Whether it be, Zelda Fitzgerald, “waking into self-hatred”, the “fragile/and wispily dressed, Jean Rhys”, or Disraeli with his “Glossy black ringlets, blistering waistcoats, silver-buckled shoes” “released…/into the gentile world”, in contrast to his “skull-capped and scholarly” father. Jews as outsiders, as well as those who, in some way, simply feel themselves to be exiles from the mainstream, are very much Feinstein’s territory. An outsider “his Litvak underlip could put them off”. A Jew “from Stepney East”, “he was always shy with Oxbridge toffs”. This is followed by a poem to the memory of the young Isaac Rosenberg, who died “in the mud” at the front on April Fools’ Day, 1918. The first poem, Courting Danger, in her new collection, describes eating “red sea urchins…on a platter of ice”, “somewhere near the Bastille”, with the Russian poet Bella Akhmadulina, underlying Feinstein’s rich relationship to Russian poetry as a translator. She brings to life East End Jewish poets, literary figures and torch song singers such as Billie Holiday, building up characters with the engagement of a story-teller. Her voice is deceptively conversational, accessible and full of warmth. Does a poem have a beating heart? Did it, against the odds, insist on life or is it simply a literary exercise?Īs a poet, translator and novelist, Elaine Feinstein has an intuitive sense of what makes a poem. It’s a thought that’s stayed with me and seems a good yardstick. Is this the fault of contemporary poets or a logical consequence of the shifting language of modernism and postmodernism, which has meant poetry is no longer something that ‘ordinary’ people turn to, as once they did, to give voice to thoughts and feelings they cannot easily name but, rather, something that’s studied for its form (or non-form) by practitioners and those in ivory towers? I remember a workshop I ran some years ago at Hebden Bridge with David Constantine who, interestingly, claimed that a poem should not be written unless it absolutely insisted on being so. But few ‘civvies’ are found clutching slim volumes of new poetry. Smart, educated people read novels, go to art exhibitions and the theatre. Why it seems, almost exclusively, to attract those who, themselves, write. Recently I came across a poetry blog discussing why poetry isn’t read by more non-poets. £9.95Īndrew Waterman: By the River Wensum.
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