This does purport to be a books or poetry website but it isn't always. I do try to say a few words occasionally, though.
The decision about Best Poem of the Year is perhaps as difficult as it ever has been this year with three main contenders all excellent and not knowing how to decide. Since they are quite different, it is important to decide not necessarily on the grounds of what type of poem it is but which is 'best', whatever that means, although it is more likely to be 'favourite' in the final analysis, not that that makes it any easier.
But, at risk of becoming yet narrower in theme, I must report on the latest developments on the reading of Elizabeth Bishop. Of course she was always there, a poet's poet, highly regarded but one doesn't always realize what one is missing until one looks closer. And for me, a glib or superficial commentator sometimes, that needs to be much closer and where possible with the help of secondary sources.
Elizabeth Bishop, Poet of the Periphery is the collection of papers delivered at the first UK conference on the poet, in Newcastle, 1999. I wouldn't always go straight to such academic exegesis but even though there is talk of poems as 'speech acts' that take us into theory and away from the poems, there is much valuable material by way of post-introductory help to be had in it from such wise counsel as Michael Donaghy. Whether or not we should be reading letters, we do if we feel like it, but here, in a footnote, you even get the poet's recipe for chocolate brownies.
So with a further Bishop critique due at Christmas, I've had another look and ordered for myself the uncollected poems, notebooks and fragments (again, going further into a perfectionist poet's work than she would have wanted us to) and her paintings.
I'm surprised how surprised I am at seeing quite how many books are available. I shouldn't be as she is ideal material for those in search of a poet to write about. Sophisticated, not immediately easy to pin down, there are plenty of approaches to the poems to be explored. The only limit is how many times one needs to read roughly the same conclusion arrived at by a different route. But I'll have a few, enough to make the Elizabeth shelf challenge the Thom Gunn shelf for yardage, who is only outdone by Larkin because there's more obvious Larkin material to have.
It is sometimes (and shamefully) possible to think one has gone far enough, there is nothing left of sufficient interest to find out about. That is always likely to be a mistake and one should never think it. Good Heavens, Chineke! were on the radio this week playing music by Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745 – 1799) who was not knowingly under-named but was also 'the black Mozart', just in case. Thanks to them for that.
So it is great to find that even though the Complete Elizabeth might only be about 100 poems, you can spend as long as you like on a short one like The Shampoo and find it chronically worthy of attention. The horizon stretches out ahead of us, gorgeously unattainable.
She avoids bad practice, there is always more to it than can be realized on first reading, is self-deprecating to a fault and undemonstratively brilliant. And thus not quite like nearly every other poet you've ever heard of.
It is a regular occurence for me to read a novel and know that I could do nothing of the sort, there is no point trying. That happens less often with poetry. So whereas Elizabeth Bishop is a consummate model for any poet in search of such a thing it would be unwise to look at her too soon and when they do, they should do so in trepidation. In the same way that Brahms destroyed so much work because he didn't think it compared with Beethoven, it might be too tempting not to be a poet at all.