Publisher's Synopsis
In Mortal Memory is a collection of lyric poems, celebratory if often melancholy, both elegiac and ironic. Affirming that life is 'all becoming' McNeillie mourns what that means in terms of loss and sorrow at time passing. The sea is a powerful presence, its meaning drawn both from the northern landscapes in which McNeillie's work is rooted, and from the work of French poets, from Baudelaire and Hugo to Rimbaud and Corbière. The poems pitch up and down across formalities, against the idea of purity, while sustaining a rhyming, singing line.
Cover painting: Giorgio de Chirico, The Nostalgia of the Poet,1914. Oil and charcoal on canvas, 35 5/16 x 16 in. (89.7 x 40.7cm). The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice1976,76.2553.65 © DACS 2009. Cover design StephenRaw.com
