Shearsman 59: Magazine Reviews

Tony Frazer

Magazine Reviews

The reviews will be updated and added to until such time as issue 59 is published online.

The Dark Horse 16, Spring 2004 (ISSN 1357-6720, ed. Gerry Cambridge, c/o 3(b) Blantyre Mill Road, Bothwell, South Lanarkshire G71 8DD, Scotland; Jennifer Goodrich, 70 Lincoln Avenue, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706, USA. 96pp, pb, £3 / $5. Appears bi-annually. Subscriptions (3 issues) £11 / $18, cheques payable to 'Dark Horse Writers'; European subscriptions ex-UK £13).

Subtitled 'The Scottish-American Poetry Magazine', this is the second issue of The Dark Horse to come my way and, like the last one, it's a mixed but stimulating bag. The basic aesthetic direction of magazine is formalist, but the intelligent end of formalism, both British and American, and I enjoy the reviews for their relentless intelligence and their combative spirit. This particular issue revolves around a paper given in the US by Joseph S. Salemi on 'Why Poetry is Dying', and a response to it by Philip Hobsbaum. Now, given the place of publication you might be expecting a Dana Gioia-type diatribe against pointy-headed experimentalists, but in fact this one mainly rails against the workshop-type poem:-

There's no renaissance or efflorescence going on. On the contrary, what we see around us is decay and deterioration masked by frenetic activity and useless over-production. the situation reminds one of those state-subsidized factories in the old Soviet Union that cranked out tons of shoddy goods that no one wanted. More poetry does not mean better poetry. It simply means a bigger pile of stuff to wade through.

He's not far wrong of course, and one can forgive the rhetorical flourishes, given that the paper was meant for reading aloud. He goes as far as to present '8 Rules of Thumb' for practicing poets, which are amusing and have something in common with some of the advice given to would-be contributors to Shearsman, elsewhere on this site. Now in amongst all the flourishes there are quite a number of errors, partial statements, and outright misguided views, but it's fun to read and I assume was fun to listen to. Philip Hobsbaum — not noted for his sense of humour — is permitted to respond here, which he does in high dudgeon. He's not wrong to compare the current poetry flood with the flood of fiction in the 19th century, but both he and Salemi miss the point that the problem with the current flood is the undifferentiated mediocrity of much of the work being published, and awarded prizes, on both sides of the Atlantic. Incidentally there is a problem with alternative poetries too, but in that case the problem is often the lack of any tools with which to judge the material in question.

The poetry in this issue is less to my taste, as you might expect, but it's mostly well-written — if not quite of the kind I find memorable. I'd sum up Dark Horse as a magazine of good taste, with the editors knowing what they're about and what they like. In short, it's the antithesis of the kind of publication complained of by Joseph Salemi. In the poetry universe there has to be room for solid conservative publications such as this, with a solid aesthetic underpinning.

Metre 15 (ed. David Wheatley & Justin Quinn; Box 8745, Dublin, Republic of Ireland. ISSN 1393-4414. €10; subscriptions (3 issues) €30 Ireland, €45 continental Europe, £28 UK.)

Metre is one of those magazines that I'd heard of but not actually seen — I only have so much time, after all — but this issue looked too interesting to miss. And so it is. I'd urge you to acquire this one for its intelligent and spirited reviews, interesting essays, special Rakosi feature, and some rather good poems too. Now I suppose my taste usually tends to run to things a little more experimental than this magazine, but at the end of the day, it's the quality that counts, and this one has bags of it.

The standouts in the poetry selection come from Anthony Caleshu, Randolph Healy, and Peter Robinson; Carrie Etter, who seems to be everywhere these days — and rightly so — comes up with another good short poem. I rather liked the poems by Greta Stoddart & Anne Stevenson too, and the issue opens with a typically well-crafted, if unexceptional lyric by Michael Longley. On the downside, however, we have some meandering verses by Robert Pinsky, as well as Sean O'Brien's stab at part of Dante's Inferno, which, you may not be surprised to hear, doesn't hold a candle to Ciaran Carson's version, which I picked up not along ago. And, speaking of Carson, this issue has a most readable, thoughtful and well-observed essay on his work by Michael Hinds.

