A genuine pleasure, and the real point of it all, for the minor dilettante literatus is the arrival of a few things at a time. One book or record arriving is good but several in a week offers the satisfaction of a binge.
While still anticipating About Larkin ft. Move Over, Darling, this week has been blessed with books by the Waterman family, Andrew and Rory, almost finishing the TLS crossword with its Shakespeare thread and, never less than momentous, a new book by Sean O'Brien. So there will be reviews and reactions to record here next week but I'd better give them a fair hearing first.
Something seemed to be echoing while reading Prof. O'Brien's poems, though, until I realized what it was his poems were reminding me of. Mine.
That is, of course, though, the wrong way round and probably post ergo proper hoc. It's me that imitates him, whose rhythms and idioms I've adopted sometimes more consciously than at others. In the 70's, we might have said 'influenced by' when a third-rate act lacking originality aped the style of a major one in the hope of some coat-tails success. But by now, 'influenced by' is redolent of 'under the influence' and brings to mind memories of spaced-out artistes barely able to remember their own names. My debt to Sean O'Brien is more like that of Mike Yarwood to Denis Healey, as a poor impersonator but books are generated by previous books, poems by poems that came before them and The Perfect Book is my poems as much as Brett Anderson's songs are his and not from Hunky Dory.
And great minds sometimes have similar ideas to mediocre ones. In the last weeks of filling up The Perfect Book to make it fit 28 pages, I had planned a poem called Career, a long look back on the oddballs, corporacy, downright indignation of having to earn a living in such a way as well as all the wonderful things that employment has provided. I couldn't do it justice. I've never been able to. More than one abandoned novel bear witness to that. But there is Sean, in Sabbatical, saying farewell to his office at Newcastle University where he was Professor of Creative Writing.
I'm sure that must have involved a lot of nonsense and bureaucracy but it might be for others to estimate how much money can be got for old rope. Just for once, the jury's out and in due course we will be the judge of that.
First reactions to my book are naturally very polite but the poems so far mentioned in dispatches are not those I'd have expected, which is unnerving in one way but to be expected in another. How would I know what readers would like best. They won't necessarily agree with me and I've noticed poets or their editors omit from Selecteds poems that I thought were among their best.
And I could offer you a cup of tea now and a gin and tonic later and you might say you liked the tea better. I'd be surprised, but you might.
So, we will see. These must still be the good, old days if we still have time to muse upon such trivial questions. And we might as well make the most of it, and days at the races and the sheer joy of it because we may not be the young ones very long.
Meanwhile, have we had enough of Oh. Babe, What Would You Say yet. Not the content, I'm afraid you're stuck with that, but the title.
I don't know whether to stick with the great Hurricane Smith and call it Don't Let It Die, go with the Northern Soul masterpiece, It'll Never be Over for Me, or keep it open to consideration. I bet you can hardly wait to see what happens.