Love in a Life

by Sir Andrew Motion

faber pbk,1991,poems by Andrew motion

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

Reviews

[Paul]

There’s some really great work in here. Andrew Motion takes those ordinary, everyday things like love, tragedy and loss, and expresses them in such a way that it reminds you of how they really feel; how life really feels.

Motion does to life what stained glass does to light.

Look

I pull back the curtain
and what do I see
but my wife on a sheet
and the screen beside her
showing our twins
out of their capsule
in mooning blue,
their dawdler’s legs
kicking through silence
enormously slowly,
while blotches beneath them
revolve like the earth
which will bring them to grief
or into their own.

I pull back the curtain
and what do I see
but my mother asleep,
or at least not awake,
and the sheet folded down
to show me her throat
with its wrinkled hole
and the tube inside
which leads to oxygen
stashed around her bed,
as though any day now
she might lift into space
and never return
to breathe our air.

I pull back the curtain
and what do I see
but the stars in the sky,
and their jittery light
stabbing through heaven
jabs me awake
from my dream that time
will last long enough
to let me die happy,
not yearning for more
like a man lost in space
might howl for the earth
or a dog for the moon
with no reason at all.

[gracie rogers]

only andrew motion could write a poem about the shit of a retired whippet and it be beautiful

[Colin]

Love in a Life dates from 1999, before Andrew Motion was appointed Poet Laureate. It's a curious mix of straightforward narrative poems and other more complex forms. To my mind, the best poems in the book are One Who Disappeared, where the simplest of poetic forms carries a highly emotional charge, and the intensely moving Hull, which evokes the spirit of both the place and its most famous poetic force, Philip Larkin. In a book of many moods, where most of the poems are about personal relationships in one guise or another, Andrew Motion also surprises the reader with the only poem I have ever read about dog-fouling (It is an Offence) a subject hitherto seldom, if ever, to be treated seriously as poetic subject matter!

[erris]

this started out really strong and went downhill. he could rhyme more? his poems are too long and his stanzas are too short for me

its love. its love in a life. i dont know how you theme a poetry book. ideally there wouldnt be a theme except time. love in a life. love in a life. i suppose it was love in a life. everything is love. love is sadness and death and it is love because it is worth those things.

fave poems: Bad Dreams, Look, Close

[Ed KC]

Some fine poems in this collection. The title is borrowed from Robert Browning's poem and there is a sense that the poet is searching out, and reflecting on, moments of love in his own life, in particular with his first and second (then current) wife. The poems deal with the precariousness of life and the fragility of love, not only that of spouses and lovers, but also of parents, children and friends. Ephemeral moments are grasped at: beginnings, endings and turning points; objects resonate and trigger memories of fleeting moments.

[Gareth Williams]

Clever and eccentric but not a collection that I clicked with. i think I shall have to read ot again before govong a final verdict. i shall post another review when I do.