Train Songs by Sean O'Brien


ISBN
9780571217762
Published
Binding
Hardcover
Pages
192
Dimensions
143 x 222 x 18mm

'This is the night mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order...' -- W.H. Auden

Wordsworth was the first laureate of locomotives: in fact he railed against them, and against the consequent opening up of the Lakes to holiday hordes ('On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway'). His dismay was echoed down the decades by disturbed ruralists, and yet the train has become part of our psychic landscape: some of the best-loved English poems - Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', or Philip Larkin's 'Whitsun Weddings' - have celebrated carriages, platforms and waiting rooms, while locomotion has inspired some of the most characteristic poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Stevenson, Hardy and MacNeice, Betjeman and Auden (whose 'Night Mail' was written to accompany a 1930s GPO documentary about the postal express from Euston to Glasgow).

Co-edited by two of our most distinguished poets, Train Songs offers a round tour - from Wordsworth to Hugo Williams and beyond - starting from the poetry of departures and brief encounters, but taking in the American Blues, the troop trains of two world wars, and the addiction to speed which characterised the European revolutions. Trains have carried the freight of history from the Industrial Revolution onwards - the Armstice in 1918 was signed in a railway carriage, the death camps were organised around train timetables - and this new anthology shows how the train in all its forms has exercised a unique hold upon our collective unconscious.
Christmas Catalogue 2024 x BookFrenzy
21.24
RRP: $24.99
15% off RRP


This product is unable to be ordered online. Please check in-store availability.
Instore Price: $24.99
Train Songs is Out of Print

Other Titles by Sean O'Brien

Embark
22.99
19.54
15% Off
Holly and Ivy
SEAN O'BRIEN
14.99
14.99
_% Off
Ten Poems About History
14.99
12.74
15% Off

You might also like

Home
32.99
28.04
15% Off
Harmony
32.99
28.04
15% Off
LVOE
39.99
33.99
15% Off
Clarity  Connection
32.99
28.04
15% Off
Shes Strong But Shes Tired
32.99
28.04
15% Off
Crush
32.95
28.01
15% Off

RRP refers to the Recommended Retail Price as set out by the original publisher at time of release.
The RRP set by overseas publishers may vary to those set by local publishers due to exchange rates and shipping costs.
Due to our competitive pricing, we may have not sold all products at their original RRP.