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Sonnet-sequences have a history of nearly 1,000 years. But a sequence of villanelles? Here, perhaps for the first time ever in English, is a suite of twenty-four of them. The delicate instrument of the villanelle is played, lightly and gently, to salute Tao Yuanming, Chinese poet, Daoist, recluse, and a great Lord of Wine, who lived more than 1,500 years ago.
"In these beautiful, lucid poems, Richard Berengarten exploits the scope of the villanelle in a profound engagement with nature and mortality, in which past, present and future voices resonate across East and West. Accompanied by 'old friends', he fills the wine jug and considers existential realities of love and loss, imagination and creativity, where his thought and form are testimony to a life-long intimacy with Daoism and the I Ching." -Lucy Hamilton
"Poetry inspired by wine is almost a genre in Chinese literature. The Chinese pastoral poet Tao Yuanming (365?-427) pioneers what may be called 'alcoholyricism'. Berengarten's drinking songs are not just a fitting tribute to and admirable emulation of Tao Yuanming's poetic theme and art, but their evocation of idyllic rural scenes and deep reflections on humanity's relation to nature entitles him to be called a Tao Yuanming in English garb." -Ming Dong Gu
"There is an elegiac if not valedictory tone abroad and at home in these beautiful poems. We are in the aural territory of an ageing song-bird - the most musical of our older poets - gathering his forces to sing, like Shakespeare's lark, at heaven's gate. He is our host and guest, as we age along with him." -Anthony Rudolf
Info autore
Richard Berengarten was born in London in 1943, into a family of musicians. He has lived in Italy, Greece, the USA and former Yugoslavia. His writing integrates multiple strands, including English, French, Mediterranean, Jewish, Slavic, American and Asian influences. Under the name Richard Burns, he has published more than 25 books. In the 1970s, he founded and ran the international Cambridge Poetry Festival. In the UK he has received the Eric Gregory Award, the Wingate-Jewish Quarterly Award for Poetry, the Keats Poetry Prize, and the Yeats Club Prize. In Serbia, he has received the international Morava Charter Poetry Prize and the Great Lesson Award, and in Macedonia (FYR), the Manada Prize. He has been Writer-in-Residence at the international Eliot-Dante Colloquium in Florence, Arts Council Writer-in-Residence at the Victoria Centre in Gravesend, Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, and a Royal Literary Fund Project Fellow. He has been Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame and British Council Lecturer in Belgrade. He is currently a Fellow of the English Association, a Bye-Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, Cambridge. His poems have been translated into more than 90 languages.
