Burning Wheel

Burning Wheel Synopsis

The Burning Wheel (1916) is a collection of poems by English author Aldous Huxley. Published when the poet was only twenty-two, The Burning Wheel captures the mind of an artist at its earliest fertile stage, enthralled with a world either blooming with change or wilting with all-out war. Although Huxley is known foremost as a novelist, his poetry exhibits a mastery of language and an uncommon sense of the music inherent to words."e;The Burning Wheel"e; opens the collection with a kaleidoscopic vision of life and creation, illuminating the poet's debt to the French Symbolists. "e;Weary of its own turning,"e; the burning wheel slows for a moment's rest. This wheel, both machine and pure, wild flame, is the poet compelled to create, the mind that "e;[w]akes from the sleep of its quiet brightness / And burns with a darkening passion and pain."e; In "e;Quotidian Vision,"e; Huxley returns to earth to remark: "e;There is a sadness in the street / And sullenly the folk I meet / Droop their heads as they walk along."e; In these simple, rhyming couplets, the poet channels the verse and vision of William Blake to see, despite the "e;mist of cold and muffling grey,"e; a "e;dead world move for him once more / With beauty for its living core."e; The Burning Wheel is a compelling collection from an artist whose poetry is no less remarkable for having gone mostly unnoticed.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Aldous Huxley's The Burning Wheel is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.