From Folk Ballads to Dylan and Cohen

The evolution of song lyrics from simple folk ballads to complex poetic forms, is one of the most significant transformations in the history of popular music. Songwriters like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen were instrumental in transplanting pre-1935 poetic ambiguity into the songwriting form, and, thus, reimagining lyrics as a serious art form. This introduction of lyrical ambiguity to songs has not only expanded the expressive potential of music but has also filled a void that modern mainstream and some avant-garde poetry, perhaps paradoxically, has failed to maintain.

Historically, song lyrics served as communal stories or refrains, intended for accessibility and for easy memorisation. Folk ballads, for instance, utilised repetitive structures and unambiguous language to convey themes of love, loss or societal injustice. Songs like ‘Barbara Allen’ or ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ are timeless thematically, but they are nevertheless unambiguous, focusing on narrative rather than interpretive introspection. Their impact lay in their thematic universality, using unambiguous language that could resonate broadly within the oral tradition.

However, the late 20th century saw a significant shift with the rise of the singer-songwriter “movement”. Dylan and Cohen’s work especially exemplifies this shift, as they introduced themes and structures more usually encountered in text-based poetry. Dylan’s lyrics, influenced by the Symbolists, Jack Kerouac's poetry and some of Allen Ginsberg’s “word chain runs” in Howl, enabled him to infuse into the song form surrealist landscapes and ambiguous narratives that moved beyond direct narrative structures. Songs like ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ rely heavily on metaphor, symbolism and an obscurity that invites listeners to interpret meaning.

Cohen, also, did similarly, imbuing his lyrics with spiritual and existential undertones, as seen in songs like ‘Suzanne’, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ and ‘Night Comes On, the latter of which I have written about elsewhere. Unlike Dylan, he does this with an economy of words, that is more akin to “formal” poetic norms than Dylan’s lyrics are. Yet both writers achieve peak ambiguity via their respective approaches. The ambiguity in their lyrics, and their refusal to convey explicit messages, introduced a new dimension into the song form.

In many ways, this ambiguity reflects the qualities of pre-1935 poetry, which often specialised in open-ended meaning and interpretive possibilities. Poets like T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas exemplified this approach in their work, leaving readers with a sense of mystery and with numerous possibilities for the interpretation of their works. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an obvious example of this, and is dense with symbolic imagery and fragmented voices, where meaning is not predominantly explicit, but rather suggested in flashes of insight after reader-engagement with the text. Similarly, Dylan Thomas’ 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion' expresses themes of defiance and transcendence in the face of death through a sophisticated and mainly ambiguous form. His repeated use of the line 'and death shall have no dominion' evokes a strong emotional response, but he leaves it to the reader to explore the full range of its meanings.

Since 2005, I’ve argued that poetry’s shift toward precision and explicitness after 1935 left it less accessible to mystery and symbolic depth. The result has been that contemporary poetry, mainly mainstream and popular poetry (and even some avant-garde poetry in recent decades), has largely avoided the kind of ambiguity that Dylan, Cohen, Thomas and Eliot embraced.

It must be emphasised, that Dylan and Cohen are not isolated in this poetic approach to music, and dozens of artists since them have carried this aspect forwards to varying extents, including: Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Neil Young, David Byrne, Tori Amos, Patti Smith, Beck, Lana Del Rey and dozens more; including bands like The Grateful Dead, The band, The Rolling Stones etc.

The impact of this development has been profound. Music has become a medium where ambiguity is not only tolerated but celebrated; where listeners are encouraged to engage in the same interpretive acts once largely reserved for poetic texts. Unlike much contemporary poetry, which tends towards precision and explicitness, song lyrics remain a laboratory for ambiguous expression. Dylan and Cohen helped to make this possible by expanding what lyrics could achieve. 

The ambiguities in song lyrics allow listeners to find resonance and meaning without dictating any singular interpretation, which is why songs have replaced poetry as a culturally significant art form.

Is John Ashbery Overrated?

John Ashbery occupies a complex position within the avant-garde tradition. While he is celebrated for his “innovative” style and layered themes, in actuality he might not embody after all the true spirit of avant-garde poetry. Instead, he risks being seen as a sort of "wannabe" (for want of a kinder word), creating a chasm between his reputation and the core principles of the “movement”.

While his work is frequently praised for its complexity, this complexity often lacks genuine originality and innovation. His poems weave together threads of thought and imagery that seem like pastiches of avant-garde influences. Whether this is intentional, though, has yet to be comprehensively established.

While his use of language to deconstruct meaning, along with his surrealist influences, is what made his poems noticeable when he first appeared, this doesn’t mean that he was doing anything particularly innovative historically. The poetic milieu he was operating within was very conservative poetically, and so naturally he would be seen as novel within that context.

And his reliance on disjointed imagery and non-linear narratives echoes elements and trends from earlier poetic movements, and even those of late-1960s psychedelic rock song lyrics. Instead of breaking new ground, his approach can be seen as a rehashing of ideas that have been explored by numerous other poets and artists.

And while his appropriation of, for instance, the "derangement of meaning" aesthetic was novel for late 1950s American poetry, a case could be made that the Beats were doing this before him.

Ashbery's association with the New York School places him within a specific cultural context that celebrates experimentation, but this affiliation can create a facade that obscures any actual contributions to the avant-garde tradition. At one time he was compared to T. S. Eliot as a marketing strategy, yet Eliot grappled with profound philosophical and emotional questions, pushing the boundaries of poetry in ways that challenged readers to confront meaning. In contrast, Ashbery’s work often seems like an exercise in style over language, prioritising a surface-level complexity that lacks the transformative engagement with language and texts that avant-garde poetry is supposed to embody.

The New York School, with all its cultural idiosyncrasies, certainly added its own flavour to the poetry scene, and Ashbery’s personal and cultural context gave him a particular lens. However, this doesn’t make him immune to critique or exempt from being held up against the broader standards of avant-garde exploration. It's one thing to mix different influences; it's another to argue convincingly that those influences have been used in a way that pushes the form or content of poetry in genuinely new directions. That's the point I’m making—Ashbery's work often seems more like an echo of past movements than a real departure from them.

Also, within this complex framework, can be found passages that lack the intricate layering often associated with his reputation. For example, his poem ‘The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers’ juxtaposes sensory imagery with abstract reflection:

Yet I cannot escape the picture

Of my small self in that bank of flowers:

My head among the blazing phlox

Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus.

I had a hard stare, accepting

Everything, taking nothing,

As though the rolled-up future might stink

As loud as stood the sick moment

The shutter clicked. Though I was wrong,

Still, as the loveliest feelings

This sort of straightforward nostalgia is remarkably similar to Wordsworth’s approach to language. I discus this in my article ‘Reflective Discursiveness: Exploring Poetic Thought and Fragmentation in Wordsworth, Ashbery, Prynne and Harwood’.

While Ashbery’s contributions to the field are acknowledged, his legacy deserves reevaluation within the context of the avant-garde movement that critics claim it represents. His "style" has led to his celebration as a literary giant, yet it has rendered his work as derivative.

This critique doesn’t stem from a desire to limit poetry to predefined notions of what it should be (I’ve written many articles defending a reader-response approach to poetry), but rather to question how Ashbery’s work fits within the broader context of the avant-garde tradition. The avant-garde, historically, has often been about radical, innovative engagement with language and form, but also about pushing boundaries in ways that challenge not just craft, but also how readers engage emotionally and intellectually with the world.

