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Shearsman 57 |
Tony Frazer
Reviews |
The printed version of issue 57 carried only one review, which was the full text of the November Book of the Month selection, Christopher Middleton's Of Mortal Fire. Click here to go to that review.
Tony Baker: Three-part Invention & other scored accounts
(West House Books, Sheffield, 2003. 36pp, chapbook, £5. ISBN 1-904052-15-0. Available in the USA from SPD.)We've not seen enough of Tony Baker's work these past few years, which makes this collection all the more welcome, a valuable taster until the next large collection appears from Reality Street in 2005. The title poem nods towards Bach but I'm not clear that the allusion is any more than a friendly nod of respect. The following sequence Notes towards a PR job is a remarkable elegiac series of poems, belying the playful title. Lastly, Mutual Credit is a long sequence subtitled an elegy of sorts for Bob Cobbing. It's a fine and original piece of work, a real pleasure; the last piece in the sequence, Parsley, seems to be a memoir of sorts of Ric Caddel:
You speak amongst the sounds of things I hear no more.
Normally of course who'd ever guess the yachtsthat sail thr air – the snatched wakes
& links
they navigate between. Ah Ric, weis the strangest sea.
I listen to this room. It isn't how it was before.
Rose Flint: Nekyia
(Stride, Exeter, 2003. 110pp, pb, 170mm x 145mm, £8.50. ISBN 1-900152-89-4)90% of mainstream poetry in the UK bores me rigid. Rose Flint writes mainstream poetry but she's in the other 10%. What does she do that the other 90% don't?
(1) I'm fed up with prose chopped into lines. I need some kind of compression or heightened diction, or a form that proves to me why it had to be a poem. (Too many poems read like short stories that failed.)
(2) I want enlightenment, doors opened onto new vistas, not tired old recyclings.
(3) I want the poem to be an experience in itself and not just a poor regurgitation of an indescribable primary experience. If it is descriptive I want to feel that I am sharing or being allowed to understand that primary experience.
Now, Rose Flint's imagery can be a little laboured at times but she's on the right track most of the time, and a pleasure it can be:
The dream of the deer goes on running into my sleep
drumming into my head, fusing into my heartbeats.
I can't find the deer's bones though I Search
and search the windswept malls and terraces, listen
for its breath on the windows. Someone told me
it was severed to the Four Winds but once
in the river's quick reflection I saw its pearly ghost.
So real, I nearly stroked my hand down its back, or did so,
Watching the leafy green of its eyes warm to me.(from Risk and the Heart)
The poems are mainly epiphanies with the language working to convey the sense of wonder, that almost ungraspable will'o the wisp that is the aperçu, the moment of insight. As with the Redgrove volume reviewed elsewhere here, this is a handsome edition of some excellent writing. Recommended.
for instance in Cave Birds, an under-rated volume from the late 1970s. Someone with access to all the manuscripts will be able to rebuild Crow as it was up to the point of its abandonment. Were this to be done, we would have a better idea of how great a failure the project actually was, or if it was. Some will feel this to be unnecessary of course, as Crow is a divisive subject in some quarters.
Ted Hughes: Collected Poems
(Faber, London, 2003. 1,333pp, h/c, £40)As can be seen from the page-count, this volume is huge. It's also been done rather well, but it's worth explaining what the book is, and what it is not. It is not a Complete Poems; instead, it is a compilation, more or less chronological, of all the published and/or broadcast poems. Translations are left out, with the exception of the late Tales from Ovid and a few scattered versions of the classics.
The only aspect of the book that I regret is the fact that Crow is left as more of a torso than was necessary. I know that an editorial decision was taken not to do a critical edition here, but there is enough information in the public domain to permit a partial reconstruction of what was left of the Crow project – which was about 80% completed. After it was abandoned, some of the material served as a quarry for other poems and some turned up,
Trevor Joyce: Take Over
(The Gig, Willowdale, Ont. 52pp, Limited-edition chapbook. ISBN 0-9685294-5-3)
Trevor Joyce: Undone Say
(The Gig, Willowdale, Ont. 46pp, Limited-edition chapbook. ISBN 0-9685294-6-1)($10 the pair in the USA; $C12 in Canada; £7.50 / €10.50 in Europe. Order from Nate Dorward, 109 Hounslow Ave, Willowdale, ONT, M2N 2B1, Canada. Cheques payable to Nate Dorward. Editions are limited to 150 copies and were intended for the poet's just-concluded North American tour, so supplies may well be very limited. Buy while you can to see where the work-in-progress is going.)
