Complete agreement with Keston's point. I'd like to think BM had little to
do with it, but it's certainly another facet of the need to ghettoise
poetry in this country - BM now comes in a little conveniently labelled
pocket so we know which shelf of the commodity market to display him on.
And the loser is PEARL, again and again, which refuses to be so tagged or
any other tagged for that matter.
We've been here before, haven't we?
R
On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Keston Sutherland wrote:
> rather a wearisomeness-caked point, but is anyone else irked (even to the
> point of gnashing) by the cover of Macsweeney's Book of Demons, on the
> hind part of which his personal difficulties and trials are pasted into a
> shameless promotion of relevant poetic "life experience", just as on the
> backs of Simon Armitage's books it was keenly stated that Si had worked -
> relevantly to his provincial, non-ivorybound and variously authentic
> personhood - as a probation officer? So now a new reader may, as
> instructed, pick up and through the book merely because delighted to get
> glimpses from "his" point of view, that of a curio. However candid BM is
> in this and other works (pretty candid) about his alcoholism, he also
> maintains an abrasive acuity in the face of its printed sensationalism and
> in that way remains (mostly) accountable. But this, this cover, is pure
> kick-ass hero-promo. Good book, though.
>
>
> Keston
>
>
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