Poetry is a pitiless mistress. How else could Sylvia Plath write “The blood jet is poetry / There is no stopping it”, or the freakishly gifted youth Arthur Rimbaud, having refashioned the art for the next century and beyond, give it all up because no one except Paul Verlaine gave a damn? Acknowledging the haters, Marianne Moore announced, in a poem entitled “Poetry”: “I, too, dislike it”. This paradox of irritation and compulsion hovers behind Glyn Maxwell’s brilliantly unclassifiable new book.
The publishers describe it as “part comic novel, part dream-memoir, part criticism and part autobiography”. Though both stand alone, the book forms a pair with 2012’s On Poetry, a whimsically profound how-to manual which included sections involving a group of fictional creative writing students. Mimi, Ollie, Wayne and Isabella turn up again here, among several new faces, to take Professor Maxwell’s 12-week poetry “elective”: “It says elective. I’m going to the pub,” he tells Kerri from Student Services. “Elective for them, not you,” she retorts.
Related: On Poetry by Glyn Maxwell – review
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