This review is taken from PN Review 28, Volume 9 Number 2, November - December 1982.
on Ronald Duncan, P. J. Kavanagh and John Hewitt
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 (
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 (
A.R. Ammons, John Hewitt, The Selected Poems (
John Hewitt, Mosaic (
I prefer books of new poems, in general, to Collected or Selected volumes. I find that there is something a little too safe about the considered presentation of a life's work, and conversely that there is something dangerous and exciting about the mixture of vanity, charm, wrong decisions and talent in most collections of new work.
Having said that, I had better note that the new poems on offer here are by John Hewitt, which opens up another dimension, that of the New Collection by The Grand Old Man, which can be either a cause for celebration or a case for voluntary redundancy. I am glad to say that Mosaic is a cause for celebration.
I am stepping out of sequence, though: I want to go from thick to thin, so I will begin with Ronald Duncan, striding across the cover of his Collected Poems, looking like Robert Mitchum's More Exhausted Brother. The book covers the period from 1928 to 1979, and some of the early poems are really good. 'The Panther', for instance, from 1936, had me rocking on my heels with its lines 'Lick lap and painful eye/crouched panther drinking my shadow down/his sides swell with each swallow./ Till the insidious dog day/yapped and my panther slunk away.' Unfortunately, in 1978, Duncan can write: 'You want to know what love is? I will tell you/it is a triangle; one side is anxiety; the second is jealousy/the third is grief. That is what love ...
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