Looking Back

by Fleur Adcock

In the first part of this book, her first since Time Zones (OUP, 1991), poet Fleur Adcock looks at some of her ancestors, from relatively recent figures struggling with hardship and family tragedies in 19th-century Manchester, through rural lives in Midlands villages, to a few prominent heroes
and villains in Elizabethan and medieval times. In the second section she returns to more contemporary subjects, such as sex and dreaming--familiar topics of this unsettled but unsparing poet.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published April 23, 1998

About the author

Fleur Adcock was a New Zealand poet and editor. Of English and Northern Irish ancestry, Adcock lived much of her life in England. She is well-represented in New Zealand poetry anthologies, was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from Victoria University of Wellington, and was awarded an OBE in 1996 for her contribution to New Zealand literature. In 2008 she was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A garland for Dame Propinquity, goddess
of work-places, closed circles and small towns,
who let our paths cross and our eyes meet
so many times in the course of duty
that we became each other's pleasure, and every
humdrum encounter a thundering in the veins.
We place at the hem of her fluted marble robe
this swag of meadow flowers, picked nearby,
as much a bribe as a thank-offering,
asking her to smile on our extensions
and elaborations of what she began.

And now, to be on the safe side, a recherché
confection of orchids and newly hybridized lilies
for her sister, Lady Novelty: not to leave us.

[andré crombie · Rating 2 out of 5]

That’s where they lived in the 1890s.
They don’t know that we know,
or that we’re standing here, in possession
of some really quite intimate information
about the causes of their deaths,
photographing each other in a brisk wind
outside their terrace house, both smiling
(not callously, we could assure them),
our hair streaming across our faces
and the green plastic Marks and Spencer’s bag
in which I wrapped my camera against showers
ballooning out like a wind-sock
from my wrist, showing the direction
of something that’s blowing down our century.

Adcock is a great poet; there are collections of hers that rate among the best I've read. Focused on her family's genealogy, however, her wit and command of language are drowned by tedium.

[Sreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting poems about people in her history, set in England, a bit grim and depressing. Portraying the tough times, particularly for women.

[mark mendoza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh f--- right off! Worst kind of establishment con. There's a special place in history's dustbins for poets who wrote odes to voting for Third Way neolib austerity/ Blair.