John Ashbery: Chinese Whispers (Farrar, New York; Carcanet, Manchester, 100pp, pb, £9.95)

Another good one from Ashbery, although quite a bit of it overlaps with the lovely Qua Books publication from late last year As Umbrellas Follow Rain (also pictured above). The title comes from my favourite poem in Umbrellas, a volume which I still think you should all go out and buy. It should be available from SPD, failing which amazon has it.

Available from the publisher for an additional 50p to cover p&p. This must be the third or fourth Leafe Press chapbook to turn up here and, design-wise, this is the pick of the bunch — a lesson to anyone who wants to do this entirely in-house, with a PC, inkjet printer and DTP software. I've seen much worse from professional printers. And it's not Bondi because it's Roker Beach at Monkwearmouth, near Sunderland. The poems are quiet, well-crafted and demonstrate a good eye and a well-tuned ear. All in all, a very welcome publication.

Slim publication of fine short prose pieces, two of which appeared in Shearsman earlier this year. Recommended.

I began by mistyping the title as Lies of the Poets, which is perhaps prophetic, given the same authors' traversal of the works of the imaginary Thomas Swan last year. We start here with Chaucer and Lydgate and end with Hopkins and Thomas Gray, but there is apparently more to come, this being but a taster for the eventual full compilation. Some of this sounds as if it might be genuine, but so did the Swan volume. I wonder. Good fun, though.

Randolph Healy: Green 532. Selected Poems 1983-2000. (Salt Publishing, Cambridge, 2002. 128pp, pb, £8.95, $12.95. Isbn 1-876857-44-7). Healy's first UK publication, this book brings together the full texts of a number of Wild Honey Press pamphlets such as Rana Rana, Scales, Arbor Vitae and Daylight Saving Sex, most of which have already been welcomed in these pages. Healy works as a math & science teacher and his familiarity with normally unpoetic forms of discourse informs his work. The surface of his poetry is not dissimilar to some other late-modernist work coming out of Ireland, but the work as a whole is really sui generis. Healy is a very interesting poet indeed and fully deserves this generous selection.

Paul Holman: The Memory of the Drift (Invisible Books, London, 2001. 24pp, tall-format chapbook (12 ins x 6 ins), no price listed. Isbn 0-9521256-9-2.) An unexpected gift, this book turned up here in November 2002. I'd heard of Holman, seen a few poems in magazines here and there, but had never seen a full collection. Now I want to see more. Six inches wide, almost 12 inches tall, this must be at least the third Invisible volume that doesn't fit onto my bookshelves. At the heart of this work there is a poem, but the poem is inseparable from the process of its composition, in much the same way that some of John Cage's piano works are inseparable from the processes that were used to create them (think of the star charts in Etudes Australes). In the wrong hands such processes are an excuse for lack of creativity and little more than a pose. Here, as with Cage, there is something far more subtle going on: the interaction of an incisive creative talent with that process. Sometimes, setting yourself oddly placed hoops to jump through can be a real asset to that creative process, as it was in Trevor Joyce's remarkable Syzygy, and as it is here in this long poem. It'll be a while before I've exhausted this one. You should be able get copies from Peter Riley's mail-order service.

David Kennedy: The President of Earth: New and Selected Poems (Salt Publishing, Cambridge, 2002. 116pp, pb, £8.95, $12.95. Isbn 1-876857-10-2).

One of the more enjoyable volumes to have come my way recently. I was surprised to note that it was David Kennedy's first major collection, so it fills a hole on the British poetic scene. The work here dates from the mid-1980s to today and sits close in style terms to the smart end of the 1980s UK mainstream – John Ash, Peter Didsbury and W N Herbert come to mind. There are a number of nods in the direction of New York (Ashbery, Koch, Schuyler, O'Hara and Berrigan are all name-checked) and it seems that Kennedy must have learned from the New York School: combined with his English tone of voice and a playful way with cut-ups, the results range from the knowingly-worn surreal to tongue-in-cheek observations of our odder mores. He has an obvious lyric talent and the poems are often artfully under-written; they have an oddly shifted sense of perspective, perhaps with just a dash of that New York hot sauce. I usually shy away from first-person poems (we editors see far too many of them, and 99% are a waste of paper and ink) but Kennedy's I's (not eyes) are exteriorised, ironised, not the never-ending celebrations of self that one sees so often. Some of these poems will no doubt go down a storm at readings, poems such as Naphtha (which begins 'Ah, Frank O'Hara') and Suburban for Beginners. For me Pavanne for a Dead Symbology more or less sums up the book. It comes from the strongest part of the volume, the Cities centre-section:

Something was happening everywhere. In one library,
books could be played like musical instruments
but they all played the same tune which experts said
was called 'Pavanne for a Dead Symbology'.