I must emphasise, that I am not suggesting that the avant-garde was ever a monolithic aesthetic unity—that would be a gross oversimplification. What I am pointing out is that Ashbery is often celebrated as embodying a kind of avant-garde ideal, yet I question whether his work truly pushes the boundaries in the ways typically associated with that tradition. And his post-surrealist tendencies, which are sometimes noted, don’t necessarily equate to meaningful innovation or deep engagement with the kind of radicalism we often see in other strands of the avant-garde.

In this light, one might argue that John Ashbery, while celebrated, is ultimately overrated and perhaps not as authentic an avant-garde poet as is claimed.

Wombwell Rainbow Interview: Poets and Writers' Writing Approaches and Methods

I was interviewed for The Wombwell Rainbow a few years ago. The interview was part of a series of interviews with poets and writers about their approaches to and methods of writing. My thank to Paul Brookes for inviting me to take part. You can find it here:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/01/24/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-jeffrey-side/

The Influence of Dylan: Rediscovering the Joy of Poetry

It has been so long since I first started writing poetry, that I had almost forgotten why I started to write it. It certainly had everything to do with listening to Bob Dylan, and aspiring to do what he did with words but in a non-musical context. Because I couldn’t write songs, I used to write poems to song melodies and rhyme schemes. This was my way of "being musical", as I regarded myself more a frustrated songwriter than a poet. Writing poetry was for me merely a way to be able to say that I was doing something creatively similar to Dylan. I never saw my early poems as anything other than different lyrics to his melodies.

Looking back, I realise that this was my only enjoyable period in poetry. After I started to write poems “seriously”, and tried to get them published, and performed them at local readings, all the enjoyment began to fade. Like most pleasures, once you start to see it as a “business” then all its charm diminishes.

I was quite content to write such poetry and not have it seen by anyone, which is what I did for a while. But after having read some 19th century poetry by Browning, Tennyson, Coleridge etc., as well as some contemporary mainstream poetry, I was surprised to find that none of it was as rich in interpretive possibilities as Dylan’s lyrics were.

This led to my appreciating even more the genius of Dylan. The only poets who matched Dylan for me were Blake, Dickinson and Eliot. I also read Rimbaud, to see if he was as good (seeing as Dylan liked him) but apart from a few phrases here and there, he wasn’t. I also read Ginsberg and Kerouac, again because Dylan liked them. Of the two, I found Kerouac’s poetry more similar to Dylan than Ginsberg’s was—apart from Ginsberg’s Howl, which is very Kerouac in parts.

Finding out that nearly all the poetry I’d read wasn’t as good as Dylan’s lyrics, was a major revelation to me, and motivated me to find out why this was the case. So I read as much about poetry and its history as I could, but still could not come up with a sufficiently plausible answer. Eventually, I decided to go to university and do a degree in English Literature, thinking that this more rigorous and advanced study might reveal some answers. It did, and these answers led me to embark on a PhD course, and later to start The Argotist Online.

I eventually found that there was poetry out there that was as good as Dylan regarding his use of ambiguity and multi-textuality, but what it had of those elements, it lacked in emotional resonance. Such poetry was often associated with various postmodernist styles of writing, and as such tended to prioritise formal dexterity and novelty above emotion. This avoidance of emotion, particularly regarding the themes of love and loss, appears rooted in a theoretical understanding, that sees emotional expression as theoretically contentious and "unsophisticated".

Though I have borrowed a lot from postmodernism in my own poetry, I have never followed it down the “no emotion” road. Maybe other poets have done and are doing the same. I welcome that, if it is the case.

Wuthering Heights: The Ultimate Film Adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Novel

Looking at the barrage of overrated and over-produced contemporary films it is easy to forget that film once aspired to be an art form. One such film is William Wyler’s 1939 underrated version of Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights which is, for me, the best film adaptation of that novel. Whilst the film deals with only the first 16 chapters of the novel’s 34, it compensates by capturing perfectly the emotional essence of the book, which for me resides in the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. When read in light of having seen this film, the rest of the novel’s 18 chapters seem almost like an afterthought or padding.

Wyler’s use of camera, lighting and mise-en-scene take much from the German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s, which is to be expected since many of this school’s filmmakers and technicians had, by the early 1930s, relocated to Hollywood and become part of mainstream film production there. This expressionist style is well suited to the film, as it provides a visual equivalent to the novel’s gothic atmosphere.

The film quite deservedly won an Academy Award for Best Original Score, by Alfred Newman. Indeed, it is difficult to separate film and score, so entwined and essential are they that they become almost dyadic. To listen to Newman’s score alone is a deeply emotional experience.

However, Wuthering Heights did not win the Academy Award for Best Picture, which went to the unfortunately titled Gone With the Wind. In my view, this was an oversight because Wuthering Heights is the far superior film. One cannot help but suspect that Gone with the Wind won because it was an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which dealt with a “big” subject. However, for me, the really timeless and universal themes are dealt with in Wuthering Heights.

Exploring the Art of Generalisation: Songs vs. Poetry

What distinguishes a song from a poem? Is it the melody or the vocal delivery, the lyrics or the musical arrangement? Certainly, it encompasses all these elements. However, for me, the key difference lies in how songs tend to generalise, whereas many contemporary poems do not. When I refer to "contemporary poems", I primarily mean anecdotal or descriptive pieces that lack ambiguity or mystery, which are often read by poetry enthusiasts. Such poems often fail to resonate personally with readers because they primarily serve as vehicles for straightforward information transfer—information that could easily be conveyed through prose. These poems aim to express the poet's thoughts and emotions regarding specific events, situations or places, without necessarily inviting readers to connect personally. The focus is on clarity of communication, whether conveying a profound insight, a prosaic observation or a commentary on everyday life.

Songs go beyond mere description. They activate both the imagination and emotions, allowing listeners to delve into their own deeply personal reservoirs of images, memories and associations. There was a time when poetry achieved this too, similar to songs, by employing generalisation. However, since Wordsworth's era—and largely influenced by him—poetry has shifted more towards novelistic and descriptive forms. Before Wordsworth, poets like William Blake or Thomas Wyatt adhered more closely to the traditions of song and ballad, avoiding extensive descriptive elements. It is widely acknowledged that songs pre-date poetry—or rather, songs transformed into poems once they were transcribed and read privately.

The limitations of poetry that does not generalise are plain to see if we compare some lines from one with those of a song. First the poetry—a stanza from Frank O'Hara's ‘Cambridge’:

It is still raining and the yellow-green cotton fruit

looks silly round a window giving out on winter trees

with only three drab leaves left. The hot plate works,

it is the sole heat on earth, and instant coffee. I

put on my warm corduroy pants, a heavy maroon sweater,

and wrap myself in my old maroon bathrobe.

What we see here is straightforward and descriptive writing that leaves little room for the reader's imagination. In contrast, let's examine song lyrics, specifically those of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. In Cohen's 'Night Comes On', we find this verse:

I said mother I’m frightened,

the thunder and the lightening,

I’ll never get through this alone.

She said I’ll be with you,

my shawl wrapped around you,

my hand on your head when you go.

And the night came on,

it was very calm.

I wanted the night to go on and on

but she said go back,

go back to the world.

In contrast to O'Hara, Cohen embraces generalisation in his verse, opening up a wealth of interpretive possibilities. Right from the outset, ambiguity dominates as listeners are left pondering whether the speaker addresses his literal biological mother or if 'mother' serves as a metaphor for God or Mother Nature. Similarly, the thunder and lightning that instil fear are ambiguous—whether they are literal or symbolic remains uncertain. This ambiguity enriches each listener's experience, allowing them to interpret the nature of the speaker's fear differently.

