{"product_id":"the-iron-blue-vault-selected-poems-9781852245030","title":"The Iron-Blue Vault: Selected Poems","description":"Attila József is Hungary's greatest modern poet. His extraordinary poetry is exhilarating in its power, transcending the scars of a difficult life. Born into poverty in 1905, deserted by his father and put out to fostering, József had a brutalised childhood, and tried to poison himself at the age of nine. Mostly self-educated, he was prosecuted at 18 for blasphemy in a poem, and expelled from university a year later for With a Pure Heart, a now celebrated poem which spoke for a whole generation. He is a genuine revolutionary poet, neither simple-minded nor difficult, though his thought and imagery are complex. A deeply divided man, his poetry has a robust physicality as well as a jaunty and heroic intelligence - Marxist in its dedication but fuelled in its audacity by both Freud and Surrealism. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he underwent psychoanalysis, and yet continued to write magnificent poetry which - although darker - drew upon highly exacting and intricate structures and metres, and upon an eclectic but balanced framework of ideas. By 1937 he was almost destitute, financially and emotionally, and in deteriorating mental health. But he was still writing some of his most compelling work, compulsive guilt-ridden poetry whose glittering lyricism is at once personal and mythic, even while receiving shock treatments and heavy medication in a sanatorium. Finally, at the age of 32, he clambered onto a railway track, and a train broke his neck and cut off his right arm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Bloodaxe Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/30\/1999\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781852245030\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 162\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.55lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.40w x 0.50d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/01\/2000 pg. 603\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/01\/2000 pg. 1426\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 03\/15\/2001 pg. 1349\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Attila J\u0026#243;zsef","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42776264966325,"sku":"9781852245030","price":16.11,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_7d920cbc-0d52-47e9-aa02-bffadad64137.jpg?v=1679412783","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-iron-blue-vault-selected-poems-9781852245030","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}