Caruso for Children, & Other Poems

by William Dunlop

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 096512102X
• ISBN13: 9780965121026
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Rose Alley Pr
• Length: 81 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.3" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

William Dunlop's "Caruso for the Children"

William Dunlop, whose favourite lovestory was taken from Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies, was a tough sell for the traditional "feel-goods" like hope, human progress, and romance. What happens when an author whose poetic allies are the bleak Hardy and Larkin nurses a life-long passion for opera, particularly the art of the tenor aria? Caruso for the Children is the result, named in honour of that renowned Italian tenor. But the timbre of the book is as far from the operatic melodrama as one could seemingly get. In this collection a bitter poem about extramarital affairs vyes its worldview--"true love, or least resistance"--with a father's quiet meditation on his sleeping children--"Man/needs a diversity of love/to train his voice to giving." "Just such a September--/the flushed air of evening; the blue mist curling" elegaically begins a poem that ends with the bombing of Southamptom, while another poem that starts off, "September's here: so what" progresses to a hauntingly lyrical homage to Yasujiro Ozu and natural beauty. Dunlop's poetry consistently avoids the easy finish; the careful, deliberate mastery of formal verse creates a backdrop to the raw emotions, giving us a way of speaking that never overwhelms, but that quietly warms--perhaps, indeed, like the stillness an aria assumes in the midst of opera's trademark brouhaha. Even Larkin, I'm sure, would grudgingly admit to being moved by such delicate longing.