Furthermore, this ambiguity invites numerous inquiries. When the speaker's mother assures him of her presence wherever he goes, the listener is prompted to question: Where exactly is he headed? Is he venturing into the fearful scenario symbolised by thunder and lightning? Could this be an existential ordeal akin to the "dark night of the soul" as described by Christian contemplatives? Is the "night" in 'the night came on' also metaphorical, perhaps representing a sense of comfort and reassurance? If so, does the speaker desire this reassurance to persist? Likely so, yet there's a suggestion to 'go back to the world'. Who issues this advice—the maternal figure or the night itself, in whatever symbolic form it represents?

The fact that this verse provokes such inquiries underscores its transcendence over the earlier quoted stanza by O'Hara.

Similar ambiguities and the questions they prompt can be found in the following verse from Dylan’s ‘Changing of the Guards’:

Fortune calls.

I stepped forth from the shadows, to the marketplace,

Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down.

She’s smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born,

On midsummer’s eve, near the tower.

Similar to Cohen, Dylan embraces generalisation in his verse, blending various poetic registers to create a tapestry of language that both diversifies his expression and pays homage to his poetic lineage. He interweaves archaic phrases like 'I stepped forth', 'smelling sweet like the meadows' and 'on midsummer's eve' with more colloquial language such as 'last deal gone down'. This linguistic variety enriches the verse while acknowledging his poetic heritage.

The verse begins by declaring 'fortune calls', yet Dylan leaves it open-ended, leaving listeners to ponder: Is fortune beckoning the speaker, the audience or humanity at large? This ambiguity empowers the listener to interpret as they see fit. The introduction of a persona stepping forth from shadows adds another layer of intrigue—the identity of this persona remains ambiguous and unexplored, leaving ample room for interpretation. Even the term 'shadows', deliberately vague, invites myriad interpretations.

Moreover, Dylan employs phrases like 'merchants and thieves' and 'hungry for power' not only as specific symbols of corruption, decay and amorality but also as broader statements on the human condition. These phrases provoke further questions: Who is the woman 'smelling sweet' like the meadows? Why is "meadows" plural—does it symbolise something beyond its literal meaning? And what about the tower—does it hold symbolic significance as well?

In essence, Dylan's verse, like Cohen's, invites interpretation through its generalisations and poetic blending, making it a rich and layered piece that transcends simple description.

Similarly with Dylan’s song ‘The Wicked Messenger’, more questions are raised than answered:

There was a wicked messenger

from Eli he did come,

with a mind that multiplied

the smallest matter.

When questioned who had sent for him,

he answered with his thumb,

for his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter.

We note immediately the presence of ambiguity with the line: ‘from Eli he did come’. We are not told if Eli is a place or a person. The name has biblical connotations and can easily be a person. In the Old Testament Eli was the judge and high priest of Israel and although loyal to God, his reluctance to remove his two corrupt sons from the priesthood resulted in disgrace. Dylan’s lack of indication as to whom or what Eli is allows us to perhaps see a biblical reference in the name. If we take the name as referring to the biblical Eli then we have to ask the question: If the messenger was sent by Eli (who was a faithful servant of God) why is he seen as wicked? Is it because his mind ‘multiplied the smallest matter’ (possibly meaning he was neurotic) or that his ‘tongue it could not speak, but only flatter’ (possibly meaning he was a liar)? Are these common human failings sufficient grounds for someone to be designated as wicked? Alternatively, perhaps the messenger is wicked because there is a crudity about him—he ‘answered with his thumb’ (he gave the finger, perhaps?). For want of detailed information, we simply do not know.

So for me, each reader deserves the essential right to craft a personal meaning that encapsulates the essence of a poem. The poem itself serves primarily as a catalyst for this interpretive act. Embracing such an approach to poetry reading could potentially elevate poetry back to its rightful place as a significant and widely appreciated art form.

What’s in a Name?: The Art & Language Group and Conceptual Poetry

In his 2013 article, ‘Charmless and Interesting: What Conceptual Poetry Lacks and What It’s Got’ Robert Archambeau asks: ‘In what sense is pure conceptualism poetry, beyond the institutional sense of being distributed and considered through the channels by which poetry is distributed and considered?’ The answer to this question would clarify the relationship between conceptual poetry, conceptual art and the generally accepted definition of poetry as being specifically a literary art whereby language is utilised aesthetically and evocatively.

That some of the concerns and practices of conceptual poetry are not new in the world of conceptual art needs no extensive repetition here. However, it is interesting to note that in relation to conceptual poetry’s use of texts and lexical elements to comprise its works, a fairly recent historical precedent already exists. This can be seen in the theories, practices and works of 1960s conceptual artists such as Lawrence Weiner, Edward Ruscha and Robert Barry; and also in the theories, practices and works of the conceptual art group known as Art & Language, which was formed by Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge in 1968. Others affiliated with this group, included Ian Burn, Michael Corris, Preston Heller, Graham Howard, Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard, Terry Smith, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton. These artists were among the first to produce art from textual and lexical sources.

The notable similarity between the theories of this group and those of conceptual poetry’s is that the group developed, extended and championed the conceptual theories that were initiated by artists such as Marcel Duchamp. The group also held the view that the practice of art should be systematically theoretical and entirely separated from concerns relating to craft or aesthetics. These and other ideas appeared in the group’s journal, Art-Language, the first issue of which appeared in 1969.

A direct parallel with the works of these artists and those produced by conceptual poets is not my intention here. There will be differences in scale (both physical and theoretical) and presentation between them; suffice to say, that the common element they share is that of a conceptual approach to their works, and as such, this leads us back to Archambeau’s question (‘In what sense is pure conceptualism poetry, beyond the institutional sense of being distributed and considered through the channels by which poetry is distributed and considered?’), and also one that I would like to ask. If it is at all possible to agree that both the Art & Language group and conceptual poetry share similar theoretical stances and working practices, then in what sense is the work produced by conceptual poetry more suited to be called poetry than that of the Art & Language group?

In one of the two Facebook discussions I took part in a few years ago about Archambeau’s question, it was mentioned by someone that the term “poetry” was merely an honorific one, conferred by the academy on what it deemed was poetry: the logical extension of this being that if the academy should deem, for instance, a text-book to be poetry then it would have to be accepted that a text-book was, indeed, poetry. In response to this, someone else mentioned that the approach of the literary theorist Roman Jakobson was more reasonable, in that Jakobson saw poetry as marked by specific functions in language rather than by an arbitrary redesignation by the academy of general texts. I agreed with the latter.

In light of this, it seems to me that given that there is no significant difference between the work of the Art & Language group and that of conceptual poetry, for the work of the latter to be designated as poetry whilst that of the former is not, seems a peculiarly inconsistent and whimsical act on the part of the academy. It seems to me, that neither the Art & Language group nor conceptual poetry can accurately be described as producing works of poetry, given that they are both operating from within a conceptual art aesthetic and theoretical stance.

Adrian Henri Interview: Performance and Written Poetry in 1995

I interviewed Adrian Henri in 1995 for the The Argotist magazine, which was the print predecessor of the The Argotist Online. Only some of the interview was used in the magazine.

The original audio cassette of the interview has now been converted to MP3 format and is now on YouTube. It is in four parts. It covers a range of topics: performance poetry, the practicalities of performance poetry gigging, written poetry and spoken poetry, poetry set to music, Bob Dylan as poet, and many other things.