These two welcome chapbooks serve as an interim update on Joyce's work since the publication by Shearsman and NWP of his Collected Poems (2nd edition published in November 2003). Both are by way of being interim editions of some unfinished work – some of it already published in earlier versions in magazines, or on listservs, but then Joyce's work takes time to mature and we can safely assume that further changes will occur to these texts before they find their definitive form between a single set of covers.
Take Over — a playful title that recalls Bunting's use of the word Overdrafts for such endeavours — contains translations or version from the Classical Chinese and the anonymous Middle-Irish. The Chinese poets from whom material has been sourced are Lu Zhaolin (7th century) and Ruan Ji (3rd century). Translation from classical Chinese is a famously approximate endeavour; the originals are dense; their sounds are no longer clear (the voicing of the words represented by the characters has changed radically over the centuries, obliterating most of the intended sound-patterns); the allusions often impenetrable to all but the most well-read of scholars. Oddly enough, this all allows the translator some licence to re-create. Now Joyce, having taken what might be termed the Poundian route, has thankfully eschewed the rhetorical flourishes that have often undermined the Anglicization of classical Chinese verse; instead he has aimed for a level of compression that would delight old Pound, while leaving out the latter's more floral approach from the Georgian era.
Would you
shun grief?
Then eschew
sense:only the insensate
never grieves.
Fall to no nets?
Need no effects.In Capital Accounts – a (presumably) very free updating of Lu Zhaolin – the compression is allied to a mixing of imagery across the intervening centuries, to the extent that I wonder if this is not really an imitation in Lowell's sense. Said to be 'worked from' the Chinese, rather than translated, it – in common with the other versions here – provides the author with some formal constraints within which to work. On the evidence here, he's enjoyed himself writing them as much as I do reading them.
The Love Songs from a Dead Tongue ('worked from the late Middle-Irish') employ a more self-consciously archaic diction – they seem more translated than worked (but how would I know?). Perhaps the free spirit at work in the Chinese poems is constrained here by a deeper knowledge of the language? At times they sound like modern versions of Anglo-Saxon:
All kings but one
in time relinquish rule
Who'd want the world?
Grief in the king-fort,
grief.but, given that the originals are bardic oral poetry, some recognition of the basics of that form are undoubtedly needed.
Undone Say is for admirers of the author's own work. His most recent previous work was the mammoth hybrid text Trem Neul, which appears at the end of the Collected. Joyce is really what used to be called an 'experimental poet', though I've often referred to him as a late-modernist when looking for a handy label. He's experimental in that he constantly shifts in search of new ways of saying; formal structures, free verse, prose poetry: it's all grist to his compositional mill. He sets himself hurdles, and on the evidence here, doesn't often trip on them. The collection includes the self-consciously difficult surface of Stillsman, a prose poem printed entirely in small caps, larger-than-normal leading, and without punctuation, all of which renders it exceedingly hard on the eyes — which is just what the author intended. Then there's the poem-sequence Undone, as complex a lyric as I've seen this poet put on a page, and some fine new shorter pieces such as the abstract love poem Saws, and the lovely Speaking of What has Happened, which I quote here entire:
always some huge unseen
alters in the world
between each flicker and the nextconsequent apprehension comes
not like an autopsy
whose subject should be deadbut through divisions
of the living breath
that is one wholefrom first cry to the end
though it accelerates or slows
by turn grows clearor close or dull or fine
mastering like a weather
the exposed attentionshivering after makes report
it rained was sunny for a while
then came a stormTwo fine collections, recommended to any who admire Joyce's work; they'll serve as an appetite-whetter pending the next large collection.
