It's magic stuff, but doesn't always sound great
when I'm reading it.
The thing I agree
with is your intolerance of the cop-out of taste. In another of
those academic conferences I remember a translator smugly intoning 'de
gustibus non est disputandum' which was meant to trump everything I'd been
taking pains to say. If that's the case, well, goodbye criticism. I thought it
such bad faith, because it was a declaration of the superiority of his taste
without the bother of arguing it.
Your analogy with the conversation in the
pub goes for all of us - to stay with that doesn't push the question
much further because it still comes down, as you say, to the apparent fact
that you don't like that person or voice or manner. If whatever prejudices we
all have can be suspended, something may well be happening in the
text.
I can think of several poets whose
work I'd have to admit is very accomplished but doesn't appeal to me in the
least. Pushed, I could probably pinpoint some things I think encumber
the poems - the ego, a set of tricks, too much leaning on an emotional
pedal, and so on... Whether I could, or would want to, convince anyone else of
this, I'm not sure, but that leads to a point David Wheatley raised in his post
about reviewing, much of which made sense to me. I also think Steven Burt an
impressive critic and respect the reasons for his reluctance to review
negatively. But like David, I admire Michael Hofmann's unclubbable and fearless
style.
My own reviewing, which has
dwindled to almost nothing, has tended towards praise and this leaves me
slightly uneasy as it seems to me that the more complete critic has the whole
gamut. Luckily I'm free of the social media but I think one can still feel other
pressures - like not wanting to cause misery, like uncertainty about one's own
rightness. I'm in two minds about this - but can see what Michael means
about a certain kind of criticism exposing "the narrow sympathies of the
reviewer"
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 3:35
PM
Subject: Re: University chiefs reel under
critical attack
I actually quite like your poetry Jamie, it's not boring at
all.
And yes, i know, I recognise your list of the things that I've heard
those who like Reid's poems attribute to them - his emotional range - as you
say, frustration, exasperation, failure, domesticity etc etc - I know I
know - and that's my point - none of that reaches me or (and maybe this is
closer to what happens) the level at which it reaches me is so
diminished that it comes across as a kind of empty shell.
I've been thinking about this a bit more. Sometimes I think that as
poetry readers we expect too much of ourselves. Because we like POETRY we
expect anything which is a POEM to be able to reach us, somehow, just because
it is a POEM. But there is an error in that kind of thinking which i haven't
really considered before. Poetry is no different to anything else - no
different in the sense that it is made by humans - in other words I don't
believe in some metaphysical property called 'poetry' - it isn't a thing, it's
a process, an activity, an art form (perhaps) a habit, it's something we do.
If I'm in the pub and people are talking I might find myself interested in
what they are saying because the subject has an interest for me, or maybe
because I like the person speaking or, from past experience expect that what
they are saying might be worth listening to. But sometimes it doesn't matter
how interesting the conversation is, we just don't like the person saying it,
or don't like the sound of their voice etc. This might seem a bit obvious,
even trivial, but lets extend it into this area where whatever Reid is doing
comes across to me in a diminished state - there must be things going on in
the text which, for whatever reason, turn me off, prevent me from focussing
etc so yes, it is about me in one sense, but it is also (and this is the
important bit) about the text. What is it that is happening in the text which,
for this reader, blocks the transfer of his 'emotional range'?
I have never been satisfied with the brush-off of 'taste'. I've never
been content to accept that there are simply horses for courses etc. I've
always wanted to understand what is actually going on.
Cheers
Tim A.
On 1 Oct 2012, at 14:32, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
Tim,
I guess the post to Peter
I've just written will look like special pleading, though you clearly have
understood the point I was repeatedly trying to make about context. I've
briefly mentioned some of the poems I genuinely admire by Reid. And yes that
"most human of poets" is open to question. I understood, though, what
it was it was standing in for - and think Reid has the capacity to include
and treat with wit and indulgence a range of emotions and experiences in his
poems - frustration, exasperation, failure, triviality, domesticity - which
are not often the makings of the lyric, as well as others such as love,
remorse, death, bereavement which more often are. My view is that these are
not class specific.
But having said that, if you don't
like it, you don't like. This really is a case of Peter's differently
coloured cars.
I haven't heard Reid read, but for
boring my own might leave him standing.
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 2:07
PM
Subject: Re: University chiefs reel under
critical attack
Hi Peter and Jamie - i've been following this exchange with
ears pricked, but not punctured. At first I was worried about the Reid
lines quoted because i thought surely they're taken out of context, which
they were, sort of. But I'll be quite honest here, whatever it is that
makes Christopher Reid such a popular and highly praised poet in some
quarters (however we try to define those quarters) it is something that I
do not get and I have to just hold my hand up to admit that whatever
planet I am on it isn't the same one.
When literary critics call his work witty satirical and insightful or
touching and human etc I really don't know what they are talking about. Oh
yes, I too can read the lines their comments refer to and follow the
argument of the text but whatever it is that gives that text substance for
those critics it is not something I share - it's as if they were talking
about another art form altogether, one that had nothing to do with the one
that I'm obsessed with. There are times when I think this must be down to
some kind of emotional lack in my own responses, there is some code that I
am not picking up, that I am not familiar with, something whose nuances
are just too subtle for me to appreciate. My god, is it something to do
with class? I ask myself when nothing else seems to give me an answer. Or
am I just too stupid?
At the end of her review Aingeal Clare says "... Reid once again
shows himself the most human of poets." How? Why? I really don't know what
that means. How does someone 'show themselves to be human' more than
another human being? It's a rubbish remark, but the kind of remark that is
all too familiar in such broadsheet reviews of poetry. Am I being unfair?
After all, a reviewer has to end their review on some high note that is
all encompassing and comfortably satisfying for its readers. Am I being
unfair to Christopher Reid when I tell people about the most boring poetry
reading I ever went to (and that's saying something).
The above might sound like me trying to be controversial for the sake
of it, but I'm not. What I describe above is a real situation, and I know
it's not just for me either.
Cheers
Tim A.
On 1 Oct 2012, at 11:47, Peter Riley wrote:
Jamie
ALl I want to add really, is that I'm very glad of people like
Aingeal Clare who will spread their critical attention across boundaries
and so might promote a healing of meaningless rifts (such as the Hybrid
anthology failed to). That is what I would like to do, in my way. When
it apparently involves praising as sharp satire quoted lines which seem
to me like infantile dribble, I'm taken by surprise, (and in this case
very amused by the bathos) but I guess it will ever be a rocky road. I
commented only on that juncture in the review, not the rest of it and
not Reid.
Very different reactions to the same thing are only discussable, I
guess, after some agreed agenda has been located. When A sees a red car
and B sees a yellow one with purple spots, that's interesting but the
end of the matter, isn't it?
Peter