You can find here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3YvS8iB3bQ

A Light for the Avant-Garde: Remembering Marjorie Perloff

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Marjorie Perloff. From the inception of The Argotist Online in April 2005, she offered unwavering support. In fact, she was the first person to be aware of its existence before it went “live” online. I had contacted her for feedback on the site prior to its launch, and her insights proved invaluable in shaping its thematic direction and content.

She also put me in contact with various academics and poets she thought would make good contributors of material to the site. Without her initial support, I doubt the site would have lasted beyond its first two months, let alone nearly 20 years.

I am also immensely grateful to her for her generous review of my long poem, Carrier of the Seed, and for featuring an interview I conducted with her in a book of one of her collected interviews.

She was not only supportive to me but to many other poets and publishers as well. And her dedication to supporting innovation and encouraging new voices in poetry was immeasurable.

I never met her in person, but we emailed each other from 2005 until a few years ago.

May she rest in peace.

Christopher Plummer: A Journey Through Six Decades of Theatre and Film

Christopher Plummer’s In Spite of Myself is one of the best showbiz memoirs I’ve read. It’s very long (over 600 pages) but never boring, largely due to Plummer’s narrative skill, wit and charm.

A large part of the book reads like a Who’s Who of the American and British theatre of the 1950s and 1960s, with Plummer having worked with most major theatrical figures of those decades, from Elia Kazan to Peter Hall. And his friendships have also ranged widely, including figures such as Noël Coward, Rex Harrison, Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, Raymond Massey and Jason Robards. He is always generous towards everyone he mentions, even to those who have treated him unfairly, either professionally or personally; and he is always self-deprecating.

He is, perhaps, better known for his film work (particularly in The Sound of Music) but a major part of his career has been in the theatre, on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, living in Britain for a large part of that decade. And amongst the major theatrical classical roles he’s played throughout his career are Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, Richard III and King Lear.

The book is also full of interesting detail about Plummer’s more personal life: his visits to different countries (he’s extremely well travelled), his favourite hotels and restaurants, his house moving adventures, and movingly about the deaths of his pet dogs, which he kept in the 1980s and 1990s.

As you can imagine for a 600-plus-page book, there is far more in it than I have been able to touch on here, so I highly recommend it—especially to anyone interested in theatre and film of the past 60 years.

The Argotist Online: A Tribute to Celebrated Poets, Academics and Songwriters

It is just over a year since I had to had to close down The Argotist Online, due to the increasing cost of running it, both financially and workload wise. It started out as a labour of love but became almost a duty.

To list all the celebrated poets, academics and songwriters who contributed articles and poetry, and who took part in interviews, would take too long, but my gratitude goes to all of them.

I hope that in a small way, the Argotist helped in forming poetic opinion in some poetic circles. It certainly publicised a lot of poets, some who later went on to greater things, such as Lena Dunham.

It also had features that caused much controversy. At one time, the Argotist was simultaneously hated by advocates of both “mainstream” and experimental poetry, which indicated to me that it was beyond partisan stances.

The ebooks it published under the name Argotist Ebooks, comprised of poetry collections, short fiction, novels, literary criticism and literary history.

Because there were so many ebooks published on the Argotist site, I felt it would be a shame to delete the catalogue once the site was closed down, so I decided to keep Argotist Ebooks going as a publishing venture, and have transferred the catalogue to a blog I created also called Argotist Ebooks, which continues to publish ebooks.

https://argotistebooks.blogspot.com/

Finally, I must thank Nick Watson, who was the editor of the original print magazine called The Argotist, which was started by him in 1996, and which I deputy edited. We were students at Liverpool University at the time, and the university kindly donated some funds to get the magazine off the ground.

Seamus Heaney: a Critical Analysis of His Poetry and the Influence of Philip Hobsbaum on Him

Since his death in 2013, Seamus Heaney’s reputation as a poet has grown from strength to strength in the popular media and in some academic circles. I recall one critic, Robert Taylor, saying in around 2009, that Heaney’s The Redress of Poetry (a collection of the lectures he gave while professor of poetry at Oxford): ‘illuminates a point of view of poetry as a force capable of transforming culture’. I was never quite sure in what way this applied to The Redress of Poetry, which essentially defines “poetry” as an act of describing acutely what is seen with the physical eyes, while using defamiliarization as a literary device to render these descriptions more lucidly.

In the book, Heaney’s reluctance towards experimentation and formal innovation is unmistakable, revealing a penchant for a poetry characterised by overt subject matter. This inclination is evident in his critique of Dylan Thomas, when he says that Thomas has a ‘too unenlightened trust in the plasticity of language’.

Heaney also expresses reservations regarding poetic artifice, asserting that in Thomas’ utilisation of it, ‘the demand for more matter, less art, does inevitably arise’. In contrast, Elizabeth Bishop garners his approval because ‘she never allows the formal delights of her art to mollify the hard realities of her subjects’.

In Seamus Heaney: From Major to Minor, R. Caldwell rightly criticises Heaney by saying:

‘There is too often the feel with his poetry that the paraphrase is the end of the matter: there is little of the multifaceted richness of suggestion that invites one to probe further’.

Heaney was a protégé of Philip Hobsbaum, who made it possible for him to get a publishing contract with Faber & Faber. Hobsbaum was also a founder of the 1960s British poetry coterie, The Group. Originally based in London, The Group founded an offshoot in Belfast when Hobsbaum had to relocate there to take up a teaching post at Queen’s University. Heaney met Hobsbaum while studying at Queens, and was invited to take part in Group meetings.

Given that Hobsbaum was a well-known critic of Modernism, especially of the American Modernism, he might have seen in Heaney someone who had the potential of sharing this view given sufficient nurturing. In Tradition and Experiment in English Poetry, Hobsbaum writes:

‘Whitman’s abstractions and random collocations have a raw life of their own, a form even through their formlessness; and this has remained highly characteristic of American poetry ever since. The Waste Land is, indeed, a heap of broken images: this is its meaning, and, to some extent, its distinction. But that kind of writing has never worked well in England’.

His criticism of Eliot extends to what Hobsbaum sees as the negative influence on English poetry of Eliot’s use of the American idiom:

‘Some damage was done to English verse by too close an imitation in the 1930s of the American idiom as evidenced in such poets as Eliot and Pound’.

Hobsbaum also sees a disparity between Eliot’s American writing style and traditional English poetic writing practice. Although Hobsbaum does not see this in itself as necessarily negative, the implication is that American Modernism is largely a geographical and cultural entity, unable to successfully function within an English milieu:

‘Again, Eliot’s work exhibits the characteristic American qualities of free association or phanopoeia and autobiographical content. English verse, however, has been at its best as fiction: an arrangement of what is external to the poet to convey the tension or release within’.

Given Heaney’s association with Hobsbaum at such a formative time in Heaney’s young life, it would not be unreasonable to presume that much of Hobsbaum’s poetic aesthetic would have filtered down to form some of Heaney’s later ideas on poetry—perhaps even on much of what he says in The Redress of Poetry.

Twentieth Century British Poetry Was Not As Innovative As Twentieth Century American Poetry

The pervasive influence of Wordsworth on British mainstream poetry in the Twentieth Century is undeniable. This influence played a significant role in shaping the linguistic uniformity observed in much of celebrated British poetry of that century, in contrast to the linguistic diversity seen in American poetry during the same period.

In that period, British poetic innovations were mainly adaptations, or “tweaks”, of those that had already been introduced by American High Modernism. One example of this can be seen in the British Poetry Revival of the mid-Twentieth century. It’s members, such such as Dom Sylvester Houédard, Bob Cobbing and others, echoed many of the tendencies found in American High Modernist works.

