{"product_id":"collected-poems-isbn-9781590178669","title":"Collected Poems","description":"Kingsley Amis’s poetry tackles all the grimly humorous subjects he tackled in his novels—lust, lost love, booze, money and the lack of it, old age, death—and does so with immense formal poise. A master of both traditional and unconventional meters with a perfect ear for parody, Amis wrote satires, epigrams, and rueful and scornful songs that are remarkable not only for their virtuosity and humor but for their scabrous realism. It all adds up to a small, entirely individual, and memorably bracing body of work. As Amis writes: “Beauty, they tell me, is a dangerous thing, \/ Whose touch will burn, but I’m asbestos, see?”“Amis wrote the sort of poems that have long fallen out of fashion: bare-knuckled, witty, light but never ‘lite,’ outward-looking instead of inward-gazing–a kind of red-blooded vers de société that is in a league with E. A. Robinson’s poignant cameos and ‘Eros Turannos’; with Auden’s ‘Miss Gee,’ ‘On the Circuit,’ and ‘Who’s  Who’; and with the poems of his friends and fellow Movement poets Robert Conquest and Philip Larkin.” – David Yezzi, \u003ci\u003eThe New Criterion \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Simply one of our best poets.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eKingsley Amis\u003c\/b\u003e (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific  British novelist, poet, satirist, and critic. Born in suburban South  London, the only child of a clerk in the office of the mustard-maker  Colman’s, he won an English scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford,  where he began a lifelong friendship with fellow student Philip Larkin.  Following service in the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals during  World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the  University College of Swansea in Wales. \u003ci\u003eLucky Jim\u003c\/i\u003e, his first  novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham  Award. Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science  fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of  poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and  three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more.  Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel \u003ci\u003eThe Old Devils \u003c\/i\u003ein  1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. He had three  children, among them the novelist Martin Amis, with his first wife,  Hilary Anne Bardwell, from whom he was divorced in 1965. After his  second, eighteen-year marriage to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard  ended in 1983, he lived in a London house with his first wife and her  third husband.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eClive James\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Sydney,  Australia, in 1939 and has lived in the United Kingdom since the 1960s.  He is the author of numerous volumes of literary criticism, poetry, and  memoir and over the course of his career has at various times hosted  several successful television and radio programs. Among his most recent  works are a translation of Dante’s \u003ci\u003eDivine Comedy\u003c\/i\u003e and the poetry collection \u003ci\u003eSentenced to Life\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Poets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302344642789,"sku":"NP9781590178669","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590178669.jpg?v=1767723905","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/collected-poems-isbn-9781590178669","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}