The Love Bomb

This volume of libretti marks new work—and new terrain—for James Fenton. Commissioned by companies in New York and England, these musical pieces make the most of the poet's poignant, witty, and characteristically lyrical verse.

Whether evoking modern-day London on the edge of apocalypse in The Love Bomb, a timeless land beyond the moon in his version of Salman Rushdie's children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, or ancient Jerusalem in his stirring oratorio The Fall of Jerusalem (which was composed to mark the millennium), Fenton's lucid storytelling and stylish wordplay bring these pieces vividly to life—with equal power in performance and on the page.

Praise

"[James Fenton] writes as no one else dares to—with clarity, wit, and the simplest of rhymes."—The Voice Literary Supplement

"Whether he's doing satire, light verse, ballads, historical pieces, complex meditation, indignant attacks on rebarbative American critics, horror, or love, there is always an Audenesque power which comes from combining moral, intellectual, and political responsibility with playful, patterning, musical, skeptical, compassionate wit."—Ruth Padel, The Independent on Sunday

About the Author(s)

James Fenton

The celebrated poet and critic James Fenton was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1994 to 1999. His recent books include A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seed, The Strength of Poetry, and An Introduction to English Poetry.

photo: © Dominique Nabokov

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