Of course, other books come along, & add to any list we may have set up. So
although I've started reading Trevor Joyce's huge volume (one 'book' at a
time, so to speak), & am finding it a terrific work, my mail the other day
contained Michele Leggott's 1999 _as far as i can see_, a volume written as
she was losing her sight to the condition called retinitis pigmentosa.
And I sat down & read it.
In many ways this volume fits into the ongoing discussion, in that Leggott
is a master of certain formal techniques, is writing out of a deeply
personal wound, and yet has composed a volume of poems both formally
exciting and emotionally evocative. the autobio is firmly graphed, yet the
poems are not confessional & the persons felt to be speaking there are as
much figures of a fictional ground as they are representations of a life
lived & written down. Wit, intelligence, love, a profound play, as with her
other books, this one counts.
Which means it suddenly became one of the important ones for me this summer...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
I put the difficulty down to god
Who failed to be unambiguous in such matters
Eli Mandel
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