3. See James Fenton, the Memory of War and Children in Exile: Poems Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939, Ed. Edward M

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

3. See James Fenton, the Memory of War and Children in Exile: Poems Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939, Ed. Edward M Notes In all references place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. NOTE TO PREFACE 1. See Seamus Heaney, 'An Open Letter' (1983), repr. in Ireland's Field Day (1985) pp. 21-30; Tom Paulin, Ireland and the English Crisis (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1984) pp. 9-22; Douglas Dunn, 'Interview with Bernard O'Donoghue', Oxford Poetry, 11.2 (Spring 1985) 46-7, 49-50. NOTES TO CHAPTER 1: JAMES FENTON'S 'NARRATIVES': SOME REFLECTIONS ON POSTMODERNISM 1. Compare Paul Muldoon's fabulation in 'Immram', Why Brownlee Left (1980) pp. 38-47, and 'The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants', Quoof (1983) pp. 40-64. 2. Compare Muldoon's 'The Big House', Mules (1977) pp.15-16, which indulgently spins a yarn, exploiting with evident enjoyment the narrative cliches of Gothic fiction and the detective novel, only in its final qualificatory line, which contradicts line 10, to playfully dismiss itself as fabrication by drawing attention to the unreliability of its artifice. 3. See James Fenton, The Memory of War and Children in Exile: Poems 1968-1983 (Harmondsworth, 1983) pp. 92-3. Line references in individual poems are incorporated wherever possible into the text. Compare W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (1976) p.41. 4. See Fenton, Memory of War, pp. 81-4. Compare The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Edward Mendel­ son (1977) p.61 and Auden, Collected Poems, pp.414-15, 224-31. 5. English Auden, p. 148. 6. Fenton, Memory of War, pp. 30-7. 7. Ibid., pp.10-19. 8. Ibid., pp. 58-61. 9. Notice the characteristically sinister wordplay here on prussic acid. 10. See 'An Interview with James Fenton', Poetry Review, 72.2 Oune 1982) 21, and Fenton, Memory of War, pp. 44-6. 11. See 'An Interview with James Fenton', p.18. 12. Muldoon, Quoof p. 29. 13. Compare Seamus Heaney, North (1975) pp.49-50. 14. 'An Interview with James Fenton', p. 21. Fenton is presumably thinking of Clare's 'Remembrances': 209 210 Notes to pages 9-17 Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain It levelled every bush & tree & levelled every hill & hung the moles for traitors See John Clare, The Midsummer Cushion, ed. Anne Tibbie and R. K. R. Thornton (Ashington and Manchester, 1979) p. 370. 15. See Fenton, Memory of War, pp. 96-9. 16. Compare the discussion of exoticism apropos of Christopher Reid's poetry in Chapter 2, pp. 34-5 infra. 17. See English Auden, pp.130-5 and The Complete Poems of Keith Douglas, ed. Desmond Graham (Oxford, 1978) p. 79. 18. See Fenton, Memory of War, pp. 47-9. 19. Compare particularly 'Ses purs ongles tres haut dediant leur onyx' in Stephane Mallarme, CEuvres completes, ed. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry (Paris, 1945) pp. 68-9. 20. See Charles Jencks, 'Late-Modernism and Post-Modernism', Late­ Modern Architecture (1980) pp.10-30; The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, 3rd edn (1981) passim. NOTES TO CHAPTER 2: THEATRE OF TROPE: CRAIG RAINE AND CHRISTOPHER REID The following abbreviations are used throughout this chapter: A Reid, Arcadia (Oxford, 1979) CP Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems (1955) K Reid, Katerina Brae (1985) M Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (Oxford, 1979) P Reid, Pea Soup (Oxford, 1982) R Raine, Rich (1984) T Raine, The Onion, Memory (Oxford, 1978) 1. James Fenton, 'Of the Martian School', New Statesman (20 Oct 1978) p. 520. Amongst vituperative attacks on the exclusiveness of the British poetry scene, Martin Booth's British Poetry 1964 to 1984 (1985) pp. 248-56, is the most outspoken. 