Wedding poems

the long version

"Published here for the first time are two poems by David Jones written in 1940 in London during the Blitz. The first poem, 'Prothalamion', is a powerful commemoration of the Blitz and must be ranked among the finest short poems of the 1939-45 war. The second, longer poem, 'Epithalamion', is a symbolic assessment of western culture since the middle ages. Revealing new aspects of Jones's social conscience, this poem adds to the celebration of the feminine throughout his work. It also embodies an aesthetic development from In Parenthesis to his greatest work, The Anathemata. As such it has an important place in the history of modern literature. In the Afterword, Thomas Dilworth, the leading Jones scholar, interprets the poems and reveals origins and human prototype for Jones's contemporaneous painting, Aphrodite in Aulis. Providing biographical context for the poems and painting, he presents a vivid portrait of David Jones and a fascinating evocation of the war."--BOOK JACKET.