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Average customer rating:

Sensational poetry
A good book. But let's be reasonable...
Should be read through as a story
A Wonderful Book
The Anti-Rhetoric of Love

Billy's Rain
Hugo Williams
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Bargain Books | Stores | Books

Book Description

A collection of poems devoted to the vicissitudes of a finished love affair-its ambivalences and duplicities, hidden depths and emotional pitfalls.

I narrowed it down to this- her voice on the phone, its cheerful 'Hello, how are you? Can you come out to play?' I wrapped her choking laugh in layers of indifference. I couldn't get rid of her mouth.

I narrowed it down once more- a look on her face, one arm across my neck. As a final test I allowed her to speak my name. That was no good at all. That was worse than useless. -"Useless"

The poems in Billy's Rain chart the course of a love affair that has ended. Its complications, evasions, secret joys, and emotional pitfalls are explored with the subtlety and irony that have long been distinguishing characteristics of Hugo Williams's powerful work.

Hugo Williams lives in London, England.

Customer Reviews:

Sensational poetry.......2003-02-24

Magnificent poetry. Read it straight through, as a story of the rise and fall of a love affair. The economy of language is truly startling -- Williams tells the whole complex story through little glimpses of his life. He reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop -- if you like her poems, my guess is you'll find Williams a treat.

A good book. But let's be reasonable..........2002-03-16

This is a good book. It won the TS Eliot prize. That was surprising, but perhaps not very surprising. It is, after all, a good book. It would be a shame if people were lead to believe there weren't any better books though. Which there are. Lots. But this is still a good book. Maybe worth four stars. Not worth five.

Should be read through as a story.......2000-06-22

The poems seem to form a continuous narrative telling the beginning and end of a love affair. If you took away the line breaks it would be a readable story. In fact I think Williams has previously written "poems" that are continuous blocks and is interested in pushing the edge of prose. Anglicisms, such as silver paper and day return and local London references add obscurity for an American reader and detract from an apparent intent to avoid poetic language. For example Trivia is about the way small things can hurt that remind of a lost love. Francis Thompson wrote "the scent of the rose is bitter to him that loved the rose" but Williams wants to avoid things like roses so he brings in names that sound (I think) prosaic and everyday to an English reader.

A Wonderful Book.......2000-03-28

It's one of those miracles of direct communication -- even the color of the cover and the painting thereon are perfect -- not to mention the title. Willliams also writes delightful essays for the Times Literary Supplement.I wish this were on the best seller list instead of "Beowulf."

The Anti-Rhetoric of Love.......2000-01-27

Hugo Williams's account of a long finished love affair might seem a sort of diary of events, a naturalistic catalogue of passion. In fact, of course, it is highly artificial, its form a deliberate arrangement of memory as meticulous in its way as a vase of lillies. Consider, for example, his very avoidance of overt rhyme, his shunning of jog-trot rhythms. Consider too the very absence of gestural hyperbole, or any sort of excess. Williams is an utterly individual writer, but he is also the heir to the Movement poets of the 1950s with their pose of modesty, their almost narcissistic austerity, their avoidance of any vocal register more demonstrative than the conversational. Like Larkin, Williams celebrates the things that didn't happen, the missed opportunities of life: "The hotel cost too much/so we didn't even touch the bed"; "For I am sorry about what happened at the fairground the other day./ For I regret not going on the slides"; "If only they were waiting for us somewhere, the nights we didn't use, the things we didn't do.." This is all the amorous equivalent of Larkin regretting the glamorous childhood he never had. Williams has turned the grammatical negative into a stylistic device quite as self-conscious as the deployment by other poets of hyperbole. At the end of one stanza, blaming himself with typical self-disparagement for the unsatisfactory and unresolved nature of the affair, he uses the device twice in one line, coming close in the process to self-contradiction: "it was my decision," he remarks on page 44, "to do nothing that made nothing happen." The line is a shrug that is also a kind of flourish. The cumulative effect of all this is a variety of anti-rhetoric, the raising of anti-art into art, of ordinariness into a careful mode of chic. Williams never gives himself away; in the process he discloses himself utterly. Like the stammering lamp in the very last line of the volume, it is the poet himself who is "somehow refusing to blow." Yet this very self-containment represents a quiet noise of implosion. The judges of the T.S. Eliot Award chose well.

Average customer rating:

The Rain Forest
Billy Goodman
Manufacturer: Tern Enterprise, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GX1T3S

The Wexford Trilogy: A Handful of Stars; Poor Beast in the Rain; Belfry

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The Wexford Trilogy: A Handful of Stars; Poor Beast in the Rain; Belfry
Billy Roche
Manufacturer: Nick Hern Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Wexford Trilogy: A Handful of Stars/Poor Beast in the Rain/Belfry/3 Books in 1 Volume

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The Wexford Trilogy: A Handful of Stars/Poor Beast in the Rain/Belfry/3 Books in 1 Volume
Billy Roche
Manufacturer: Nick Hern Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1854592653

Impact of Acid Rain and Deposition on Aquatic Biological Systems (Astm Special Technical Publication// Stp)

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Impact of Acid Rain and Deposition on Aquatic Biological Systems (Astm Special Technical Publication// Stp)
Billy G. Isom , and Sally D. Dennis
Manufacturer: Astm Intl
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

Natural History | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

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The Rain Forest (Planet Earth Books)
Billy Goodman
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (Juv)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Biology | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0316320196

Rain (Featuring a Photograph of Dorothy Page on Front Cover)

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Rain (Featuring a Photograph of Dorothy Page on Front Cover)
Billy Hill , Peter de Rose , and Dorothy Page
Manufacturer: Shapiro, Bernstein & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Sheet music
ASIN: B000NYS13Q

If You Want The Rainbow (You Must Have The Rain)

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If You Want The Rainbow (You Must Have The Rain)
Billy and Mort Dixon (Lyrics) and Oscar Levant (Music) ROSE
Manufacturer: Remick Music Corp.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OSDPM8

Average customer rating:

The Rain Forest
Billy Goodman
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (Juv)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTSL94

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