The Onion Memory

by Craig Raine

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Poet and critic Craig Raine was born on 3 December 1944 in Bishop Auckland, England, and read English at Exeter College, Oxford.

He lectured at Exeter College (1971-2), Lincoln College, Oxford, (1974-5), and Christ Church, Oxford, (1976-9), and was books editor for New Review (1977-8), editor of Quarto (1979-80), and poetry editor at the New Statesman (1981). Reviews and articles from this period are collected in Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990). He became poetry editor at the London publishers Faber and Faber in 1981, and became a fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1991. He gained a Cholmondeley Award in 1983 and the Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award in 1998. He is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté.

His poetry collections include the acclaimed The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984) and History: The Home Movie (1994), an epic poem that celebrates the history of his own family and that of his wife. His libretto The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1986) is based on The Last Summer, a novella by Boris Pasternak. Collected Poems 1978-1999 was published in 1999. A new long poem A la recherche du temps perdu, an elegy to a former lover, and a collection of his reviews and essays, entitled In Defence of T. S. Eliot, were both published in 2000. Another collection of essays, More Dynamite, appeared in 2013.

Craig Raine lives in Oxford. His latest books are How Snow Falls (2010), a new poetry collection; and two novels, Heartbreak (2010), and The Divine Comedy (2012).

Reviews

[Elīna Kokareviča · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grāmata, kuru noteikti var novērtēt ar vairāk nekā četrām zvaigznēm, bet tādu skaitu izvēlējos, jo tā ļoti atgādina tādu 20. gadsimta otras puses imažismu, kas daļai pasaules varētu būt kas jauns, bet daļai - kaut ko atgādināt, atgādināt ko bijušu... Esmu pie tās daļas, kurai dzejoļi atgādina 20. gadsimta sākumu, sākot ar Ģertrūdi Steinu, beidzot ar plejādi krievu imažistu. Taču autors, protams, piedāvā pietiekami daudz jauna - tādi dzejoļi kā Tattooed Man un Bed and Breakfast un vēl arī citi neatstāj vienaldzīgu nevienu (manuprāt). Un kā jau ikviena dzejas grāmata tā na izlasāma pilnībā nekad.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changing something into something strange is a way of avoiding cliché.
You are not where you think you are, things are not what they seem.

For some, poetry is between music and prose.
For another, it might be between microscopy and photography.

It might not something that you say, but something that you see.

Like head-on images of plain things:

"the gentle irony of objects, how
they told amusing lies and drew laughter,
if we only believed our eyes." (from "An Enquiry Into Two Inches of Ivory")

[L.B. Sedlacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great poems from Raine. He writes in such an original voice making him one of my favorite poets. Poems start out one way and end in unexpected ways making this a unique read. The title poem, no surprise, was my favorite. This book has selections from Raine’s books in it.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guy's imagery is in 4K....

[Belinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martian poetry, quirky in the originality of observations.