Szirtes, George - Stephen Romer (review date 16 August 1991)
Stephen Romer (review date 16 August 1991)
SOURCE: Romer, Stephen. “Events through Glass.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4611 (16 August 1991): 24.
[In the following review, Romer discusses the emotions found in the poetry of Szirtes's Bridge Passages.]
Geòrge Szirtes's new book carries the dedication “For my friends in Hungary”, which puts us instantly in the picture, given that most of the poems were composed in Hungary itself during the momentous months of 1989-90. To outsiders, the demise of the Communist regime there was perhaps less spectacular, and in a sense less public, than the similar events in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and especially Romania. As if in keeping with our more muffled perception of Hungary, the poems in Bridge Passages are themselves remarkably oblique.
One hesitates to use a phrase like “distanced appraisals” in describing them, because so many of them are intimate, or intimiste...
[The entire page is 903 words long]
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- Introduction
- Principal Works
-
Criticism
- William Palmer (review date December 1980)
- Alan Jenkins (essay date August 1982)
- John Lucas (essay date 13 January 1984)
- Andrew Motion (review date April 1984)
- John Lucas (review date 26 August 1988)
- Mark Ford (essay date 19 January 1989)
- George Szirtes (essay date spring 1989)
- Stephen Romer (review date 16 August 1991)
- Stan Smith (review date 9 January 1992)
- Nicholas Murray (review date 7 June 1996)
- Caitriona O'Reilly (essay date March-April 1999)
- Judith Kitchen (essay date summer 1999)
- George Szirtes with András Gerevich (interview date winter 2001)
- James Sutherland-Smith (review date September-October 2001)
- James Hopkin (essay date 27 October 2001)
- Further Reading
- Copyright
