A Night Out with Robert Burns The Greatest Poems
- 4 Jan 2018
- 9781786891617
- £10.99
- 256 pp
- 129×198mm
- 15 Jan 2009
- 9781847674500
- £8.79
- 256 pp
In a few words
The definitive collections of poetry by Robert Burns, arranged and introduced by award-winning writer Andrew O’Hagan. ‘Save this collection a place at your Burns table’ Guardian
In a few words
The definitive collections of poetry by Robert Burns, arranged and introduced by award-winning writer Andrew O’Hagan. ‘Save this collection a place at your Burns table’ Guardian
There is probably no better modern introduction to Burns' work . . . A triumph
Presents Burns as a poet infinitely worth reading
People who find it hard to get into Robert Burns have the answer to their prayers with this book. Here are The Greatest Poems presented in a way that Burns himself would have enjoyed -- letting the poems chime and rhyme with the debates that surround us in the world today. Somebody clever once said that poetry helps you to live your life, and here is Burns at his most helpful, in conversation with a Scottish writer who loves him, Andrew O'Hagan. I think the book will change a lot of people's attitude to poetry.
Ewan Mcgregor
The way Burns sounded, his choice of words, his rhymes and metaphors,
all that collapsed the distance I expected to feel between myself and
the schoolbook poetry I encountered first at Anahorish Elementary
School...He did not fail the Muse or us or himself as one of poetry's
chosen instruments.
Seamus Heaney
More about
the book
The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted-up and toasted. He is famous as the author of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and he has long been the patron saint of the heartsore and the hungover. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age.
This is a Burns collection like no other, introduced, arranged and contextualised by the award-winning novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan. Above all, it is an accessible edition made for the pleasure of reading that brings Burns’ timeless work to full, riotous, colourful life.
More about
the book
The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted-up and toasted. He is famous as the author of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and he has long been the patron saint of the heartsore and the hungover. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age.
This is a Burns collection like no other, introduced, arranged and contextualised by the award-winning novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan. Above all, it is an accessible edition made for the pleasure of reading that brings Burns’ timeless work to full, riotous, colourful life.
People who find it hard to get into Burns have the answer to their prayers in this book . . . presented in a way that Burns himself would have enjoyed – letting the poems chime and rhyme with the debates that surround us in the world today
Ewan Mcgregor
O'Hagan strips away the sentimentality which continues to cling to Burn's coat-tails and offers him to us at his very best - political, passionate, incisive and expressive - with biographical and textual notes that greatly enrich the reader's experience
The way Burns sounded, his choice of words, his rhymes and metaphors,
all that collapsed the distance I expected to feel between myself and
the schoolbook poetry I encountered first at Anahorish Elementary
School . . . He did not fail the Muse or us or himself as one of poetry's
chosen instruments
Seamus Heaney
Picking out his favourite Burns poems, [O'Hagan] explains why each of them still matters, either personally or politically, with the lucidity one has come to expect from one of the leading Scottish essayists and novelists of his generation
O'Hagan strips away the sentimentality which continues to cling to Burn's coat-tails and offers him to us at his very best - political, passionate, incisive and expressive - with biographical and textual notes that greatly enrich the reader's experience.
Picking out his favourite Burns poems, [O'Hagan] explains why each of them still matters, either personally or politically, with the lucidity one has come to expect from one of the leading Scottish essayists and novelists of his generation.
Another triumph from the imaginative folks of Canongate and their repackaging skills. Burns has not always been well-served by his publishers and this is exactly the sort of enterprise his 250th birthday next year deserves.
[A] highly personal anthology.
