Michael Heller: Beckmann Variations and other poems
Published 15 March 2010
Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95
/ $15
ISBN 9781848610873
Ekphrasis, that ancient mode found in Homer's description of Achilles's shield or Keats' Grecian Urn, is here transformed in Michael Heller's meditations in poetry and prose on work by the painter Max Beckmann. Heller navigates, sometimes with Yeats as his Virgil, through a gallery of Beckmann's pictures, seeing them as uniquely bringing home contemporary civilization's catastrophic impulses ("as if days were not for sanity"), impulses at once horrific and unsettling yet strangely beautiful and restorative.
Download a PDF sampler from this book.
UK trade orders via Bertrams Books or Gardners Books.
US trade orders via Ingrams or Baker & Taylor.
Please support your local bookshop by ordering Shearsman titles from them. If you prefer to order online, use the following links:
Order from the Shearsman online store
Order from The Book Depository
Order from amazon.co.uk
Order from Barnes and Noble.com
Order from amazon.com
Order from Small Press Distribution (USA)