The national gallery

"A poetic collage of art in the modern world: from Rilkean elegies for an iPhone to a meditation on Melville's classic. Jonathan Ball's fourth poetry book, the first in seven years, swirls chaos and confession together. At the book's heart is a question: Why create art? A series of poetic sequences torment themselves over this question, offering few answers and taking fewer prisoners. Loose sonnets that consider the artistic creations of Leatherf...