{"product_id":"9780571315789-train-songs","title":"Train Songs","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePoetry of the Railway\u003cbr\u003eWordsworth was the first laureate of locomotives: in fact he railed against them, and against the consequent opening up of the Lakes to holiday hordes ('On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway'). His dismay was echoed down the decades by disturbed ruralists, and yet the train has become part of our psychic landscape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e'This is the night mail crossing the border,\u003cbr\u003eBringing the cheque and the postal order.' \u003cbr\u003e-- W.H. Auden\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWordsworth  was the first laureate of locomotives: in fact he railed against them,  and against the consequent opening up of the Lakes to holiday hordes  ('On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway'). His dismay was  echoed down the decades by disturbed ruralists, and yet the train has  become part of our psychic landscape: some of the best-loved English  poems - Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', or Philip Larkin's 'Whitsun  Weddings' - have celebrated carriages, platforms and waiting rooms,  while locomotion has inspired some of the most characteristic poetry of  Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Stevenson, Hardy and MacNeice, Betjeman and  Auden (whose 'Night Mail' was written to accompany a 1930s GPO  documentary about the postal express from Euston to Glasgow).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCo-edited by two of our most distinguished poets, \u003ci\u003eTrain Songs\u003c\/i\u003e  offers a round tour - from Wordsworth to Hugo Williams and beyond -  starting from the poetry of departures and brief encounters, but taking  in the American Blues, the troop trains of two world wars, and the  addiction to speed which characterised the European revolutions. Trains  have carried the freight of history from the Industrial Revolution  onwards - the Armstice in 1918 was signed in a railway carriage, the  death camps were organised around train timetables - and this new anthology shows how the train in all its forms has exercised a unique  hold upon our collective unconscious.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57536563052918,"sku":"9780571315789","price":9.58,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_36329097.jpg?v=1774289203","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9780571315789-train-songs","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}