In another, the oldest books began to swim about
lazily like ancient carp in a feudal pond.
This was just annoying until somebody caught one
and, opening it, found a signet ring

and a string of pearls from the old Empire.
Then things really hotted up: word reached the capital
and all books had to be sent there to be searched.
Many jewels were found and other strange treasures

and who can forget the President, live on t.v.,
holding up a tiny silver lobster and a wooden spoon,
and saying "This is a message. I really believe it
but I don't know how to deliver it."

©David Kennedy, 2002.

A fine book and one that deserves a place on rather more shelves than it will achieve, such being the fate of most poetry. One lives in hope however. Do give this a try.

The 17th edition of a useful list of worldwide literary outlets – mags, small presses etc. I can't help thinking this would be better off on the web, where it could be kept current rather more easily. It is nonetheless very cheap and well done for what must be an almost thankless task.

Pura López-Colomé: No Shelter. Selected Poems. (translated by Forrest Gander; Graywolf Press, St Paul, MN, 2002. 87pp, pb, $15). Pura López-Colomé is a new name for me, but she is 50 years old, and is the author of five books of poems published in Mexico. This is a bilingual volume where, unusually, the Spanish texts form the second half of the book instead of being printed facing the translations. The English versions are fine, and as accurate and careful as you would expect from this source. The poetry: well, it's strange and it's beautiful, which is good, because it shouldn't sound like Anglo poetry, even if it has to sound as if it belongs, somehow. This is a book I shall be returning to often. We know too little of Mexican poetry after the death of Paz, the one name we could all mention if pushed.

Henri Michaux: Ideograms in China (trans. Gustaf Sobin, New Directions, New York, 2002. 58pp. pb, $9.95. Isbn 0-8112-1490-7).

Cause for celebration. This translation actually appeared in 1984 as a bibliophile edition from New Directions, and also in one of the New Directions annual anthologies, albeit in a rather more cramped layout. Here it is at last in an edition of its own at an affordable price, plus a useful new afterword by Richard Sieburth. It's worth putting alongside your Fenollosa and Pound's meanderings on the subject, but Michaux's text is more of a poetic meditation than an enquiry into the mysteries of the ideogram.

Drew Milne: Mars Disarmed (The Figures, Great Barrington, MA, 2002. 68pp, pb, $10. Isbn 1-930589-09-3. Distributed by SPD). Milne's first US collection. About half of the book has already appeared in chapbooks in the UK, in Pianola (Rempress) and The Gates of Gaza (Equipage). His disconcerting lyrics that teeter on the edge of sense, expressed in colliding registers and a mix of "poetic" and demotic, are amongst the more interesting in this style. Not one for British collectors, really, given the overlaps, but a good introductory volume for US readers.

Paul Muldoon: Moy Sand and Gravel (Faber, London, 2002. 90pp, h/c, £14.99.)

I joined the UK's Poetry Book Society and this is the first book I received as their quarterly choice: a predictable selection, given Muldoon's status. Now, I continue to have a problem with Muldoon's work, something which I am sure will not disturb him in the least. I first came across him in 1973, when Faber published his debut volume and he became a cause célèbre as a rising young star (like me, he was born in 1951). I hated that first book, seeing it at the time from my then resolutely Black-Mountain-influenced position as a throwback. These days, given a more mellow position, I still have trouble reading his work, finding it mostly sloppy, flaccid and uninteresting. And I hate the way he tries to ring the reader's bells with sentimental references and reminiscences, in the tried-and-tested officially-approved MOR way. Here's the beginning of Homesickness:

The lion stretched like a sandstone lion on the sandstone slab
of a bridge with one fixture, a gaslight,
looks up from his nicotine-worried forepaw
with the very same air my father, Patrick,
had when the results came back from the lab,

Not that this is his only style. By no means. Muldoon can bore for Ireland, and in a myriad of styles. I weep for British and Irish poetry's future if this is what we're supposed to read and adopt as our standard. Lord help us.

