Spirits of the Stair

<p>When Peter Robinson published<em> Untitled Deeds </em>in 2004 a number of his readers expressed surprise that the writer who as early as 1983 had been described as 'the finest poet of his generation' in PN Review and two decades later in The Reader 'the finest poet alive' should suddenly emerge from his exile in Japan as an aphorist. What had happened? While the Western world was declaring war on an abstraction Robinson had been drawing up peace terms with a host of them. Finding weapons of mass destruction in the speechifying of politicians and the toxicity of pension plan promises feeling chilled by global warming and hot under the collar the poet found no other respite than to reach for his notebooks. What came from them were wrung-out dishcloths and acupuncturists' needles sound bites that chew on what they eschew salves for old saws and less-is-more morsels which were promptly anthologized in <em>The Boodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations </em>(2006) and <em>Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists</em> (2007). Now five years further in <em>Spirits of the Stair: Selected Aphorisms</em> Robinson's enlarged and extended reflections look out on the world and see a wounded head bandaged in clouds. These words that didn't come to mind when occasion demanded words that were the right thing to say when the moment had passed now reach us with a timely lateness that appears for all that to be just what we were waiting for.</p>