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Title: |
The Chancy Now |
| Sub-title: |
120 Sonnets |
Search Result:
| By (author): |
C. K. Stead |
| ISBN10-13: |
177671279X : 9781776712793 |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pages: |
120 |
| Weight: |
.000 Kg. |
| Published: |
Auckland University Press - November 2026 |
| List Price: |
12.49 Pounds Sterling |
| Availability: |
Not yet Published
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| Subjects: |
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| In the 1970s a young professor, I rescued from a puddle in Princes Street a Penguin of Nietzscheâ s Thus Spake Zarathustra, dried it and read it, annotating as I went, underlining his thought that one must have chaos within if one is to give birth to a dancing star â At 93, his wife Kay and son Oliver recently dead, writing nothing, C. K. Stead thought there were no more books. Then, â alive on pills, / and the surgeonâ s knifeâ , enduring grief and recovery, sonnets began to appear, three or four a week, the poems collected in this volume. Chaos wonâ t teach a sonnet to limit its lines but every sonnet should have its dancing star. From the ABs under the high ball to Brauniasâ s lamingtons, from Dionysus to Guide Rangi, from the Uber driver (â Heâ s a Wittgenstein man so we get along perfectly / passing over in silence what canâ t be discussedâ ) to the author (â My Chookspeakâ s better than my French because I learned it / in the right way, by ear, not off the pageâ ), 120 sonnets reveal a poet battered, bruised and still in his prime. After a sonnet tending to self-pity and crap I consign it to the bin and set off knowing todayâ s wild northerly wind and rough seas at Kohi will knock me into shape. |
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