E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Stock-taking is endless in poetry.  I need to unclutter my shelves of looming reviews.  Here are a few quickies: American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry , out last year, proves to be an indispensable map of new poetic styles and ideas in North American poetry; similar in outlook to the Fusion Poetry idea I championed back in the late 90s, the idea of hybridity welcomes an end to stale conflict over the lyric, and aims for traffic between experimental and traditional poetics.  A must-have. The Best American Poetry 2009 , guest edited by David Wagoner , features a superb opening foreword by David Lehman , attacking the idea of negative reviewing, and discussing, among other things, Mad Men .  As always, the selection of poems is remarkable, and while each year favours a slightly nuanced critical approach - how could it not? - the editor's humanity comes through.  With poems from John Ashbery, Mark Doty, WS Merwin, Tom Sleigh, Adrienne Rich, B...

Been reading Lachlan Mackinnon's new Faber collection, Small Hours . A very fine long prose sequence in the second half, which is reminiscent of Life Studies Lowell , but with a very English spin. Stephen Morrissey's Girouard Avenue from Coracle press also has something of the memoir to it, this time of Montreal - moving, serious poetry by a Canadian poet worth getting to know. Also, been enjoying Cure for a Crooked Smile , by Chris Kinsey , from Ragged Raven. Kinsey is always a surprising and sensitive poet, and she was a BBC Wildlife Poet of the year recently. She writes particularly well about the animal kingdom. Yeshiva Boys , by David Lehman , is superb - third (or is that fourth?) generation New York School poetry, that twists and turns linguistically, with verve and style - creating a slightly more humane kind of Bernsteinesque Language Poetry - but just as formally and humorously attuned. Lehman will be reading for Oxfam in the London series, March 1st, with ...