Selected Poems of Christopher Logue
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Selected Poems of Christopher Logue
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Going Logue

User avatar fallback
Dec 15, 2024

There's a fair bit of chaff in this retrospective, but when Logue's on song he's a match for any English poet of the second half of the 20th century. Stuff like "When I was serving my country" and "Caption for a Photograph of Four Organized Criminals" blends the personal and political as deftly as his contemporaries Gavin Ewart (of whom Logue reminds me) and Peter Reading, and his later work — "Fragment" and "New Numbers" especially — reads like an updating of Eliot with its easy but insistent iambs and many-angled narrative voice. There's a very funny invective against a neighbor who mutilates Logue's tree. There's an extract from his monumental "War Music" included too, but you should read that in its entirety. I loved this one (could you call it an ecLogue?):

Things

The sun shines on the fields and on the town.
Far in the distance by the mill
A man in blue is gardening.
A cat sleeps on a window-sill.
At a bar, two gentlemen discuss the latest Aston-Martin.

A boy and girl by a railway bridge.
The girl holds up her face. Is kissed.
The train that passes by contains
A general and a scientist
Delighting in each other's brains.

In a quiet place a woman of fifty dressed in black,
With a newspaper across her face,
Dreams that she is young and slim.
The front page of the paper says:
I MARRIED A SEXUAL MANIAC
And the back page says:
SKIRTS WILL BE SHORTER IN THE SPRING.

The lovers go their separate ways.
She feels he only wants one thing.
He feels he's misunderstood.
The man who has been gardening
Cleans his spade with a bit of wood.
And the sun goes down on the fields and on the town.

VL+1
2 comments
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vedleyEarly user badge1 year ago

Oh that's a wonderful piece, I've definitely got to check out some of Logue's work. Would War Music be a good place to start?

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yarbDonator badge1 year ago

It's the only other thing I've read by him and it's a bona fide masterpiece so I'd have to say yes. I don't know if you can get it in one volume now. There's nothing like it. I guess you should be familiar with the Iliad going in.