Wendy Mulford: and suddenly, supposing: Selected Poems (Etruscan Books, Buckfastleigh, 2002. Isbn 1-901538-41-9 h/c, 42-7 pb. 190pp, £25 h/c, £9.50 pb).

This is one of the books of the year, as welcome as it is unexpected. Wendy Mulford is a familiar figure on the UK small press scene, both as a poet and as the founder-editor of Street Editions, which merged with Ken Edwards' press in the 90s to become Reality Street Editions, still one of more lively and consistent presses around. I'd seen some small chapbooks of Mulford's work, but had managed to miss out on some significant later work, for reasons that are not clear to me now – stupidity? Blindness? Perhaps. In any event, the missing items are all here, and splendidly printed too. The book comes with fulsome blurbs from J H Prynne (who scores highly for originality in his) and Fanny Howe. Now that's an interesting chorus line. So what's the work like? Feminist, postmodern lyric, sort of. Such classifications don't work in this case, really. The book covers a good 35 years of work, ranging from what-you-might-expect-from-a-beginner-at-the-radical-end-of-the-sixties to ambitious, syncretist works from the 80s and 90s such as The Bay of Naples, the East Anglia Sequence, and the prose fragment La Pitié-Salpetrière. There's not an overriding consistency to the work; the style wanders to meet the content – lyrics tend to be short-lined and limpid, the ambitious works long-lined and thrusting, sometimes combining prose and imported narratives with the poetry. She has a startling command of her work, however, whatever style she adopts. Here's After dinner from the lovely Bay of Naples cycle:

In a drift of eagles
compliance lay on my lips
to heal and to host
the harm held
in a gift of lilacs
(the natural ability)
the cracked crocus
reason framed
in a hand-mirror
the young self-healed
a power of angels
dance and declare war
I can and am able
I breathe and it's chosen
the reluctant head pinned
this terror of words.

©Wendy Mulford, 1992.

Or The Pale Land 1489, from the splendid East Anglia Sequence, a powerful 'poem of place':

No colour no movement
even the marsh frozen
no thing stirs
the ice curls deeper
the skater skates uphill
the banished redshank cries
the far-foraging gull following each boat
pull down the ribbon-thin channel
out the Glaven-mouth to the iron sea.

Each long night I climb to the lightless church
kneel on the cold worn sorrow-stone
kneel where the starlight draws in
through the high clerestory
my prayers clamped to my teeth
only the blood of my lover flows hot
only the warmth of the struggling man
thwarted wrestles the
death-dealing sea

The worse for us waiting
shut out
from marsh from heath from common & pasture
river-bank & sea-shore
Mother of God all desire all
plenitude gone
watching our children starve
no wool no wood no salt no fish
no God
will grant safe passage to our men

© Wendy Mulford, 1998, 2002.

It's work like this that makes you wonder what the average mainstream publisher has against it. I guess Wendy Mulford wouldn't fit too snugly into the kind of marketing campaigns such publishers come up with, but work of this quality deserves to be much more widely-read, and Nicholas Johnson's Etruscan Books has done an excellent job of getting it out into the world, and in such a fine-looking edition too, complete with cover by John Hall. The paperback in particular is cheap at the price, though both editions are excellent value for what you get. Go out and buy it NOW. In the UK you can most easily source it from Peter Riley's mail-order service. Just to reiterate: I now have two firm nominations for the best poetry books of the year 2002, one from each side of the Atlantic, and each by a woman: this is one, and the other is C D Wright's Steal Away. New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon), reviewed in the last issue.

Wendy Mulford & Peter Riley (eds): A Meeting for Douglas Oliver (Poetical Histories, Infernal Methods & Street Editions. ISBN 1 871965 60 8, 90pp, h/c, £11.50. edition limited to 300 copies). This book is also available from Peter Riley's mail-order service (as well as from SPD in the USA), and is not just a memorial festschrift, as it contains 27 uncollected poems by the late Douglas Oliver, dating from throughout his life, and all worth having. Strongly recommended & it's beautifully produced, but order it quickly before it sells out. Other contributors include John James, John Hall, David Chaloner, Tony Lopez, Kelvin Corcoran, Denise Riley.

