A welcome addition to Oxford's contemporary poetry list, Sean O'Brien presents his third, and most powerful, book of poems yet. Angry, painful, and politically aware, O'Brien's poems soar by virtue of their energetic rhythms, astute syntax, and fine sense of the possibilities of parody. Sean O'Brien's work has won much admiration among contemporary poets; HMS Glasshouse will surely confirm that reputation.

HMS Glasshouse (Oxford Poets)

O’Brien, Sean

Oxford University Press

This is the story of a civil war within the Civil War. Many mountain whites in Southern Appalachia opposed the Confederacy, especially when the South's conscription and impressment policies began to cause severe hardships. Deserters from the Rebel army hid in the mountains and formed guerrilla bands that terrorized unprotected Confederate homesteads. Violence escalated as Rebel guerrillas fought back. The conflict soon took on some of the ugliest aspects of class warfare between poorer mountain whites, who were usually Unionists, and the more well-to-do mountain property owners, who supported the Rebels. Mountain Partisans penetrates the shadowy world of Union and Confederate guerrillas, describes their leaders and bloody activities, and explains their effect on the Civil War and the culture of Appalachia.
Although it did not alter the outcome of the war, guerrilla conflict affected the way the war was fought. The Union army's experience with guerrilla warfare in the mountains influenced the North's adoption of hard war as a strategy used against the South in the last two years of the war and helped shape the army's attitude toward Southern civilians. Partisan warfare in Southern Appalachia left a legacy of self-imposed isolation and distrust of outsiders. Wartime hatreds contributed to a climate of feuds and extralegal vigilantism. The mountain economy never recovered from the war's devastating effects, laying the groundwork for the region's exploitation and impoverishment by outside corporations in the early 20th century.

Mountain Partisans: Guerrilla Warfare in the Southern Appalachians, 1861-1865

History

Americas

Praeger

The last major battle of the Civil War at Fort Blakely, Alabama, on April 9, 1865, was quickly overshadowed by the concurrent surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox, and is largely forgotten today. And yet the Federal campaign against Mobile, the last important Southern city that remained in Rebel hands, was a significant military operation involving 45,000 Union soldiers and 9,000 Confederates. Faced with overwhelming odds, diehard Rebels refused to surrender, and--even with the end of the war clearly at hand--Federal soldiers remained willing to fight and die to capture the last enemy stronghold. O'Brien explores the battle and the driving forces behind it in the first comprehensive treatment of the campaign in over 130 years.The Mobile campaign sheds light on the workings of unit cohesion in the closing days of the war--a bond of loyalty forged by four years of hardships, with soldiers no longer fighting just for country or cause but for their own band of comrades. Black solders (ten percent of the Federal army in the Mobile campaign) were further motivated by another factor: to end slavery and to prove African Americans worthy of equality. Soldiers in this campaign faced the full fury of America's war-making science, with innovations like trench warfare, rifled artillery, land and naval mines, army-navy amphibious operations, submarines, and minesweeping operations--all new technologies to be perfected by a later generation in World War I.

Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy

The Inferno

Picador

From one of England's most established poets comes a new collection of poems filled with scabrous wit and lyric assurance that are just as sharp as his five previous award-winning collections. Most recently, O’Brien’s Down River won the 2001 Forward Prize for Best Collection, making him the only poet to have won the Forward Prize twice.

The Drowned Book

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Pan/Macmillan

The slightest wrinkle on front cover. 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

Afterlife

Picador UK

Sean O'Brien is widely acknowledged as one of the most gifted English poets now writing, and as a leading poet-critic. Cousin Coat collects the best of O'Brien's work to date; long-time O'Brien aficionados will be grateful to have so much of the early work available again, while recent converts will be delighted to find that O'Brien's boisterous wit, intelligence and astonishing technical fluency were as much in evidence at the outset of his career as they are now. While some of O'Brien's mises en scene and dramatis personae have remained constant over the years - the urban dystopia, the train, the rain, the underground, the canal, the lugubrious procession of conductors, policemen, head teachers and detectives - their shadows have deepened with O'Brien's sense of their historicity and mythic power. His imaginative landscape has become impressively varied: as well as blackly paranoid fantasy and scabrous political critique, O'Brien's work now encompasses English pastoral, comic set-piece and metaphysical lyric, and shows a growing fascination with song-form and dramatic verse. Cousin Coat represents the best introduction to one of the most significant English poets of the last thirty years. `The bard of urban Britain' The Times `A collection which holds numerous satisfactions for anyone with a sense of humour and a political consciousness' Guardian on Ghost Train `The most invigorating new book of poems I've read this year' Sunday Telegraph on Downriver

Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976¿2001

Picador USA

November

A brilliant new collection from the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prize winning poet Showing O'Brien at the height of his powers, with his intellect and imagination as gratifyingly restless as ever, this collection is haunted by the missing, the missed, the vanished, the uncounted, and the uncountable lostlost sleep, connections, muses, books, and the ghosts and gardens of childhood. Ultimately, the poet is led to contemplate the most troubling absences: O'Brien’s elegies for his parents and friends form the heart of this book, and are the source of its pervasive note of départ. Elsewhereas if a French window stood open to an English roomthe islands, canals, railway stations, and undergrounds of his landscape are swept by a strikingly Gallic air. This new note lends these recent poems a reinvigorated sense of the imaginative possible.

November is Sean O'Brien's first collection since his widely celebrated The Drowned Book, the only book of poetry to have won both the Forward and T. S. Eliot prizes. November is haunted by the missing, the missed, the vanished, the uncounted, and the uncountable lostlost sleep, connections, muses, books, and the ghosts and gardens of childhood. Ultimately, these lead the poet to contemplate the most troubling absences; O'Brien's elegies for his parents and friends form the heart of this book, and are the source of its pervasive note of départ. Elsewhereas if a French window stood open to an English roomthe islands, canals, railway stations, and undergrounds of O’Brien’s landscape are swept by a strikingly Gallic air. This new note lends O’Brien’s recent poems a reinvigorated sense of the imaginative possible: November shows O’Brien at the height of his powers, with his intellect and imagination as gratifyingly restless as ever.

A contemporary adaptation of The Birds by an award-winning poet, published to tie in with a major production at the National Theatre directed by Kathryn HunterPez and Eck are on the hunt for the perfect society in "a city where free men might live like birds". But when they start building the bird city for real, Pez starts to have ambitions - which seem not a million miles away from dictatorship. As the fantasy utopia threatens to turn into a tyranny the birds start to rebel. Sean O'Brien's new verse version brings Aristophanes' devastatingly ironic comment on human ambition bang up-to-date and is brimful of jokes ancient and modern.This adaptation by the winner of the Forward Prize for Poetry of Aristophanes' classic comedy is published to coincide with the National Theatre production and tour in 2002.

The Birds (Modern Plays)

Humor & Entertainment

Methuen Drama

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Books by O’Brien, Sean

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O’Brien, Sean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

HMS Glasshouse (Oxford Poets)

Mountain Partisans: Guerrilla Warfare in the Southern Appalachians, 1861-1865

Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy

The Inferno

The Drowned Book

Afterlife

Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976¿2001

November

November

The Birds (Modern Plays)