The Harper | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

The Harper

Nov 27, 2025 4:07 AM

Author:Peter Redgrove

The Harper

Peter Redgrove, who died in June 2003, was a friend and contemporary of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and became one of the most celebrated and prolific post-war poets - regarded by many as a true visionary.

The Harper, which gathers together his last poems, is a collection still charged with characteristic energy, eroticism and transforming imagination. Redgrove's language thrills with thunder, rain and electricity, the air heavy with perfumes and balsams, wasps and spiders - and reading these poems is uncannily like re-entering a dream. Peter Redgrove made us look at our world with fresh eyes, and he changed our perception forever.

Reviews

Redgrove's language can light up the page

—— Angela Carter

Redgrove is thunderously, exhilaratingly good

—— Adam Thorpe

He is recognised today as one of the few poets capable of sustained rapture, a heirophant of alchemical mysteries, chronicler of sexual ecstasies, witness to sensual, synaesthetic delights beyond the reach of most of us

—— Gerard Woodward

Redgrove's strengths are a clairvoyant creativity, glittering images and glittering risk...wonderful imaginative leaps of seeing, glancing epiphanies...or sustained surrealities which etch the surprisingness of the world

—— Ruth Padel

I would use the old-fashioned term 'genius' of Redgrove

—— Anthony Thwaite

Naguib Mahfouz's wonderfully readable family saga provides a riveting and accurate portrait of Egyptian society

—— Bookseller

His masterpiece

—— The Sunday Times

'Acidic and unforgiving...This hilariously accurate skewering of the mores - and the morons - of Hollywood left a deliciously vile taste in my mouth, and I loved it!

—— The New York Observer

'Irrestistably engaging'

—— Kirkus

'Witty and intelligent...just the thing for a lazy summer day'

—— Newsday

Genuine wit and charm

—— Image

Witty novel about life and love after divorce, Hollywood-style.

—— Daily Express

A bitchy and entertaining look at life in La-La Land

—— The Sun

A perfect poolside read

—— New Woman

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