Once upon a time there was a movement called the Modernists and there was a certain knight in shinning armor/ poet called W.B Yeats. This man forged a middle road between modern verse incorporating meter and sophisticated ideas for modern times, it has been this road which has dominated English verse since the war. However despite all this progress the idea of free verse was smote asunder it would seem. The work of Eliot seems to have been swept aside, which is a heinous mistake. It is with this in mind that we turn to the latest collections of Motion, Muldoon and Cope.
Andrew Motion who for the last decade was our Poet Laureate, stepping into the shoes that had been vacated by one of the greatest poet of the last century- Ted Hughes. Motion got this post more through what he wasn't that what he was. Firstly, he hadn't voiced publicly any opinion about Ulster (which Heaney had and felt he couldn't be the PL therefore), secondly, he hadn't any great greivance about our colonial past, (which Walcott had and therefore couldn't be PL therefore), thirdly he hadn't slept with somebody of his own sex (which Duffy had and so Blair, in his infinite wisdom, decreed that she couldn't be PL therefore) finally he didn't write in free verse so he could become a 'people's poet'. Thus Motion ascended to the PL- and promptly wrote very little, and ten years later he gave up the post to be filled by Duffy. From this lost decade has arisen -not quiet phoenix like- 'The Cinder Path'.
As has been said he is a formal poet, indeed there is some interesting stuff in here, the eponymous poem is a simple little puff about the mortality of existence, and his pursuit for the Grave of Rupert Brooke seemed to capture all that it aimed to. This aside I rather felt a little bored with it and beyond this that his control of the meter was not all encompassing. That he had allowed his pursuit of the form to interfere with his pursuit for the content- style over substance.
This could again be said of Muldoon's 'Maggot'. Muldoon, like Heaney, doesn't support the union and so couldn't be the PL, however he's had a very distinguished career which seems to have been right-fully earned. There is almost an extravagance in this work, with poetic sequences forming the back bone of this book. The eponymous sequence links the imagery of decay with that of love, which is a consistent theme in this work. There are some stand alone poems, which provide startling imagery- children disemboweling mothers, albatrosses feasting on plastic- but in the context of the text seem to be flashes in the pan, but I rather think that they add an excitement which is wanted in the scheme of things. The sequences however, climax not in the final narrative of road side shrines, but in the poets lament upon a dying poem drawing comparisons with the decay of nature and the loss of a loved one. His poetry is more exciting, formally skilled and fluid than Motion.
Yet Cope stands as the doyenne of the formal post war poets. The only other poets who have an equal control over their meter which immediately come to mind are Larkin and Hughes. Her first book 'Making Coco for Kingsley Amis' is a stunningly witty and often poignant waltz of a collection. 'Familliy Values' is her latest is an often darker book, with poems dealing with her strained relationship with her mother, the BBC and getting older, Cope still provides us with what we have come to expect in her 'Villanelle for Hugo Williams'. This is a pithy, witty and touches upon the English Condition-much like the collection itself. This is the best of the formal poets on offer at the moment, without a hesitation or a doubt.
Family Values; 94/100
Maggot; 78/100
The Cinder Path; 54/100
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