2. Craig Raine quotes Wordsworth to this effect in Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation, ed. John Haffenden (1981) p.182 and in 'Babylonish Dialects', Poetry Review, 74.2 Oune 1984) 31. 3. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings, ed. Louis A. Landa (Oxford, 1976) pp. 128, 143. 4. London Review of Books, 3, 24 July; 4, 18 Sept; 9 Oct, 20 Nov, 18 Dec 1986; 8 Jan 1987. 5. Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems [hereafter CP] (1955) pp. 486, 64. 6. Jane Austen, Selected Letters 1796-1817, ed. R. W. Chapman (1955) p.189. Raine's more extensive apologia, apropos of John Donne, is 'Making Love with the Light On', Listener (5 April 1984) pp. 12-13. Notes to pages 18-36 211 7. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1982) p. 357. 8. Harold Pinter, Plays: One (1976) pp.14-15. 9. This Eliotic theme (as in the elegiac 'Burnt Norton') is also explored in 'Memory' (T, p. 25), which Raine depicts as 'the staircase we can never climb, I the ruined spiral of the silver birch, I dripping cob­ webs', confirming the Symbolist origins of his Martian interest in metaphor. 10. T. S. Eliot, Complete Poems and Plays (1969) pp.18-212. 11. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927; repr. Harmondsworth, 1974) p.183. 12. Compare Wallace Stevens's 'Life is Motion' (CP, p. 83), with its celebration of 'the marriage I Of flesh and air'. 13. R, p. 22. The decorous formality perhaps owes something to Enobarbus' s famous encomium on Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, n.ii. 198-9. 14. M, p. 6. Dryden's great translation of De Rerum Natura, IV.1052-1287, is in The Poems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley, 4 vols (Oxford, 1958) I. 413-21. 15. John Haffenden, 'An Interview with Christopher Reid', Poetry Review, 72.3 (Sept 1982) 16; Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, ed. Samuel French Morse (New York, 1977) p. 179. Compare Stevens's equation of poetry with 'metaphor or metamorphosis' in The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York, n.d.) pp.ll7-18. 16. The sequence 'Spleen' in Charles Baudelair~, CEuvres completes, ed. Claude Pichois, 2 vols (Paris, 1975-6) 1. 72-5, contrasts with 'Parfum exotique' (pp. 25-6), 'La Chevelure' (pp. 26-7), 'L'Invitation au voyage' (pp. 53-4), 'Chanson d'apres-midi' (pp. 59-60), 'Un hemis­ phere dans une chevelure' (pp. 300-1), 'L'Invitation au voyage' (pp. 301-3), 'Les Projets' (pp. 314-15) and 'Any where out of the world' (pp. 356-7). 17. Ibid., 1. 26. 18. Ibid., II. 334. Baudelaire is recasting a passage in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Poetic Principle', repr. in his Complete Works, ed. James A. Harrison, 17 vols (New York, 1902) XIV. 273-4. 19. 'Brise marine', in Stephane Mallarme, is CEuvres completes, ed. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry (Paris, 1945) p. 38; see also 'Les Fenetres' and 'L' Azur', ibid., pp. 32-3, 37-8. 20. Ezra Pound, Collected Shorter Poems, 2nd edn (1968) pp. 221, 220; cf. the full context of pp. 216-21. 21. W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems, 2nd edn (1950) p. 392. 22. I would, of course, not wish to assert that there was a single High Romantic ideology unassailed by criticism from within: Word­ sworth, for example, is the author of 'Peter Bell' as well as of The Prelude. Nevertheless I believe that one can usefully discriminate between the vatic pretensions which the major Romantics confirmed as a poetic tradition and Reid's ludic subversion of the High Romantic frame of reference that has continued to play such a dominant role in twentieth-century poetry. 212 Notes to pages 37-44 23. 'Endymion', IV.636-44, in The Poems oflohn Keats, ed. Miriam Allott (1970) pp.271-2. 24. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, ed. Graham Petrie (Harmondsworth, 1967) p.453. Compare Corporal Trim's flourish with his cane, ibid., p. 576. 25. Stevens, CP, p. 322. 26. The English Auden, ed. Edward Mendelson (1977) pp.210-12. 27. Compare 'Morality and the Novel' in D. H. Lawrence, A Selection from Phoenix, ed. A. A. H. Inglis (Harmondsworth, 1971) p.177. 28. See Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811). 29. James Joyce, Ulysses (1922; repr. Harmondsworth, 1971) pp. 455-63. 30. Compare, for example, Craig Raine, 'Good Manners', London Review of Books, 6.9 (17 May-6 June 1984) 9; Viewpoints, p. 179. Joyce supplied the epigraphs for M; R, pt 1 and p. 88; and T, pp. 5, 12. 31. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916; repr. Harmondsworth, 1975) pp. 221, 217. 32. Lines 996-1014; text from Jonathan Wordsworth, William Word­ sworth: The Borders of Vision (Oxford, 1984) p. 414. M. H. Abrams traces the origins of 'the apocalyptic marriage' in Natural Supernatu­ ralism (New York, 1973) Ch.l. 33. Stephen's transposition of Flaubert is in Portrait, p. 215. 34. Compare, for example, Mr Y's stencilling of catkins with the catkin 'epaulettes' in 'The First Lesson' (R, p.109); his playful reference to 'snows' with the metaphor of 'state cocaine' in 'The Sylko Bandit' (R, pp. 88-9); his fascination with the drunk lexicon of dreams with the sleeping 'readers' of 'A Martian Sends A Postcard Home' (M, p.2). 35. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. George Watson (1965) p.167. 36. Stevens, Opus Posthumous, p. 167. For some of the other contexts of 'poverty' see ibid., p.104, and CP, pp.299, 317, 320-1, 325-6, 477, 480, 495, 505, 510, 532-3. 37. London Review of Books, 6.17 (20 Sept-3 Oct 1984) 11. 38. Stevens, Opus Posthumous, p. 178; Necessary Angel, p. 31. Compare CP, p.167; Necessary Angel, pp. 27-31, 170-1; Opus Posthumous, pp. 158, 159. 39. Stevens, Necessary Angel, pp. 57-8. 40. Poetry Review, 74.2 Gune 1984) 30-3. 41. Stevens, Necessary Angel, p.
Recommended publications
  • We Met at the End of the Party’
    APPENDIX: ‘Be my Valentine this Monday’ and ‘We met at the end of the party’ These poems came to light in 2002, as a result of a complicated sequence of events. Following Monica Jones’s death on 15 February 2001, the staff of the Brynmor Jones Library, Hull, cleared 105 Newland Avenue of Larkin’s remaining books and manuscripts. The Philip Larkin Society then purchased the remaining non-literary items: furniture, pictures and ornaments. These were removed in late 2001 and early 2002, and are now on long-term loan to the Hull Museums Service and the East Riding Museum Service. Both searches missed a small dark red ‘©ollins Ideal 468’ hard-backed manu- script notebook which had slipped behind the drawers of a bedside cabinet. This cabinet was removed by the house-clearer with the final debris, and subse- quently fell into the hands of a local man, Chris Jackson, who contacted the Larkin Society. I confirmed the authenticity of the book in a brief meeting with Mr Jackson in the Goose and Granite public house in Hull on 17.vii.2002. The notebook seems initially to have been intended for ‘Required Writing’, which Larkin wished to keep separate from the drafts in his workbooks proper. The first eleven sides are occupied by pencil drafts of ‘Bridge for the Living’, dated between 30 May 1975 and 27 July 1975. These are followed by notes on Thomas Hardy and other topics. Seven months later, however, Larkin used the book again, this time for more personal writing. The central pages were left blank but on the final five sides he wrote pencil drafts, dated between 7 February 1976 and 21 February 1976, of ‘Morning at last: there in the snow’, ‘Be my Valentine this Monday’ and ‘We met at the end of the party’.
