Fulham 2 Hamburg 1

http://footyroom.com/fulham-2-1-hamburg-sv-2010-04/

Here one can watch Simon Davies' tremendous goal from four different angles.

Is it better than Clint Dempsey's v. Juventus.

Don't know, don't care.

Simon Armitage - Seeing Stars

Simon Armitage, Seeing Stars (Faber)

A few years ago I arrived at a definition of ‘poem’ by refining one offered by Terry Eagleton (who really should know) in his book How to Read a Poem. I removed all the parts of his definition that looked to me extraneous or misleading, for example that a poem is a ‘moral statement’, and was left with the fact that a poem is ‘a piece of writing in which the author and not the typesetter decides where the line-endings come’.
That looks right to me in the face of all the erroneous definitions offered by poets and thinkers over the years, and it is important to know or else we literally don’t know what we are talking about.
But now Simon Armitage has delivered this book of poems, in nearly all of which the lines go to the right hand edge of the page and end on words that arbitrarily happen to be the next word in the narrative. So either these poems have set back the cause of defining poetry to square one or they are that strange and unsatisfactory hybrid, the prose poem, poems written in prose rather than ‘poetry’.
For the most part these are unlikely tales set in quite ordinary circumstances, and Armitage is at his best as raconteur with his understated, deadpan style and telling detailed phrases. He stretches the surreal and the ordinary sides of his stories, the breadth of depth of his imagination really quite remarkable.
Entertaining and resourceful as they undoubtedly are, though, these might not be his best poems. It is a self-contained collection of pieces that belong, like this, in a book to themselves but whether they add to his reputation as one of the finest and somehow representative poets of our times, I wouldn’t want to say. I wonder if another book might be along sooner rather than later featuring a more traditional and orthodox poetry that threatens the security of my well-nurtured definition not quite so much.

Top 6 - Mina Loy

Poets are so often defined by their difference from some perceived 'centre' or mainstream. Their 'voice' is their own and they are somehow against the grain and individual. But whenever you look for poets that represent this elusive orthodoxy, there doesn't appear to be one because each candidate in turn is described in terms of their unique contribution.
The worst offenders for this claim to being 'opposite' to some unbearable state of normality are the so-called avant-garde, who seem to exist only to advertise their own difference from the rest. But it is 100 years now since the models of so much avant-gardisme appeared and the latest practitioners are, in fact, more staid, conservative, safe and predictable than those poets who continue in some kind of longer standing 'tradition'.
You can see how silly it all gets and it would be preferable if these distinctions could be reduced in significance and poetry read and appreciated on a less schismatic basis.
If and when the revolution ever happened in English letters, it still might have been at the outset of Modernism with Pound and Eliot and Mina Loy, a captivating and stylish lady from the most bohemian of milieu whose biography reads like a checklist of the bad boys and girls of those radical times.
Der Blinde Junge is the poem most likely to remain her anthology piece, a fragmentary snapshot of broken Europe after World War I. A difficult poem for difficult times, one might say, and such poetry is not written to be made easy. But Loy isn't always quite as opaque as it sometimes seems. Three Moments in Paris is an earlier work, selected here mainly for its first section, sensual and psychological and possibly ahead of its time.
The Mediterranean Sea is gloriously descriptive, Lady Laura in Bohemia a luxurious character sketch of sublime decadence and Lunar Baedeker is the perhaps most exuberant of her insistent wordplay. The Dead plays some accordion tricks with time and imagery that make one forget to consider their plausibility and literal truth, which is one thing poetry ought to be trying to do sometimes.
It is the sensual, the glamorous and the luxury of language that Mina Loy brought to the Modernist movement that makes her remarkable, her sheer enjoyment of the enterprise that makes her a welcome addition to a canon of varied and exciting poetry, irrespective of labels, agendas and manifestos.

Derek Mahon - An Autumn Wind

Derek Mahon, An Autumn Wind (Gallery)

Derek Mahon is showing no signs of letting up as he approaches his seventieth year and is the first poet to have two new books reviewed on this website.

Retirement is on his mind, though. The opening poem, Ithaca, concerns the return of Ulysses, who asks that Athene 'lets me live to taste the joys of home, relinquished years ago, and sit down with my family once more.' The other poems on the first pages here similarly end with a prospect of settling down and looking forward to a relaxed future, A Quiet Spot reflects that it is time to 'create a future from the past, tune out the babbling radio waves and listen to the leaves.'

