Dimensions
155 x 233 x 47mm
The twentieth century has been a turbulent time of social and political upheaval, technical progress and enormous changes in lifestyle. It has also been a century of great poetry which has reflected these changes, capturing both world events and everyday life. Scanning the Century is the story of the last 100 years told in poetry, drawing on a diverse range of material in English and in translation, from familiar and surprising voices. Its thirty-nine sections begin the modern age with Omens (Eliot, Hardy, Lichtenstein's dark 'Prophecy'), cover such subjects as Love and Sex (Larkin, Adcock, Thom Gunn) and the Sixties (Dylan, Lennon and McCartney), and end with the new century (Les Murray on 'The Future').
'Marvellously readable... I encountered more than 100 poems I had never read before, drawn from an extraordinary range of writers... you can open this book at almost any page and hit on an imaginative, truth-telling poem.'
Peter Porter, Sunday Times
