Reviews
In Praise of Jewish Resentment, New Poems by Geoffrey Godbert,
ISBN 1-903031-99-0, A5, 60pp, Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY, £8.00
I have problems with ‘confessional poetry’, (though I know the ‘I’ of the poem is not necessarily the ‘I’ of the author), because it seems to me to posit a number of implicit assumptions: that ‘I’ am the centre of the world; that ‘I’ am interesting and have done interesting things, and that I can write them up in an interesting way. So, with the personal pronoun appearing in all but a few of the 46 poems in this book, Geoffrey Godbert had some work to do to win me over. I’m afraid, though, that it began to get rather worse for me: the words ‘poem / poetry / poetry’, or mentions of writing, cropped up in almost a half; a quarter are single sentence poems, and a third have ‘names’ dropped in them, mostly of artists. Clearly, these mannerisms became irksome, and it took an effort for me to remember I was writing a review, and not a statistical analysis. Yet, when he looks away from himself, a different poet emerges, ‘What was totally unexpected / were the sharp breezes of his memory / rustling exotic labels / marking the travels of his life, / stirring his empty luggage...’ The Traveller (In memory of Howard Fry).
Page(s) 13
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