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

Charles Wright is an established American poet but, like so many other American poets, has had little exposure here. Zone Journals is, in fact, his first book to be published in Britain. It’s interesting to reflect on why so many American poets are overlooked in this country, though perhaps a lot of English poets are overlooked there? There used to be quite an exchange of ideas, and I wonder why it’s now slackened off? Giving talks and teaching classes, I’m often struck by how little British poetry readers seem to know about American writing. But then, I’m also struck by how little they know about the full range of poetry produced in Britain. They seem to get their information solely from the reviews in a handful of daily and Sunday newspapers.

     Zone Journals is a book of observations and reflections, written in the way that journals usually are, but in this case, shaped into poetic form. The lines are often long, the tone relaxed, the language almost conversational, and the moods vary with the place and the season. And, as with journals generally, you don’t need to start at the beginning, and it’s possible to dip into the entries at almost any point, picking up the thread and running it through your mind until you’re satisfied. The writing draws you in:

-Mist in the trees, and soiled water and grass cuttings splotch
The driveway,
                     afternoon starting to bulk up in the west
A couple of hours down the road

     The spacing between lines allows the language to breathe, and makes for a rhythmic movement which ties in with the urgency or otherwise of the writing. Of course, it can and does happen that not every entry is all that interesting, and there are times when you feel that the poet is failing to rewrite carefully enough. The fact that something is a journal doesn’t or shouldn’t mean that anything goes, especially if it is to be offered to readers. Wright sometimes nearly bogs down in mundane detail:

Then backtrack and a right turn
To the west, across the road and into Kensington Gardens
And out to the chestnut and beech grove
As the dogs go by
                     and the Punks noodle along
In their chrome stud belts and Technicolour hair.

     Passages like that are the exception rather than the rule, though, and Charles Wright usually manages to keep the rhythm rolling and the content lively.