James Fenton Website: Selected Poems (Penguin)

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Yellow Tulips
Poems 1968-2011

From the Publisher (Fabery and Faber):

Yellow Tulips is a gathering from four decades of work by a writer described by the Observer as 'the most talented poet of his generation'.

Winner of both the Queen's Gold Medal and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, James Fenton has given readers some of the most memorable lyric verse of the past decades, from the formal skill that marked his debut, Terminal Moraine, to the dramatic and political monologues of The Memory of War and Children in Exile, through to the unforgettable love poems of Out of Danger.

This assembly, made by the author himself, includes a generous offering of his most recent, uncollected work: it is an essential selection by, as Stephen Spender put it, 'a brilliant poet of technical virtuosity'.

Previous Editions of Fenton's Selected Poems

Selected Poems (out of print):

Penguin's Selected Poems is the first full selection of James Fenton's poems to be published, and represents the whole range of his work from light-verse to political and love poems to opera libretti. It includes early work from The Memory of War and Children in Exile as well as later work from Out of Danger, which won the Whitbread Poetry Prize in 1994. Also represented are examples of his work in verse for the stage and recent unpublished poems.

Critical Acclaim for Fenton's Poetry

'Passionate and personal; Fenton's poems can also be extremely funny and violent; they are always full of the pleasures of the language.' -- Paul Theroux

'James Fenton is very popular - it's the way he writes, with a mixture of poetic language and real directness.' -- Peter Porter

'For my money it [Out of Danger] is one of the best collections of the past twenty years.' -- Giles Foden, Guardian

'A brilliant poet of technical virtuosity' Stephen Spender 'The most talented poet of his generation.' -- Observer

Reviews and Critical Discussions

Bashaarat, Magnus. 'Picks of the Paperbacks'. The Daily Telegraph (18 February 2006): 8.

Publishers Weekly (26 June 2006): 31.

Campion, Peter. 'Eight Takes'. Poetry 189.4 (January 2007).

Metcalf, Stephen. 'James Fenton's Selected Poems: Beneath a jaunty surface, a lurking menace'. International Herald Tribune (9 February 2007).

Metcalf, Stephen. 'Informal Menace'. New York Times Book Review (11 February 2007).