"Poetry is deep play. It''s comfort. It's challenge. Just like a friend." - Paul Kelly
Love is Strong as Death is a collection of favourite poems chosen by Kelly himself. The common thread uniting the varied verses is that they all speak to two of literature's greatest themes: love and death - and everything in between.
It is, as Paul points out in a beautifully written foreword, all around us: in the pop songs that can be heard everywhere we work, shop and play; quoted on ritual occasions such as weddings and funerals; and even in our everyday speech though we may be unaware of it – “it’s neither here nor there”… “tongue-tied”… “cold comfort”… “vanished into thin air” – these phrases all sprang from Shakespeare’s plays which, for the most part, were written in ten syllables lines of verse.
Here is Love is Strong as Death, a hand-picked selection of poems ranging from Shakespearean sonnets to contemporary verse, from works by Australian poets to translated literature, and from pithy one-liners to excerpts from epic narratives. In this wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology, Paul encourages readers to pick poems up and pass them on, to memorise them for fun and to use his selection as a starting point for new discoveries.
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Cover image by Cybele Malinowski