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Chess Pieces |
eBook Available
But never underestimate
the powers of the pawn
who can promote into a queen
and put a kingdom on,
or moving humbly up the board,
killing on the side,
outpriest the priest, and leave the knight
without a horse to ride,
and trip the elevated rook
to bring it crashing down,
and nudge the misanthropic queen
into oblivion,
and stop before great Caesar's throne,
a tiny regicide,
and watch a cornered monarch fall,
and ponder how he died.
--from The Powers of the Pawn
the powers of the pawn
who can promote into a queen
and put a kingdom on,
or moving humbly up the board,
killing on the side,
outpriest the priest, and leave the knight
without a horse to ride,
and trip the elevated rook
to bring it crashing down,
and nudge the misanthropic queen
into oblivion,
and stop before great Caesar's throne,
a tiny regicide,
and watch a cornered monarch fall,
and ponder how he died.
--from The Powers of the Pawn
Details
Part of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series (number 3 in series)
88 Pages
ISBN 9780773519015
March 1999
Formats: Paperback, eBook
"These poems play games with the world, or they appear to. Perhaps the world is playing its own kind of joke on us through the genial agency of David Solway's Chess Pieces. One might mistake this enterprise for a manual for poetical grand masters - did these poems not so precisely mimic the games our lives play, and so tearfully evoke the dreadful stakes we play for. They are true poems, and their play releases powerful forces." Peter Davison, poetry editor for The Atlantic Monthly.
"I have enjoyed David Solway's poems for decades, and am glad to see a new collection; glad, too, to find that these Chess Pieces are wholly accessible to one whose grasp of the game is primitive. Here, as always, Solway writes with a Gravesian dash and brio, taking (and giving) pleasure in a fine vocabulary, a gift for surprising figures, and a striking breadth of reference." Richard Wilbur.
"I've long wanted to learn just enough chess to call myself, accurately, a patzer. Now I have another reason: in order to appreciate more fully David Solway's grand-masterful poems. For the nonce, I'm content to admire Chess Pieces simply for its art, , which is (to steal one of Solway's lapidary lines) "towering, valorous, cardinal, majestic." Ben Downing, Managing Editor of Parnassus.
"I have enjoyed David Solway's poems for decades, and am glad to see a new collection; glad, too, to find that these Chess Pieces are wholly accessible to one whose grasp of the game is primitive. Here, as always, Solway writes with a Gravesian dash and brio, taking (and giving) pleasure in a fine vocabulary, a gift for surprising figures, and a striking breadth of reference." Richard Wilbur.
"I've long wanted to learn just enough chess to call myself, accurately, a patzer. Now I have another reason: in order to appreciate more fully David Solway's grand-masterful poems. For the nonce, I'm content to admire Chess Pieces simply for its art, , which is (to steal one of Solway's lapidary lines) "towering, valorous, cardinal, majestic." Ben Downing, Managing Editor of Parnassus.
David Solway has won the QSPELL award for poetry and is the author of many books of poetry and non-fiction.
