Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Next Issue Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance' David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This review is taken from PN Review 41, Volume 11 Number 3, January - February 1985.

Chris McCullyLOOKING AND BEING SEEN Charles Tomlinson, Notes from New York (OUP) £4.50 pb.
Tom Disch, Here I am, There You Are, Where Were We (Hutchinson), £4.95 pb.
Harry Guest, Lost and Found (Anvil Press Poetry) £4.95 pb.
Sheila Wingfield, Collected Poems (Enitharmon Press) £5.25 pb.

Charles Tomlinson's Notes from New York is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. I wonder if the recommendation indicates that Tomlinson's verse is becoming comfortable - or familiar - enough for the eminences grises who decide such things? Tomlinson, after all, has little in common with the Thwaites and Lerners, those whose verse is safely tinged with Limehouse Pink; he has always been comparatively neglected by English readers. But Notes from New York demonstrates that those who neglect Tomlinson are neglecting a considerable poet.

Despite what seems to be a more overt use of metrical structures, the collection is uncompromising in that themes familiar from earlier Tomlinson are again explored. Perspectives on water, on desert, and on light - the perspectives embraced by Zukofsky's statement 'To see is to inform all speech' - are investigated with civility and exactitude. Yet what is new about the collection is that 'relationship' is not simply defined on visual quiddities but on the existence of objects in time. To pursue a mildly picturesque analogy, it is as if a geologist, tapping concentratedly at a particular vein of rock for years, has suddenly looked up and become newly aware of the entire cliff face. But the analogy is too simple to do justice to Tomlinson's work here; the neat seams appear to have been perceived in a vertigo formed by the complexities of history and the difficult contingencies of human passage. Although it is hard to quote in brief from Tomlinson, I take ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image