So perhaps there is more acceptance and less anger in Mahon than there once was. It was never a furious rage but a controlled discontent that fuelled his discursive complaint but here his ruminations are more classical and rhymed and accepting than they've been before.

The Thunder Shower would make an excellent classroom exercise with its onomatopeia, extended metaphor and atmospheric description of passing thunder in terms of orchestration; World Trade Talks and the sad story of the Beached Whale engage with current events but even in the elegy to James Simmons, there is a sense of quiet celebration that leads into an odd little project, a final section of poems by the fictional Indian poet Gopal Singh. Quite honestly, one wouldn't have noticed the difference if these had been by the non-fictional poet, Derek Mahon, but they appear to be differentiated by an Eastern spiritual quality that perhaps refers us back to Mahon's previous book and interest in Gaia.

One almost doesn't expect poets to extend their range once they pass a certain age and Mahon hasn't done anything to shock or challenge that glib assumption but his assured voice is clear and sympathetic in this collection, resolute and apparently reconciled. Perhaps the best poem here is An Aspiring Spirit, after Quevedo, which expresses Mahon's benign attitude as beautifully as any,

There will be ashes, yes, but smouldering ashes;

there will be dust but dust glowing with love.

Generational Anthology

It was a fine thing for me to find my review of Identity Parade (somewhere here below), the recent anthology, highlighted by Jane Holland at Raw Light and described as 'excellent and thoughtful'. I thought I was just a harsh critic who had missed the boat and missed the point of Roddy Lumsden's pick of the poets who have emerged since the mid-1990's.
But I've kept on trying, as promised, with the book and either it's me (most likely) or it's the poems but I still can't see that book representing the last 17 years since the last The New Poetry in the same way that similar attempts were made by Alvarez, Conquest, Lucie-Smith, Motion and Morrison or Hulse-Kennedy-Morley to represent previous brief periods. With all due respect to Roddy Lumsden's encyclopedic breadth of reading, knowledge and expertise, his anthology missed too many good poets, included too many and read too much like a portfolio of university exercises.
My lordly attempt below to radically reduce the number of names involved but include some of his omissions has moved his goalposts. One day somebody, and it won't be me, will choose a more representative anthology, or at least it is to be hoped they will. But, in the meantime, herewith, are 20 poets to represent the period since the last generational anthology, and I've used the resources Roddy provided in his book and on his website, The Poem, extensively because one has to.

In absolutely, no particular order.
Lachlan Mackinnon http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/09/saturday-poem-pigeon-lachlan-mackinnon
Martin Mooney http://www.ulstertatler.com/people-profiles.asp?id=197
Jane Yeh http://janeyeh3.com/default.aspx
Alice Oswald http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=authD4F18F621142f1DB24JmT18BD533
Roddy Lumsden http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/lumsden.htm
Sophie Hannah http://www.sophiehannah.com/poetry.html
James Sheard http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview30
Kathryn Gray http://kathrynlouisegray.blogspot.com/
Kathryn Simmonds http://www.thepoem.co.uk/limelight/simmonds.htm
Sue Hubbard http://www.suehubbard.com/
Kate Clanchy http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/clanchy.htm
Martyn Crucefix http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/martyncrucefixpage.html
Nick Laird http://nicklaird.com/
Sasha Dugdale http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182104
Julia Copus http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/copus.htm
Stuart Paterson http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/stuartapaterson
John Stammers http://www.thepoem.co.uk/limelight/stammers.htm
Caitriona O’Reilly http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/personpage.asp?author=Caitriona+O'Reilly
Jane Holland http://www.weddingreads.com/They_Are_A_Tableau_At_The_Kissing-gate-Jane_Holland/
Colette Bryce http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/bryce.htm

Top 6 - John Donne

If there is, or needs to be, such a thing as the Greatest Poet in the English Language, Donne would be at least a candidate for the position. And so, you would think that his Top 6 poems would include some of the finest poems in the language, and I'm sure it does.

In a similar way to Bach's music, where the mathematical perfection still carries an emotional charge, Donne's intellectual line of thought and cleverness are still convincing in their engagement and 'authenticity', if the reader needs to be convinced by a balance between these two elements. But a paltry commentator like me isn't going to add anything significant to Donne studies here when he is served by some of the most impressive critical writing about any poetry.

Leishman's The Monarch of Wit and John Carey's John Donne: Life, Mind and Art are paragon examples of studies of any poet as is John Stubbs' biography and no poet suffers from the best sort of such support.

