Felt mildly disappointed with Alice Oswald's first collection The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile. Everything else I've read by her has been so obviously the real poetic thing that it seemed odd to find myself not quite getting most of the shorter poems in the volume, though funnily enough I thought the opening piece, Pruning in Frost, was perfect in its way. I particularly struggled with the sonnets in the collection, though recognising the obvious command of form. Of course, there was enough of quality in every poem for me to realise the problem was me not living up to what was on offer rather than any inherent deficit in the poems themselves.
Having said all that, the final extended piece, The Three Wise Men of Gotham Who Set Out to Catch the Moon in a Net was so obviously wonderful that my faith in Ms Oswald as my favourite living poet (probably, provisionally) was restored.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment