{"product_id":"the-chancy-now-by-c-k-stead-9781776712793","title":"The Chancy Now","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn the 1970s a young professor, I rescued from a puddle in Princes Street a Penguin of Nietzsche’s\u003c\/em\u003e Thus Spake Zarathustra\u003cem\u003e, dried it and read it, annotating as I went, underlining his thought that one must have chaos within if one is to give birth to a dancing star –\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt 93, his wife Kay and son Oliver recently dead, writing nothing, C. K. Stead thought there were no more books. Then, ‘alive on pills, \/ and the surgeon’s knife’, enduring grief and recovery, sonnets began to appear, three or four a week, the poems collected in this volume.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eChaos won’t teach a sonnet to limit its lines but every sonnet should have its dancing star.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the ABs under the high ball to Braunias’s lamingtons, from Dionysus to Guide Rangi, from the Uber driver (‘He’s a Wittgenstein man so we get along perfectly \/ passing over in silence what can’t be discussed’) to the author (‘My Chookspeak’s better than my French because I learned it \/ in the right way, by ear, not off the page’), 120 sonnets reveal a poet battered, bruised and still in his prime.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAfter a sonnet tending to self-pity and crap I consign it to the bin and set off knowing today’s wild northerly wind and rough seas at Kohi will knock me into shape.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48226212872428,"sku":"9781776712793","price":24.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781776712793-the-chancy-now-1.jpg?v=1787554554","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/the-chancy-now-by-c-k-stead-9781776712793","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}