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It's
some years since the poet Barry MacSweeney died and this is the first book of
essays to consider his body of work as an overall achievement. Not all
poetry, it could be said, benefits from such systematic readings, but
MacSweeney's work was both ambitious and complex, in a variety of ways, and
for those who are interested in his writings this substantial tome should
prove both a stimulation and perhaps a provocation to further exploration of
his poetry.
On of the first things to be said perhaps is that some of these readings are
very much at odds with each other and this fact provides an additional source
of stimulation as well as possible irritation. You read one essay, which
seems persuasive and erudite and filled with perception only to be confronted
with another which presents a somewhat contradictory analysis which also
feels authoritative and full of passionate conviction.
All that can be said about this, of course, is that complex texts are
themselves often filled with such possibility and agreement or otherwise is
likely to be tempered by the reader's own predilections or sympathies. That
said, it's clear that a number of these pieces add to our knowledge and
understanding of Barry's magnificent achievement even though any judgement of
his work is bound to have a strong dose of subjectivity.
At least two of these essays, those by his partner S.J. Litherland and his
friend and one-time co-journalist Terry Kelly, have a personal slant.
Litherland does a great job of relating his job as a journalist with that of
his role as a poet and makes a lot of his need to be continually gathering
information and lists as well as headlines, a fact which feeds into aspects
of his poetry, particularly around the time of Jury Vet,
where the 'headline' represents a key aspect of the writing. She also points
towards his 'dandy sensibility', a suggestion which feeds into the
self-mythologising nature of much of his work, something which divides
admirers and not-so-admirers, who would rather the ego was lacking in
presence.
In fact, Barry's mixing of the traditional and the modern - a facet which a
number of these essayists are attracted to - also draws a degree of flak, as
in the case of Peter Riley who sees MacSweeney as an ultimately flawed grand
lyricist whose work is marred by a tabloid sensibility and an at-times
excessive use of exploitative scatology. For Riley, Pearl is the highpoint of Barry's achievement
where The Book of Demons
presents its nemesis. It's hard to disagree with Riley as he's such a
magisterial, logical arguer of his case but I think he misses something in
his dismissal of MacSweeney's 'tabloid side', which I feel adds to his poetical
palette. There's a lot of humour in his 'excessive' mixing of registers -
even in the dark, dark poems of The Book of Demons, where Barry's alcohol
addiction becomes a central part of his subject matter - and the long lines
of those poems are filled with a soaring lyrical quality which is only aided
by the humour (of the gallows variety, for sure!) and the dazzling inventive
wordplay which just about holds together in its excess. Terry Kelly's essay -
'Not Dark Yet É', also points towards Barry's mixing of materials from pop
and rock culture and that of high-art and includes a review of a Bob Dylan
gig at the Newcastle Odeon in 1966 which Barry wrote on Dylan's 'electric
heresy' tour -
The first half was
devoted to folksy numbers and the new, cool-looking
Dylan, in black suit and
boots to match,
with his barbed wire haircut,
was excellent
ÉÉÉÉ..
The second
half saw him backed by a five-piece beat group, and
for my
money this
was the most exciting half with, for a finale, the immortal
'Like a
Rolling
Stone.'
Here again we see MacSweeney's mixing of the traditional and the modern and
while he's clearly in favour of the 'new sound Dylan' there's no suggestion
here that he's of the camp that shouted 'Judas' on the same tour in
Manchester!
Harriet Tarlo ranges across MacSweeney's output in an impressively argued
essay which points towards MacSweeney as a one-off who, in trying to find a
'new-old' role for poetry was largely misunderstood by the critics and the
poetry establishment. Her coverage of the main topics of landscape (place),
politics and language is extraordinary and this remains a key essay in the
collection and one that I'm going to have to read again. Andrew Duncan
concentrates primarily on Black Torch and his analysis here is political, almost Marxist
in fact. Duncan has written so much about MacSweeney elsewhere, including a
reference to John Wilkinson, where he argues that Wilkinson's critique, while
intriguing, is too boxed-in by psycho-analytical theory. He has a point but I
found Wilkinson's analysis here - 'The Iron Lady and the Pearl: Male Panic in
Barry MacSweeney's 'Jury Vet'' - intriguing. His use of key cultural figures
- Martin Amis, Elvis Costello and Barry MacSweeney and their artistic
response to the 'masculine' politics of Margaret Thatcher may be partly
imagined but it's a novel approach and has much to say about the politics and
the uncertainty of that time. I'm pleased to say that Martin Amis comes off
worst in this 'rogues gallery trio'.
Matthew Jarvis' essay - 'Hard Hats in Heather' mixes folk-culture with a
hard-edged urban style via an argument which suggests that MacSweeney fuses
country with city in a manner not normally acknowledge by mainstream critics.
His thesis is, at times, a little too systematic but I love his reference to
'Sparty Lea's dancing trees' and his reading in particular of 'Ranter' is
probing and genuinely explanatory. This is something I'd say about all the
essays in this volume - they all add something in terms of explanation of
MacSweeney's writing and even where the interpretations conflict the
perceptions are stimulating. Like John Wilkinson, William Walton Rowe
concentrates on the politics of MacSweeney's poetry, particularly in relation
to Black Torch
and
MacSweeney's desperate response to the Thatcher government. His mixing of
experimentation and traditional modes is seen as central to this - 'Poetry
that is radical has to smash open the regime of appearances', not I suspect a
sentiment that Peter Riley would have much time for. Language and landscape
come together here in an approach that attempts to speak for a different form
of 'Albion;' and Rowe locates MacSweeney's poetry centrally in the
nonconfomist radical tradition of Blake, Shelley and Milton.
W.N. Herbert also concentrates on the dynamic between pastoral and urban in
MacSweeney's poetry and touches on the commercial success of his early work -
The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of his Mother - which was followed by a
retreat into the world of 'underground poetry publishing'. His early embracing of 'projective
verse' and his championing by the likes of Jeremy Prynne underwrite the
experimental aspect of his poetics while also conflicting perhaps with his desire
for a worldview, a workable socialism which was nevertheless undiluted by a
limiting 'reality'. If MacSweeney was a Romantic, and I'd argue that he was,
he was also valuably influenced by the tenets of Modernism and its consequent
fragmentation. Herbert's suggestion of MacSweeney's utilising of characters
from Shakespeare in relation to alienation and homelessness, particularly in The
Book of Demons,
is fascinating.
Paul Batchelor, apart from providing an introductory essay, concentrates on
the relation between MacSweeney's work and his 'adopted fathers', Basil
Bunting and Jeremy Prynne. This entails a of degree of biography - Bunting
was MacSweeney's boss for a short period at the Evening Chronicle, - but also probes the degree
to which MacSweeney was influenced, linguistically, by both Prynne and Bunting.
One of the things that comes across strongly to me, in fact, in many of these
essays is a refutal of MacSweeney as the 'naive romantic', the inspirational
and intuitive 'genius boy' who was anti-intellectual and untutored. He may
have left school at sixteen but apart from his self-education in his
newspaper career he mixed with the likes of Prynne from quite early on and
was well read in terms of poetics. It may be in fact that he has the edge on
the
academic poets and it's certainly clear by now that his work in total is
something to be reckoned with. I'm glad that his influence is still alive and
kicking in a number of contemporary British poets.
© Steve
Spence 2015
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