Another example of a British poetic movement that was derivative of American High Modernism is what is often termed “British Linguistically-Oriented Poetry”. This was predominant in the 1970s and 1980s, and had many members, including, Bill Griffiths, Tom Raworth and Maggie O’Sullivan. The movement was often celebrated for its innovative approaches to language and form, but was simply an extension of American High Modernism.

Both the British Poetry Revival and British Linguistically-Oriented Poetry were derivative of American High Modernism. Eliot and Pound had already emphasised a heightened awareness of language and a departure from its conventional usage. Similarly, the British Poetry Revival and British Linguistically-Oriented Poetry continued this focus. American High Modernist poets were interested in semiotics and exploring the idea of linguistic signifiers. The British Poetry Revival and British Linguistically-Oriented Poetry continued that project. The use of fragmentation and collage techniques, which were prominent features in American High Modernist poetry, was also used by the British Poetry Revival and British Linguistically-Oriented Poetry

The most that can be said about these two movements, is that their various writing “procedures” (they used this word a lot) were simply continuations of the experimentation introduced by the American High Modernist poets. They introduced no revolutionary break from the poetic traditions set by American High Modernism.

High Modernism was essentially a product of an American sensibility: Eliot, Pound, Williams, Stein and Stevens, all being American-born. The only exception was Joyce, who was Irish—not British. Even before High Modernism, America was leading the way in poetic innovation, with poets like Whitman, Dickinson, Poe, Crane and Hovey. It’s important to emphasise, that Poe’s influence even travelled to French symbolists like Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé and Jarry, and then this influence returned to American modernists, primarily through Stevens.* And such American poetic innovation continued throughout the twentieth century: from Kerouac to Ginsberg to Ashbery to Language Poetry.

Twentieth Century British poetry, conversely, continued in the tradition of Wordsworthian empiricism, antagonistic to any use of a poetic language that basis its effects on aspects other than descriptiveness and anecdotal confession. And the so-called British poetry innovators, were, as we have seen, derivative of American High Modernism.

* My thanks to Jesse Glass for providing the linear taxonomy regarding the Poe-French Symbolist connection.

Here is a pertinent Facebook exchange about this blog post:

Tim Allen:

The problem with this is not just that it’s rather a sweeping statement, but also that from some viewpoints, the opposite could be said. Unless we are just talking about scale, of course. Compared to the US scene, the Brit innovative scene is tiny, but that just reflects the population size. The situation is also made problematic by the importance of ‘influence’. What I mean is, if you say that Brit modernist poets were influenced by things coming out of America, you also have to say that American modernists themselves were being influenced by the same sources. They were not being influenced because they were American; they were being influenced because, like their Brit counterparts, they were the kind of poets who were open to such influences. They were always overwhelmingly outnumbered by fellow Americans who were not influenced, exactly the same with the Brits.

There is also the issue of what actually constitutes ‘high modernism’ as you call it and how that differs from later developments. We could argue about this, but I think the influence on later poets was almost entirely down to Williams and the Objectivists. Even Stein doesn’t really figure much as an influence until much later. Yes, Pound influenced the Objectivists, but Eliot has had almost no influence on any of them. The political distance between left and right is also important here, and behind it all, the prime influence was European anyway, though I admit that a lot of the Brits got that influence filtered through the Americans. I wrote quite a bit back a while ago about the differences between the US work and the Brit, and there are differences, but those differences are not ones of degrees of innovation.

Jeffrey Side:

You say that the size of the British innovative scene compared to the U.S. scene is tiny, but this reflects population size. While population size may influence the scale of artistic movements, my blog post focuses on the nature of innovation rather than sheer quantity. It suggests that British innovation was often derivative of American High Modernism rather than representing a unique departure.

You mention the reciprocal influence between British and American modernist poets, emphasizing that both groups were influenced by each other. My blog post acknowledges influence but argues that British poets tended to follow and adapt innovations introduced by American High Modernism, rather than creating a revolutionary break from those traditions.

You raise the issue of defining “high modernism” and suggest that the influence on later poets was mainly from Williams and the Objectivists, with less impact from Eliot. There might be room for debate on the definition of high modernism, but my blog post argues that British movements like the Poetry Revival and Linguistically-Oriented Poetry were continuations of the experimentation introduced by American High Modernist poets as a whole.

You mention the political distance between left and right and say that the prime influence was European, often filtered through Americans for the British poets. My blog post acknowledges European influence (especially the French one) but argues that the British poets took this influence via Eliot, etc.

You note the differences between U.S. and British poetry and argue that these differences are not necessarily in degrees of innovation. My blog post agrees that there are differences but suggests that British poets were often derivative of American High Modernism, introducing no revolutionary break from those traditions.

Tim Allen:

Sorry, but I just cannot agree with your main points. I certainly do not agree with your statement above that ‘British innovation was often derivative of American High Modernism rather than representing a unique departure’. Some British poetry was influenced by high modernism, but this is not what we are talking about when it comes to the British Poetry Revival, etc. I will try to get back to your other points later – haven’t the time at the moment.

Jeffrey Side:

Why is agreeing with my statement that ‘British innovation was often derivative of American High Modernism rather than representing a unique departure’ difficult for you? Just reading the poetry will reveal the influences it draws on. Indeed, the whole British Poetry Revival project could not have existed without High Modernism, of which it uses all of its techniques.

You say ‘Some British poetry was influenced by high modernism but this is not what we are talking about when it comes to the British Poetry Revival etc.’ Are you suggesting that the British Poetry Revival was not intending to be innovative?

Tim Allen:

Again, I really want to get into this properly but haven’t the time. I know what I mean, but finding a clear way of saying it needs time I haven’t got today. There are some good comments from others above anyway. A part of this is to do with your emphasis on ‘high modernism’. In short, I am saying that the poetry of the British Poetry Revival, etc. did not require ‘high modernism’ as a root. What it did require, to a degree, was cultural osmosis from European (and yes, particularly French) avant and left-field poetry. The sticking point there is how much this was via certain American poets. But once you take it down to that level, it becomes a bit silly to invoke which country they come from. Also, remember there is a tendency for people to forget about Latin America, where modernism developed faster than it did in the North. One other point – I am not trying to defend Brit poetry against American – I really don’t care about that, it’s irrelevant. It’s just that I don’t think what you said is correct.

Jeffrey Side:

You say that the British Poetry Revival ‘did not require high modernism as a root’, yet the work speaks for itself—its “innovations” are homages to High Modernism. You say that the British Poetry Revival required ‘cultural osmosis from European (and yes, particularly French) avant and left-field poetry’, but while this might be correct, it’s not really relevant to my main point: that it was grounded on the principles of American High Modernism. It is that grounding that is the main point, and I ask you to bear this in mind, so that we are not sidetracked. And this grounding addresses your question: ‘The sticking point there is how much this was via certain American poets’. I would say all of the early American High Modernist ones. Maybe later ones did not have an influence, but that is not what I am arguing.

How Resetting My Age Counter at 50 Changed My Life

I’m now 61 years old, and looking back, I can honestly say that one of the best decisions I ever made was resetting my age counter when I turned 50. As I was approaching that age, I found myself reflecting on life, as so many of us do, regretting that I hadn’t made the most of the time I had.

But at 49, I started to realise that chronological age was just a number—a social construct that doesn’t have to dictate how we live our lives. I saw that while the calendar says one thing, our biological age can tell a different story. With the right diet, food supplements and mindset, it is possible to live to over 100 at the peak of fitness.

