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Poetry Book Reviews
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C Day-Lewis a Life by Peter
Stanford |
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Blueprint for Life by Ray
Hollingsworth |
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The Ice Age by Paul Farley |
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Dart by Alice Oswald |
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The Brink by Jacob Polley |
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These Days by Leontia Flynn |
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C
Day-Lewis a Life
by Peter StanfordPublished by
Continuum £25.00 |
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The press release which accompanies the book tells us that Peter Stanford’s aim in writing
it was to ‘reassess the work of a poet lauded in his lifetime
but whose literary reputation has latterly become a matter of
controversy’. This may, in fact, be a masterly piece of understatement -
as Day-Lewis' reputation seems to have undergone an almost unprecedented
collapse. When John Betjeman succeeded him as Poet Laureate in
1972, he remarked with typical generosity that: ‘I am absolutely
sure Cecil’s poetry is underrated. He persists in the mind. I only
rattle on the ears.’ Thirty five years on, at a time when Betjeman
has been elevated to the status of ‘national treasure’, Day-Lewis
seems to have slipped off the scale altogether. To add insult to
injury, the authorities at Westminster Abbey refused to allow him a
plaque in Poets’ Corner.
Peter Stanford’s biography is an attempt to rekindle interest in
the Day-Lewis the poet - but he certainly has his work cut out.
Most of us know that Day-Lewis was one quarter
of the four-headed monster ‘MacSpaunday’ - a term coined by Roy
Campbell to encompass that group of Oxford educated, left wing 1930s poets including: Louis MacNeice,
Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden.
Later, Day-Lewis would become a pillar of the literary establishment -
becoming both Poet Laureate and Professor of Poetry at Oxford
University. Also, unbeknown to many, he was a writer of detective fiction
(under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake) and a skilled translator
Stanford deals effectively with
his formative years: his birth
in Ballintubbert, Ireland, the death of his mother when he was
four and what Day-Lewis called his father’s ‘smother love’.
Stanford is
also especially good on his relationship with Auden - how it helped
to shape him as a poet - but also how Auden was far more a
competitor than the mentor we were previously led to believe.
However, the centre of the book is undoubtedly the poet’s personal life which,
even by poetic standards, is messy. Stanford weaves his way
tactfully through Day-Lewis’ myriad extra-marital
relationships. Originally married to Mary King the daughter
of a master at Sherborne, he had affairs with Billie Curran and
Rosamond Lehmann. Even after his second marriage to the actress Jilll Balcon
- 21 years his junior -
he was still straying -
notably with the
model Elizabeth Jane Howard and the novelist A.S Byatt. Jane Howard
said of Day-Lewis: ‘There is a very hard, selfish core to Cecil
that was very much concealed behind the charm’ and this seems to sum
him up rather well. Like some other poets Day-Lewis
seemed to feel that ‘playing the field’ would help to preserve his poetic inspiration;
it certainly made him a prolific poet - some
would argue too prolific. However, unlike Robert Graves
(who similarly courted the muse) he didn't leave behind
a particularly inspiring collection of love poetry.
One of the main problems that Stanford has is actually
convincing us that Day-Lewis’ poetry deserves to be re-valued at
all. He was clearly one of those fortunate writers who happened to
be in the right place at the right time and almost certainly achieved a
degree of fame which was undeserved. That’s not to say that his
work isn’t competent, well-crafted and credible; it just lacks
that unique sound.
Stanford identifies how he suffered from being in Auden’s shadow
and never truly found his own voice. Even in later life, when he had
turned away from his earlier concern with politics, he again fell under the
influence of other poets - this time Robert Frost,
Edward Thomas and
most notably Thomas Hardy. (In fact, he is buried next to
him at Stinsford Churchyard in Dorset.)
I have to admit that I did enjoy reading some of Day-Lewis' late
Irish inspired poems such as Ass in Retirement and Ballintubbert House, Co.
Laois which appeared in his final collection The Whispering Roots
(1972).
