Robin,
Thanks for this helpful and painstaking reply. I think this is probably a
case we just diverge somewhat in taste and ways of reading. No harm in that!
Best,
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
> Hi, Jamie.
>
> You're right that I'm prejudiced against the Moment as a whole (and I'd
> argue a case for this prejudice if put to it) but that was what the
> Armitage poem reminded me of, so it was a useful shorthand.
>
> I should say that I read the poem and wrote my comments before looking
> carefully at what you yourself said (it was the way I was trained, always
> read the text before you read the critics) and coming back to them
> afterwards, I'd want to take into account your points about the sibilant
> echoes, and the coherency of the way in which the imagery develops.
>
> Also whether or not the line endings pay their way -- my immediate thought
> was that they were imposed *on a more regular structure, as a gesture
> towards radical chic. But that's maybe unfair, and something I perhaps
> should reconsider.
>
> Trouble is, I don't really want to go back to the poem again and read it
> more carefully. I just didn't find myself engaged enough the first time
> through to bother. I think the division in response that's coming out is
> to do with something pretty fundamental, a response to the nature of
> imagery or something (sorry to be so sloppy and vague) and I doubt if it
> would be resolved even if I re-read the poem yet once more. I suspect
> I'd simply harden my attitude and argue more grimly.
>
> As to the Porter comparison -- yes, I agree that it's setting a high
> standard, and how many poems, or even poets, could stand beside it. (For
> me, _Cost of Seriousness_ is easily Porter's best book, followed by
> _English Subtitles_.) But again, given the situation presented in the
> poem, "tender domestic [possible] loss" (yuck! but I can't think of how
> to word this more sensibly), it was what sprang to my mind.
>
> Also, I was hoping someone could tell me where exactly, "Finally we are
> condemned by our lack of talent," occurs in _Cost of Seriousness_. Try as
> I might, I just can't seem to find it any more, and I'm beginning to think
> I must have made the line up.
>
> Oh, one last point:
>
>> You know as I do well as I do that hundreds of examples of this could be
>> found in "mainstream" poetry.
>
> Sure, but it was something else I was picking up on, as I remember my
> reactions, not just enjambement. When radical line breaks are used across
> a phrase boundary, in say the work of David Black, there's always a
> purpose to it, that I couldn't at the time intuit in the Armitage text.
> But I won't push the point as I can't be bothered to go back and pin down
> just precisely what was getting up my nose around this particular aspect
> of the poem.
>
> Best,
>
> Robin
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jamie McKendrick" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 3:09 PM
> Subject: Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
>
>
>> Robin,
>> I don't want to drag this out, but I had a few thoughts about your mail
>> on the poem.
>> You're reminded of the Movement. Is that always such a bad thing? Still,
>> for me, it doesn't much resemble any particular Movement poet, though I
>> think you may have a point that the register is "deliberately limited"
>> (not necessarily a bad thing either), but I'd call it subdued rather than
>> "prosaic".
>> I'm not convinced the kettle line "hovers just on the edge of cliche" -
>> I've already said why I think it sets up a series of images which are
>> essential.
>> Your next point:
>>>(but what's up with those breaks across line endings and between the
>>>two-line sections? I couldn't see the point, other than a mild gesture
>>>towards avant-guardism)
>> I see no such gesture and can't at all work out why run-ons over line and
>> stanza should be considered a preserve of the avant-garde. You know as I
>> do well as I do that hundreds of examples of this could be found in
>> "mainstream" poetry. Whether they work or not is the only point of
>> interest. Here I think the first stanza run-on: there are signs// of
>> someone having left" is ok, making the space stand for an absence. The
>> second stanza run-on is more interesting: "the clockwork// contractions
>> of the paraffin heater" - with the stalled alliteration giving emphasis
>> to "contractions" - a word associated with pregnancy, which then leaves a
>> disturbing suggestion, how can I put it, that the couple's intimate life
>> is on hold, though their appliances are vicariously heated and animated.
