Can I read The Gifts of Fortune on EtoBox?

The Gifts of Fortune by Peter McDonald is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Gifts of Fortune about?

The poems in The Gifts of Fortune , Peter McDonald's seventh book of poems, cover a spectrum of personal history. They go to Belfast, Oxford, and further afield; in time they visit the poet's pasts, his now, his possible futures. Autobiographical detail McDonald's experiences (as a working class boy in Belfast, who dreams of leaving, and a middle-aged Oxford don, who dreams of going back) are filtered through a deep instinct for poetic tradition. At the heart of the book are two one, 'Mud,' in which family, professional, and literary histories are combined in strictly formal, but personally unguarded, reflections on poetry, class, and privilege; and another, 'Blindness,' where a series of ten line units test poetic form to (and beyond) breaking-point, in a meditation on family and suffering, disappointment and hope. Other poems return to themes of wealth and poverty, love and loss, and the alienation and puzzlement of age. Throughout the book, form is ghosted by the formless, hovering just beyond the frame; and Fortune vies with Fate, quite another force.

Author

Peter McDonald

Publisher

Carcanet Press, Limited

Published

2020

Language

EN

ISBN

9781784109431