So I made a conscious decision to change my perspective. I vowed that I wouldn’t see 50 as the start of decline but as the beginning of something new. This led me to see my 50th birthday as a chance for a fresh start. Instead of thinking of it as the midpoint of life, I chose to reset my age counter to zero. So at 51, I regarded my age in this second life as being one year old, and at 52, I regarded it as being two years old, and at 53, I regarded it as being three years old, and so on.

Now, at 61, I see that resetting my age counter was more than just a mental exercise—it changed the way I approached the second half of my life. By treating 50 as a new beginning, I’ve been able to stay motivated and optimistic about the future rather than dwelling on the past.

Here’s why resetting the age counter at 50 is a good approach to aging:

It takes away the fear of aging: By resetting your age, you no longer see each birthday as a countdown to old age.

It inspires healthier choices: With the idea of a new life ahead of you, you find it easier to stay committed to your health.

It opens up possibilities: Instead of seeing life beyond 50 as a period of winding down, you are able to approach it with the same excitement you had in your younger years.

So I encourage anyone approaching a milestone birthday or simply feeling the weight of time, to consider resetting their age counter. It’s never too late to do this.

‘Reflective Discursiveness: Exploring Poetic Thought and Fragmentation in Wordsworth, Ashbery, Prynne and Harwood’ at Unlikely Stories

My thanks to Jonathon Penton for publishing my article ‘Reflective Discursiveness: Exploring Poetic Thought and Fragmentation in Wordsworth, Ashbery, Prynne and Harwood' in Unlikely Stories.

Here is an excerpt:

“Discursiveness, particularly in its poetic form rather than its philosophical scope, serves as a mimesis of the thought processes, inherently descriptive in nature. It is often perceived as a way to mirror the way thoughts flow and evolve, rather than presenting a strictly linear or coherent argument. Although postmodern poetry frequently presents these thought processes as fragmented, plural and discontinuous, the lexical elements (such as abstract nouns and descriptors) within discursiveness often restrict connotation despite the fragmented nature of the discourse. According to T. S. Eliot, poetry is ‘something quite different from a collection of psychological data about the minds of poets’; implying that the poetic form of discursiveness transcends mere psychological introspection.”

https://www.unlikelystories.org/content/reflective-discursiveness

Why Poetry Book Covers Could Benefit from Consistency Like Album Art

In the publishing world, book covers come and go, updated with each new edition to reflect changing trends or marketing strategies. This is especially true for poetry collections, where cover designs frequently change with reprints or reissues. But what if poetry covers were treated more like album art? Iconic, unchanging and forever linked to the work they represent. Here are some reasons why I think poetry could benefit from the kind of consistent, memorable cover art that has made album covers such powerful cultural symbols.

The most famous album covers—The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, to name just a few—are instantly recognisable and have become iconic and forever linked to the music they represent. They aren’t just marketing tools, they’re part of the album’s identity.

Imagine if poetry collections had the same kind of lasting visual presence. Unfortunately, poetry covers tend to change with each new edition, diluting their impact over time. A classic collection might have five or six different covers, each reflecting the design trends of its era. This constant change can make it harder for a poetry collection to leave a lasting visual impression.

By adopting a more consistent approach to cover design, poetry collections could develop strong visual identities that endure. A memorable, iconic cover can enhance a collection’s cultural significance and make it stand out in bookshops, online and in the minds of readers.

One of the reasons vinyl records have seen a resurgence in popularity is the collectibility of iconic album art. Original pressings with their original covers are prized by collectors, not just for the music but for the unique combination of sound and visual design. Collectors often seek out these albums as much for the cover art as for the music inside.

Poetry collections could benefit from this same sense of collectibility. A first edition of a classic poetry collection with its original, iconic cover could become a sought-after item, valued not only for its literary content but as a piece of visual art. Consistent cover designs could make poetry books more collectible, adding a new layer of value and interest for readers and collectors alike.

In today’s multimedia world, where art forms often blend and overlap, having a consistent visual identity can be a powerful tool. We see this with musicians whose album art becomes part of their broader artistic expression, from music videos to concert posters to social media profiles.

Poetry is increasingly crossing over into other media. Spoken word performances, poetry readings on YouTube and multimedia poetry projects are all blurring the lines between literature, performance and visual art. A consistent and iconic cover design could help poetry collections establish a stronger presence in this cross-media landscape, creating a cohesive brand that resonates across different platforms.

While poetry covers have traditionally been fluid and subject to change, there’s a strong case to be made for treating them more like album art. In an era where visual identity plays an increasingly important role in artistic success, poetry has much to gain from embracing the enduring power of a well-designed, consistent cover.

Exploring the Art of Generalisation: Songs vs. Poetry

What distinguishes a song from a poem? Is it the melody or the vocal delivery, the lyrics or the musical arrangement? Certainly, it encompasses all these elements. However, for me, the key difference lies in how songs tend to generalise, whereas many contemporary poems do not. When I refer to “contemporary poems”, I primarily mean anecdotal or descriptive pieces that lack ambiguity or mystery, which are often read by poetry enthusiasts. Such poems often fail to resonate personally with readers because they primarily serve as vehicles for straightforward information transfer—information that could easily be conveyed through prose. These poems aim to express the poet’s thoughts and emotions regarding specific events, situations or places, without necessarily inviting readers to connect personally. The focus is on clarity of communication, whether conveying a profound insight, a prosaic observation or a commentary on everyday life.

Songs go beyond mere description. They activate both the imagination and emotions, allowing listeners to delve into their own deeply personal reservoirs of images, memories and associations. There was a time when poetry achieved this too, similar to songs, by employing generalisation. However, since Wordsworth’s era—and largely influenced by him—poetry has shifted more towards novelistic and descriptive forms. Before Wordsworth, poets like William Blake or Thomas Wyatt adhered more closely to the traditions of song and ballad, avoiding extensive descriptive elements. It is widely acknowledged that songs pre-date poetry—or rather, songs transformed into poems once they were transcribed and read privately.

The limitations of poetry that does not generalise are plain to see if we compare some lines from one with those of a song. First the poetry—a stanza from Frank O’Hara’s ‘Cambridge’:

It is still raining and the yellow-green cotton fruit

looks silly round a window giving out on winter trees

with only three drab leaves left. The hot plate works,

it is the sole heat on earth, and instant coffee. I

put on my warm corduroy pants, a heavy maroon sweater,

and wrap myself in my old maroon bathrobe.

What we see here is straightforward and descriptive writing that leaves little room for the reader’s imagination. In contrast, let’s examine song lyrics, specifically those of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. In Cohen’s ‘Night Comes On’, we find this verse:

I said mother I’m frightened,

the thunder and the lightening,

I’ll never get through this alone.

She said I’ll be with you,

my shawl wrapped around you,

my hand on your head when you go.

And the night came on,

it was very calm.

I wanted the night to go on and on

but she said go back,

go back to the world.

In contrast to O’Hara, Cohen embraces generalisation in his verse, opening up a wealth of interpretive possibilities. Right from the outset, ambiguity dominates as listeners are left pondering whether the speaker addresses his literal biological mother or if ‘mother’ serves as a metaphor for God or Mother Nature. Similarly, the thunder and lightning that instil fear are ambiguous—whether they are literal or symbolic remains uncertain. This ambiguity enriches each listener’s experience, allowing them to interpret the nature of the speaker’s fear differently.

