Letters
Philip Hobsbaum replies:
I was asked by the editor of Thumbscrew to review the latest collection of verse by Michael Longley. The terms of the commission suggested that I was being given the chance to write a retrospective account of a gifted lyric poet. This vitriolic response by Ian Duhig suggests that instead I have defiled his personal Sacred Cow.
Ian Duhig imputes to me ignorance, dishonesty and unworthy motives. His abuse is a comment only upon itself, and a sad one. It does not seem to me to deserve an answer.
Michael Allen, also writing in reproof, is another matter. Here is a respected teacher at Queen’s University. Surely we may rely on him for independent judgement, unprompted by interested parties?
Or can we? I find myself accused of misreading. What Dr. Allen probably means is that I have not read his article on Longley in a collection of essays on contemporary Irish poetry edited by Elmer Andrews. But, of course, I have read this piece, and enjoyed it as a loyal testimony to the work of a close friend: “a vigorous rhythm in fruitful relationship with a commanding syntax”, and so on. If I didn’t refer to Dr. Allen’s contribution in my review, it was because that contribution seemed to me not criticism but eulogy.
I am taken to task by Dr. Allen for “misreading” ‘The Ice Cream Man’. It is he who misreads. He asserts that I rank this poem along with the “random collocations” of Edward Thomas. What I said - as can be easily verified - was that Longley’s collocations were not random, any more than those of Edward Thomas. I agree that I didn’t tell the “story” of that particular poem. There surely was no necessity to do this with readers as sophisticated as Dr. Allen in mind.
It is clear that Dr. Allen values Longley at a high level. He sees ‘The Ice-Cream Man’ (all ten lines of it) as a comment on ecology world-wide. If that is true, then what would he find to say about Chapter 47 of Tess of the D ‘Urbervilles, with its hostile evocation of the threshing-machine encroaching on country rhythms? Having pitched his account of Longley so high, how is he to deal with even more distinguished writers? Stereophonic sound? 3-D? Fireworks?
In the course of my review, I compared Michael Longley with Robert Herrick, Edward Thomas and Louis MacNeice. Is that a form of deprecation? Only a poet far more conceited than I take Mr. Longley to be would think so.
Page(s) 45-47
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