The best poems...?

I'm grateful to Richard Skinner for having reminded me the other day on Twitter of the following quote from Ian Hamilton:

"The best poems are a strange combination of intense personal experience and icily controlled craftsmanship".

Of course, this typically assertive and implicitly provocative statement by Hamilton is as much a declaration of personal method as a blueprint for others. Its hinge lies in the use of "strange". Predictability can kill a poem.

There's also an intriguing dual interpretation of the word "icily". While consciously advocating dispassionate craft when writing poetry, Hamilton is also unconsciously revealing one of the few stumbling blocks that I encounter when reading his otherwise terrific verse: a lack of warmth and engagement. I hugely admire his work, but struggle to empathise.

Alan Jenkins on Ian Hamilton

This morning I found myself reading Alan Jenkin's introduction to Ian Hamilton's Collected Poems for the umpteenth time. Like always, I was drawn to a quote of Hamilton's justification for his poetic method:

...In certain moods, I used to crave expansiveness and bulk, and early on I had several shots at getting "more of the world" into my verse: more narrative, more satire, more intelligence, and so on. Each time, however, I would end up knowing for certain that I could have tackled the material more cogently in prose. Why push and strain...

Of course, this very much reflects my own experience as a poet.

Today, however, I was also drawn to a part of Jenkin's conclusions that hadn't hit home as much on previous occasions. It concerns Hamilton's influence on other poets and reads as follows:

...Now several decades have passed, it would be hard to exaggerate the extent to which his influence has waned...not one of these poets...shows much trace of Hamilton's influence in his own work, and I can't think of a single poet who does...

Jenkins was writing in 2009. At that time, I would have agreed with him (which is probably why this passage somewhat passed me by on earlier readings). Six years later, the panorama is changing.

Hamilton was a very divisive figure during his lifetime, but his verse has become hugely relevant to many poets who have emerged in the past few years. They aren't worried about the so-called Poetry Wars, etc, as his poetry is their focus. If you're not familiar with Hamilton's work, why not get hold of his Collected Poems and see what I mean for yourself?

The Telegraph on Ian Hamilton

Thanks are due to Richie McCaffery for posting a link on Facebook to the Telegraph's so-called review of Ian Hamilton's Collected Poems, which has just been issued in paperback. It's an exceptional book, as the reviewer thankfully manages to mention in passing among the countless references to Hamilton's undoubted sexual exploits, boozing and mischief-making. The feature is a potted biography, not a critical analysis of poetry.

Hamilton's verse is outstanding. What's more, it's more than capable of engaging with readers who are unaccustomed to picking up a book of poems. This Telegraph article, however, has very little chance of encouraging anyone to do so. Instead, the piece yet again decides to focus on salacious details just like in the case of Plath, Hughes and even Larkin. Caricatures abound.

Forget the Telegraph's sensationalism. Get hold of a copy of Ian Hamilton's Collected Poems. Read it. Allow yourself to be moved.

Poetry as biography, biography as poetry

Ian Hamilton's biography In Search of J.D. Salinger is as much a reflection on the nature of the genre itself as a story of the the man's life. This might have initially been down to legal reasons (Hamilton's original effort had to be pulped), but the end result is excellent.

While reading it recently, I was again reminded of parallels between poetry and biography, above all in the treatment of subject matter. Even though they may often deny doing so (even to themselves), the practitioners of both genres take fact and transform it into fiction. They take fiction and transform it into fact. They play at blurring the two.