Monk's Eye

"Cees Nooteboom wrote the poems that make up Monk{u2019}s Eye on two islands: he began them on the Dutch island of Schie... (more)

"Cees Nooteboom wrote the poems that make up Monk{u2019}s Eye on two islands: he began them on the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog and finished them on the Spanish island of Minorca, where he has spent summers for decades. The poems{u2014}which can be read individually or, all together, as the record of a poet{u2019}s life{u2014}are about the two islands. But they{u2019}re also about islands as an archetype, about the serenity that we can find on beaches and amid dunes, the sea sweeping imperturbably around us. Accompanied by Sunandini Banerjee{u2019}s collages, the poems in this volume are rich in allusion; they address the past, memories, illusions, dreams, and the heart of all poetry{u2014}which Nooteboom locates in the opening line of Plato{u2019}s Phaedrus, when Socrates, walking with his admirer, asks, 'My dear Phaedrus, whence came you, and whither are you going?'"--Dust jacket. (less)