num_pages: 16
description: Written during the Gulf War for The Guardian, the title poem is Harrison's response to Ken Jarecke's potent photo of a charred Iraqi soldier on the road to Basra. "As a poet Harrison doesn't fool around.... There's something about his working-class temperament that hasn't time nor patience for metaphor and the grand abstraction. A Cold Coming is delivered rapid-fire in ninety-two clipped, rhymed couplets that never wear on the ear, driving the piece with relentless wit, heartbreak and a sick humor that is probably the only sane way to deal with the enormity of the subject...Harrison is a major poet, a tough and tender-minded realist fully aware of his spiritual contradictions". -- Willamette Week. "Harrison's poetry is fuelled by the strongest feeling and most exhilarating erudition, and attains a quite remarkable singularity". -- TLS.
language: English
title: A Cold Coming: Gulf War Poems
titlecomplete: A Cold Coming: Gulf War Poems
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 8
publisher: Dufour Editions