I know I said enough, but stuff is still going round in my head.
Perhaps Jeffrey should have concentrated in his article on trying to
stick with Heaney's comments without getting into any critique of his
poetry, but that is soooooo difficult with this sort of thing.
I agree with most of what Peter says too, but as is often the case
with what Peter says, I wonder where that leaves us as regards forever
holding our peace, or not.
A writer like Heaney is always going to be a problem for those of us who
1. love all sorts of poetry from across time and space who also
2. can recognize Heaney for the talent that he is and understand why
he is so big but who
3. have to admit that his poems do little for us and whose work has
zero influence on our own.
I know there are some more extreme opinions out there too, but mine
isn't one of them. I was always pretty neutral about Heaney's poems -
they never irritated me the way Larkin's did, or Duffy's. I always
preferred Hughes by a long chalk anyway. Over time, however,
irritation has slowly crept into my response to Heaney. This has
probably coincided with my own counter development and I know that if
I had to write an article such as Jeffrey's I would soon get into a
pickle. How can i write about the fact that one of Heaney's major
achievements, the rich onomatopoeia of his early poems, for example,
turns me off, without making myself sound silly and pretentious to
those who swoon over such stuff because they think that that is what
ALL poetry should be about.
Tim A.
On 8 Apr 2009, at 14:31, John Muckle wrote:
> Actually, I see now that the Eric/Philip mistake was Jamie McKendrick,
> presumably a joke.
>
> Anyway, I'm off.
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