'Nonsense', wrote Mervyn Peake, 'can take you by the hand and lead you nowhere. It's magic.' Peake (1911-68) is one of the great English nonsense poets, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. His verses lead the reader into places where...
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'Nonsense', wrote Mervyn Peake, 'can take you by the hand and lead you nowhere. It's magic.' Peake (1911-68) is one of the great English nonsense poets, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. His verses lead the reader into places where cause is cut free of effect and language takes on a giddy life of its own. Malicious bowler hats threaten their owners, a cake is chased across an ocean by a rakish knife, aunts become flatfish or live on sphagnum moss. Fully annotated, with a detailed introduction, Complete Nonsense contains all the poems and illustrations from Peake's Book of Non
Cover; Title Page; Table of Contents; Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; A Note on the Text; References and Further Reading; I Saw a Puffin; The Song of Lien Tsung; Railway Ditties; You Can Never Be Sure of Your Birron; Beard of My Chin; You Before Me; Although I Love Him; Practically Poetry; Ode to a Bowler; Raft Song of the Conger Eel; The Dwarf of Battersea; Thank God for a Tadpole; About My Ebb and Flow-ziness; A Fair Amount of Doziness; Ancient Root O Ancient Root; The Frivolous Cake; Simple, Seldom and Sad; Linger Now with Me, Thou Beauty; I Married Her in Green
Swelter's SongI Cannot Simply Stand and Watch; Upon the Summit of a Hill; Come, Sit Beside Me Dear, He Said; Deliria; The Sunlight Lies Upon the Fields; Mine Was the One; The Threads of Thought Are Not for Me; Come Husband! Come, and Ply the Trade; How Good It Is to Be Alone (1); How Good It Is to Be Alone (2); Upon My Golden Backbone; All Over the Lilac Brine!; The Sunlight Falls Upon the Grass; The Crocodile; The Giraffe; My Uncle Paul of Pimlico; It Makes a Change; What a Day It's Been!; How Mournful to Imagine; The Jailor and the Jaguar; The Camel; I Wish I Could Remember
I Waxes and I Wanes, SirThe Hippopotamus; A Languorous Life; Sensitive, Seldom and Sad; Roll Them Down; One Day When They Had Settled Down; Again! Again! and Yet Again; Uncle George; The King of Ranga-Tanga-Roon; I Cannot Give You Reasons; The Ballad of Sweet Pighead; Hold Fast; I Must Begin to Comprehend; The Threads Remain; White Mules at Prayer; O Love, O Death, O Ecstasy; Tintinnabulum; Squat Ursula; The Hideous Root; The Men in Bowler Hats Are Sweet; Aunts and Uncles; The Osseous 'Orse; Song of the Castle Poet; How White and Scarlet Is that Face; O Here It Is and There It Is…
Little Spider'It Worries Me to Know'; A-Lolling on the Shores of Old Hawaii; O'er Seas that Have No Beaches; The Bullfrog and the Flies; The Rhino and the Lark; Richly in the Unctuous Dell; Manifold Basket's Song; With a One, Two, Up!; In Ancient Days; O Keep Away; O Darling When a Story's Done; Undertaker's Song (1); Undertaker's Song (2); Nannie Slagg's Song; Fuchsia's Song; Nannie Slagg's Lullaby; Where the Little Dunderhead; Lean Sideways on the Wind; Of Pygmies, Palms and Pirates; An Angry Cactus Does No Good; I Cannot Give the Reasons; O Little Fly; How Fly the Birds of Heaven
Leave the StrongerFish or Fowl; 'Shrink! Shrink!'; An Old and Crumbling Parapet; It Is Most Best; The Hours of Night Are Drawing On; Over the Pig-Shaped Clouds They Flew; Come, Break the News to Me, Sweet Horse!; What Though My Jaw; The Trouble with Geraniums; Crocodiles; Along the Cold, Regurgitating Shore; I Have My Price; Jehovah, Jehovah; Synopsis Over the Border or The Adventures of Footfruit; The Adventures of Footfruit or The Enthusiast; Another Draft of Footfruit; Crown Me with Hairpins; Notes; Key to the Figures of Speech; Index of Titles; Index of First Lines; About the Author
