Great minds think alike: And Puns, then best when exquisitely bad; (S.T. Coleridge, poem quoted in Letter to John Thelwall, 31 December 1796) Good poets have a weakness for bad puns. (W.H. Auden, ‘The Truest Poetry is the most Feigning’) I’m tempted to call this 1-0 to Auden: he trumps Coleridge for pithiness, memorability and […]
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Which Poets Do You Give the Benefit of the Doubt?
I’ve just written an article for the Magma Newsletter, titled ‘Which Poets Do You Give the Benefit of the Doubt?’. The premise is that when we read a poem, our response is mediated by what – if anything – we already know about the poet. So if we encounter a ‘difficult’ poem, then it makes […]
Elizabeth Bishop – ‘Large Bad Picture’
This poem has one of my all-time favourite titles, as well as one of my favourite endings: In the pink light the small red sun goes rolling, rolling, round and round and round at the same height in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling, while the ships consider it. Apparently they have reached their destination. It would […]
Derek Walcott – ‘A Sea Change’
With a change of government the haze of wide rain which you begin to hear as the ruler hears the crowd gathering under the balcony, the leader who has promised the permanent cobalt of a change of government with the lilac and violet of his cabinet’s change. I couldn’t resist posting this today. It’s from […]
Review – Voice Recognition anthology, Sarah Jackson, Andrew Elliott
Magma 46 has just been published – it includes my review of Voice Recognition, an excellent anthology of young poets edited by Clare Pollard and James Byrne; Sarah Jackson’s pamphlet Milk; and Lung Soup by Andrew Elliott, which is like nothing you’ve ever read. (I published two of Elliott’s poems in Magma 34, and found […]