Anne Stevenson, Four and a Half Dancing Men

Ian Gordon (Anglia Ruskin University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1993

Places

United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

Four and a Half Dancing Men, published by Oxford University Press in 1993 as part of the Oxford Poets Series, is Anne Stevenson’s twelfth collection of published poetry. It brings together thirty-six poems, written since the publication of The Other House, previously published separately in a range of periodicals and anthologies. The volume is dedicated to Mary Lucas, her husband Peter’s mother, and built around eight poems, collectively entitled “Visits to the Cemetery of the Long Alive”, dealing with the pain, sadness and anger of old age and approaching death, particularly as the poet had witnessed it in visiting Mrs Lucas in a nursing home for the elderly.

Many of the poems in Four and a Half Dancing M…

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1266 words

Citation: Gordon, Ian. "Four and a Half Dancing Men". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 August 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31611, accessed 27 November 2024.]

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