Poetry Book Reviews

C Day-Lewis a Life

Published by Continuum £25.00

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

Blueprint for Life

Published by Kiss Production Ltd £7.95

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

The Ice Age

Published by Picador £7.99

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

Dart

Published by Faber and Faber £6.99

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

The Brink

Published by Picador Poetry, £7.99

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

These Days

Published by Jonathan Cape, £8.00

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