This review is taken from PN Review 115, Volume 23 Number 5, May - June 1997.

on John Riley, Séan Rafferty, Michael Haslam

James Keery
Michael Haslam, A Whole Bauble (Carcanet) £
John Fuller, Amy Clampitt, Gillian Clarke, Vasko Popa, R.F. Langley, Kathleen Raine, Séan Rafferty, Pearse Hutchinson, Michael Hartnett, Richard Kell, R.F. Langley, John Montague, Sally Purcell, Robert Nye, Freda Downie, Drummond Allison, Lee Harwood, David Constantine, Edward Lowbury, Anthony Cronin, Edith Sitwell, C.K. Williams, Thom Gunn, Weldon Kees, P.J. Kavanagh, Norman MacCaig, Paul Auster, John Welch, Christopher Middleton, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Donald Davie, Miriam Waddington, Ciaran Carson, Elizabeth Jennings, A.S.J. Tessimond, Norman MacCaig, Charles Tomlinson, Michael Hamburger, Michael Donaghy, Sheila Wingfield, Alan Brownjohn, Peter Porter, Edith Sitwell, Ronald Duncan, W.S. Graham, Michael Murphy, Kathleen Raine, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Anne Stevenson, Montagu Slater, Ian Patterson, Collected Poems ed. Nicholas Johnson (Carcanet) £
Séan Rafferty, Peacocks. Full Stop (Poetical Histories) £
John Ennis, Heinrich Heine, Salvador Espriu, Charles Tomlinson, Peter Bland, Carole Satyamurti, Andrew Motion, Michael Longley, David Scott, Michael Longley, John Riley, Mark Strand, Denise Riley, John Montague, Clive Wilmer, Matthew Sweeney, Peter Abbs, George MacBeth, W.S. Graham, Francis Ponge, Douglas Clark, David Gascoyne, Christine Evans, Derek Mahon, Frederick Seidel, Geoff Page, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Hofmann, Ruth Bidgood, Kirkpatrick Dobie, Vicki Raymond, David Malouf, E.J. Scovell, Jean Garrigue, Fleur Adcock, Kenneth Koch, Bernard O'Donoghue, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, James Schuyler, Lee Harwood, David Wright, Vivian Smith, Kathleen Raine, Hugo Williams, David Harsent, Michael Hamburger, Mark O'Connor, Les A. Murray, Charles Johnston, Fleur Adcock, Philip Levine, Galway Kinnell, Michael Riviere, Lawrence Lerner, Thomas Blackburn, D.M. Thomas, Fleur Adcock, John Montague, P.J. Kavanagh, David Holbrook, John Silkin, Günter Grass, Elizabeth Jennings, Patricia Beer, Peter Sansom, Jaan Kaplinski, Vladimir Khodasevich, Jack Clemo, Frank Koenegracht, Jamie McKendrick, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jean Bleakney, William Plomer, Colette Bryce, Kathleen Jamie, Selected Poems ed. Michael Grant (Carcanet) £
Cover of Selected Poems

'Suddenly the press had a poet, the fun had a purpose,' wrote Tim Longville in his catalogue note for Ancient and Modern, published in 1967 by Grosseteste Press. John Riley and Longville set up the press together with Gordon Jackson in 1966, and from 1968 until Riley's murder in 1978 co-edited Grosseteste Review, among the most significant magazines of the time; they also co-authored several small collections, and two volumes of superb translations from Holderlin. In 1980, Longville published The Collected Works, including much of Riley's prose and his solo translations from Mandelstam and others, but omitting all the collaborations (the book runs to 500 pages as it is). Michael Grant has made an excellent selection of about half of the poems in The Collected Works, omitting the earlier work in Ancient and Modern, but otherwise reprinting Riley's collections virtually entire, together with some pieces uncollected at his death. The title poem is worth quoting in full:
 

Away from the house the sun falls
  slanting,
And trees almost in leaf in yesterday's
  sun
Put on today an elegant new shape,
A complex, streamlined growth. Did
  you ever see

The maidenhair (some few survive), a
  pre-
Historic tree? Limpid leaf, irregularity,
A touching intent to grow come what
  may
With perhaps insufficient means: a
  pleasure

To look on. As who shall see in winter
  leisure
Compassionate history ...
previous page
next page
Searching, please wait...