The Sea! The Sea!

An Anthology of Poems

Jay Peter

This anthology celebrates the sea as an elemental force with deep resonances for people everywhere. As such, it has always had a place of honour in poetry. Poets from time immemorial have written of sea adventures, voyages, explorations, battles, drownings, storms, shipwrecks, fishing and trade, to name just some of the human interactions with the sea which have been described, praised or lamented in poetry. "The Sea! The Sea!" entertainingly blends poems ancient and modern, well-known and familiar, solemn and light-hearted. As well as English-language poets from the anonymous author of "The Seafarer" to the present, the book includes a light seasoning of Spanish and French poems to commemorate their countrymen's part in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, whose anniversary this book commemorates.

About the Author

Peter Jay (b. 1945) read Classics and English at Oxford. Among his books are a collection of poems "Shifting Frontiers", the Penguin Classic "The Greek Anthology", and several translations including Gerard de Nerval's "Chimeras", Janos Pilinszky's Crater and the novel "Conversations with Sheryl Sutton" (with Eva Major) and selections of poems by Ana Blandiana, Stefan Aug. Doinaa and Nichita Stanescu. He is the managing director of Anvil Press, which he founded in 1968. He lives in Greenwich.

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