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Collected Poems, 1958-2005

(2006)

Published by O Books in October 2006
ISBN 1905047940
Price £29.99/$59.95 Paperback

 

Publisher’s Outline

This includes the poems in A White Radiance and new works since 1994, including A Dandelion Clock, new lyrics, 1994-2005; Summoned by Truth, 2000-2005 (see below); and Groans of the Muses, 2005. There are 30 volumes in all, with Notes at the end of each volume and an Appendix entitled ‘Vision and Technique in the Collected Poems’.

 

Summoned by Truth comprises three political poems expressing humanitarian concerns –

‘Zeus’s Ass’

‘Attack on America’

‘Shock and Awe’

‘Zeus’s Ass’ is about the visit of Tony Blair to address a Women’s Institute conference, which barracked him. Zeus, the ruler of the world, wants the British public to accept his globalist plans for European (and world) unity, and via Hermes he chooses Blair to convey his message. He will lull the British people into vacuousness. It all goes wrong when the Women’s Institute ladies wake up and see too truly. All is not lost, and Zeus prevails.

This work is in the mock-heroic idiom of Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’ and satirises the vacuousness of New Labour policy during its unassailable first parliament.

‘Attack on America’ is about the September-11th attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan.  Bush is using the attacks as an excuse to create a New World Order, and his intentions and their outcome are satirised in the poem. This work draws on the tradition of political satire developed by Dryden (in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’).

‘Shock and Awe’ is about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the fall of Baghdad. Again U.S. motives are satirised.

These three poems are a biting and ironic reflection on the true motives of the Anglo-American alliance under Bush and Blair and echo themes developed in The Syndicate.  They continue a 17th/18th century tradition created by Dryden and Pope.

See Selected Poems: A Metaphysical’s Way of Fire

 

The Back Cover Says

Since the Second World War English poetry has become almost exclusively social and secular. It has lost contact with poetry’s true task – ancient, traditional and perennial – of mirroring the contemplative, metaphysical vision of Reality or God.

Here is a new, distinctive and original metaphysical voice. Nicholas Hagger descends through the Dark Night to his centre, experiences illumination and ascends to a unitive vision of the One that so attracted poets like Dante and Eliot, Blake and Yeats. While doing so, he reflects the Age, focusing prophetically on the end of Communism, the decline of Europe, the heart of America and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Grounded both in the present day, and in history and philosophy, Collected Poems is a signpost to the life of the future, and essential reading for both poets and anyone with soul.  Many of these poems are published here for the first time.

 

Contents

Collected Poems – List of poems in Contents

 

New approach

Hagger’s poems present his quest for Reality and the vision of unity, and reflect the follies and vices of the Age. He brings a new Universalist approach to poetry.

 

Nicholas Hagger