Listen to what they did.
Don’t listen to what they said.
What was written in blood
Has been set up in lead.
—from “Blood and Lead”

The leading poet of his generation, James Fenton has over the course of his career built a body of work breathtaking in its range and sensibility. From the passionate political poems that launched him into fame to the intimate illuminations of love—and loss of love—in his later work, Fenton’s poetry has always been marked by formal daring, wit, and an abiding empathy for the victims of war and political oppression. With selections from all of his published work since The Memory of War, the entire text of his libretto The Love Bomb, and new, previously uncollected poems, Selected Poems is an imaginative and formal tour de force.

Praise

Praise for Out of Danger:

“[Fenton] writes as no one else dares to—with clarity, wit, and the simplest of rhymes . . . Like Auden, Fenton displays enormous range.” –Village Voice Literary Supplement

“What love of words . . . could fail to be delighted by these heart-wrenching . . . lines?” –Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Sunday Globe

About the Author(s)

James Fenton

James Fenton was born in Lincoln, England, in 1949. His volumes of poetry include Terminal Moraine, The Memory of War, Children in Exile, and Out of Danger. He was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999.

photo: © Dominique Nabokov

Table of Contents

Author's Note

 

I. From The Memory of War and Children in Exile

Wind

A German Requiem

Cambodia

In a Notebook

Dead Soldiers

Lines for Translation into Any Language

Children in Exile

God, A Poem

The Skip

 

II. From Out of Danger

Beauty, Danger and Dismay

Out of Danger

Serious

The Ideal

Hinterhof

The Possibility

The Mistake

I'll Explain

In Paris with You

The Milkfish Gatherers

Jerusalem

For Andrew Wood

Out of the East

Blood and Lead

The Ballad of the Imam and the Shah

I Saw a Child

Tiananmen

The Ballad of the Shrieking Man

Fireflies of the Sea

Cut-Throat Christ

Gabriel

The Ballad of the Birds

I Know What I'm Missing

Here Come the Drum Majorettes!

The Orange Dove of Fiji

The Exchange

An Indistinct Inscription Near Kom Ombo

 

III. The Love Bomb

 

IV. Recent Work

Memorial

Yellow Tulips

Martine's Song

Everything in Your Window Is a Sign

Was That Your Idea of Love?

The Alibi

I Kept That Gun

Down to the Twigs and Seeds

Never Let Me See You Suffer