Furthermore, this ambiguity invites numerous inquiries. When the speaker’s mother assures him of her presence wherever he goes, the listener is prompted to question: Where exactly is he headed? Is he venturing into the fearful scenario symbolised by thunder and lightning? Could this be an existential ordeal akin to the “dark night of the soul” as described by Christian contemplatives? Is the “night” in ‘the night came on’ also metaphorical, perhaps representing a sense of comfort and reassurance? If so, does the speaker desire this reassurance to persist? Likely so, yet there’s a suggestion to ‘go back to the world’. Who issues this advice—the maternal figure or the night itself, in whatever symbolic form it represents?

The fact that this verse provokes such inquiries underscores its transcendence over the earlier quoted stanza by O’Hara.

Similar ambiguities and the questions they prompt can be found in the following verse from Dylan’s ‘Changing of the Guards’:

Fortune calls.

I stepped forth from the shadows, to the marketplace,

Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down.

She’s smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born,

On midsummer’s eve, near the tower.

Similar to Cohen, Dylan embraces generalisation in his verse, blending various poetic registers to create a tapestry of language that both diversifies his expression and pays homage to his poetic lineage. He interweaves archaic phrases like ‘I stepped forth’, ‘smelling sweet like the meadows’ and ‘on midsummer’s eve’ with more colloquial language such as ‘last deal gone down’. This linguistic variety enriches the verse while acknowledging his poetic heritage.

The verse begins by declaring ‘fortune calls’, yet Dylan leaves it open-ended, leaving listeners to ponder: Is fortune beckoning the speaker, the audience or humanity at large? This ambiguity empowers the listener to interpret as they see fit. The introduction of a persona stepping forth from shadows adds another layer of intrigue—the identity of this persona remains ambiguous and unexplored, leaving ample room for interpretation. Even the term ‘shadows’, deliberately vague, invites myriad interpretations.

Moreover, Dylan employs phrases like ‘merchants and thieves’ and ‘hungry for power’ not only as specific symbols of corruption, decay and amorality but also as broader statements on the human condition. These phrases provoke further questions: Who is the woman ‘smelling sweet’ like the meadows? Why is “meadows” plural—does it symbolise something beyond its literal meaning? And what about the tower—does it hold symbolic significance as well?

In essence, Dylan’s verse, like Cohen’s, invites interpretation through its generalisations and poetic blending, making it a rich and layered piece that transcends simple description.

Similarly with Dylan’s song ‘The Wicked Messenger’, more questions are raised than answered:

There was a wicked messenger

from Eli he did come,

with a mind that multiplied

the smallest matter.

When questioned who had sent for him,

he answered with his thumb,

for his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter.

We note immediately the presence of ambiguity with the line: ‘from Eli he did come’. We are not told if Eli is a place or a person. The name has biblical connotations and can easily be a person. In the Old Testament Eli was the judge and high priest of Israel and although loyal to God, his reluctance to remove his two corrupt sons from the priesthood resulted in disgrace. Dylan’s lack of indication as to whom or what Eli is allows us to perhaps see a biblical reference in the name. If we take the name as referring to the biblical Eli then we have to ask the question: If the messenger was sent by Eli (who was a faithful servant of God) why is he seen as wicked? Is it because his mind ‘multiplied the smallest matter’ (possibly meaning he was neurotic) or that his ‘tongue it could not speak, but only flatter’ (possibly meaning he was a liar)? Are these common human failings sufficient grounds for someone to be designated as wicked? Alternatively, perhaps the messenger is wicked because there is a crudity about him—he ‘answered with his thumb’ (he gave the finger, perhaps?). For want of detailed information, we simply do not know.

So for me, each reader deserves the essential right to craft a personal meaning that encapsulates the essence of a poem. The poem itself serves primarily as a catalyst for this interpretive act. Embracing such an approach to poetry reading could potentially elevate poetry back to its rightful place as a significant and widely appreciated art form.

Is Poetry Still Stuck on the Bookshelf?

Tony Frazer of Shearsman Press said in a 2017 online discussion that ‘few poetry books sell 500 copies. I’ve been told that a sale of 500 is good going for a poetry small press in the USA’. Yet Tony, and many other publishers, have remained steadfastly loyal to the print book format as a means of disseminating poetry.

Perhaps the main reason why poetry print books don’t sell well is that the market for purchasable poetry has diminished since the 1960s. Several interrelated factors contributed to this decline. The rise of mass media, particularly television and later the internet, has shifted public attention away from traditional forms of literature, including poetry. Additionally, the educational focus has shifted away from arts and humanities subjects, resulting in fewer people being exposed to and appreciating poetry. The publishing industry’s commercial focus on best-selling prose fiction has also marginalised poetry, which is viewed as less profitable. Furthermore, cultural and societal changes have altered the way people engage with and consume literature, with a preference for more immediate and accessible forms of entertainment. These factors, coupled with the soaring cost of poetry print books over the past 30 years, have contributed to diminished sales.

However, this doesn’t appear to be the case regarding free poetry ebooks, which are becoming increasingly popular. Studies show that over 70% of poetry readers are receptive to digital formats for poetry, in the form of ebooks and audiobooks. My own experience of publishing free poetry ebooks since 2010 supports this trend, with each ebook receiving between 20 and 60 downloads a day.

I first became aware of the reach of free poetry ebooks when Geoffrey Gatza published my long poem Carrier of the Seed as an ebook, and I found out after a few months that it had over 8000 downloads. I was very pleased, as it garnered hundreds more readers than it would have had if it was a print book. For me, gaining lots of readers is preferable to holding a beautifully printed book in my hands that doesn’t sell well and remains largely unread.

I am aware, however, that downloads don’t necessarily indicate how many people actually read the ebooks, but downloads do indicate reach and potential engagement. The more downloads, the higher the chances of actual engagement. While I can only estimate the number of actual readers, if one of my ebooks is recorded as having 1000 downloads a week, I assume that even if not all of those people read it, there are still likely more actual readers than would buy a physical version of that ebook in a week. This can’t really be said about people browsing the poetry section in a bookshop, where most shops probably stock less than 30 copies of each poetry book they try to sell.

One common objection to ebooks is based on the assumption that there’s a difference in the quality of the reading experience between on-screen and in-print texts, with the latter being seen as more conducive to “deep” reading.

But I don’t necessarily see such a difference—at least not in terms of “quality.” There is, of course, a different physical experience between reading a book and reading on-screen. The most obvious being that you can feel the texture of a book in your hands while reading it. For some, this in itself is the sole reason why they buy books. As to the psychological experiences that the contents of a book induce in the reader while reading it and those induced while reading on-screen, I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference.

Moreover, now that devices for reading ebooks can replicate the look of printed pages (even in sunlight), their “on-screen” display is no different from that of a printed page. With PCs, the difference still pertains, but almost everyone now downloads ebooks to reading devices. Such devices also weigh less than a thick paperback book and are effortless to hold. I’ve read books whose enjoyment has been ruined because they are too thick and heavy. An example is The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. It’s so thick and heavy that reading it is unpleasant for me.

Nikki van der Zyl RIP

I heard recently that Nikki van der Zyl, the woman who dubbed the voices for many of the leading female characters in the Bond films (Honey Ryder in Dr No; Sylvia Trench in From Russia with Love; Jill Masterson in Goldfinger; Dominique Derval in Thunderball; and Kissy Suzuki in You Only Live Twice), died in 2021.

I was in email contact with her in 2019, after I emailed her telling her how much I appreciated what she had done for the Bond films. She thanked me, and sent me a copy of her autobiography.

