Anne Rouse is a keenly observant writer of spiky satirical portraits and shapely lyrics of the ordinary and the bizarre.
Her perspective in Ox-Eye
the term for a small cloud presaging a storm
is one of apprehension in poems relating to personal and social change. Ranging from her native east coast of America to her adopted home on the south coast of England, these incisive but often amused poems question how we view past and present, dismantling obsolete nostalgia, and casting a critical eye on what we wish for and what may happen instead.
Ox-Eye is her fifth collection from Bloodaxe, appearing 14 years after her previous book, The Upshot: New & Selected Poems, which included the new poems of The Divided (2008), along with selections from her first three critically acclaimed earlier collections, Sunset Grill (1993) and Timing (1997)
both Poetry Book Society Recommendations
and The School of Night (2004).
By:
Anne Rouse
Imprint: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Spine: 7mm
ISBN: 9781780376080
ISBN 10: 1780376081
Pages: 64
Publication Date: 06 December 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
7 Polaroid 8 Moonrise 2021 9 Landfill 10 Feeny’s Yard 11 Finish Line 12 Seyton 13 Night of the Monkey Puzzle Tree 14 The Town 15 To the Night Market 16 Ballad of a She 17 Haymaking 18 Late Swim 19 Greetings from Hastings Pier 20 Change 21 Request to a Neighbour 22 The Builder’s Mates 23 Inconsequence 24 Fling 25 Cyclops in Cythera 26 The Waves, and a Bang 27 It Greens Again 28 Uncertain Ode 29 A Thank You Note 30 The Morvoren 31 Morvoren (Variation) 32 Ode to a Puritan 33 From the Dark Tower Came 34 Man Ironing 35 Monterey 36 The Scholars’ Hostel 37 Before I Left on Friday 38 High Wall 39 Graffiti 40 Heel 41 Again 42 Notes from a Moon Station 43 Oil 45 Speech Act 46 Ildeth in Bela 47 Warriors 48 A Calenture 49 A Lothario 50 Obits 51 Domestic Animal 52 Report on Local Damage 53 Clematis 54 Found Poem for Beryl Markham 55 Louse 56 Suburban Pastoral 57 The Beat 58 At Chincoteague 59 Return to Sender 60 The Maying 62 Grotto 64 Acknowledgements
Anne Rouse was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Virginia. After some years working in London as a psychiatric nurse, she now lives in East Sussex. A former health worker, she has been a Hawthornden Fellow, and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Glasgow (2000-02), Queen's University, Belfast (2004-05), and the Courtauld Institute, London (2008). In the past, her poetry has receivedPoetry Book Society Recommendations and has been named in theTimes Literary Supplement Book of the Year lists.
Reviews for Ox-Eye
Anne Rouse's poems are watchful and amused, sardonic and appalled. They are also in the best sense political: the big picture of our whole society informs her miniatures of city life where dossers and shopping jostle for attention alongside love and death. -- Ruth Padel & Sean O'Brien * PBS Bulletin * Rouse has honed her craft further to produce some lovely focused lyrics with a wonderful development in her tone. The sureness of Rouse's touch is a pleasure to read throughout and The School of Night is her most moving volume yet. -- Andrew Neilson * Magma * The reader is surprised and pleased and informed by the conclusions the poet leads us to, by her often poignant humour and shocks of transcendence that are rooted in a natural and unforced realism. -- Penelope Shuttle * Poetry London *
