Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Sinead Morrissey 'The Lightbox' Philip Terry 'What is Poetry' Ned Denny 'Nine Poems after Verlaine' Sasha Dugdale 'On learning that Russian mothers buy their soldier sons lucky belts inscribed with Psalm 90 to wear into battle' Rod Mengham 'Cold War Hot Air'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This review is taken from PN Review 37, Volume 10 Number 5, March - April 1984.

Steven TuohyFLIRTING Kit Wright, Bump-Starting the Hearse (Hutchinson) £4.95

'It's the age', complained the sage of Tooting, 'One foot's obsessed with progress, one's in the grave' ('The Field Researchers', Treble Poets 1, Chatto, 1974). Admirers of Kit Wright's sharply melancholic light verse are bound to feel a certain apprehensiveness even as they delight in his splendidly entertaining new collection Bump-Starting the Hearse. The problem is that Wright's talent seems to be disintegrating under the conflicting pressures of his theme. The sad, fatalistic songs of resignation are operating in increasing isolation from what have become random (albeit often brilliantly inventive) tours de force of comedy or protest. The imaginative middle ground that made The Bear Looked Over The Mountain (Salamander Imprint, 1977) such a fertile collection seems to have largely disappeared. What's emerged is a poetry newly rich in personality, but lacking the search, the experimental vigour and ironic distancing of the best early work. The writer who could once make his poetry rave with such startling eloquence now often seems to be merely flirting with despair.

The personality remains, however, an extremely attractive one, and the verse is as technically adroit as ever. In both kinds of poem I've indicated we find work that is perfect as far as it goes. Take the sly, wry 'The Power of Prayer':


Very, very little of his garden
  Did God elect to seed.
The rest he leased to utter, outer blankness,
  Invaded by the rankness
    Of not a single weed.
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image