Ethan Paquin: The Makeshift (Stride, Exeter, 2002. 82pp, pb, £7.95, $15. Isbn 1-900152-80-0, distributed by SPD in the USA). Paquin is the editor of the online journal Slope, and this is the first time I've come across his poetry. It's a most welcome occurrence. American, and one would guess it from the style and verve of the poems – even without the various clues in the text that point across the Atlantic – Paquin has learned early to excise the excess baggage of his poems, to pare them down to the right size. The celebratory intro from Brian Henry was probably unnecessary: these poems are good enough to make their own way in the world without help from bigger names. Recommended.

Spare epigrammatic poetry in the quasi-oriental mould. Unusual to find a British poet using this rather American style, but welcome all the same. Available direct from the publisher's mailorder service, if from nowhere else. Try this if you like the minimalist lyrics of Cid Corman or, say, Frank Samperi.

A wedding poem. Interesting design, with tracing-paper cover and string tie.

Since giving up the Elizabeth Press some 20 years ago, James L. Weil, poet and publisher, has produced some charming little keepsake pamphlets of his friends' work and also – intermittently – of Keats, his greatest literary love. This is the most spectacular one yet, an exquisite production by the Kelly-Winterton Press, all letterpress, with the Rilke text set in period gothic script. Corman's version in particular is lovely (and that is not to put down the Lyman version) and unexpected. Here are the first 2 stanzas:

Now does the silenced odist's face
feel how far the horizon is:
and all the sorrow we cannot grasp
falls back upon its dark possessor.

And this remains, as it is, draining,
becoming the freest of the free
for but an instant – a new mild being
the self come on and death disdaining.

Copyright © Cid Corman, 2002.

Exquisite in more ways than one, and I don't even like Rilke.

Interesting book, this, from an Irish poet & artist resident in Brighton, whose work had somehow passed me by until now. At its best the work here is wonderful, especially when she pushes against the natural boundaries of her instinctive poetic. Some of the other poems, above all those that try to tell stories, don't work as well but the book is certainly worthy of attention and Ms Scanlan's work will be worth tracking, I'm sure.

Craig Watson: True News (Instance Press, Santa Cruz, CA, 2002. Isbn 0-9679854-2-0. 78pp, pb, $10. Available from SPD.)

Some of the poems from the 'Spectacle Studies' section of this book appeared in Shearsman 52, so, if you liked those, you'll like this book. Personally I think this is Watson's best book to date, more relaxed, more comfortable with the lyric style he's developed as his calling card. There is a subtle shift of perception involved in reading Watson's poetry, in accommodating these narratives of an other. That shift is partly the result of an aleatory process, but also of a subtle blending that only the true artist is capable of. Page one of Venice for instance:

      Look what a mess we've made: lost Dante in the boat, drank from canals, learned original sin by example; then, while asking for directions, we were handed history without a bilge pump and hung from our heels across the bridge of sighs.

      A road is the archetypal metaphor for change, but this city is all shadow and steam so we move easily between islands, leaving no wake in water and no echo against fog.

In some languages the same word means sink and swim,
but who were they talking to, so attractive and absent?

      Even if we never see it coming, happiness knows what to expect; but we dwell in the gap until we can calculate an escape.

Copyright © Craig Watson, 2002

Buy the book. Ten bucks well spent.

Other Books announced & worthy of attention:

Cesare Pavese: Disaffection. Collected Poems 1930-1950 (translated by Geoffrey Brock, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA. Isbn 1-55659-174-8, 396pp, pb, $17. Bilingual edition.

As far as I know there is no other edition of Pavese easily available in English – though there was one once from London's Peter Owen, I think. Published in October, 2002.

Paul Bowles: Collected Stories & Later Writings (The Library of America, New York, 2002. H/c, 1,062pp, $40). Three Novels: The Sheltering Sky, Let it Come Down, The Spider's House (Library of America, NY, 2002. H/c, 938pp, $35).

Bowles has now been given the LoA Pléiade-style treatment, and well-deserved it is. The stories are amongst the best I've ever read; the novels are strange and I can't quite work out whether they are failures or not. They probably are, but glorious ones. 75 bucks (and rather less if you go through amazon.com) gets you nigh on 2,000 pages of great writing by one of the real 20th Century originals.