WHAT LIGHT CAN DO IBD

Sinopse

âÇÖThese poems record a life lived sensuously and to the full in three countries: Italy, Ireland, and Australia. In an era when eros-charged descriptions of foreign feasts make best-selling travel books and TV programs, this book will find a large audience. But Luke Whitington is far more than a sensualist whose mindâÇÖs tongue curves inquisitively round gnocchi in the shape of a famous courtesanâÇÖs navel. This is a poet who knows history and art, and feels intenselyáboth youthâÇÖs freshness and the nostalgias of age, lamenting lost parents and lovers. His Italy is flavoured by Horace and Brodsky, and his imagery is rich and deep. Hedges shaken by a storm in Ireland are seen âÇÖrunning away like green-cloaked roguesâÇÖ. The moon rises like a 'Soaring circular Sphinx, slowing in mid-summer night air'. Youth clings to a middle-aged manâÇÖs complexion 'Like an anxious fly'. A high wind sets the leaves 'streaming this way, that way / Like frightened mice'. Lovers lie embraced, 'While the whole world looks, and thinks it sees.' Pigeon-swarms, 'intoxicated with the element', swerve, dissolve, reform 'as if to a heavenly conductorâÇÖs baton'. Cows in a water-meadow munch flowers 'where Vikings rose in roars from bumping prows of curved ships'. A poetáof such luxuriant talent would normally have revealed it over a lifetime ináa dozen slim volumes. Whitington instead has saved all his riches and served them up in this one sitting. Enjoy!âÇÖ - Mark OâÇÖConnorâÇÖFor years, I have been part of a small group of friends who have received, almost daily, an early morning email from Luke W.As a rule, it would contain only two or three words of text, and an attachment - a poem. Newly minted, fresh out of his imagination, sometimes still to be completed. A prodigious production that meant a prodigious inner push to do poetry. It is something that would at times irritate: how does he dare doing so much and so well? To see now, finally in a book, some of those works, gives a sense of timelessness to those morning emails - they are now part of a coherent whole, of a life justified also by a poetic product of considerable, true quality and appeal. Good on you, early riser, constant, brilliant writer!âÇÖ - Paolo Totaro AMá