Description
In this exquisite book-length sequence, Ellen Hinsey explores the boundary between poetry and metaphysics, and the intimate bonds between morality and mortality. A modern examination of the contemplative life, The White Fire of Time draws on a breadth of cultural knowledge and a deep understanding of the wisdom of the body. The poems in this singular collection are visionary meditations which investigate, as Hinsey writes, 'that wild chaos where life's power endures'. The work is in three sections: The World, meditations on the ordinary, the daily life of the body and its place in nature and time; The Temple, investigations into language and the ethical life; and The Celestial Ladder, in which poems trace the soul's spiralling journey through desire, love, grief and endurance. Each section mirrors the structure of the whole, with poems following specific forms, serving to create a symphonic rhythm in which details, metaphors and meanings build and interweave.
About the Author
Ellen Hinsey has published four books of poems: The Illegal Age (Arc Publications, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Choice; Update on the Descent (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), a 2007 National Poetry Series Finalist; The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan University Press, USA, 2002; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2003); and Cities of Memory (1996), winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award. She also edited and co-translated Tomas Venclova's The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). in 2017 Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova was published by Rochester University Press/Boydell & Brewer and Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism by Telos Press. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared widely in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry Review, Poetry and The Irish Times. Her translations of contemporary French fiction and memoir are published with Riverhead/Penguin Books. Her other awards include a Berlin Prize Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and a Lannan Foundation Award. She has lived in Paris since 1987, and teaches writing and literature at Skidmore College's program and the French graduate school, the Ecole Polytechnique.
Reviews
This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality, is unsurpassed among poets of her generation. -- Carolyn Forche
The White Fire of Time is a cantata, a poem of praise, resonating with the Dante of The Divine Comedy and the Milton of Paradise Lost. The strengths of this collection are its immediacy and the care, precision and purity of its diction. It is rare that such lapidary language accrues such music. -- Honor Moore
The White Fire of Time is a stunning quest for essential things, a pursuit that goes courageously against the current of contemporary American poetry. -- Adam Zagajewski
Ellen Hinsey has manifested a range of concern and a sensitivity to larger human issues which is the sine qua non of authentic poetry. She has found a way to be both truthful and original, to make poems which are absorbing and enlightening, historically pertinent and philosophically urgent...to our great good fortune they succeed in their unlikely ambitions. * C.K. Williams *
Book Information
ISBN 9781852246129
Author Ellen Hinsey
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 201g
About the Author
Ellen Hinsey has published four books of poems: The Illegal Age (Arc Publications, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Choice; Update on the Descent (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), a 2007 National Poetry Series Finalist; The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan University Press, USA, 2002; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2003); and Cities of Memory (1996), winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award. She also edited and co-translated Tomas Venclova's The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). in 2017 Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova was published by Rochester University Press/Boydell & Brewer and Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism by Telos Press. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared widely in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry Review, Poetry and The Irish Times. Her translations of contemporary French fiction and memoir are published with Riverhead/Penguin Books. Her other awards include a Berlin Prize Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and a Lannan Foundation Award. She has lived in Paris since 1987, and teaches writing and literature at Skidmore College's program and the French graduate school, the Ecole Polytechnique.
Reviews
This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality, is unsurpassed among poets of her generation. -- Carolyn Forche
The White Fire of Time is a cantata, a poem of praise, resonating with the Dante of The Divine Comedy and the Milton of Paradise Lost. The strengths of this collection are its immediacy and the care, precision and purity of its diction. It is rare that such lapidary language accrues such music. -- Honor Moore
The White Fire of Time is a stunning quest for essential things, a pursuit that goes courageously against the current of contemporary American poetry. -- Adam Zagajewski
Ellen Hinsey has manifested a range of concern and a sensitivity to larger human issues which is the sine qua non of authentic poetry. She has found a way to be both truthful and original, to make poems which are absorbing and enlightening, historically pertinent and philosophically urgent...to our great good fortune they succeed in their unlikely ambitions. * C.K. Williams *
Book Information
ISBN 9781852246129
Author Ellen Hinsey
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 201g
