everymans poetry (3 resultados)

Paperback. Condición: Good. Welcome to Lord Rochester: Complete Poems (1996) ? Everyman?s Poetry , ISBN 9780460878197 ? a book that arrives looking respectably classic and then immediately starts behaving like it has been smuggled out of a Restoration drinking den in someone?s sleeve. Because this is John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester : court wit, professional troublemaker, and the sort of poet who could turn a compliment into an insult, an insult into an aphrodisiac, and an aphrodisiac into a philosophical crisis before the candle had burned down. If you like your poetry polite, uplifting, and suitable for reading aloud at a village fête, Rochester is not here for you. If, however, you enjoy brilliance with sharp elbows ? satire, sex, cynicism, swagger, and the occasional unexpectedly tender moment hidden behind the leer ? then welcome to the party. Mind the puddles. ?Complete Poems? is a bold promise, and with Rochester it comes with a certain delicious danger: completeness means you don?t just get the famous stings and punchlines, you get the full range of his voice ? from gleeful obscenity to razor-edged social observation, from drunken bravado to sudden clarity about how fleeting everything is. He?s obscene, yes, but he?s also frighteningly intelligent. The jokes land because the mind behind them is quick enough to make you laugh and wince at the same time. You?ll read a line and think, I can?t believe he wrote that, and then think, annoyingly? that?s good. The irony, of course, is that Everyman?s Poetry packages him in a dignified little volume ? the literary equivalent of putting a rowdy libertine in a clean shirt and asking him to behave at dinner. It?s charming, really: you can place this book on your shelf next to Shakespeare and Keats and it will sit there looking refined, while quietly containing material that would have got you escorted out of polite society and possibly challenged to a duel. It?s the perfect stealth classic: respectable cover, scandalous contents. Rochester?s world is Restoration England: a court full of intrigue, hypocrisy, and performance; a culture that loved wit almost as much as it loved pretending it didn?t; a moment when poetry could be both weapon and entertainment, and the sharpest people used language the way others used swords. He writes about desire like it?s a joke and about virtue like it?s a rumour ? but underneath the mischief there?s often a hard, bleak honesty about pleasure, power, and the body?s inconvenient insistence on mortality. Condition: Good , meaning this copy has been read, handled, and survived ? much like Rochester himself, at least for a while. Expect a little wear, but it?s still perfectly ready to do its job: make you laugh, raise your eyebrows, and remember that ?classic literature? has always contained an unruly streak. Perfect for: lovers of satire, wit, and sharp historical voices, readers curious about Restoration culture and its less polished underside, poetry fans who don?t mind being scandalised as a form of education, and anyone who enjoys a book that looks respectable while smirking. Sold by Crappy Old Books , naturally ? because where else would a tidy Everyman edition of history?s most gloriously inappropriate poet end up, if not waiting for the next reader to pick it up, read a page, and think: Right. That?s enough enlightenment for today.

First edition Very fine and bright blue boards in fine pictorial dustjacket with crisp bright text throughout. Handsome all around.

8°, 500 S., Text: englisch, original Leineneinband (Hardcover) mit original Schutzumschlag, der selten unbeschädigt aufzufindene Schutzumschlag nur minimal an oberer und unterer Buchrückenkante und an den Ecken beschabt, Vorderdeckelinnenseite unten mit kleinem Besitzerstempel, Titelseite unten mit Besitzervermerk, sonst schönes, sauberes Exemplar. Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599) Abholung im Ladengeschäft in Frankfurt am Main möglich - spart die Portokosten. Pickup at the store in Frankfurt am Main is possible and saves the shipping costs.