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An anthology always has a
purpose, and that purpose is often to promote a school of, or a notion about,
poetry. Even anthologies of previous historical periods or of other cultures
usually have a 'political' element, such as challenging the received view of
a particular period of poetry. So what about this book? Well, inevitably, the
title The Best... has to be addressed.
'The best' is a subjective term, and an ideological one. The term also has a
history; the first edition of Palgrave's Golden Treasury,
published in 1861, was subtitled 'the best songs and lyrical poems in the
English language.' Editor Roddy Lumsden feels obliged to raise the subject
of the book's title in his Introduction, saying 'Now let's deal with the "B"
word'. But he brushes the subject aside without offering any substantial
argument. By contrast, David Lehman, in his Foreword to The Best American
Poetry 2011, begins by asking 'What
makes a poem great? What standards do we use for judging poetic excellence?'
and then devotes four and a half thousand words to an attempt at an answer.
One suspects that Lehman's verbosity and Lumsden's dismissiveness are driven
by the same anxiety. This is Lumsden on the book's title:
The word
[best] irks some people who feel that the
subjective
nature of selecting and editing a book like
this is at
odds with such an objective term as 'best'.
So far, so good. But what then is his response to this perfectly reasonable
objection? Lumsden again:
I can see
[the objection], but there is no manifesto
behind the
word, no ulterior motive.
One could argue that the word itself constitutes a manifesto. But whether the
motive is 'ulterior' or not, there certainly is a motive for using the word,
as this description of the book, from the website of Salt Publishing,
illustrates:
An
indispensable guide to UK poetry and a must-have
purchase for
anyone interested in the art from
newcomers to
the art to the most experienced
professional
and all creative writing students in the UK.
If you're trying to pitch a book at a (very large) market of 'newcomers' and
'all creative writing students in the UK' then claiming that it contains the
best poetry is going to be very useful to you. But, motive or no motive,
Lumsden's attempt to brush away the significance of the word 'best' is
futile, as it will be the defining feature of this series, and will continue
to polarise people into those who feel a glow of pride that their work has
been accepted in a collection of 'the best', and those who indignantly
question the concept. The same problem applies to the American anthologies,
although there the inclusivity has redeemed the series to some degree; the editors
range from Lyn Hejinian at one end of the spectrum to Billy Collins at the
other. One test of the Salt series will be whether Lumsden is brave enough to
hand over editorship of an issue to, say, Ken Edwards or Peter Philpott or
Andrea Brady. We'lll see.
Anthologies separate individual poems from their context in the author's
work, and encourage 'anthology poems' in the same way that competitions
encourage 'competition poems'. This is particularly the case in this
anthology, as it only gives us one poem from each poet. The commodification
of poems by anthologies is a well-documented phenomenon, and again,
Palgrave's Treasury - in which the
editor 'improved' poems by adding titles to those which had none Ð is the
archetype. It's possible to see a similar process at work in this book: the
contents are drawn from current UK poetry magazines, both online and print,
and while most magazines have a bias, and publish poetry of a particular
type, thereby putting the poems into a context, this anthology removes that
context, implying that contemporary poetry is a single homogeneous entity. In
reality, it isn't; there is a division between the poetry of, say, Carol Ann
Duffy and that of Maggie O'Sullivan, and it's not just due to official
acceptance or funding of one over the other; it's to do with the philosophies
and assumptions which underlie the poetry; put simply, Duffy and O'Sullivan
have different notions about what poetry is. Such divisions are intrinsic to
the post-modern nature of poetry in the twenty-first century. To deny that
there are 'schools' or movements in poetry, and instead to assert that it's
all one, (and that the finest work will somehow rise to the top - as 'the
best' tag implies) is to deny the very energies which drive much poetic
production.
So much for the 'politics' of the book. What about the contents? It's
difficult to review a collection of seventy poems by seventy different poets;
it would seem pointless to pick out likes and dislikes. To take another tack;
what would do we learn about contemporary poetry from this collection? Well,
first, the standard is high. All of the poems are at least competent; clearly
there are very many people who devote their lives to the art of poetry, and
this is borne out by the results on show here. I wouldn't claim, of course,
to like all of the poems, and there are some I'd value more than others,
mainly because I'm more in sympathy with what they're trying to do. Secondly,
the poets generally seem very articulate when discussing their work, judging from
the 'contributors' Notes and Comments' at the back, in which each poet
describes the circumstances of their poem's making. I guess both of the above
are a result of the dominance of creative writing departments in which many
of the poets have either studied, or taught, or both. The growth of creative
writing in this country, following the lead of the US, is an interesting, and
in many ways a positive development. Certainly, universities provide a base,
as well as resources and funding, which allows a lot of good things to happen
in poetry terms. One could also argue however, that there's less chance of
the one-off, individual talent emerging, and certainly, there's no-one who
fits that description in this book, with the possible exception of Alexander
Hutchison.
The selection in this book is largely mainstream; there are, as Carrie Etter
has pointed out, no prose poems, which is a shame considering the burgeoning
interest in that form by practitioners like Ian Seed, Simon Smith, Linda
Black and Etter herself. The book does include a few more radical
practitioners, such as Chris McCabe, but this apparent attempt to be
inclusive simply makes the selection appear more shapeless and unfocussed,
but at the same time doesn't go far enough to truly represent the range of
poetics currently being practiced. The anthology doesn't explicitly align
itself with any poetic school, but, as Ron Silliman has pointed out in an
American context, the mainstream (or School of Quietude, as Silliman styles
it), is the one poetic school that pretends not to be a school. Of course,
once you take into account schools or genres of poetry, the concept of 'best'
becomes difficult to sustain.
Finally, to return to the 'Contributors Notes and Comments' Ð that section of
the book, mentioned above, in which poets describe the genesis of their poem;
I've mentioned that these are very articulate, and I can say that I found
them genuinely interesting. These notes do however, support my contention
that this is a 'mainstream' anthology, as they mostly talk about the
experiences and ideas that led to the poem, but tend to avoid any discussion
of 'process', that its, of treating the raw material of language as a
substance to be worked; a self-generative and reflexive medium (though there
are one or two exceptions, most notably George Szirtes and Michael Zand).
A book which represents so many poets by a single poem is bound to replicate
the faults to which anthologies in general are prone. I think the same
problem exists with the American series, regardless of whether the issues are
edited by a radical or a conservative. It could be argued that alighting on a
poem by accident may cause a reader to find out more about a particular
poet's work; but that could be done just as easily by reading the magazines
and websites from which this selection is drawn, which would also put the
work into context. This book contains work by number of poets I admire, some
of whom I know personally. But my contention is that good poems, in
themselves, do not make a good anthology. Palgrave's Golden Treasury contains some tremendous poems; the problem is the
packaging and presentation which here serve to give a limited picture of what
contemporary poetry is while at the same time promoting the essentially
conservative ethos that generates ventures like the Forward Prize and now the
projected annual event of The Best British Poetry.
©
Alan Baker 2011
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