John Greening
The Artist's Reply
(at the Corn Exchange, Bedford)
When Shostakovich shouts that last reply
to what he calls ‘just criticism’ - why
does he not quite convince us of the lie,
but empties all his sacked-up rhetoric
and chaffs us with a brazen party-trick -
no magic, but whatever’s politic?
On Harpur Street, the gangs are tuning up:
they fit their drugs like mutes, and snarl the cup
of their finale out from bleeding Europe.
Pity the courtesies that criticise,
or any solitary soul who tries
to baton them with critical white lies.
In here, the middle classes’ middle age
enjoys its night of safe exotic rage
made sanitary by the turning page
of players who have never known a war,
but know too well this war-horse of a score:
the paschal strings, the brass all narrow bore.
Page(s) 19
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The