Dear me. A Montreal writer has got his hands on my latest collection, and found a whiff of the undergraduate about it. I'd suggest any critic who uses phrases like "dorm-room touches" has a bit of spring break fever themselves. Anyway, it's an interesting, violently mixed review. As the reviewer writes: "The voice which might have knit these elements together into a powerful whole seems, as yet, to lack confidence in what it is attempting to say." Well, yes, except what the poems are saying is that the idea of one voice, and one powerful whole, remains elusive, for poems, for texts - especially in bleak midwinter. However, the "excess" of reference to other authors in the collection (and other figures, in general, from Hirohito, to Brando) was intentional, and valedictory. I happen to think allusion and homage are viable poetic tropes - and excess is also, at times, a literary option. Many conservative Montreal critics tend to want poetry to be austere, epiphanic, and vocally coherent. You see, folks, North Americans can be stiff and quaint in their poetic needs.
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
Comments
What the Montreal Review of Books fails to understand is that it is an advrtising medium for the Quebec Writers Federation, and other Quebec writers. It should be promoting books by its members and other writers, not being negatively critical of them. In other words, it is supposed to sell books. This is typical of the Montreal writing community, which is often insular and negative. You won't find this in BC Bookworld or in other journals or places that are supportive of their writers...
Stephen Morrissey