Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis Poems

That cold winter evening
The fire would not draw,
And the whole family hung
Over the dismal grate
...

Things tell less and less:
The news impersonal
And from afar; no book
Worth wrenching off the shelf.
...

Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.
...

Do this. Don't move. O'Grady says do this,
You get a move on, see, do what I say.
Look lively when I say O'Grady says.
...

See her come bearing down, a tidy craft!
Gaily her topsails bulge, her sidelights burn!
There's jigging in her rigging fore and aft,
And beauty's self, not name, limned on her stern.
...

Kingsley Amis Biography

Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, and various short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. According to his biographer, Zachary Leader, Amis was "the finest British comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of the English novelist Martin Amis. In 2008, The Times ranked Kingsley Amis ninth on their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.)

The Best Poem Of Kingsley Amis

Wasted

That cold winter evening
The fire would not draw,
And the whole family hung
Over the dismal grate
Where rain-soaked logs
Bubbled, hissed and steamed.
Then, when the others had gone
Up to their chilly beds,
And I was ready to go,
The wood began to flame
In clear rose and violet,
Heating the small hearth.

Why should that memory cling
Now the children are all grown up,
And the house - a different house -
Is warm at any season?

Kingsley Amis Comments

Kingsley Amis Quotes

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

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Kingsley Amis Popularity

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