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    Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times
    Unavailable
    Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times
    Unavailable
    Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times
    Ebook906 pages7 hours

    Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times

    By Neil Astley

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Staying Alive is an international anthology of 500 life-affirming poems fired by belief in the human and the spiritual at a time when much in the world feels unreal, inhuman and hollow. These are poems of great personal force connecting our aspirations with our humanity, helping us stay alive to the world and stay true to ourselves. The Staying Alive trilogy of anthologies have introduced many thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry.

    Many people turn to poetry only at unreal times, whether for consolation in loss or affirmation in love, or when facing other extremes and anxieties. Staying Alive includes many of the great modern love poems and elegies, but it also shows the power of poetry in celebrating the ordinary miracle, taking you on a journey around many of the different aspects of everyday life explored in poems.

    A strong poem is not just for crisis. Such a poem is there for all times, helping us face or embrace daily change and disruption. It will also speak to us when nothing seems to be happening, when the poem's importance is in helping us stay alive to the world and stay true to ourselves.

    Staying Alive has reached a wider readership than any other anthology of contemporary poetry. It is a landmark in the history of literary publishing. A sequel, Being Alive (2004), and a companion anthology, Being Human (2011), completed this poetry trilogy. Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (2012) selects 100 poems from all three anthologies, a third from each. These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry – all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry.

    ‘Truly startling and powerful poems.’ – Mia Farrow

    ‘These poems distil the human heart as nothing else… Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. It’s invigorating and makes me proud of being human.’ – Jane Campion

    ‘Staying Alive is a blessing of a book. The title says it all. I have long waited for just this kind of setting down of poems. Has there ever been such a passionate anthology? These are poems that hunt you down with the solace of their recognition.’ – Anne Michaels

    ‘Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can’t think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems.’ – Philip Pullman

    ‘Usually if you say a book is “inspirational” that means it’s New Agey and soft at the center. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I’ve decided I’m now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius.’ – Edmund White

    ‘Staying Alive is a wonderful testament to Neil Astley’s lifetime in poetry, and to the range and courage of his taste. It’s also, of course, a testament to poetry itself: to its powers to engross and move us, to its ability to challenge and brace us, and to its exultation. Everyone who cares about poetry should own this book.’ – Andrew Motion

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateAug 30, 2016
    ISBN9781780371764
    Unavailable
    Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times
    Author

    Neil Astley

    Neil Astley is the editor of Bloodaxe Books which he founded in 1978. His books include many anthologies, most notably those in the Staying Alive series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011) and Staying Human (2020), along with three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets and In Person: World Poets. He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, and has published two poetry collections, Darwin Survivor and Biting My Tongue, as well as two novels, The End of My Tether (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award), and The Sheep Who Changed the World. He was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books in 1995; is a patron and past trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival; and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. He lives in the Tarset valley in Northumberland.

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    Reviews for Staying Alive

    4.5/5

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    • 2/5
      If anyone ever reviews the poems inside an anthology you should disregard it completely. I discovered my favourite poem within these pages, yet the entire collection was not to my taste. That is poetry.
    • 5/5
      I haven't read all these poems yet, but I love the way it's in sections and the range of what's collected here. There's a range of themes, it's not all any one kind of poetry or topic. I don't like all of the poems, but I like the fact that they're all here, for me to experience.
    • 4/5
      The perfect poetry anthology for the bedside table. This is a book to pick up for a few moments every day, there will be something to calm you or warm you or give you goosebumps. Staying Alive reminds you of one of the reasons that poetry exists - to capture that fleeting moment and pin it in your memory forever.
    • 5/5
      This anthology of modern poetry is both a curious exercise in marketing (the close-up photo on the cover has nothing to do with any of the poems, but presumably makes the book more accessible for readers in their teens and twenties); and a very strong anthology of contemporary poems. There are famous authors and poems in this collection - Robert Frost, 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening'; Stevie Smith, 'Not Waving but Drowning'; Dylan Thomas, 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' - but most of the poets are people I've either never heard of or never read, making this volume a great entry-point to their work. The editing is sensitive and inspired, placing poems next to each other in ways that create additional resonances. Sometimes the juxtaposition reveals the way one poem was inspired by or conceived explicitly as a response to another; in other cases, pairings let the reader compare two ways of experiencing or expressing the same emotion or situation. Yet, the editing is not heavy-handed; chapter introductions provide helpful information about many of the poems, but you can read just the poems and come away enlivened. Some poems in this collection that were new to me and that I really liked include: Robert Hayden, 'Those Winter Sundays'; Billy Collins, 'Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes'; Sharon Olds, 'True Love'; Fleur Adcock, 'For a Five Year Old'; Derek Mahon, 'Antarctica'; and Miroslav Holub, 'Brief Reflection on Accuracy'.
    • 5/5
      An amazing collection, truly worth its title."And the Days Are Not Full Enough"And the days are not full enoughAnd the nights are not full enoughAnd life slips by like a field mouseNot shaking the grass.- Ezra Pound
    • 4/5
      A very good anthology of modern poetry. Arranged by themes with introductory essays this is a superb introduction to poetry and a good anthology for those times when taking a whole shelf of volumes just isn't practical. Great for dipping into.
    • 5/5
      This fabulous anthology turned me on to several poets I hadn't read before. I enjoyed the broad range of poets and styles Astley includes, along with his thematic groupings, which give gentle order to the collection and help to make the whole more than the sum of its parts.
    • 4/5
      I saw this on a recommended book list (Best Books of the Decade, I think). It is a lovely collection of poems. Lots of my favorites here. I’m adding this book to my wishlist at Amazon when I turn this copy back into the library.