These poems are pleasant enough responses, but I'm not sure that they all work too well – they slip too easily into a quasi-prose narrative that could have used a greater air of mystery to go with the subject matter(s) – as she manages with the delightfully surreal, and appropriate, address to St Teresa:
Sarah Law: The Lady Chapel
(Stride, Exeter, 2003. 103pp, pb, 170mm x 145mm, £8.50. ISBN 1-900152-88-6)Also in Stride's smart new livery, this is the first book I've seen by Sarah Law. As with the book by Rose Flint reviewed above, it's an unexpected pleasure. The Lady Chapel sees the author investigating significant female creators of the past, such as St Teresa of Avila, Mrs Yeats, Julian of Norwich. Hildegard of Bingen, Margery Kempe etc – medieval mystics are rather in vogue, perhaps a little too much so at the moment.
As for donkeys
I've occasionally taken to the air,
wine of velocity coursing through the veins
as the gear changes; offloading boulders
of prayer in their cool, silk parachutes.The 31 poems of the 'Yoga Sequence' Stretch were a surprise. An unpromising subject I thought, grounded no doubt in the memory of the agonies experienced while locked into some futile yogic manoeuvres of my own. Each of the poems is a 14-liner, named for a yoga position / stance and is an interesting mix of physical description, allusion to the exotic name of the position, and external imagery. Take Ancestor Worship for instance:
See, they come for me, unless I do this,
Subtlety's the surface of the dream. Inside
guts rumble, pledged for further massage. Slots
of your day-time's carved into a niche, and skies
have their advertising cards. Sometimes this is enough,
(the pamphlet on the desk-top, slipped in after work)
I am as if your friend, you know. Handwritten
In a sanitary font the soundbites come. And before
She knows, she's bowing down again, her curves
Worrying her, perhaps preventing her from total obeisance.
Please save my babies, save them. A hundred days
For every generation, mistily forswaying the moment
That she has to do my twist, Lives
Shadily chain, in intestinal juncture. She shouldn't complain.The Lady Chapel is an impressive and assured collection, and makes 3 out of 3 good ones for Stride's new collections, as far as I am concerned.
Full of Star's Dreaming. Peter Redgrove 1932-2003
(Stride, Exeter, 2003. 43pp, pb, 170mm x 145mm, £5.95. ISBN 1-900152-19-3)Festschrift volumes in memoriam are difficult. You have to invite the poet's friends and supporters, as well as those of the press itself, but you're always going to upset someone. I'm going to be unkind and give this one score cards out of ten, in order of appearance in the book:
Rose Flint 6
Rupert Loydell 7
Brain Louis Pearce 5
Mark Goodwin 5
David Grubb 7
Philip Gross 5
Andrew Motion 3
Neil Roberts 4
Philip Hobsbaum 1
David Caddy 3
Rupert Loydell (2nd poem) 8
David Grubb (2nd poem) 6
Peter Porter 7
B L Pearce (2nd poem) 5
John Burnside 8
Mark Goodwin 6 (but 10 for the title Peter Redgrove is a Carp)
Jay Ramsay 4
Harry Guest 9
John Burnside (2nd poem) 7Why have I been so unkind to Hobsbaum, one of Redgrove's most stalwart supporters over the decades? Because no-one, no-one, should ever start a poem
That tireless ocean Redgrove,
Has now become a dead cove,
What shall we inherit
Of that impermeable spirit.The defence rests. Actually the book is better than you might expect, as the scorecard might indicate. Motion offers an amusing anecdote, but it's a poor poem; Porter's assumption of Redgrove's triadic line is deftly done and appropriate; the Guest and Loydell poems are worth the price of admission on their own. So take the rest as free gifts and buy the book for those. And, better still, buy Peter Redgrove's Sheen, his fine posthumous collection, also from Stride.
Chicago Review 49:2, Summer 2003. (200pp, pb. Ed. Eirik Steinhoff, 5801 South Kenwood, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. One-year subscription $18, single copy $6.)
Autobiography by Robert Adamson, Peter Riley on Randolph Healy, good poetry by (among others) Peter Larkin, Michael Palmer, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Ed Roberson, Camille Guthrie; essays by Joshua Weiner on W C Williams and David Kadlec on Mark McMorris.
Another fine issue at the usual absurd low price. A necessary acquisition.
NO. A Journal of the Arts 2 (2003. eds Deb Klowden and Ben Lerner, 39 West 29th Street, 11A, New York, NY 10001. 265pp, pb, $12. 2-issue subscription $20. Go to website.)
