Hi Mark, I think he can be quietly charming but not always that polite
- 'Bollockshire' for a start or any lines from 'Two Dogs on a Pub
Roof':
They are your world, where you live,
and this is what they telegraph
of yaps and yelps, their salvoes of snuff-
sneezes, their one-note arias, oath-
fests and dog-demagoguery, their throes of
gruff
throat-flexing and guffaws without mirth
are meant to signify.
Well not that rude, but although he might look like he'd fit into
Alvarez's 'genteel' tradition I think he slips out of that quite easily -
there's a lot more hurt, and humour.
Or 'You had to admire the insouciant slob!' from 'Men against
Trees'
And not polite particularly those Alfred Wallis poems from an earlier
book I don't have to hand.
Maybe he's not a poet for all seasons but who
is?
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 5:54
PM
Subject: Re: University chiefs reel
under critical attack
As often, this conversation got me trolling the
internet for examples, and I've read what of Reid (I'd never heard of him
before) I could find. The work is I think quietly charming, very polite,
but it's not about to change lives. Good company for an evening by the
fire with a dram of decent whiskey.
Which may be enough. But there
have been lots of poets working the everyday who do a lot more. Probably
not necessary to name names.
-----Original
Message-----
From: Tim Allen
Sent: Oct 1, 2012 10:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
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