    [Show full text]
  • The Fall of Saigon James Fenton in the Summer of 1973 I Had a Dream in Which, to My Great Distress, I Died
    GRANTA May 2019 The Fall of Saigon James Fenton In the summer of 1973 I had a dream in which, to my great distress, I died. I was alone in a friend’s house at the time and, not knowing what to do, I hid the body in her deep freeze. When everyone returned, I explained to them what had taken place: ‘Something terrible happened when you were out. I – I died.’ My friends were very sympathetic. ‘But what did you do with the body?’ they asked. I was ashamed to tell them. ‘I don’t know where it is,’ I said, and we all set out to search the house for my corpse. Upstairs and downstairs we looked, until finally, unable to bear the deception any longer, I took my hostess aside and confessed. ‘There wasn’t anything else in the compartment,’ I said, ‘and I just didn’t know what to do.’ We went to the deep freeze and opened it. As the curled and frozen shape was revealed, I woke up. I was glad to be going off on a journey. I had been awarded a bursary for the purpose of travelling and writing poetry; I intended to stay out of England a long time. Looking at what the world had to offer, I thought either Africa or Indochina would be the place to go. I chose Indochina partly on a whim, and partly because, after the Paris Peace Accords in January of that same year, it looked as if it was in for some very big changes.
    [Show full text]
  • James Fenton and ‘In Paris with You’
    Context: James Fenton and ‘In Paris With You’ James Fenton (1949–) ‘The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.’ James Fenton Prize-winnning poet James Fenton was born in 1949 and has worked as a political journalist, a literary reviewer, a war correspondent, and a columnist. At school, he developed what became a life-long interest in W.H. Auden, a poet whose work has had a profound influence on Fenton’s own poetry. He once said ‘I think of Auden as the starting point’. Fenton’s poetic career began when he won a prestigious poetry prize for his sonnet sequence Our Western Furniture while studying at Oxford University. When his collection Terminal Moraine was published in 1972, Fenton used the profits to travel to South East Asia, where as a journalist, he reported on the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and the collapse of the Cambodian regime. On his return to England in 1976, Fenton became political correspondent for the New Statesman, a left-wing political magazine, where he worked alongside contemporary authors Julian Barnes and Martin Amis, and poets Craig Raine and Blake Morrison. When The Memory of War (1982) was published, Fenton was recognised as one of the finest poets of his generation. He was Oxford Professor of Poetry 1994–99, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2007. 1 ‘In Paris With You’ In his poetry, Fenton often uses traditional forms (such as the sonnet or lyric) to explore contemporary events.