The reviews are almost all good, and cover a range of American, British and Irish work — the sort of reviews that you can read and learn something, as well as know whether you want to read the book(s) under review. The essays include Charles Altieri on American poetry's love affair with Polish poetry (mainly Milosz, Herbert & Szymborska), which strikes me as a fair assessment of the situation, and Peter MacDonald on Geoffrey Hill, a singularly robust defence of Hill's supposed 'difficulty' and of the theme of patience in Hill's work, accompanied by a commanding sideswipe at Tom Paulin, well-known despiser of Hill, l'homme et l'oeuvre, and equally well-known television personality. Paulin's been said to write poetry too, but I can't say I've noticed anything in his published work that can be thus described. There's also a symposium on Lowell's Collected, a vast and indigestible tome some years overdue, and one which causes some weird dissension here. For what it's worth, I like the splendid, orotund early Lowell of The Quaker Graveyard, find the confessional poems of less interest, and the Notebook 'sonnets' of no interest at all, which means that his art declined after the first nervous breakdown and went to pieces after the others. Why doesn't anyone ever mention these awkward facts? Reviews here also of two more very important volumes, already welcomed here: the New Collected Oppen (now available from Carcanet in the UK), and the Complete Niedecker, both of which are accorded careful and appreciative notices.

The special birthday celebration for Carl Rakosi (100 years old in September 2003), is a fine thing to see, with poems by Michael Heller, Nicholas Johnson, David Miller and Maurice Scully and essays by Andrew Crozier and David Wheatley, among others.

Modern Poetry in Translation 22: Poets at Bush House. The BBC World Service. (Ed. Daniel Weissbort, King's College London, University of London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS. ISBN 0-9545367-0-3, ISSN 0969-3572. Subscription (2 issues) £22 in the UK, £26 overseas).

Daniel Weissbort's farewell, as David Constantine takes over w.e.f. the next issue. The first 70-odd pages include Bonnefoy on Yeats, Juhasz, Heym, Tsvetaeva and two names that are new to me: Ortsion Bartana (Israel) and Skender Kulenovic (Bosnia). The rest is devoted to the BBC Poets, if I may be forgiven for so describing them: Brecht, Couturier, J P de Dadelsen, Pilinszky / Hughes, Zinovy Zinik, plus a memoir by Ewald Osers and a group of translations by Jonathan Griffin. An interesting issue.

Oasis 110 (ed. Ian Robinson, 12 Stevenage Road, London SW6 6ES. £2.50, £6 for 4 issues)

A mixed bag this time, though Carrie Etter and Alan Baker stand out. Tessa Ransford's German translations will turn up in a Shearsman volume later this year. This issue's been somewhat delayed, but Oasis will apparently shortly return to regularity. It looks a bit like Shearsman's print version, and that's because I stole my design from Ian Robinson. It's the kind of magazine that's worth subscribing to if you like Shearsman, and has published an amzing amount of good work over the past 30-odd years.

I'm sad to have to report that my old friend Ian Robinson, editor of Oasis, passed away on 20 April 2004, and that therefore number 110 was the last issue for which he was responsible — although his friends will try to ensure that any pending issue is also released. It is hoped that the journal can continue under a new editor, but matters will only become clearer late in the summer of 2004.

The Paper 7, November 2003. (ed. David Kennedy, 29 Vickers Road, Firth Park, Sheffield S5 6UY. ISSN 1474-8037, 64pp, £5 / $10. Subscriptions (2 issues) £8. Cheques payable to D G Kennedy).

Excellent reviews by Peter Manson of Maggie O'Sullivan (Palace of Reptiles), by Pete Smith of Barry MacSweeney (Wolf Tongue) and by Robin Purves of J H Prynne (Triodes). Poetry by Pierre Joris and Elizabeth James (the latter particularly good), and a 'talk' by Erin Mouré. A surprise in this company is Michael Symmons Roberts on 'praise poetry' in a secular age, and a good essay it is. All round, a very good issue. Recommended, though I understand the issue has, in fact, sold out.

