297 pages : 25 cm
"What does it mean to be a poet's wife, his muse and lover, there for the heights of inspiration and the quotidian of the day-to-day, and oftentimes, too, the drudgery of being in a supporting role to "the great man"? In this exquisite and sensitive new novel, David Park explores this complicated relationship through three luminous characters: Catherine Blake, wife of William Blake, nineteenth-century poet, painter, and engraver; Nadezhda Mandelstam, whose husband, Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, died in a transit camp en route to Siberia during Stalin's rule; and Lydia, the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her husband's life in the days just after his death. All three women deal with their husband's fame or notoriety, taking seriously their commitment to the men they married and to assisting with and preserving their work. And this despite infidelities, despite a single-mindedness at the expense of others, and despite hardship sometimes beyond comprehension. Set across continents and centuries, under wildly different circumstances, these three women exist as a testament to love, to relationship despite the odds, and to art. Deeply insightful and beautifully wrought, The Poets' Wives is David Park at his best--a novelist who finds dignity and grace away from the spotlight, and who reminds us that art has the power to capture even the quietest of voices"--
"What does it mean to be a poet's wife, his muse and lover, there for the heights of inspiration and the quotidian of the day-to-day, and oftentimes, too, the drudgery of being in a supporting role to "the great man"? In this exquisite and sensitive new novel, David Park explores this complicated relationship through three luminous characters: Catherine Blake, wife of William Blake, nineteenth-century poet, painter, and engraver; Nadezhda Mandelstam, whose husband, Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, died in a transit camp en route to Siberia during Stalin's rule; and Lydia, the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her husband's life in the days just after his death. All three women deal with their husband's fame or notoriety, taking seriously their commitment to the men they married and to assisting with and preserving their work. And this despite infidelities, despite a single-mindedness at the expense of others, and despite hardship sometimes beyond comprehension. Set across continents and centuries, under wildly different circumstances, these three women exist as a testament to love, to relationship despite the odds, and to art. Deeply insightful and beautifully wrought, The Poets' Wives is David Park at his best--a novelist who finds dignity and grace away from the spotlight, and who reminds us that art has the power to capture even the quietest of voices"-- from publisher's web site
Includes bibliographical references

David Park

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

New York: Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury Continuum

Bloomsbury UK

Wisden

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

United States, United States of America

First U.S. edition, New York, 2014

UK ed., FR, 2014

London, 2015

London, 2014

[curator]admin-andrea-mills@archive.org[/curator][date]20180517205653[/date][comment]status tbd[/comment]

From award-winning writer David Park, an absorbing account of the lives of the women most important to three poets: William Blake, Osip Mandlestam and an imagined contemporary Irish poet.
Three women, each destined to play the role of a poets wife: Catherine Blake, the wife of William Blake a poet, painter and engraver who struggles for recognition in a society that dismisses him as a madman; Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry costs him his life under Stalins terror; and the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her marriage during the days after her husbands death as she seeks to fulfil his final wish.
Set across continents and centuries, and in very different circumstances, these three women confront the contradictions between art and life, contemplate their emotional and physical sacrifices for anothers creativity, and struggle with infidelities that involve not only the flesh, but ultimately poetry itself. They find themselves custodians of their husbands work, work that has been woven with loves intimacies and which has shaped their own lives in the most unexpected of ways.

Three women, each destined to play the role of a poet's wife: Catherine, the wife of William Blake - a poet, painter and engraver who struggles for recognition in a society that dismisses him as a madman; Nadezhda, wife of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry costs him his life under Stalin; and the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her marriage during the days after her husband's death as she seeks to fulfil his final wish. Across continents and centuries, they confront the contradictions between art and life, contemplate their emotional and physical sacrifices for another's creativity, and struggle with infidelities that involve not only the flesh, but ultimately poetry itself

2023-06-28