The first issue of No was a clear statement of intent; the challenge is always to do it again – second-album syndrome, if you like. Well, they have done it again, on schedule, and they've delievered a superlative issue. As with #1, there's an entire book bound into the journal, this time Kenneth Irby's In Denmark, which appears to be a previously uncollected group of poems from the early-mid 1970s. It's a while since I've read Irby's work and this is good to have, even if it's not current work.
We also get a fine essay on / close reading of Yeats by Marjorie Perloff, an astonishing virtuoso translation of a Jacques Roubaud sonnet sequence by Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, as well as a remarkable collection of fine poems by women contributors: Elizabeth Robinson, Eleni Sikelianos, Chris Tysh, Ann Lauterbach, Barbara Guest, Erin Mouré, Caroline Crumpacker, Molly Dorozenski. Standouts amongst the male supporting cast are Michael Palmer and Peter Gizzi. Lastly there is a fascinating essay by Mary Austin, recovered for a new audience and a new time.
NO is a challenging and stimulating journal that could become a serious arbiter of taste if it can maintain the momentum of its remarkable first two issues. It is what Conjunctions once tried to be before disappearing into a rut.
Poetry Review Vol. 93 No. 3, Autumn 2003. (120pp, pb, ISBN 1-900-771-365. Eds. David Herd & Robert Potts. 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX. ISBN 1-90077-135-7, 112pp, pb, £7.95 (plus £1.05 p&p). Subscriptions: UK £30, Overseas airmail £40, USA $56.)
Probably the best issue yet under the new editorial team, and that because the poetry selection is much better than usual. It's still a broad church – as it should be – but the material available seems to be improving. Fine poems by Tony Lopez, Anthony Caleshu and Carrie Etter, among others, plus some superb versions of Pierre Reverdy by Simon Smith (which explains where the title of Simon Smith's last book came from…). There are only a couple of outright poor poems in the issue and I won't single them out here.
Essays: Toby Litt on Writing, Fiona Sampson on Romanian & Bessarabian poetry. Patrick McGuinness on Laura Riding; reviews of Liz Lochhead, Barry MacSweeney, Edwin Morgan, Marilyn Hacker, Kwame Dawes, Gerrit Lansing, George Stanley, Avraham bin Yitzhak, Hans Magnus Enzensberger (an hilarious trashing of an over-rated poet by Andrew Duncan), Monica Youn. At the end Jane Yeh provides a superbly controlled and punchy round-up of half-a-dozen collections, roundly trashing what she considers to be unworthy and praising what she considers good, often of the same poet. Would that more such honesty were displayed in reviews elsewhere.
The cover has a photo of a pensive Alistair Campbell, until recently spin-doctor supreme at 10 Downing Street. I don't know why, but it is a good photo.
Poetry Salzburg Review 5, Autumn 2003. (194pp, pb. ed. Wolfgang Görtschacher, University of Salzburg, Dept of WEnglish and American Studies, Akademiestrasse 24, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria. Subscriptions £9 / €15 / $20 for 2 issues, single copies £5 / €8 / $11.)Fine issue: special features on Adrian Clarke and on the Cork Poetry Festival 2002 (by Matthew Geden). Other original,work by Andrew Duncan, Iain Sinclair, Robert Sheppard, Rupert Loydell, Egon Schiele (who, unknown to me, was also a poet), Guy Birchard, Susan Gevirtz, David Greenslade and others.
Tears in the Fence 35, Summer 2003. (ISSN 0266-5816. 128pp, pb, £6. Subscriptions (3 issues) £15 UK, £23 offshore airmail, $25 cash USA airmail. Edited by David Caddy, 38 Hod View, Stourpaine, Blandford Forum, Dorset DT11 8TN.)
David Caddy's heart is in the right place and his magazine continues to be one of the better ones available in the UK today. Good work here by Peter Robinson and Estill Pollock (doing Rimbaud), among others, and the usual crop of solid, intelligent reviews. Something of a centrist magazine, TiTF looks both towards the current mainstream and towards the more innvovative poetries of the UK, though it tends to print verse largely from the former current. Worth tracking.
Copyright © Shearsman Books Ltd, 2003.
