Clive James on the ordinary becoming extraordinary

Continuing with some (late) summer reading, I've been poring over one of several excellent articles by Clive James on The Poetry Foundation website. The feature in question, titled A Stretch of Verse, is especially interesting when addressing the question of how the ordinary can become extraordinary. Here's a short quote as a sample:

Being in the right spot can make a phrase powerful even when it might seem frail heard on its own. Consider the placing of Louis MacNeice’s lovely phrase “the falling London rain.” It comes at the very end of his poem “London Rain” and seems to concentrate all the phonetic force of the poem:

My wishes now come homeward,
Their gallopings in vain,
Logic and lust are quiet,
Once more it starts to rain.
Falling asleep I listen
To the falling London rain.

This is the least obvious version of the hit: when ordinary words become extraordinary because they are in the right spot. The most obvious version is when one or more of the words is doing strange work. 

You can read the piece in full by following this link.

Dennis O'Driscoll in Poetry Ireland Review

I might be absurdly late to the party, but my discovery of Dennis O'Driscoll's poetry has been a joy over the past few months. 

On the back of that process, I sought out examples of his prose online, and stumbled on an excellent article by him from Poetry Ireland Review. It's well worth a read in full (see link here) if you've got a few minutes free over the summer, but here's a thought-provoking snippet as an initial taster...

"...Many of the techniques of poetry can be acquired and improved through practice and emulation. What cannot be taught, what must already be in place, is an individual perspective on the world. We want the poet's own version of life, not a rehash of Dylan Thomas's or Sylvia Plath's world. The personal rhythms, obsessions, linguistic quirks which readers and reviewers may initially deprecate are the best foundations on which to build a poetic talent. The poems which the editor rejects may become your cornerstone..."