Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Handmade Equations by Peter Dent,
95 pp, ISBN 0-907562-65-5, Shearsman Books, 58 Velwell Rd, Exeter, EX4 4LD, 2005.

One of the blurbs on the jacket likens Dent to Beckett, but I saw no Beckettian convoluted meanings or black humour, only self- conscious "craft" which, in its stream-of-consciousness rambling maybe suggests Joyce, but minus any of his terrible wit or joy. This is what I mean, strange spacing and all:

     See you make it up as you go it's an issue
     Kept to the forefront instant to the thinking
     Sacrificing words for even better words like
     Truth itself arrived at minus its clothes ...

... and I chose this verse because it makes sense of a kind, although it does not seem to do more than describe a process of writing. And as for that pompous "Truth itself..."! Another blurb talks about Dent's "quiet lyricism". I read several pieces aloud, listening for the lyricism. There are "rosettes of gold" and "tall dark trees"; maybe these are what beguiled the reviewer. After about twenty pages I found myself asking What is poetry for? — a pointless enough question, since we know poetry serves no practical purpose, and therein lies its indispensable nature. As William Carlos Williams puts it: "It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there." Thanks, WCW. This is what I mean — Williams' statement is clean and clear, with imagery that gives it sinew, like a strong arm.

   There is no danger of men dying miserably for lack of reading Peter Dent. This poet does not reach out an arm to the reader, or even a finger. He talks to himself about himself, about what it is like being himself, about what it is like thinking about being himself and writing about being himself. The result is a very particular genre, and if you have the time and the inclination, maybe such writing is for you. Of course every writer is primarily expressing and addressing the self, but in writing for publication, surely the point is to communicate rather than bamboozle or — dare I say it — bore?