These are evocative and touching poems - yet there 's still a
nagging feeling in the back of my mind that MacNeice could have
written them better.
So, will this book kick start Day-Lewis’ flagging reputation? I
doubt it. But it is certainly a detailed and sensitive account of a
complex man and will hopefully spark debate. Success, as General Patton famously
observed is: ‘How high you bounce when you hit bottom.’ It
remains to be seen whether Cecil will bounce. If he does, then future
generations may yet give him a spot in Poets’ Corner.
8/10
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Blueprint for Life
by
Ray HollingsworthPublished by
Kiss Production Ltd £7.95 |
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I have to admit that the prospect of a self-published collection by
an 'alternative' poet from Essex didn't exactly fill me with joy. However, when the book arrived at Poets'
Graves HQ, I found
it to be an attractive (glossy) book with blue graphics and
distinctive black and white type. Style over content? Well, actually
no. For the poems it contains are bang up to date. Hollingsworth
stares modern urban Britain in the eye: 'detector vans', 'lager cans'
and 'ultraviolet
tans' to name but a few. Furthermore,
his work is definitely not idealised,
sentimentalised or picturesque in any way - which has got to be a good thing. In fact, it is probably the most
contemporary thing I've seen since Peter Reading. (Although, to be
fair, Peter Reading also possesses an effortless mastery of poetic
form and meter which Hollingsworth doesn't - more anon).
The collections two set-piece poems are the title poem
Blueprint for Life
and UK Living. The first is a little reminiscent of something
like
John Cooper-Clarke's Beezley Street but grittier, more
disparate and without the jokes. Garages 'seep battery acid and poison' and the streets
are 'aglow/ with shellsuits and midriffs'. However, there is also a wry sense of humour
at work in lines such as 'at the
end of the bus route kids shoot/at corporation personnel wearing
bullet-proof clothing' and 'some little slag
from the roller hockey team' is hit 'full in the gob by a steak
and kidney pie'. The second piece , UK Living is reminiscent
of Dylan's classic Subterranean Homesick Blues - a rattling, rhyming, list-like rant on the state of the nation.
Again this is admirable stuff - uncompromising and gritty.
What is also surprising about this collection is that many (in
fact most) of the
poems are actually love poems. Amid the psychedelic grot and
ugliness of the modern world is the redeeming power of love.
In poems such as d, Yasmin, Wild Party Eyes, Milk Floats and
Fast Food
and Piccadilly Line Hollingsworth shows a tender side. In
Piccadilly line, for example, we have the plain but poignant 'and your
black dress/it still hangs/in my wardrobe' and in Walking at
Night the off-beat but effective 'pink loveheart crushed on the
laminate/ at flat 14a'. In the frequently ironic world of modern poetry this kind of candidness would be
shunned - which is a shame.
On the downside, Hollingsworth's poems are fairly formless.
Admittedly he does acknowledge this shortcoming in his introduction.
However, the
conventional wisdom on "form" is that you can only abandon it once
you've
demonstrated you can use it. It would be
good to see him try more traditional poetic shapes. A Hollingsworth sonnet
or sestina would be very interesting thing indeed.
Blueprint for Life also raises interesting questions
about the publishing of poetry in general - for instance: who decides what
is good and are they right - and are we, the poetry reading public, getting what
we want/need??
Through a combination of personal funding, PR skills, performance
and persistence,
Hollingsworth has made this collection the best selling poetry title
in the UK in 2004. It is not the sort of book Faber and Faber, or for that
matter, many other poetry publishers would put out. But he has
obviously found
an audience and he is putting his words inside other people's heads
which, at the end of the day, is what it 's all about.
8/10 |
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The Ice
Age by Paul Farley
Published by Picador £7.99 |
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Paul Farley is one of the lecturers on the Lancaster University
creative writing course - the course which produced Jacob Polley
(see below). However,
unlike Polley, Farley's main influence is Philip Larkin rather than
Ted Hughes. In fact, the opening
poem in The Ice Age, From a Weekend First - is full of echoes of
both The Whitsun Weddings
and Here. For example, 'waters harden' as oppose to 'quicken',
'big sheds that house their promises of goods and sex' as
opposed to 'Push through the plate-glass swing doors to their
desires' and 'Crematoria, multiplex' as opposed 'An Odeon'.
