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The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures.

As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, readers around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic.

At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller. The writer’s command of language is combined with the poet’s eye for visual detail to remarkable, and unforgettable effect.

In The Uncertain Land and Other Poems, those same strengths are vividly displayed as O’Brian leads us on a journey through his own life. Here, we see a writer full of a young man’s spirit, challenging life, and here an author reflecting an old man’s melancholy at youth gone; in between, as he describes the places that he lived and people that he encountered, are poems of sly observation, wry humour and delicate beauty.

Through more than 100 poems, O’Brian reveals insights into the world that captivated him while he was at work on a succession of novels that would reach its apotheosis in the Aubrey/Maturin adventures, which would secure his reputation as ‘the Homer of the Napoleonic Wars’. Intensely personal, allusive and unique, this is the work of a lifetime, published now for the very first time.

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The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures.

As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, readers around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic.

At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller. The writer’s command of language is combined with the poet’s eye for visual detail to remarkable, and unforgettable effect.

In The Uncertain Land and Other Poems, those same strengths are vividly displayed as O’Brian leads us on a journey through his own life. Here, we see a writer full of a young man’s spirit, challenging life, and here an author reflecting an old man’s melancholy at youth gone; in between, as he describes the places that he lived and people that he encountered, are poems of sly observation, wry humour and delicate beauty.

Through more than 100 poems, O’Brian reveals insights into the world that captivated him while he was at work on a succession of novels that would reach its apotheosis in the Aubrey/Maturin adventures, which would secure his reputation as ‘the Homer of the Napoleonic Wars’. Intensely personal, allusive and unique, this is the work of a lifetime, published now for the very first time.

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The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
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The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

Overview

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures.

As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, readers around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic.

At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller. The writer’s command of language is combined with the poet’s eye for visual detail to remarkable, and unforgettable effect.

In The Uncertain Land and Other Poems, those same strengths are vividly displayed as O’Brian leads us on a journey through his own life. Here, we see a writer full of a young man’s spirit, challenging life, and here an author reflecting an old man’s melancholy at youth gone; in between, as he describes the places that he lived and people that he encountered, are poems of sly observation, wry humour and delicate beauty.

Through more than 100 poems, O’Brian reveals insights into the world that captivated him while he was at work on a succession of novels that would reach its apotheosis in the Aubrey/Maturin adventures, which would secure his reputation as ‘the Homer of the Napoleonic Wars’. Intensely personal, allusive and unique, this is the work of a lifetime, published now for the very first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780008261351
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 03/21/2019
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
Format: eBook
Pages: 176
File size: 3 MB
Age Range: 13 Years

About the Author

About The Author

Patrick O’Brian, until his death in 2000, was one of our greatest contemporary novelists. He is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey–Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He is the author of many other books including Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He lived for many years in South West France and he died in Dublin in January 2000.


Patrick O’Brian was born in 1914 and published his first book, Caesar, when he was only fifteen. In the 1960s he began work on the idea that, over the next four decades, evolved into the twenty-novel long Aubrey–Maturin series (with an extra unfinished volume published posthumously). In 1995 he was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He died in January 2000 at the age of 85.


Nikolai Tolstoy is an English-Russian author and Patrick O’Brian’s step-son, their relationship spanned forty-five years during O’Brian’s marriage to Mary Tolstoy, NIkolai’s mother.

He has written a number of books, including Patrick O’Brian – The Making of a Novelist, The Coming of the King and Victims of Yalta. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1979.

Date of Birth:

December 12, 1914

Date of Death:

January 2, 2000

Place of Birth:

Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire

Place of Death:

Dublin, Ireland

Education:

Shebbear College, Devon

Website:

http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobhome.htm

Table of Contents

Foreword Nikolai Tolstoy ix

Part I Poems

Blitz poetry 1

'The sea and the sky are silent' 5

Mrs Koren 6

'The harsh dry polished rattle' 7

'You will come to it' 8

The Olive Harvest 9

The Inine 11

Tibi donum offero 12

A present 13

French verses 14

Mal du pays 14

Le bois des oiseaux 14

Espagnols exilés 15

'A dog bit his master' 16

Goat 17

Looking towards the south 18

Foxes surprised 19

Epitaph 20

February 21

The Deep Gold of a Pomegranate-Tree 22

The Cypress Tree 23

Meads no more 24

The Lagoon 25

A Lycéen 27

In Upper Leeson Street 28

How to lay a mine 30

The far side of the pass 32

August, Sun-impaled 33

Words from the bottom of a river 34

Croagh Patrick 36

A T'ang Landscape Remembered 37

Song 38

Farewell, my sin I have enjoyed you 39

A man under his impulsion 40

David danced before the ark 41

The falling of the leaves 43

Dear Mona Fitzpatrick '32 (or '3) 44

The theft 45

The electric light failing 46

Youth gone 47

Giving up smoking 48

Diego 49

Spaniards Exiled 52

The Captain and the Stock 53

To the hermitage and down, refreshed 55

Waiting for money in a far country 58

In Madame Ponsalié's garden 60

Walk by the sea to see wonders 62

The raven 64

The young listless man 65

From the Welsh 66

Snowdon for the sunrise 67

The wine-dark sea 69

The bad day 70

Sterne 71

The Pleiades on Christmas Eve 72

The apology 73

Dead hours of louring justification, a desert of time 75

Myself a young man read a poem 76

The uncertain land 78

Silver-haired charm and urbanity 81

Winter in Foreign Parts 82

Obsèques 83

The dark figures 85

'Is true the rat' 86

The duty of pleasure 87

Poulp: or, the Medusa a Toy 88

Grey and white 89

No smoking: the second day 90

Pray, Luv, forgive me my sourness 91

The Mandrake 92

For Louise's visitors' book 94

'Clouds over clouds' 95

'Walking on the high mountain' 97

'Help my understanding, Lady' 98

'Down through the vines' 99

Collioure 100

'Long, straight, the steel lines' 101

'If I could go back into my dream' 102

'Loose-bellied, grey' 103

Old Men 104

'When your lance fails' 105

Part II Drafts

The Sardana for the First Time 109

'Yesterday an old husband' 111

'Whereas in Jewry came a star' 112

'Not that a hard-roed herring should presume' 113

'The pattering of rain' 114

'The cry of buzzards in the sky' 115

'Vicious intromission' 116

Forbear O Venus pray forbear 117

A halt on the Trans-Siberian 118

'When my Muse and Chian Veins vie' 119

The sorrow & woe 120

Boars 121

Night walking 129

'On the mountain I have quite a good sense of direction' 131

The True-born Englishman 132

'Sun sloping through the cypresses' 135

Labuntur anni (The advancing years) 136

'Peace; a great lawn that small, fat feet' 137

The hard winter 138

'An old thin tall man' 139

What the hell do you know about poverty? 140

'The north wind low over the house' 141

'High on the cold mountain road' 142

'I went out in a night of tearing wind' 143

'A wheeling buzzard lifting to the sun' 145

'Thoughts that range from anger and revenge' 146

'Of France and of the knowledge of that land' 147

Captivity 149

'When a dry heart sets a bleeding' 151

Loud-mouthed neighbours through the floor 153

'For Jojo's livre d'or 85' 154

Acknowledgements 155

Index of first lines 157

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