PN Review 156, March-April 2004. (ed. Michael Schmidt, 72pp, A4 perfect-bound, £6.99. ISSN0144-7076. ISBN 1-85754-678-4. Subscriptions for 6 issues £29.50. Write to PN Review, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ).

This magazine can be, and often is, a real delight, the sort of thing you can take on a long and thoughtful train journey, knowing you won't have to put it down at any point because of boredom or for lack of things to read. The reviews are wide-ranging of course, as they always are in this magazine, but the real gems lie in the original work: short 'reports' by Marius Kociejowski and R F Langley; Eavan Boland's excellent essay-review of the Robert Duncan/Denise Levertov correspondence; fine long poems by John Matthias & Robert Minhinnick; Liam Guilar on Layamon / Lawman; Philip Terry's prose tour-de-force 'A Brief Anthology of Jazz' (which is not what it sounds like); James Keery's ongoing analysis of the 1940s; and the cream of the crop in a new group of poems Tableaux 1-XX by the irrepressible Christopher Middleton: 20 unlinked poems spread in double-columns over six-and-a-half pages — worth the price of admission on their own.

Poetry Ireland Review 78 (ed. Peter Sirr, 120pp, pb, €7.99; One-year subscription (4 issues) €40.50, 2 years €76. ISBN 1-902121-16-3. Subscriptions for 6 issues £29.50. Write to 120 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Republic of Ireland).

This is Peter Sirr's second issue in charge of PIR, and a handsome-looking periodical it is. Now, permit me first to issue a health-warning — this issue includes my review of Christopher Middleton from the Book of the Month, November 2003 on this site, and I may also appear in the next issue, so any praise here might conceivably be regarded as being compromised. Please be assured that the responses below try to be objective.

There are poems here by Nuala Ní Dhomnhaill (in Irish only), Gregory O'Donoghue, Ian Duhig, Peter Didsbury, Peter, Robinson, Peter Porter, Sarah Maguire, Peter Carpenter et al; decent translations of Günter Grass by H-C Oezer; essays by Duhig, Didsbury, Robinson and Austin Clarke; plus a good set of reviews of Irish and British books. PIR is a kind of Irish analogue to Britain's Poetry Review and, commendably, looks further afield than one might expect it to, given its status as a national organ. In general, the poetry printed tends to the prevailing style that you would expect, but it is — without exception — very well-written (and my great bugbear is sloppy mainstream writing, not this kind). The presence of Louis Armand, the Prague-based Australian poet, confounds expectations somewhat.

Eamon Grennan's ten-page engagement with the vast Collected Poems of Robert Lowell — whom I met several times in his late years, and some of whose poetry I greatly admire — is a model of its kind. Serious, deft, picking up the threads and also classifying them for a potential reader. It's the best review I've read of the book, which is an important, if infuriating publication, though I'd suggest the interested reader also look out the issue of Metre referred to above, where the symposium on Lowell is good reading.

In short, a fine issue, and a journal worthy of serious attention.

Poetry Review Vol 94 No. 1, Spring 2004 (ed. David Herd & Robert Potts, 120pp, pb, £7.95 plus £1.05 p&p; ISBN 1-900-771-39-X; ISSN 0032-2156. One-year subscription (4 issues) £30, ex-UK £40 (airmail), USA $56. Subscriptions for 6 issues £29.50. Write to 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX.)

Some fine poetry from John Ashbery, Michael Haslam, Estill Pollock, Sarah Maguire, Deryn Rees-Jones, among others. Stimulating essays by Peter Middleton on literary politics and the folly of binaries, and by Andrea Brady on the New Collected Oppen. Some solid reviewing, as usual, and once again of a range of publications, from small presses out to the big London publishers — which is as it should be. Poetry Review continues to be a standard-bearer of quality under its new editorship.