>> I'm stating this crudely, but I think the poem allows these suggestions
>> to surface. The other stanza run-on maintains the 'k' sound - "For weeks
>> now we have come and gone, woken// in acres of empty bedding..." - again
>> the space of the line ending and the stanza break gives a sense of
>> uninhabited space and emptiness, with the deliberate excess of "acres".
>> I think that's about all I have to say on the poem - maybe this will
>> seem to you and to Mark, whose post I've just read, "contrived for its
>> own sake" and, somehow, therefore akin to basket-weaving. I do think the
>> poet "needed" to write it, to use Mark's distinction (though "Reason not
>> the need") and that it's effective in its own way.
>> One afterthought about your post, Robin, concerns your use of Peter
>> Porter's The Cost of Seriousness to deliver a withering stroke:
>>>Was it Peter Porter who said, "Finally we are condemned by our lack of
>>>talent"? If you put this poem beside Porter's poems in _The Cost of
>>>Seriousness_ (and there is an overlap of concerns between the two) then
>>>this is simply not worth bothering with.
>> It's a long time since I read this book, written when Porter was in his
>> fifties. But the elegies to his wife in it don't at all seem evidence of
>> "an overlap of concerns between the two" (no more really than in the Ward
>> song Jeff has sent). It just seems odd to use this whole book, one of
>> Porter's best, to bash a single early Armitage poem with. Anyway you've
>> reached your conclusion that "this is simply not worth bothering with" so
>> I doubt that resolve will be much dented by anything I've said. The only
>> point of agreement I have with your post is your final concession that
>> there's a rhythmic force to the poem. I think this poem and much of the
>> rest of his work bears this out.
>> Jamie
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 2:15 AM
>> Subject: Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
>>
>>
>>>> Robin, 'scuse my last email - written before I'd read yours below, and
>>>> only in response to your earlier one.
>>>> Jamie
>>>
>>> Finally some comments on the Armitage poem, Jamie.
>>>
>>> First point (and yes, I *am a pedant, and proud of it, Alison <g>),
>>> let's reattach the title to the poem, as it would seem to be relevant.
>>> "Night Shift".
>>>
>>> So we have a context, but ...
>>>
>>> Once again I have missed you by moments
>>>
>>> OK, competant rhythm, but choice of a deliberately limited and prosaic
>>> register. What does this remind me of? Oh, yes, Movement poetry.
>>> (This poem could have been written any time since the fifties, and was
>>> written much more frequently then.)
>>>
>>> Followed by:
>>>
>>> steam hugs the rim of the just-boiled kettle
>>>
>>> To my ear, that hovers just on the edge of cliche.
>>>
>>> The rest of the poem is much the same -- not particularly bad, not
>>> particularly good (but what's up with those breaks across line endings
>>> and between the two-line sections? I couldn't see the point, other than
>>> a mild gesture towards avant-guardism).
>>>
>>> But it's the last two lines that confirm my opinion of what's gone
>>> before -- "the air, still hung with spores of your hairspray" is for me
>>> easily the best line in the poem, but it's followed by, "body-heat
>>> stowed in the crumpled duvet," which lapses back into triteness.
>>>
>>> So not, finally, something that would particularly want to make me seek
>>> out more of Armitage's poems. Was it Peter Porter who said, "Finally we
>>> are condemned by our lack of talent"? If you put this poem beside
>>> Porter's poems in _The Cost of Seriousness_ (and there is an overlap of
>>> concerns between the two) then this is simply not worth bothering with.
>>>
>>> Against that, the strongest side of the poem is the rhythms it uses --
>>> Armitage is actually rather good there. Or at least competant. But
>>> what a waste, to link a decent ear for rhythm with lame and insufficient
>>> imagery and language.
>>>
>>> My two cents' worth.
>>>
>>> Robin
>>
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