Before watching the athletics on TV tonight (I skipped Top of
the POps to watch it) I read Sally's Collected POems' and
Alice's 'Dart'. The new poems in SAlly's book (70 of them)
are of similar quality to the published. She lived in a
world partly invented by Charles Williams and partly of
her own traced back to Arthurian/TRoubador/Classical
sources which does not vary from her first poem to
her last. SAdly she died relatively young. Alice Oswald's
book is an invocation of the River Dart partly in the
words of the people who live on it (whom she taped)
and partly her own words. It is difficult to tell
which is which.
What struck me about these two books is the similarity
in entering a world of dense language which is totally
selfcontained and whose relevance is to the book
which contains it. These books are a brute declaration
that the author existed and is unique to be set against
the passage of time. It is interesting that they are
written by women because I suppose they are closed systems
that are quite sufficient to themselves without any
external influence.
Well next on the list is Marjorie Perloff's 'Twenty-first-century
Modernism' and I will see if I learn anything. I might get
to it tomorrow night. It looks a quick 200-page read.
Much of it has been published before.
Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: [log in to unmask]
Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
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