After Pusan

<p><b>''To describe Alan Ross as a polymath does scant justice to the eclecticism of an extraordinary man . . . Ross was a war hero, poet, bon viveur, travel writer, incorrigible gossip, racehorse owner and brilliant magazine editor.'' Richard Whitehead, <i>Observer</i></b><br><i><br>After Pusan</i>, first published in 1995, is the third panel (alongside <i>Blindfold Games</i> and <i>Coastwise Lights</i>, also in Faber Finds) of a triptych of memoirs by Alan Ross. Inspired by Ross''s visit in 1986 to the South Korean coastal city of Pusan, like its predecessors it gracefully entwines poetry and prose. <br><br> ''<i>After Pusan</i> opens with a thirty-page prose memoir of [Ross''s] visit, economically and self-effacingly told, deft in its detail and tireless in its curiosity... This memoir is more than merely an adjunct to Ross''s other travel writings, though, and more than only a prelude to the poems which fill the rest of these hundred pages. <i>After Pusan</i> breaks a long silence in his life as a poet; and it was that visit to Korea... that suggested to him ''that if poetry was ever going to come again it might do so now.'' <i>PN Review</i></p>