The Sun Rising and A Valediction: forbidding Mourning stroll effortlessly into any selection of great poems, one would have thought. Donne's much-vaunted rakish eroticism, whether genuine reportage or slightly more fantasist, is most memorable in his 'Newfoundland' poem, To His Mistress Going To Bed.

It is the Songs & Sonets that make his reputation for me where the precision and composition are most important and The Good Morrow and The Canonization refuse to be overlooked, leaving us- as ever- with only one more place and several candidates for it. And these little features being lazy snapshots of my unsolicited opinions, then rather than wade through lots of long poems and still go back to it anyway, I'll nominate an old favourite in The Flea because, in spite of more stately lines elsewhere in Donne, it is somehow the poem that usually defines his way of doing the job, for me.

Nick Kent - Apathy for the Devil

Nick Kent, Apathy for the Devil (Faber)

It has long seemed to me, if it could actually ever matter, that the decades that pop music should be divided end in 5's and not zeros. Thus, the fifties were 1955-64; the 60's began in 1965 and the 70's in 1975, etc. Not that anyone should care beyond the professors of pop culture, except that it means this 'memoir of the 70's' crosses a divide between two eras rather than reporting from the front-line of one distinct period. The 70's began with end of the 60's, progressive rock and glam and then found itself in punk.

Although it wasn't necessarily music that was Nick Kent's main concern. By all means, he works for the NME and interviews some of the big names of the day but the more dominant concern of this account is hard drugs. And, then, having written his music paper reviews, he sems to find himself getting beaten up more than seems reasonable. Finding him here published by Faber, I'm not sure how often that would have happened to stablemates T.S. Eliot or Philip Larkin.

He suffers bodily harm at the hands of various punks and has scrapes or just avoids them with Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and, most alarmingly, the Bee Gees. While we were enjoying the efforts of all the songsters and hit parade merchants in the 70's, thinking they were all just Jimmy Saville's best friends, guys'n'gals, it was actually a predatory industry run by gangsters and fixers, like Zeppelin's Peter Grant or an apparently inept little git called Malcolm McLaren.

Kent's best mate, as a hanger-on on the music scene, was Iggy Pop but he reports on spending time with many big acts. Rod Stewart is given the biggest endorsement as good company and from there, it's downhill all the way. The Rolling Stones are all but over after Exile on Main Street due to Keith Richard's devotion to heroin and the books title is taken from a Bob Dylan quote when asked what he thought of the Stones in the mid-70's. Bowie is 'lightning' clever; Bolan charming when he thinks it will get him somewhere but the lasting impression of the period from Kent's point of view is of a dark hangover period from the sixties, with the grim reaper collecting a great harvest as the excesses took effect.

How much of it one believes, given Kent's drug intake, is a matter for the individual conscience but, in fact as the book progresses it's almost possible to start feeling sympathy with his views and personality if not for his helpless condition. It's not until the Afterword, when his story is brought up to date that you realize with a sort of dull thud how he could take such a dim view of the drug-taking of Sid Vicious, John Bonham, Keith Richards and all and yet describe his own. He eventually got better after casually wandering into a village church near Swindon some years later.

What I wanted from the book was only more anecdotes like those excerpted in the weekend newspapers. And there are some worth having, like Dickey Betts, guitarist with the All man Brothers,

Apparently he'd been out riding his Harley one day when he became peckish. Seeing a bull grazing in a field, he'd stopped his bike, ambled over to the animal, beat it to death with his bare hands and then cooked it and ate it before casually returning to his vehicle and speeding off again.

It's not all quite such good fun, though. Kent is not a great writer but companionable enough and he's not primarily a music critic but a part of the 'scene', as interested if not more so, in its attitudes, styles and careers. His valuations, tastes and opinions seem mostly well-judged, though. I just hadn't realized that the period of pop music I had enjoyed the most, being then of the right age to do so, was quite so dark and hellish for others.

Good Friday- Maggi Hambling

Twilight

Twilight

Is it too early for you?
Let’s pretend it isn’t.
The gin is quaintly ruinous
but sparkling
and decadent, the novel
by the armchair bookmarked
at an early chapter
before the tense adventures
have begun.
The music on the CD
is a madrigal by Byrd
that is not yet contrapuntal
and the chess position
on the board is left
before the bishop
occupies a long
diagonal, who waits
for news of strategy at home.

It’s nearly time
to draw the curtains
on the tidy, lamplit room
while, across England,
Evensong is finishing,
the dark side of us
still touched
by a residue of light;
our light rapidly dimming
now to a richer,
desperate whisper.
Let’s begin.