Wow! eBook
Selected Poems: Secular and Sacred
Author(s): Richard Crashaw (Author), Robin Holloway
- Publisher: Fyfield Books
- Publication Date: 25 April 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 140 pages
- ISBN-10: 1847772331
- ISBN-13: 9781847772336
Book Description
One of the greatest English poets of the mid-seventeenth century, Richard Crashaw is still widely neglected and misunderstood. Published to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his birth, this new selection of his work aims to help restore him to his rightful place. Skilfully and sensitively arranged by Robin Holloway, Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at the University of Cambridge, this selection unfolds in a sequence of movements and intermezzi, Crashaw’s secular verse forming a lively counterpoint to his beautiful devotional poetry. The selection also includes some of Crashaw’s Latin verse, with wholly new English translations.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘A fine selection of Crashaw’s lyrics with an engagingly personal introduction. Holloway’s friendly and witty approach may find Crashaw a new audience as much by acknowledging his weaknesses for the modern reader as by championing his strengths.’ –Times Literary Supplement
‘[Crashaw exhibits] a deliberate conscious perversity of language… like that of the amazing, impressive interior of St. Peter’s.’ –T.S. Eliot
About the Author
RICHARD CRASHAW was born in London in 1613, the son of a Puritan priest. He was educated at Cambridge and then began to teach at the university. However, his conversion to Roman Catholicism led to his removal from Cambridge and in 1649 he died, supposedly poisoned, in exile in Italy.
ROBIN HOLLOWAY studied composition with Alexander Goehr in his teens, and read English at King’s College, Cambridge. In 2011 he retired from a personal Professorship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
