Book Description Review “The influence of writers like T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden abounds in Sullivan’s long stanzas and page-width lyrics, which are littered with pitch perfect images, succinct turns of phrase, and exquisitely captured sentiments. Sullivan elevates otherwise mundane daily interactions through artful specificity and repetition of sounds. At times playful and humorous, Sullivan skillfully shifts gears to poignant and profound. Composed of three long poems, this volume presents an odd paradox: though intimidating in length, it leaves the reader wanting more. An antithesis to abbreviated Twitter poetry, Sullivan’s lyrics are nonetheless accessible and exceptionally rewarding.”―Diego Báez, Booklist (Starred Review)“Three Poems is a richly rewarding collection that shows all the confidence and skill of a poet writing in their prime: it is hard to believe this is a first book.”―Paul Batchelor, The Spectator“A magnificent debut . . . Assured, cool, and anthropological in its focus on a life lived via distinct stages and in discreet contexts. The elasticity of her poetic gift―the sheer range of what she can make language do and say―coupled with formal mastery, ensures we’ll be reading this collection for years to come.” ―Citation for the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize “Hannah Sullivan’s majestic debut offers three big pictures―birth, coming of age and death―but this isn’t a triptych. Instead, these themes extend across the book, with the poems acting as a set of transparencies that enlarge and complicate one another . . . Her authority, reach and ambition are exhilarating. Her metaphorical scope is that of the internet.” ―Lavinia Greenlaw, London Review of Books “[Sullivan] writes freshly about everything, including sameness. She is a sensual conjurer of atmospheres―writing almost as a poet-restaurateur. On a single page: cloves, rainstorm, peanut oil, ozone, brandy, frost, freezing blood and peaches ‘sitting with their bruises’―each with its own tang . . . Sullivan’s poems are as intense as Edward Hopper’s paintings.” ―Kate Kellaway, The Guardian Read more About the Author Hannah Sullivan lives in London and teaches English at Oxford. She studied Classics at Cambridge, and then lived in the United States for a decade. Three Poems is her debut collection. It was awarded the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize and the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. Read more Customers Review: The first poem was long and superficial – sunglasses, waxing, bottoms. Nothing worth reading. However the final 1/3 was original and engaging and sometimes moving.Publishers need to be braver when putting poetry collections together you do not need to see everything the poet has written, only the good parts. I’d have been happy to spend the same money on 2/3 less book.
“You are listening to Bowie in bed, thinking about the hollowsOf his eyes, his lunatic little hand jigs, longing for Berlin in the seventies.You are thinking of masturbating but the vibrator’s batteries are lowAnd the plasticine-pink stick rotates leisurely in your palm,Casting its space-age glow into the winter shadows.”This collection of three poems is simple, and seems to be speaking to persons who are active in the 2010s. At the worst of times, the book seems to try and say “Love me!”, as with this:”You are slightly disappointed in Obama’s domestic policy,You think the great American novelist is David Foster Wallace.The epigraph to The Pale King is from Frank Bidart,It is about pre-existing forms and formal questions in art.And as you are dancing in a suit skirt to the Killers’ ‘Mr Brightside’,Feeling the anthem soar and rise, he makes the PowerPoint slides”I can’t help but feel that this book lacks details which speaks to or with, rather than at me.