Farley also possesses some of
Larkin's formal skills: he can rhyme when he wants to and he can use meter
effectively -
particularly iambic pentameter. However, what he
definitely cannot do is draw the kind of significance that Larkin
draws. Far
too many of the poems in The Ice Age are simply inconclusive e.g An Erratic,
Establishing Shot or Relic.
Many of the poems rely heavily upon Farley's Liverpool childhood,
but again we don't get down to the significance of it. Unlike Tony
Harrison - to whom he is sometimes likened - Farley does not use his
(working class) background to tackle issues relating to class and
culture. Far too often he uses it, like Poly Filla, to pad out the
poems. In Dead Fish, for
example ,we have a poem about playing statues at school - but
there's simply no punch line. In fact, it only narrowly avoids descending
into sentimentality.
There are some enjoyable poems in this collection: e.g. Fly, The Glassworks,
Gibraltar and
For the House Sparrow, in Decline. I also have soft spot for A
Field Guide to Birds of Britain & Europe - but only because it
was also one of the first books I ever owned too.
To be fair, Farley is good at capturing the modern world (something which many poets
can't do)
and there are some good descriptive touches e.g. 'low Vent-Axian hum
round the backs' or 'a starling's modem mimicry' - but overall I found this collection disappointing. One gets the
impression that Farley could write reasonably well on virtually any subject.
However, for me, he doesn't manage to penetrate to the heart of
things.
A bit more of
Harrison's grit wouldn't go amiss.
6/10 |
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Dart
by Alice OswaldPublished by Faber and Faber
£6.99 |
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Dart is unusual in that, although it comprises a sequence
of poems, it is essentially
one long poem - detailing the journey of the
River Dart from its source on
Dartmoor to the sea. It is also unusual in that it includes the voices of
many people who were interviewed and recorded by Oswald over a two year period. All of
these people's lives are connected in some way with the river, either as
walkers, fishermen, sewage workers, ferrymen, water abstractors,
boat builders etc. These different voices (although possessing a
somewhat similar poetic tone) give a first hand immediacy to the
poem. From the sewage worker, for example, we hear the
admirably graphic: 'I fork the screenings out - a stink-mass of loopaper and whathaveyou, rags cottonbuds, you name it.' Or from the
stonewaller: 'You get upriver stones and downriver stones. Beyond
Totnes bridge and above Longmarsh the stones are horrible grey
chunks, a waste of haulage, but in the estuary they're slatey flat
stones, much darker, maybe it's to do with the river's changes.'
Between the voices are more formal poems, written by the author. These
untitled poems vary in form from free verse to intricate quatrains
and triplets and even feature sections of rhyming couplets. The overwhelming feel
of them, however, is of
something appropriately free flowing -
one might even say stream (no pun intended) of consciousness. In this sense
they are quite reminiscent of Thomas'
Under Milk Wood.
On the down side, however, the poem does have a slightly
'bolted-together' feel about it. (Though perhaps no more so than The Wasteland
which it is obviously influenced by.) Also, I have to say that
when you first open Dart, the 48 pages of closely printed text is somewhat
daunting and will certainly discourage some potential readers -
which is a shame as it is full of some lovely
descriptive work e.g. 'trampling around at first you just make out/the elver
movement of running sunlight/three foot under the road-judder you
hold/and breathe contracted to an eye-quiet world/while an old
dandelion unpicks her shawl.'
If you like River by Ted Hughes you'll almost certainly
like this. Coincidentally the Dart was one of the rivers that
also inspired him.
