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Robin Robertson

The Wrecking Light Hardcover

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Product details

Language: : English
ISBN-13 : 978-0330515504
Item Weight : 8.4 ounces
Dimensions : 5.43 x 0.59 x 8.11 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #9,413,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
11 ratings

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Marcia Terwilliger

One to try that's different.

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2014

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Small book of poems that flows page after page with a poem. It's not my very favorite but it's a good poetry book to read.

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susan waddell

Very solemn and I'm not really fond of poetry based ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2015

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Very solemn and I'm not really fond of poetry based on Greek literature. I've heard some poems by Robin Robertson. Well-written but not at all uplifting.

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Ray Garraty

poet with the photographer’s eye

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2013

This collection by British poet Robin Roberston consists both from his own poems and translations. Among those who Robertson translated, there are names such as Baudelaire, Ovid, Neruda. And if translations are often ploted, Robertson’s own poems are plotless (except for those that are based on myths.)
Robertson's eye is the photographer’s eye, how accurately he captures some part of the nature. Nature, everything that surrounds us, according to Roberston, is ominous and sometimes dangerous. But the poet finds those words that even at the most terrible you look at least with curiosity.

Roberston is often contemplative, but not a participant. And to contemplate, it is necessary to step back, refuse to contact. Because of that the lyrical hero, sometimes present in the poem as "I", sometimes as a spirit standing behind photocamera, just pushing on the button of the camera, that seems a lonely and sympathetic, hiding his secret desire to get into nature, into the nature of things.

When the lyric hero finds himself in his own image as he becomes part of a sinister world, the hero does not experience the illusion of his own purity and integrity. He is as grim as the world around: No light shining back at me, just shame.
Robertson’s poems are not loudly; on the contrary - often full of ominous silence: If you're absolutely silent and still, you can hear nothing but the sound of nothing.
You want to remember by heart the poems from this book, to pronounce privately, but not out loud.

One person found this helpful

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A collection to savor

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2014

I discovered poet Robin Robertson at Blackwell's Bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London.

It was near the end of a two-week vacation in London last September. We had met a British friend for lunch nearby, and afterward we were walking down Charing Cross toward Trafalgar Square. Blackwell's was right there, and who am I to pass up an opportunity to step into a bookstore?

I wandered around the shop until I found the section for poets and poems. It wasn't what I've come to expect in many U.S. book shops--it was large, and it was diverse, with volumes ranging from anthologies and collections by well-known poets to new poetry by people I'd never heard of.

I can't explain why Robertson's "The Wrecking Light" caught my eye. But it did. I randomly opened it to this poem:

About Time

In the time it took to hold my breath
and slip under the bathwater
--to hear the blood-thud in the veins,
for me to rise to the surface -
my parents had died,
the house had been sold and now
was being demolished around me,
wall by wall, with a ball and chain.
I swim one length underwater,
pulling myself up on the other side, gasping,
to find my marriage over,
my daughters grown and settled down,
the skin loosening
from my arms and legs
and this heart going
like there's no tomorrow.

I bought the book on the strength of that one poem, and then discovered the pleasure of the rest of what the volume contains. To read Robin Robertson's "The Wrecking Light" is to walk in the poetry of identity, place, geography, mythology, geography--and the list doesn't stop there.

Published in 2010, it's a remarkable collection. It includes "At Roane Head," which won the Forward Prize for best poem of 2009 (Robertson has also won Forward Prizes for best collection and best first collection--the only poet to have won prizes in all three categories). It includes "Leaving St. Kilda," a beautiful poem of the topography seen sailing away from the island in the Outer Hebrides. It includes two poems of Greek mythology that make their stories seem almost contemporary. There's "Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market" that is a stated nod to Pablo Neruda, and a poem about Strindberg in Berlin. The command Robertson exerts over this range and diversity of subjects and themes is dazzling.

So who is Robin Robertson?

You can read his entry at the Poetry Foundation, but here's a brief thumbnail: born and raised in Scotland, influenced by Celtic and Classical myth, author of several poetry collections, editor at several London publishing houses, translator of Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, and a translator of Medea by Euripides. And he's one fine poet.

The Wrecking Light is a rich collection, one to savor and even marvel over.

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Red Robie

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 5, 2016

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Lovely poetry, recommended

Rose Cassington

good poetic stories and imagery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2015

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I knew I wanted this book before I bought it , good poetic stories and imagery

One person found this helpful

dolma

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2014

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Delighted. Thank you.

Sophie Cooke

stunning heartfelt collection

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 10, 2011

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I am a poetry junkie, and this is the real deal. Every poem comes from a place of pain and beauty; capturing both the joy and the pathetic irony of human life. A sense of knowing too much about oneself (or about humanity) suffuses the lines. It is as if Robertson has gone to the edge of something, and stepped over; his poems come from beyond the cliff. The individual human weakness that he explores is somehow not depressing: in a way, Robertson's poems are showing us how much we need each other - the strength in THIS.
The poems are beautifully crafted, being both simple and mythically powerful. I have tried to pick a favourite but really can not choose. Whether he is showing us ducks' feet caught in the ice - bodies torn off by foxes - or a woman's hair on the pillow beside a vase of tulips, Robertson seems to be always on top form in every poem. The imagery is stunning. 'He put all his doubt / to the mouth of her long body, / let her draw the night / out of him like a thorn.'

15 people found this helpful

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