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Not a Moment Too Soon
Frank Kuppner's new (eleventh) book consists of three long, hilarious, philosophical, existential sequences, 'The Liberating Vertigo of a Final Passage of Meaning', 'Not Quite the Greatest Story Never Told' and 'Not Quite a False Fresh Start Either'. Those 'not quites' are a keynote – what might have been and what actually is, the gap between being the space of the poem, its ironies, humour and wry heartbreak. The poems in the sequences are short, reminding us of his first book, A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty, where short 'orientalising' forms were first perfected. 216 poems through the second sequence, he interrupts himself with, '[I have almost said enough.]' But that's just short of the half of it. 'Points weaved together / to make myself' – these are the points of each poem, haiku or tanka or something else, the weave being uneven and richly suggestive. Words fill out unexpectedly, the ubiquitous Stars become Sta[i]rs. His subject matter is what lies beyond the window of his rented rooms. The world is an erotic and philosophical minefield. He is rather too fitful and feverish to relish it for what it is, what it might be or even what it might have been.
The Same Life Twice
Comic, cosmic: for Kuppner the terms are inseparable. In the three plaited sections of The Same Life Twice, Frank Kuppner asks the essential, answerless questions about human existence: What are we doing here? Is it really here? And why here? Fortunately,' he writes, 'it is nearly always possible to take notes, even if these habitually contradict each other.' Here are Kuppner's fieldnotes from life in an unfathomable universe. A sardonic Virgil showing us a directionless Infinity, Kuppner guides us through a reality in which we are just one more of the 'ignorant infinite dots / rather than the vast central vortex we must feel ourselves to be'.
A Very Quiet Street
None
The Third Mandarin
Frank Kuppner's The Third Mandarin contains 501 quatrains in five 'books'. It collages an alternative Imperial China of drunk poets, grumpy sages, and sex-starved emperors. The poems riff on a variety of forms, from prophecies and love letters to drinking songs and graffiti. As a storyteller, Kuppner sticks faithfully to the path of least significance. His is a poetry of things that might happen in a minute or two, to people we don't really care about, for reasons too complicated to go into. His characters have a habit of turning up late to their own poems, as the poet rushes off to find them so that he can get started. Half riddling philosopher, half drivelling idiot, Kuppner's speaker has the air of someone who has forgotten why they came into the room, 501 times. Funny, ridiculous, and beautiful, The Third Mandarin confirms Kuppner as a poet 'of immense intellectual and comic power' ( Poetry Review), 'one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British poetry ( LRB).
Life on a Dead Planet
Kuppner returns with more philosophical contemplations in his latest novel. Momentary, internalised dilemmas are the author's stock-in-trade and his work sparkles with lateral and highly astute observation on human behaviour.
Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry
The comparative study of the literatures of Ireland and Scotland has emerged as a distinct and buoyant field in recent years. This collection of new essays offers the first sustained comparison of modern Irish and Scottish poetry, featuring close readings of texts within broad historical and political contextualisation. Playing on influences, crossovers, connections, disconnections and differences, the 'affinities' and 'opposites' traced in this book cross both Irish and Scottish poetry in many directions. Contributors include major scholars of the new 'archipelagic' approach, as well as leading Irish and Scottish poets providing important insights into current creative practice. Poets discussed include W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, Louis MacNeice, Edwin Morgan, Douglas Dunn, Seamus Heaney, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala ni Dhomhnaill, Don Paterson and Kathleen Jamie. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of poetry from these islands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Second Best Moments in Chinese History
The 501 quatrains which constitute Frank Kuppner's text may make it seem like a repackaged version of his first collection. This work, however, provides a different tone.
A God's Breakfast
Poet Frank Kuppner's first collection of new verses in four years includes a strangely edited riot of 782 epigrams and annotations to illustrate the emergence of a new classical world in "The Uninvited Guest." "West Land" serves as a commentary on the foibles of arrogance, putting an enormously self-important writer and thinker in his place.