8/10 |
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The Brink
by Jacob PolleyPublished by Picador Poetry, £7.99 |
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The first thing that strikes you about
The Brink, is that it does not employ the ironic conversational
tone favoured by so many of the today's new poets. Instead it
sticks firmly to the tried and tested descriptive tone
popularised by the likes of
Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. In fact, the poems have a reassuring Anglo-Saxon feel
to them. Polley makes use of consonance, alliteration and assonance
- not to mention some breathtaking similes. In Fish we are told: 'the eels on the fields in the rain,
coupling and uncoupling, like iron escaped from a blacksmith's
bucket;'. Or in The Boast we have the rather stunning description of a crow
in a snowy landscape: ' spilling its wings from its own inkstand and
trickling into the distance'.
Polley's subject matter is birds, fish (cooked and otherwise), landscapes, snow (2 poems), the sea and
his father. Obviously we are again firmly in the world of Ted Hughes - but
what I like
about Polley's poetry is that he is not afraid to include 'unpoetic' elements into
his work. In First Light, for example we have
'the new couch, wrapped in plastic', in The Kingdom of Sediment 'bicycle
spokes and ragged tins' in the bed of a remembered stream and in Crabbing
'beer bottles scrape the harbour wall'.
In his poem Singing School Seamus Heaney tells us that
'Description is revelation' and in the hands of the Irish master it
often is. Polley is fortunate to share this knack for most of the
time. If there is a
criticism of The Brink - and to be frank it's quite hard to
find one - it is that some of the poems fail to make the jump from
description to revelation. In Crabbing for example, which is a
fine evocative piece about fishing for crabs in the harbour, the
final ' tip them out, count them and kick them back into the sea '
is a little disappointing. In his poem The Snag Polley
may even hint at this particular shortcoming in his work when
he writes: ' What's my point? It falls short like the sighting of
dead stars' .
For once, then, you can take the blurb on the dust jacket at face
value. Polley does indeed possess a 'remarkably mature talent'
- especially since he is still in his twenties. However, it will be
interesting to see, when he emerges more fully from the shadow of
Hughes and Heaney, whether his
poetry improves or deteriorates? If it improves, then we are
certainly all in for a treat.
9/10
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These Days by
Leontia Flynn Published by Jonathan Cape, £8.00 |
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by 29 year old Northern Irish poet Leontia Flynn -who this week was named as one of the twenty 'Next Generation
Poets'.
Like many of the new poets her style is light and conversational
which gives the poems a deceptively simple feel.
Her subjects range from memories of childhood, love, her mother and
father, student life and urban life.
Some of the poems seem a little too clever and too slight. For
example, in the opening poem Naming It she compares a moment
of clarity to the difference between an avocado and an aubergine in
her friend's 'well-stocked' fridge (?). Then in Two Crossings
- a poem about an Irish Sea crossing she is fluent but the ending is remarkably
inconclusive: 'we are half asleep with this rocking as the boat approaches the harbour and home.'
When her themes are stronger, however, she seems
more successful. The two poems about her father Eeps (about his
wiring skills) and Mangles are assured - as is the stately
and solemn contemplation of time passing These Days and Pet Deaths about the
loss of her terrier.
However, perhaps the finest poem in the collection is
Without Me (no 5). (For some strange reason there are five poems
in the collection entitled
Without Me ??) In this she turns a childhood memory of playing
frisbee with the 'plastic lid of an old rat poison bin' into a
transcendent, Heaney-esque piece which this time delivers a powerful
ending: ' And I would have sworn that our throw and catch had
such momentum/ that its rhythm might survive, somehow, without me.'
Throughout the collection there are also echoes
of Philip Larkin. In The Second Mrs De Winter
she contemplates the 'falafel-cooking' previous occupant of her
flat which is reminiscent of Mr Bleaney. There is even a nod to Christopher Marlowe in
Come Live With Me.
Although Flynn uses very little rhyme and few traditional stanzas,
it's nice to see her sneak in an accomplished sestina (26)
towards the end of the collection.
Surefooted, if a little inconsequential, Leontia Flynn is certainly one to
keep an eye on for the future. 7/10 |
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