    [Show full text]
  • Reflexivity Aid Impersonality in the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill
    REFLEXIVITY AID IMPERSONALITY IN THE POETRY OF GEOFFREY HILL bY ANDREW MICHAEL ROBERTS A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. at University College London 1991 ProQuest Number: 10609405 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10609405 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis is a critical study of the distinctive qualities and the development of Hill's poetry. It identifies two characteristic features of his work. The first is the pervasive presence of reflexivity. While there is a reflexive element in much poetry, Hill's poems are marked by a sustained scrutiny of their own medium, expressing an intense concern with the moral and intellectual risks of poetic utterance. The second feature is the aspiration to impersonality. This has a direct source in T.S. Eliot's critical writing, but Hill's poetry exhibits a high degree of sophistication in its engagement with this modernist ideal, employing a range of strategies to renegotiate the role of the subject in poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • [Insert Your Title Here]
    Popular Music and the Myth of Englishness in British Poetry by Brian Allen East A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama May 9, 2011 Keywords: Englishness, popular music, British poetry, poetics, national identity Copyright 2011 by Brian Allen East Approved by Jeremy Downes, Chair, Professor of English Jonathan Bolton, Professor of English Virginia M. Kouidis, Associate Professor Ruth C. Crocker, Professor of History Abstract This dissertation deconstructs the myth of Englishness through a comparative analysis of intersections between popular music and the poetry of the British Isles. In particular, my project explores intersections where popular music and poetry critics attempt to define Englishness, intersections where poetry and music combine to perform Englishness, and intersections where poetry and music combine to resist Englishness. In the wake of centuries of colonialism, British cultural expressions comprise a hybrid discourse that reflects global influences. I argue that attempts by critics to preserve the myth of Englishness result in the exclusion of a diversity of voices. Such exclusionary tactics potentially promote the alienation of future readers from British poetry. A comparative analysis of intersections between poetry and popular music expands the current critical discourse on British poetry to incorporate the hybridity of British popular music. Although for comparative purposes I consider music as a literature, I do not focus on song lyrics as the exclusive, or primary “text” of popular music. Instead, I am much more interested in the social forces that transform popular music into an expression of Englishness.
    [Show full text]
  • A Biography of Christopher Hitchens As a Public Intellectual
    The Public Intellectual: Continuity as a Pre-Requisite for Credibility? A Biography of Christopher Hitchens as a Public Intellectual. MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Glenn Walters Student number: 11108304 Main Supervisor: Dr. Guido Snel Second Supervisor: Dr. Alex Drace-Francis June, 2016 1 Table of Contents x. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 3 xi Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................... 3 xii Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 6 1. Chapter One: Christopher Hitchens’ Life and Writing Career .......................................... 9 1.1 Autobiography and Hitch-22 ................................................................................................. 9 1.2 Early life, Oxford University, and the International Socialists .............................................. 10 1.3 Bohemian Bloomsbury and The New Statesman ................................................................. 13 1.4 America and The Nation ..................................................................................................... 17 1.5 Vanity Fair and the 1990’s .................................................................................................. 20 1.6 Later Career and American Citizenship
    [Show full text]
  • Charles Wuorinen: Haroun and the Sea of Stories
    CHARLES WUORINEN: HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES CHARLES WUORINEN 1938–2020 DISC 1 (80:54) DISC 2 (52:35) ACT I ACT II HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES [1] Scene I In the Sad City of Alifbay 10:42 [1] Scene I Rescue the Princess! 6:59 LIBRETTO BY JAMES FENTON [2] Scene 2 A Story 2:20 [2] Scene 2 To the Twilight Strip 7:30 [3] Scene 3 Enter Two Men 7:11 [3] Scene 3 On the Way to the South Pole 3:37 HEATHER BUCK soprano [4] Scene 4 On the Road 3:17 [4] Scene 4 They Were Being Pulled Slowly Forwards 12:47 STEPHEN BRYANT bass-baritone [5] Scene 5 To the Valley of K 1:16 [ ] [6] Scene 6 In the Dark 0:33 5 Scene 5 Meanwhile, at the MATTHEW DiBATTISTA tenor Citadel of Chup 5:39 [7] Scene 7 In the Valley of K 2:25 DAVID SALSBERY FRY bass [6] Scene 6 At the Door of P2C2E House 5:29 [8] Scene 8 Meeting Mr. Buttoo 2:59 [7] Scene 7 Mr. Buttoo’s Rally 4:33 BRIAN GIEBLER tenor [9] Scene 9 The Floating Gardens 7:58 [8] Scene 8 Back Home 2:14 WILBUR PAULEY bass [10] Scene 10 On the Houseboat 2:28 [9] Scene 9 Haroun Wakes in His Bedroom [ ] Scene 11 Changing Bedrooms 3:01 MICHELLE TRAINOR soprano 11 at Dawn 3:46 [12] Scene 12 The Story Tap 9:38 NEAL FERREIRA tenor [13] Scene 13 Flying to the Moon 3:05 HEATHER GALLAGHER mezzo-soprano [14] Scene 14 Wishwater 5:37 CHARLES BLANDY tenor [15] Scene 15 The Story He Drank 1:56 AARON ENGEBRETH baritone [16] Scene 16 Flying to Gup City 9:17 [ ] Scene 17 War is Declared 7:08 THOMAS OESTERLING tenor 17 STEVEN GOLDSTEIN tenor BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT AND CHORUS Gil Rose, conductor DIRECTOR’S COMMENT By Mark Lamos FILLING THE SEA OF STORIES I can’t quite remember how I came to direct the premiere of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, though I was thrilled to be asked, and I was eager to work with Charles Wuorinen, whose music I very much admired.