I lost contact with her in 2020. I think she might have caught Covid in a bad way, and that was what eventually caused her death. She was 84, and lots of people that age were dying from Covid. May she rest in piece.

The Limitations of Visual Poetry

In The Reader, the Text, the Poem, Louise Rosenblatt says: ‘The poem, then, must be thought of as an event in time. It is not an object or an ideal entity. It happens during a coming-together, a compentration, of a reader and a text’. She later elaborates:

‘The reading of a text is an event occurring at a particular time in a particular environment at a particular moment in the life history of the reader. The transaction will involve not only the past experience but also the present state and present interests or preoccupations of the reader. This suggests the possibility that printed marks on a page may even become different linguistic symbols by virtue of transactions with different readers. Just as knowing is the process linking a knower and a known, so a poem should not be thought of as an object, an entity, but rather as an active process lived through during the relationship between a reader and a text’.

For the poem to be experienced as an event in time, the importance of mental activity, or “internalisation”, in the reader cannot be overestimated. By internalisation I mean that part of the reader’s response that is able, through conscious decision, to minimise the relevance of the text in the hermeneutical process. This is difficult to achieve with poetry in which the artifice (in the form of certain extra-lexical ingredients—such as the visual and acoustic) is foregrounded at the expense of semantic elements. Such poetry inhibits internalisation and is, as Charles Bernstein has said, ‘concerned only with representing its own mechanisms’.

These elements of artifice are, like painting and music, non-semantic and, as such, they preclude an exegetical response that is distinct from the hermeneutical procedures employed in the reception of non-representational visual art and music. In ‘The Dollar Value of Poetry’ Charles Bernstein advocates a poetics that is grounded in experiences that are released in the reading: a ‘nongeneralzable residue that is specific to each particular experience’. In this sense, then, poetry is seen as being untranslatable and unparaphrasable for ‘what is untranslatable is the sum of all the specific conditions of the experience (place, time, order, light, mood, position, to infinity) made available by reading’. Bernstein sees this untranslatability as being misunderstood by advocates of ‘certain “concretist” tendencies, who see in radical concrete procedures the manifestation of untranslatability at its fullest flowering’. As Bernstein, stresses ‘what is not translatable is the experience released in the reading’. He goes on to say that ‘in so far as some “visual poems” move toward making the understanding independent of the language it is written in, i.e., no longer requiring translation, they are, indeed, no longer so much writing as works of visual art. In ‘Words and Pictures’, he emphasises the linguistic and semantic criteria necessary for any aesthetic of viewer/reception theory to be plausible: ‘visual experience is only validated when accompanied by a logico-verbal explanation’. For Bernstein, then, as he says in ‘Thought’s Measure’, ‘there is meaning only in terms of language’.

Furthermore, he is well aware of the dangers of too much foregrounding of artifice when he writes in ‘Artifice of Absorption’:

‘In my poems, I frequently use opaque & nonabsorbable elements, digressions & interruptions, as part of a technological arsenal to create a more powerful (“souped up”) absorption than possible with traditional, & blander, absorptive techniques. This is a precarious road because insofar as the poem seems overtly self-conscious, as opposed to internally incantatory or psychically actual, it may produce self-consciousness in the reader in such a way as to destroy his or her absorption by theatricalizing or conceptualizing the text, removing it from the realm of an experience engendered to that of a technique exhibited’.

Bernstein welcomes internalisation. Without it, it is impossible for poetry to be experienced as an event in time. However, he does tend to view the semantic field as incorporating non-lexical features of a poem. While I agree with incorporation in principle, in practice it is psychologically problematical for most readers. This is perhaps why such poetry is deemed “difficult”.

It could be argued that visual poetry is, indeed, semantic. I agree to an extent. For instance, Ernst Gomringer’s ‘WIND’ (which plays with associations such as the words “in” and “win” contained within the word “WIND”) and Augusto de Campos’s ‘CODIGO’ (which contains the word “God” as an anagram and alludes to “cogito ergo sum”) do, indeed, operate semantically. Nevertheless, their semantic operations are extremely meagre. With ‘WIND’ the associations come to only two words: “win” and “in” (perhaps also the word “wind”, as in to wind a clock). The same limitations can be seen in de Campos’s ‘CODIGO’. Apart from a reader’s fleeting appreciation of the novel aspects of these poems their affects are exhausted no sooner than they are recognised.

In contrast, if we compare the following lines from ‘Into the Day’ by J. H. Prynne with ‘WIND’ and ‘CODIGO’ we can see their limitations more clearly:

‘Who does we reign our royal house

is roofed with fateful slates’

These lines begin with the words ‘who does’ which immediately puts us into questioning mode, but the next word, ‘we’, draws our attention to the grammatical inappropriateness of the preceding word, ‘does’, in its location between ‘who’ and ‘we’. We have been led to expect a question but the grammatically incorrect syntax has frustrated this expectation. We are left instead with a language that rather than denoting a position of enquiry relies, instead, on connotation for this effect. This sort of “question” belongs to an “enquiry” that is syntactical rather than referential. In other words it is language pretending to be a question.

Similarly, ‘our royal house is roofed with fateful slates’ although syntactically correct contain the juxtaposition of ‘fateful’ with ‘slates’, two words not usually associated or combined with each other. This cannot be said of ‘roofed’ and ‘slate’ which often share the same juxtaposition. If the word ‘fateful’ had not been included there would be little room for plurality of meaning. The word ‘slates’ would mean solely roofing materials. It is the juxtaposition of ‘fateful’ and ‘slates’ that produces the plurality. A few of the dictionary definitions of the word ‘slate’ are: 1) a fine-grained rock that can be easily split into thin layers and is used as a roofing material. 2) a roofing tile of slate. 3) a writing tablet of slate. 4) a dark grey colour. 5) a list of candidates in an election. ‘Slate’ is, thus, rich in connotation. The addition of ‘fateful’ enables any one of these meanings to become appropriate. For example, it is quite possible to have a fateful dark grey colour—as in the sense of an omen. So, too, is it possible to have a fateful group of electoral candidates.

If we were to choose this latter image for one of the meanings of ‘fateful slates’ we could make it fit into the rest of the sentence (if it can rightly be called one) by opening up the meanings of ‘our royal house is roofed with’. This is fairly simple, as the idea of electoral candidates enables ‘royal house’ to connote a political arena of some sort as suggested by the word ‘house’ (The Houses of Parliament or The White House, for example). The word ‘roofed’ connotes a ‘covering-over’—a protection of some sort, as in the image of a bird’s wing covering and protecting its young. If we take this as our connotation, then one of the many meanings of ‘our royal house is roofed with fateful slates’ could be: ‘Our political system is protected from tyranny by its processes of electing political candidates who are under oath (fated) to guarantee this freedom from tyranny’. This interpretation of Prynne’s 12 words is only possible with a richer semantic field of possibilities than both ‘WIND’ and ‘CODIGO’ provide.

The formal qualities of a poem are, of course, important but only indirectly: in that they facilitate the inner ear’s appreciation of the poem’s sonorous qualities. They do not contribute overmuch semantically. The only thing of importance is the mental activity experienced by the reader. The reader’s attention should not be focused on the poem’s structure or its rhetorical devices but, rather, should be concentrated on the resonance produced by the semantic qualities of the lexis. Only in this way, then, can the poem be fully experienced as mental activity. It must be remembered that a poem is primarily “heard” in the mind. All that we are able to glean from a poem is conveyed through the poems semantic operation. To argue that the formal qualities of the text facilitate a more than limited semantic response is to rely too heavily on an aesthetic theory that is more appropriate to the visual arts.