The T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is an annual award given to the best new poetry collection in the United Kingdom or Ireland. It’s been called the poetry prize that British poets most want to win. The prestige associated with the prize is large; so is the prize money, some 25,000 pounds, or about $32,500 at current exchange rates.The 2018 prize winner was “Three Poems” by British poet, writer, and professor Hannah Sullivan. The collection is indeed three poems: “You, Very Young in New York;” “Repeat Until Time;” and “The Sandpit After Rain.” These aren’t three poems that go on and on for pages; they have breaks, and even numbered subheads like “2.3” and “Hospital Windowsills.” Thematically, however, the collection is three poems.“You, Very Young in New York” is set in that city, and it tells the story of a young woman on her own for the first time, living and working, partying and getting drunk occasionally, loving and experiencing the sights, the sounds, and the smells of the city. “Repeat Until Time” is about going even farther from home, this time to California, and discovering an environment and culture marked primarily by repetition. “The Sandpit After Rain” fuses the death of a father with the birth of a son, an ending and beginning and how alike they are.Sullivan uses language that is clear, sharp, and largely devoid of ambiguity. Whether she is describing a bakery at Broadway and 28th, a strip mall in California, or the beginnings of labor in childbirth, Sullivan employees a keen, practiced eye.This extract is from the second poem, “Repeat Until Time.”7 p.m.: commuting home: arrest.Trader Joe’s, the Daly City multiplex.Repetition’s sense of comedyUnsheathed as architectural poverty:Beige curves on Taco Bells,And fog, the old dry ice machine.Three sooty wraithsFade on the bridge like figures on a vase,Faded already in an eighteenth-century house –Stooped, waterthinnedChinoiserieSome kind from Stanford GSBEnters the 101 the wrong way round.He kills two Puerto Rican passengersAnd the taxi driver.DUI. The Dean writes: ‘Our communityCan only get strongerFrom this manifest tragedy.’An Audi TT in the next lane gets rammed:The driver pops a nicotine gum,Even though he is already chewing one:Sweet watermelon shell in gum stings.His wife goes through to voicemail.Parked up, his face mashes into the wheel.It is July and the fog fallsLike a solid,Like raisins in soda at elBulli.The world tastes of molecules,Palpitates in ozone.Sullivan calls “Repeat Until Time” the “Heraclitus poem.” He was a Greek philosopher who lived in Ephesus about 500 B.C. He’s credited with the saying that “no one steps into the same river twice.” Sullivan applies that idea to her understanding of and experiences in California, a state that is, perhaps, never the same place twice.She has solid American connections. She received her Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 2008 and taught in California for several years. She is the author of “The Work of Revision,” a study of modernist writing published in 2013. She is an associate professor of English at New College, Oxford, and lives with her family in London. “Three Poems” is her first poetry collection.Sullivan faced some stiff competition for the prize. Several works were shortlisted, including one by Sean O’Brien, who has previously won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize. But “Three Poems” is a worthy recipient by a new voice in poetry.
This is a small but hard-hitting poetry collection about three stages of life: youth, cyclical aging, and both death and birth. Hannah Sullivan is a master with words.For you if: You like to read poetry or want to challenge yourself to get better at it.FULL REVIEW:”Now it is April and another summer. As you go past the subwayAn older, also shoeless guy leaps out and shouts, “Girl, hey.”He starts to twirl a topless bowler and it dips like an early swallow.He raps, “I love you, girl,” getting low, and the sky over the ParkWhitens in a punched-out square, as one unlit cab followsAnother down Fifth and, through tears, you are laughing.”Three Poems was a really beautiful collection. I’m not super experienced reading poetry, but I’m trying to do it more often so that I’ll get better every time. This one challenged me a little bit, but it was so worth it. Hannah Sullivan is just so masterful.As you’d guess from the title, this collection has three long poems in it. Each poem is broken down into subsections of a sort, and the subsections use different forms — couplets, long stanzas, etc. The first poem talks about youth, and feeling stuck in it, and feeling free in it. The second poem talks about how life is cyclical. And the third poem looks at death and birth side by side, after the author’s father died as her first child was born.The three poems all definitely feel connected to one another, not just because they are in the same book or because Sullivan wrote all three — but because she constantly brings you back and back. A line here, a phrase there, a moment of recall up ahead. There’s a powerful through line that tugs you onward.It’s amazing how Sullivan triggered feelings of nostalgia in me, even for experiences I’ve never had. I’ll probably be rereading this one very soon — I’m sure I’ll get even more out of it.TRIGGER WARNINGSPregnancy / childbirthDeath / grief |
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