ron silliman posted a review of gael turnbull There are Words: Collected
today, including a nice photograph of a site-specific Turnbull piece -
mirror writing reflected the right way in water - i've never seen that
effect done like that before! esor : rose
Silliman picks out lots of favourite bits, then he has a paragraph on "the
ear" (pasted below) - the favoured Silliman organ for poetry. When he wrote
about Redell Olsen & Drew Milne before he said something about hearing or
not hearing "island" poetry. It's an interesting point because i have no
idea whether "not hearing" across the Atlantic is something that Americans
on the list feel afflicted by? (Silliman lists Prynne, Jones, Oliver, Fisher
as examples)
the other way around, Roger said something about "Atlanticist" leanings as
being negative a few posts ago, and i must say i read as much if not more
poetry published in the US than in the brit/irish catchment area - and i
never really think about this question of ears. But maybe i should?
- e d m u n d.
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/10/there-are-words-collected-poems-of.html
Ron SIlliman:
"There are gems like these everywhere throughout this book. Small,
brilliantly conceived, perfectly executed poems, with an unmistakable ear.
This last feature is especially worth thinking about, given just how
different accents are in the U.K. compared with the United States. The
number of, to use Charles Bernstein’s apt phrase, island poets with an ear
that makes sense to a Yank auditory canal is exceptionally small: perhaps,
in the past century, just four – Bunting, Turnbull, Raworth, Thomas A.
Clark. This is not to fault others – from J. H. Prynne to David Jones to
Douglas Oliver or Allen Fisher – whose ears may well make perfect sense on
their own terms, but who don’t, how shall I say this, travel well on at
least that one level. But I do think it’s an enormous advantage in the pure
accessibility of the work. "
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