Last week's Poem of the Week in Carol Rumen's excellent feature in the Graun was a particularly astute choice. Thom Gunn's Slow Waker really is a striking example of the poet exploiting his many gifts yet in seemingly relaxed, informal mode. But here's the thing. When I first encountered the poem in my recent read-through of the wonderful Collected Poems it didn't jump out at me as it did last week. I suppose I needed Ms Rumen's telling analysis to help me along. I needed someone else's act of creative attention.
I suppose that's what genuinely fruitful criticism does. It alerts us to what we might fail to register in all the noise.
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