Skip to main content

Oliver Reynolds?

Who is Oliver Reynolds?  We might still be asking that - but a new review of his latest book, by David Wheatley, partly rescues Reynolds from something closely resembling benign neglect.  Odd, since he had four books with Faber, starting in the mid-80s, after winning an Eric Gregory Award, then the Arvon Prize - proof that nothing is sure in the house of poetry.  Now, Reynolds, perhaps eccentrically working, in middle-age, as an Opera House usher, has a new collection out, Hodge.

He deserves readers.  Why does he not have them (much) anymore?  I suspect that the poetry world's indifference to many good and even excellent writers is partly connected to the social networks that, naturally, flow about publications - going to a launch one is reminded that most books receive the reception not of all their peers, but those known to the editors, publishers, and authors - if lucky.  And, as poetry circles widen and contract, with age and circumstance, some poets get left behind, through no fault of anyone's ... but, yet, are we not, sometimes, as poets, rather too au courant and modish in our reading habits?  How often do we take down the dusty, or the off-beat, from the shelves, for a second, even a debut, glance?  Many poets read widely - few read obscurely.  Not that Reynolds is obscure; even more troublingly, he was hidden in plain sight - which reminds that vogues and schools march on the bones of previous big beasts.

Comments

Rob said…
I was thinking about this earlier on. I'd found a Faber collection from the early eighties from a poet I'd never heard of. I looked at a few pages and thought it was OK but nothing special, and put it back on the shelf. Unfortunately, I can't even remember who it was now! Must have another look next week while I'm there, as I doubt anyone will have bought it.

I read widely, but also obscurely at times. I suspect more people do that than you think, Todd, or perhaps I just want to think that. From the same charity shop, I bought a book featuring 25 Hungarian poets - a poem for each year from 1978-2002. Looks interesting. Obscurity is relative too. I recently read an Iain Crichton Smith collection. I suspect he would seem an obscure choice to may of your readers but, where I come from, it wouldn't be seen as obscure at all.
puthwuth said…
Thanks for this Todd. I had always been a fan of OR's work, and was happy to give this just-out book a boost. Having followed the fairly heated arguments around the rights and wrongs of Patrick Crotty's Penguin Book lately, I think people need to remember that canons are not set in stone, and that even someone who seems to have arrived as comfortably as OR did only 11 years ago can suddenly fall away, disastrously. And be aware too that if the work was good then, it remains good now, and that we should always speak up for the unfairly neglected.
richard lopez said…
luck? surely, chance has a huge part of it. why does one poet continue to get accolades while another just-as-published writer toil in relative neglect? that's one for the ages, and in my opinion, matters nought. after all, should a writer care very much about history and reputation than that writer will, most likely, worry about fame rather than the work and the life of work, which matters, at least to me, much more. as for reading obscurely, i'd like to see more published and more written about the british poet spike hawkins. i found a few of poems in an old anthology some years ago and still haven't found many of his poems or who the hell hawkins is.
This sounds like the man I heard at a Modern Poetry in Translation launch, reading innovative translations of classic German poems. He is certainly a versatile poet!

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".