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Sailing the Forest

Sailing the Forest selects from the finest work of one of the most essential voices in contemporary poetry. Robin Robertson's verse is at once haunted and haunting, beautiful and brutal, ancient and immediate - and capable of tricking ghosts from the most apparently innocuous and familiar shadows. His unique, mythically charged world is a place of forked storms, where 'Rain . . . is silence turned up high' and we can see 'the hay marry the fire / and the fire walk.' Through five remarkable collections, Robertson has captured the illusory and intangible in language of muscular physicality. Sailing the Forest is the definitive introduction to a poet at the very height of his talents.

'Robin Robertson is one of the finest contemporary poets, as Sailing the Forest amply shows. His is a wonderful hard clear music, and the muscularity and toughness of his verse is everywhere counterpointed by a deep-lying tenderness' - John Banville

'He writes poems about the body, and that’s where they hit you, and that’s where they seem determined to stay.' - Jeff Gordinier, NYRB

Agent: Peter Straus
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Other Robin Robertson Titles