After a long hiatus (study commitments..) I needed some poetry back in my life. Blackmail Press #28 came out recently in which I modestly appear; a kind gift by a family member means I'm attending a 2-day poetry course over the summer - so I picked up a few books. Okay, that's not always necessary, but who could resist?
When considering buying books (not just on poetry), I always think in terms of what I would want to refer to again and again. A short term read is better coming from the public library rather than a bookstore, unless I plan to pass it on in some way, or want to support the author.
There are some recommended books by the course tutor which I bought, not because you have to have them but because my poetry collection is looking a bit sparse at the moment. I've weeded my books twice in the last year or two and try to borrow rather than buy, as I've just said. I also picked up a few others that looked intriguing...
The distinction between books on poetry and books of poetry isn't clear-cut, in my mind. If you want to learn more about writing poetry you need to read poetry. If you're not reading poetry, why on earth would you bother trying to write it?
So here are the books sitting on my desk at the moment, waiting to be read properly, and later joined by a couple of others I'm waiting on from Fishpond.
Strand, Mark. & Boland, Eavan (eds). The Making of a Poem : A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York / London : W. W. Norton & Co., 2000
"If example is the best teacher..." I'd never heard of this book before I came across it in Borders yesterday. But I'm always interested in learning more about forms, and when I opened it I realised it was chockful of poems arranged by form, and not just sonnets, villanelles, heroic couplets etc, but also the elegy, the ode, the pastoral, and a section on open forms. Less technical perhaps than other books but all the basics are here and then some.
Fry, Stephen. The Ode Less Travelled : Unlocking the Poet Within. London : Arrow Books, 2005
I'd knocked around buying this one for a while but was always put off by the author. Why would I want to learn about poetry from Stephen Fry, despite his perfect performance as Jeeves? But looking through it again in Unity Books recently, I realised how unpretentious and downright funny he was about poetry - and we all need that. I certainly do. How about his 3 Golden Rules for reading his book?
1. Take your time
2. Don't be afraid
3. Always have a notebook with you.
Rules for life, in fact. And he isn't afraid to talk technically. So a breath of fresh air.
Harvey, Siobhan (ed). Our Own Kind : 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals. Auckland : Godwit, 2009
Recommended reading for the poetry course, whose tutor incidentally is Harvey herself. I do come at this book from a strong animal rights perspective, being a vegan for ethical reasons. On the whole I thought I couldn't pass this one up, and when browsing it I came across several poems that prompted me to bring out my notebook and pen - a sure sign of success. In particular the strong bitter ending of Brian Turner's Pig, Fleur Adcock's Crab which talks about eating the "permitted parts of the crab" (I doubt the crab permitted it), and Our Cow by Cilla McQueen, which after reading a couple of times unfastened itself for me and began to spread in lots of possible directions, including a respect for the cow itself. Plus the book has lots of cute black & white pictures of animals (and people interacting with them) by Mark Smith.
Green, Paula. & Ricketts, Harry. 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry : over 85 key poems plus 25 poets talk about their work. Auckland : Vintage, 2010
Recommended reading again. Anthologies about New Zealand poetry are frequently published, with different slants (spirituality, animals, Auckland, Wellington etc) but this book intends, according to the preface, to open up rather than fix, celebrate rather than criticise, and introduce rather than assume. When looking through it I'm struck by how little I know about the poetry scene in New Zealand. This book covers the usual suspects like form and effects, but also has significant sections looking at the history of poetry in NZ, and other ways to look at poetry by "identities" - ethnic identities, New Zealandish, women, children. These aspects are what most interest me at first glance.
Carey, John. What Good are the Arts? London: Faber & Faber, 2005.
This is a question I ask myself often. Carey also had some controversial reactions to this book, and when I began to read I found out why. He does prick the balloon of pretentiousness that exists around (seems chiefly the visual) arts. Claims of spiritual eminence and elitism etc. He also has a great sense of humour, particularly when talking about what a work of art is. I want to write about this more in a later post, and I'm only half-way through, so all I'll say here is that he starts by asking what a work of art is, then examining the usual arguments around the arts (high art vs low art, scientific work on arts, do arts make us better, art as religion), and then talks specifically about literature (including poetry), and why he thinks literature is better than all the other arts. A couple of interesting concepts here are - literature's ability to criticise itself, and the idea of indistinctness (see my comment on Cilla McQueen's poem from the animals anthology).
Not specifically poetry, but very relevant.
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