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Isaac Rosenberg

Selected Poems and Letters

Edited by Jean Liddiard

• Poetry • Non Fiction • Hardback • Prose

Description:

Isaac Rosenberg has long been regarded as one of the most important artistic figures of the First World War. His poems, such as ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ and ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’, have been included in every significant war anthology and have earned him a place in Poets’ Corner. He studied at the Slade School of Art at the same time as Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler, showing promise as a painter. His poverty, education and background made him an outsider, yet it was just that experience which equipped him to cope with the unforeseen horror of war in the trenches: ‘I am determined that this war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not master my poeting.’ Inexplicably for such a major figure, Rosenberg’s work has been out of print for many years. In this Selected Poems and Letters, his biographer Jean Liddiard has made a substantial selection of his finest poems and most revealing letters, providing also an authoritative introduction and a detailed chronology.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song -
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

from ‘Returning, We Hear the Larks’