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1529042089

The fire of joy : roughly 80 poems to get by heart and say aloud.

Author: James, Clive.

Publication year: 2020

Language: English

Media class: Hardback

Classification: 821.008

Publisher: London : Picador, 2020.

ISBN: 9781529042085 (hbk.) : 20.00

Notes:

Essentially, this is Clive James' desert island poems: a selection of his favourite verse and a personal commentary on each. 'The Fire of Joy' was the final book Clive James completed before his death in 2019. It takes its title from the French expression Feu de Joie, which refers to a military celebration when all the riflemen of a regiment fire one shot after another in a wave of continuous sound: it is a reminder that the regiment's collective power relies on the individual, and vice versa. In this book, James has chosen a succession of English poems, exploding in sequence from Chaucer to the present day; they tell the story of someone writing something wonderful, and someone else coming along, reading it, and feeling impelled to write something even more wonderful.