Toys / Tricks / Traps
eBook - ePub

Toys / Tricks / Traps

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Toys / Tricks / Traps

About this book

In Christopher Reid's marvellous new collection, a schoolboy furtively and thrillingly drops a marble through the top of his desk so that it makes its way in darkness along a complicated chute of books, rulers and rubbish, only to emerge from a hole in the base and be caught deftly in his other hand. The poem is titled 'Homeric' and might serve as a clue to the mood and construction of the collection in general, where the poet, now in his seventies, seeks to track down and commune with his much younger self. It is an investigation that tests Wordsworth's 'the child is father of the man' by contriving a series of transtemporal encounters between two selves who may now, conceivably, begin to understand each other.

Reid was born in Hong Kong and, thanks to the roving nature of his father's employment, spent some of his childhood in foreign places. Most of the locations in this book, however, are the Britain of the 1950s and '60s - perhaps, at this distance in time, no less exotic. As the poems move from pre-verbal experience to adolescence, the younger self is captured in scenes that illuminate the steps by which a man - a poet - has been raised. Another poem conjures up the childhood of Henry James in order to reflect on 'the large part /mystery plays in both childhood and art,' a proposition that the book as a whole may be said to endorse through both its wondering gaze and its ingenuity.

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Yes, you can access Toys / Tricks / Traps by Christopher Reid in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Faber & Faber
Year
2023
eBook ISBN
9780571376629
Edition
0
Subtopic
Poetry

Table of contents

  1. Landing Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. Epigraph
  5. The Hero
  6. Shut-eye for the Old Man
  7. The Language of Babies
  8. Over My Head
  9. Alphabet
  10. Ars Poetica
  11. Kindergarten
  12. Byzantium
  13. Hand / Mind / Eye
  14. The Wolves of Epsom
  15. Intimations of Mortality
  16. The Edge of the Table
  17. A Fairy Tale Romance
  18. Rumpelstiltskin
  19. Ferdinand
  20. Daddy-Long-Legs
  21. Start-Rite
  22. Night Dance of the Solitary Traders
  23. Traffic Island
  24. The House Itself
  25. Liminal
  26. The Museum of Disappointing Toys
  27. You
  28. Little Self
  29. The Defendant
  30. A House Call
  31. A Small Boy and Others
  32. Breaking or Losing
  33. The Adventures of Theodore Faddlefoot
  34. A Ton of Feathers
  35. Nebuchadnezzar
  36. Fog
  37. Blessing and Initiation
  38. Low-Flying Locusts
  39. I Spy
  40. A Star Is Airborne
  41. Wonders
  42. Prospectus
  43. How Baron Munchausen Defeated the Bully
  44. Silly Owls
  45. Mythology
  46. Homeric
  47. Jezebel
  48. School Photo
  49. Crocodiles
  50. Hay Fever Haiku
  51. Obbly Obbly Onker
  52. Elephant Trap
  53. Ballad of the Bombs
  54. Arrival of the A to Z List
  55. Uncle Neil
  56. Golf in the Family
  57. Mystery of the Two Ages
  58. Epiphany
  59. Gold Mohur
  60. Street Scene
  61. Home Thoughts from Abroad
  62. Anecdote from Shopping
  63. A Unique Collection
  64. Mirrors
  65. To Autumn
  66. Theorem
  67. Dictionary and Typewriter
  68. Lucretius, He Say
  69. Sun and Moon Bow Down before Him
  70. The Lion of Judah
  71. A Salute to the British Council Library, Colombo
  72. An Epistolary Romance
  73. Trincomalee
  74. Acknowledgements
  75. About the Author
  76. By the Same Author
  77. Copyright