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Kevin Cryan
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Poetry Notebook by Clive James
« : 19.10.14 at 21:29 » |
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October 17, 2014 4:47 pm
‘Poetry Notebook: 2006-2014’, by Clive James
Review by Elaine Feinstein
The author looks back at the poets who have resonated with him over the years, from Walt Whitman to Sylvia Plath
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Kevin Cryan
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Revelator
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"And then I eat the stick"
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Re: Poetry Notebook by Clive James
« Reply #1: 12.11.14 at 19:57 » |
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The New Statesman has published a rave review of Poetry Notebook:
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/11/visions-midnight-inimitable-voice-clive-james
I agree with the reviewer--I'm two thirds of the way through the Notebook and it's a wonderful read. I hope it won't be Clive's last book of criticism, but if so, what an excellent final bow. It shows that his critical powers and ability to turn a sparkling phrase remain undimmed by illness. And it's also reinvigorated my flagging interest in modern poetry.
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Kevin Cryan
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Re: Poetry Notebook by Clive James
« Reply #2: 15.02.15 at 21:28 » |
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The Observer
Poetry Notebook 2006-2014 review – Clive James’s absorbing thoughts on verse
The great critic champions the poems that have given him most pleasure in this provocative collection of essays
Kate Kellaway
Sunday 15 February 2015 14.00 GMT
Quote:Clive James is never po-faced about poetry. He writes with the buoyant, aphoristic panache that made his career and with a judgment refined by a lifetime of reading and thinking about poetry – and writing it (he has a new collection coming out this April). This sympathetic, absorbing and provocative book is a miscellany – most of its articles written for Chicago’s Poetry magazine. But there are unifying thoughts. One is that “poetry” is not what excites him – too baggy a word and covering a multitude of sins – it is the particular poem that matters, the hardest thing to write. He argues that we are living in a time when “almost everyone writes poetry but scarcely anyone can write a poem”. He is on the side of clarity (he hopes it is “forgivable to favour those poets who show signs of knowing what they are saying”) while noting how complicated simplicity can be.
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Kevin Cryan
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Kevin Cryan
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Re: Poetry Notebook by Clive James
« Reply #6: 11.04.15 at 10:42 » |
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The National UAE
The rhymes and reasons of Clive James
Clive James at his home in Cambridge, England, in 2012. Hazel Thompson / The New York Times
Saul Austerlitz
April 9, 2015 Updated: April 9, 2015 03:51 PM
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Clive James makes it all seem easy. His 2007 treasure trove of 20th-century history and art, Cultural Amnesia – an absolute must for any learned reader’s bookshelf – made the prospect of picking up a dictionary and absent-mindedly learning German while paging through a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s essays sound delightful, and more improbably, manageable.
I eventually lost track of the number of times in James’s slim new volume of essays, Poetry Notebook, that the author casually mentioned memorising lines, stanzas, whole poems. James makes poetry sound like a slice of chocolate cake, casually nibbled at until the whole has been consumed. “He can get a whole poem in your head,” he mentions about reading Frost. For a brief moment, I almost saw myself dipping into Frost’s collected work and memorising a few choice poems, until I awoke with a start and remembered that James had played this trick on me before. As he remarks of Auden in one of the essays here: “It seemed so effortless. And so it was, but only for him.”
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full review
Kevin Cryan
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=Words&action=display&num=1413750565&start=6#6 |
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Kevin Cryan
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I love Midnight Voices!
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Re: Poetry Notebook by Clive James
« Reply #7: 17.04.15 at 15:26 » |
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Poems That Make Your Skin BristleIt Makes Your Skin Bristle
April is Poetry Month—and a good time to celebrate one of our finest exponents of strict form, elegant diction and clear thought.
By Adam Kirsch
April 16, 2015 6:58 p.m. ET
Quote:Clive James has excelled at many trades during his long career—critic, memoirist, television presenter—but his first and longest-lasting love has been writing poetry. His poems enjoy a high reputation with readers who value strict form, elegant diction and clear thought, and his delightful exercise in spite, “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered,” has a kind of cult status among writers. Now, as he nears the end of his career—he has spoken publicly about his recent diagnosis of leukemia and the prospect of death—Mr. James has condensed the wisdom earned over a lifetime of reading and writing poetry into “Poetry Notebook.”
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To read full review, you must be a subscriber to WSJ..
Kevin Cryan
Poetry Notebook
By Clive James
Liveright, 238 pages, $24.95
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=Words&action=display&num=1413750565&start=7#7 |
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Kevin Cryan
MV Fellow
I love Midnight Voices!
Posts: 1144
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Re: Poetry Notebook by Clive James
« Reply #8: 18.08.15 at 09:49 » |
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The Guardian
THE OBSERVER.......
Culture On my radar
On my radar: Jonny Greenwood’s cultural highlights
The Radiohead musician on his debt to Clive James…………….
Jonny Greenwood: ‘Clive James has given me the further education I missed when I dropped out [of university] at 19.’ Photograph: Edu Hawkins/Redferns via Getty Images Quote:
2 | Book
Clive James: Poetry Notebook 2006-2014
I owe so much to Clive James. He’s led me to most of my favourite writers and poets – and frankly, he’s given me the further education I missed when I dropped out [of university] at 19. He also makes me delight more than any other writer – so effortlessly lucid, amusing and learned – often in the same sentence. It must be hard to write like him, but all the effort is hidden under the hood: the effect is prose that purrs, never rattles. I’ve devoured all his essays, and learned from this particular collection of essays about much more than poetry (especially through his criticism of Ezra Pound, which I was glad to apply to lot s of avant-garde music).
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See “Conversation is the key” Jonathan Bate
Kevin Cryan
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