    [Show full text]
  • G-LSUD3 Enlit 6-368: Contemporary British Poetry
    ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI SCHOOL OF ENGLISH G-LSUD3 EnLit 6-368: Contemporary British Poetry Instructor: Dr. Kanarakis Yannis Class: Thursdays 16:00 – 18:30 (Room: 01 New Building) Office: Wednesdays 12:30- 14:30 (Room: 310 E) COURSE DESCRIPTION This course aims to introduce students to contemporary English-language poetry in Great Britain and Ireland by tracing the most important developments, poets, texts and movements from the post-war period to the present day. After a brief overview of the contemporary poets’ most influential forebears, students will be given the opportunity to be introduced to the politically committed poetry of the 30s, the surrealist and New Romantic trends of the 40s, the “Movement” of the 50s, the “British Poetry Revival” of the 60s and the 70s, and we will conclude by considering some of the most engaging and original poetry written in Britain and Ireland the last three decades as expressed through some contemporary movements like the “Martians,” the “Poeclectics,” the “Poetry Slam,” the “New Poetry,” and the “New Generation” movement, minority poetry, performance poetry, new media, digital, experimental and twitter poetry. The emphasis of the course will be on reading and engaging with poetry first hand. The organizing principle throughout the course will, nevertheless, be the connection between poetry and innovation, form, gender, multiculturalism, minorities, politics, nationality, performativity, spatiality, subjectivity (especially the lyric subject) and electronic writing. COURSE ASSESSMENT/REQUIREMENTS - Students can choose either to take the end-of-semester exam which will cover the entire semester OR write an MLA-styled research paper of about 4.000 words (40%) and answer only one question in the final exam (60%).
    [Show full text]
  • THE Hitchens Review
    by FRED INGLIS Hitch-22: a memoir by Christopher Hitchens Atlantic Books 435pp £20 hb ISBN: 978-1-84354-921-5 This book has been reviewed absolutely everywhere, mostly, it seems, by Pharisees at pains to express their gratitude that they in no way resemble the great Hitchens. Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian took up her entire interview, indeed, with explaining in a frenzy of self- righteousness that she didn't like him and anyway he was a drunk. It's true that, once alienated, Hitchens looks to swap offensiveness for offences taken. His dust-jacket is a close-up of the man drawing heavily on a cigarette of which he has smoked so many thousands , defying them to kill him (sixty-one and still going strongly for the top) and defying also his well-intentioned reader to disapprove and stop him. The enviable recognition, the notoriety, the controversiality, the sheer cheek and bounce of the man are not, surely, the topics which should first preoccupy pious readers of the THE , concerned that the books whose subject-matter is the state of the world, should be well- written, well-informed, judicious, balanced if not wholly without the unsteadiness of strong feeling, and expressive of a coherent enough vision of human bondage. Hitchens embodies all these exigent qualities in abundance. He also possesses enough vitality for three men, and enough love of life and of others to fill the hearts and the biographies of the several splendid writers whose close friendship is so richly celebrated in these pages – Martin Amis, James Fenton, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and, in a dying fall, Edward Said.
