Simon Perril, Two Slices of Toast: Emptiness and Disappointment in Peter Manson and Andrea Brady. Symbiosis, 11.1 (April 2007) 75-88

This essay was originally published in Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, Volume 11.1 (April 2007) pp. 75-88

Essay Topics and Keywords:

contemporary poetry, Andrea Brady, Peter Manson, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Ernst Bloch

An extract from this essay:

“This essay represents an attempt to situate the work of two contemporary poets, Andrea Brady and Peter Manson, doing so by tracing a strain of concerns variously articulated in nineteenth century France via Arthur Rimbaud, ones which make their way into mid-twentieth century America and Canada through Jack Spicer and George Stanley, and on into twenty-first century Britain. Brady is an American poet living and working in London; Manson is a Scottish poet living and working in Glasgow. Both of these poets participate in a complex dialogue articulating a sensibility between hope and disappointment; Manson through a chapbook of translations of Stéphane Mallarmé; Brady through a book of poems negotiating a strain of contemporary indifference which she partly anchors in the context of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. This essay foregrounds the dialogue between disappointment and hope by recourse to the philosopher Ernst Bloch. ”

Simon Perril

De Montfort University, Leicester