New Releases by John Cassidy

A sudden change of light can transform our perception of the familiar world. Holding such moments of tension, John Cassid gains insights into a situation as he shapes a poem around it. In this new group of poems, he has extended his territory to cover apprehensions of time; his progress is wary but determined, and always held in check by the sureness of his craft. The poems are concerned with the idea of time in many of its aspects: with chance and causality, perspective and circumstance, change and persistence, youth and age. They vary in their approach; some are observations, some speculations, some less formally shaped than others. Changes of Light is published simultaneously with The Fountain, a pamphlet comprising those poems from John Cassidy''s booklet, The Dancing Man (Poet''s Yearbook Award, 1977), which were not included in Cassidy''s book, An Attitude of Mind (Hutchinson, 1978). The title-poem, ''The Fountain'', was the precursor of the time poems of Changes of Light.

The Fountain is a reissue of those poems from John Cassidy''s booklet, The Dancing Man, which were not included in his book, An Attitude of Mind (Hutchinson, 1978). They formed part of a collection which won him the first Poet''s Yearbook Award in 1977. Cassidy''s poems are mostly descriptive, often portraits of people, or scenes from the natural world. Caught in sharp-edged detail, the subject is explored as the poem is shaped, so that the implicit significance of a particular observation or experience is uncovered by the defining action of the poem''s language and imagery, and in the harmonising of its rhythms. The Fountain is published simulataneously with Changes of Light, a pamphlet of new poems all concerned, in various ways, with apprehensions of time; they develop ideas which Cassidy had started to explore in ''The Fountain'', the title-poem of this pamphlet.

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