Anathemata

The Anathemata by David Jones, 243 pages

"Anathemata" is a word Jones re-purposed from Greek, "the things set aside for the gods".  In Jones' personal usage, this includes not only sacred things in the narrow sense, but all of those things which formed him and sustain him.  The Anathemata therefore incorporates personal experience, Welsh folklore, British history, and the Latin liturgy into the eternal moment that is the life of the poet.

The Anathemata is not easy reading - it is complex and multi-layered and obscure, full of Joycean wordplay and notes in the tradition of Eliot, which form their own text even as they modify the text of the poem.  It is the sort of poetry that must either be carefully read and reread or not read at all.