The Melancholy Of Anatomy

Amusing, touching, and unsettling, The Melancholy of Anatomy is that most wonderful of fictions, one that makes us see the world in an entirely new light. Here is the body turned inside out, its members set free, its humors released upon the world. Hearts bigger than planets devour light and warp the space around them; the city of London has a menstrual flow that gushes through its underground pipes; gobs of phlegm cement friendships and sexual relationships; and a floating fetus larger than a human becomes the new town pastor. In this debut story collection, Shelley Jackson rewrites our private passages, and translates the dumb show of the body into prose as gorgeous as it is unhygienic.

In The Melancholy of Anatomy, his ninth collection of poetry, Martin Corless-Smith turns his attention towards ageing and mortality, and in particular to the death of his father. Shifting between formal verse and prose, from the metaphysical to the whimsical, from surreal to anecdotal, the book moves between poetic articulations as a mind might through memories, sifting to find anything to hold on to as everything flows and falls away. At times melancholic at times nihilistic at times luminous and dark, this collection asks questions about poetry, memory and what it is to have loved and lived. Praise for The Fool and The Bee: "Corless-Smith has an extraordinary eye for detail and this meticulously crafted collection is a pleasure to build a relationship with. It is the kind of book that demands attention, to spend pondering, to be read more than once...Wonderful stuff." -Andrew Taylor, Stride Magazine "There is something quite extraordinary in Martin Corless-Smith's handling of words, a lyrical hardness or punch that we're not used to and a kind of stagecraft...All glimpses of hope are spectacular fantasies cancelled by intrusions of reality, but there is also a delight in the writing itself, the extremely resourceful and virtuosic countering and elaborating that goes on, the singing and the dancing." -Peter Riley, The Fortnightly Review

Combining corporeal fantasy with physiological imagery, portrays a world populated by various pieces and products of the human body as it explores the sometimes disturbing, sometimes wondrous aspects of being human.

400 years after The Anatomy of Melancholy, this book guides readers through Renaissance medicine's disease of the mind.

One of the richest books in the English language, this systematized medical treatise on morbid mental states also features a compendium of memorable utterances on the human condition, compiled from classical, scholastic, and contemporary sources.