New British Poetry : Edited by Don Paterson and Charles Simic

Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT
Review: I'm giving this brilliant anthology five stars, despite its infuriating introduction. The UK poetry scene is smaller than its US counterpart, so the "poetry wars" there must be like a knife fight in a phone booth. I can't understand why co-editor Don Paterson wants to fuel the conflict, as he himself admits that there are some "attractive voices" among the Post-modern camp. Wouldn't it have been more representative to include some of these, rather than the pedestrian Jacky Kay or the dull Andrew Motion?

However, the vast majority of the poets in this collection are anything but dull and pedestrian. There's an edgy postmodernity driving the work of John Ash, W.N. Herbert, Peter Didsbury and Jo Shapcott, for instance, and the more formal poets, like Peter Reading and Alice Oswald, are stunning technicians. There's surprisingly little of the "blokey" anti-intellectualism of Larkin and his heirs, though Larkin's masterfully elegiac tone and engagement with the colloquial are detectable in the work of Carol Ann Duffy and Sean O'Brien. I should add that Paterson's own poems are included. After grinding my teeth over his bad tempered factionalism I didn't want to like his poetry, but I found it stunning.

This book is required reading for American poetry readers as well as an exciting resource of imaginative possibilities for American poets. Just razor out a few pages of the introduction and stick in a few poems by Denise Riley.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, some average poetry for stupid people
Review: It's about time someone put together an anthology of really average poetry for a general readership. I'm with Don Paterson there. I hate academics and all those clever people; they think they're so special, learning stuff all the time and reading widely. If you are proud to be uneducated then this is the right book for you! Lots of really average poetry here, some from prize-winning poets, and everyone knows that they're the best! I live in Britain, well, Scotland actually, and hadn't heard of any of these people, but like most general readers of poetry I guess most of the stuff is awful, and these poets here are the most ordinary ones I've ever read. Yes, it's really ordinary stuff and we owe everyone a debt for pulling this one off. You can waste your money on lots of anthologies (I buy them all the time as gifts for friends) but this one felt like I'd spent my money on on something really average and normal -- it's great. I get the feeling it slightly misrepresents Britain, though. But the introduction is the best thing here. It's really good to hate forms of diversity and experimentation, and Paterson really gives serious writers a good kicking. Go Paterson! Workling-class blokes like Paterson have led me back to poetry and to a better life, a truly average life with limits and boundaries, and I'm proud of him. Buy this book and join the ranks of general readers, scores of them, who are proud of living in a small enclosed world somewhere in England. Maybe.

Rating:
Summary: worth getting
Review: Most of us in America have little idea of what is going on in the British poetry scene. This anthology helps remedy that. Admittedly it only gives a partial sense of what is going on over there, but still, we get a good idea. And it is filled with some great poetry. Sure there is a few bad poems and some mediocre poems, but there is a lot of great poetry in this anthology. There are great poems by Michael Donaghy (though the editors missed a couple of Donaghy's best poems), James Fenton, Carol Ann Duffy, Glyn Maxwell, Andrew Motion, and Roddy Lumsden. And at least one really good poem by Ian Duhig, Christopher Reid, Anne Rouse, and Jo Shapcott.