Kingsley Amisās poetry tackles all the grimly humorous subjects he tackled in his novelsālust, lost love, booze, money and the lack of it, old age, deathāand 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: āBeauty, they tell me, is a dangerous thing, / Whose touch will burn, but Iām asbestos, see?ā
Kingsley Amisās poetry tackles all the grimly humorous subjects he tackled in his novelsālust, lost love, booze, money and the lack of it, old age, deathāand 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: āBeauty, they tell me, is a dangerous thing, / Whose touch will burn, but Iām asbestos, see?ā