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But, A.N. Wilson's scholarly and evocative Jesus proved an engrossing read with several imaginative explanations and much sense, if not light, shed on the weird permutations of the story as it has been passed down through Christian propaganda. I raced through the second half of it before taking Elizabeth Bishop Studies to the next level by looking at the correspondance with The New Yorker.
Quite how much detail we need as background to poems is difficult to say. In Philip Larkin Studies we have a museum with his spectacles to be gazed upon, letters, more letters, a reconstruction of what his record collection might have consisted of, his photographs, every conceivable line of doggerel he never could have imagined would see print and thank heavens the diaries were burned as he wished. All that to investigate a very 'private' man who meticulously published only his best poems and rarely gave readings.
One is struck by how painstaking the editors are in offering ideas for amendments to poems. What a nerve ! This is Elizabeth Bishop, don't they know. But she is accommodating and amenable most of the time and on good terms. It is even very civilized when she withdraws from her contract by which The New Yorker gets first refusal on her poems and stories.
The magazine has a house style, likes punctuation to conform to their standard and also writes back sometimes to say a poem was voted out but then they kindly forward it to the Partisan Review. The only reservation one has about the book is having to read repeated entreaties for more poems because, despite rejecting a percentage of them, they don't want to lose her. And she gets paid simply for letting them have first refusal.
But editing is an unlikely pleasure. Why, only today I realized that the word 'amaze', in different forms, turns up in three poems in The Perfect Book. That is much better than the same word, 'glorious', appearing three times in the same poem, In Pursuit of Autumn, and having to pretend to make a virtue out of lexical impoverishment. But one 'amazed' was changed to 'startled' and another to 'surprised' and I felt better for it.
One can hardly wait to have the little bundle of joy to have and to hold. And then to stare aghast at the bare cupboard of having not one line of new poems on hand.
But I'm very comfortable, thank you, with the cosy intimacy of Elizabeth and her editor friends and only fear for myself as next I intrepidly attempt to scale the north face of The Salt Companion to Mina Loy. As difficult poets go, she is one but needs must. She is my dangerous, avant-garde mistress, the sort of girl I was warned about but didn't listen. I hope she's gentle with me.
