John Burnside, and other stories.

It's not always good news one finds on the poetry-related internet. The death of John Burnside was marked by Martyn Crucefix or else it could have been a long time before I knew. He was one of the few remaining poets whose new titles were essential, one of those rare writers who could be called a 'poet' because he did more with the language than accumulate some of its constituent parts. And he was rewarded with a fair share of the major poetry prizes as well as this website's Best Poem of 2017 when I read enough new poems to have some good ones to compare.

Mistaken for a Unicorn seemed like a very special poem until I realized John Burnside conjured the same sort of semi-mystical magic on a regular basis the like of which I haven't found in any other writer. It becomes simply what he did but remains virtuoso, in a class of its own and not to be replaced.

--

At the end of Ellman's James Joyce I feel I've done as much as I can but, as in the Wake, having done it all find myself only really at the beginning of Joyce Studies. 

I was much taken by his diatribe against summer and anticipation of October although I'm happy with September. Also, of local interest, was him spending the summer of 1923 in Bognor and doing early work on the Wake there. He was visited by Eliot but, checking on when Eliot was in Bosham, maybe that was in 1917 but it adds significantly to nearby sites of literary interest. Bognor awarded the place a blue plaque.

Portsmouth is where  Dickens was born but he didn't do much else here and Conan Doyle is claimed with more justification. Not too far up country, near Petersfield, is Steep - which it is - and some very recognizable Edward Thomas country. Not far East is Warblington where the grave of Rosemary Tonks was eventually to be found and then Bosham where not only Eliot stayed for some recuperation but Dylan Thomas was there, too.

On his voyage to Italy, Keats stopped off to visit a friend at Bedhampton and a plaque in Chichester records where he began The Eve of St. Agnes. Chichester Cathedral has a book signed by John Donne and a tomb written about by Philip Larkin. I'm sure there's more than those things to know about.

--

Hindemith has proved quite a success on my turntable with the three volumes of viola music preferred in their number order if only on the basis of less being more, the solo viola being vol. 1, with piano 2 and with orchestra 3, which is not to say there isn't plenty to like about all of them. As with Shostakovich, its the right amount of dissonance not going overboard into modernist mannerism.

--

And, as an idea for a project, why not my own anthology of English poetry all gathered into a pdf. By no means any sort of educational tool or canon, just an extended favourite poems with personal notes by way of commentary. The equivalent effort at pop music stalled midway eventually but neither job needs finishing.