    [Show full text]
  • The Filial Art: a Reading of Contemporary British Poetry Author(S): Blake Morrison Source: the Yearbook of English Studies, Vol
    The Filial Art: A Reading of Contemporary British Poetry Author(s): Blake Morrison Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 17, British Poetry since 1945 Special Number (1987 ), pp. 179-217 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3507659 Accessed: 03-02-2016 06:54 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3507659?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Yearbook of English Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 134.208.29.220 on Wed, 03 Feb 2016 06:54:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Filial Art:A Reading of ContemporaryBritish Poetry BLAKE MORRISON London I I am morecertain that it is a dutyof nature to preservea goodparent's life and happiness,than I amof any speculative point whatever. (Alexander Pope) My fatherwas an eminentbutton maker - butI had a soulabove buttons - I pantedfor a liberalprofession.
    [Show full text]
  • 50 Poems & the Fire of Belonging: the Life and Work of Mick Imlah
    50 Poems & The Fire of Belonging: The Life and Work of Mick Imlah and the influence of the work on my poetic development By Robert Edward Selby A Doctoral Thesis in Creative Writing Presented to Royal Holloway, University of London February 2015 Declaration of Authorship I, Robert Edward Selby, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, it is always clearly stated. Signed: ___________________________________________________________ Date: ____________________________________________________________ 2 Abstract This is the most sustained study to date of the late poet Mick Imlah. The close reading it makes of a number of his poems is informed and placed in context by biographical information gathered from archival research and interviews with his friends and colleagues. The study argues that Imlah’s first collection, Birthmarks, can be understood in the context of his predilection for the fictive potential of poetry being complemented by a contemporaneous, wider renaissance in interest in the Browningesque dramatic monologue and narrative. The study argues that his second collection, The Lost Leader, can be understood in the context of Imlah’s increased identification with his Scottish heritage, triggered by creative and personal crises and encouraged by Scotland’s growing sense of nationhood towards the end of the twentieth century. The implication is that Imlah’s oeuvre, contrary to the perception that it is sui generis, can be regarded as in dialogue with changes that took place within and without British poetry towards the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first: the re-appreciation of Victorian verse, for instance, or the emergence, from the 1980s, of a more confident Scottish voice.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mid-Atlantics
    11 BEN MASTERS The Mid-Atlantics ‘I Pitched My Voice Somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic’ In a eulogising essay following the death of John Updike in 2009, Ian McEwan wrote: ‘American letters, deprived in recent years of its giants, Bellow and Mailer [and now Updike], is a levelled plain, with one solitary 1 peak guarded by Roth.’ Philip Roth would go on to announce his retirement from writing in 2012 and passed away in 2018, thus eradicating the final face from McEwan’s literary Mount Rushmore. McEwan’s friends and peers, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, similarly wrote eulogies for Updike; just as McEwan and Christopher Hitchens (another member of their literary set) had done for Saul Bellow in 2005 (‘What other American novelist’, asked Hitchens, ‘has had such a direct and startling influence on non-Americans young enough to be his children?’2), while Amis and McEwan both spoke at Bellow’s memorial in New York. Amis also wrote an account of Roth’s 3 oeuvre the year after his retirement, and followed this with an appreciation after his death, while McEwan remembered Roth on BBC Radio.4 Thus, in the early years of the twenty-first century, three of Britain’smost acclaimed and criticised novelists – Amis, Barnes and McEwan – found them- selves reflecting on the enormous influence of a senior generation of American writers now passed, and were perhaps left wondering where this placed their own generation on the altered literary landscape. Certainly, Zadie Smith, one of the major-voices-to-be of a new twenty-first-century literary generation, regarded Amis, Barnes and McEwan as a collective in its own right: ‘Better to cultivate a cipher-like persona, be a featureless squib called Mart, Jules, Ian’, writes Smith in her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), suggesting her indebted- 5 ness in perhaps the way they would most appreciate – ironically.
    [Show full text]