Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

Jeffrey Side’s First Response
April 2009
Jamie, just to respond to a few points you make in your letter about my Heaney article. I will quote from your letter
and add my comments beneath.
‘It’s worth the effort subjecting an off-the-cuff remark by Heaney in an interview to a several-thousand-word
scholastic investigation’.
I see no reason why a casual remark should not be examined in depth if it is representative of more considered
statements made by Heaney in the past. You will note that the brunt of my article deals specifically with statements
made by Heaney in his The Redress of Poetry, which fully rehearses his opinions and theories about poetry, as well as
his, sometimes, dismissive evaluations of other poets. Indeed, the article goes into such depth because I anticipated
accusations similar to the one you and John Muckle have made.
‘How dare Heaney suggest, for example, that J. H. Prynne and his followers have avoided publishing with commercial
presses when the blame can be laid at the mainstream’s door? Even if Prynne himself has declined to be published in
certain commercial anthologies and other poets affiliated with him have expressed scorn for the larger poetry
outlets, that doesn’t let the mainstream off the hook. What’s to stop them subsidizing experimental work out of their
own pockets, amply lined as they are and stuffed with undeserved tenners? [Ten-pound notes.]’
Your last sentence is not something that I suggested in my article, therefore, I will regard it as mere pique on your
part. Regarding Prynne’s reluctance to be published in mainstream quarters, this certainly is not the case with
regard to Bloodaxe, who published his collected poems. And I cannot be sure that he has shunned mainstream
publishers in the past, as you assert. You will have to be more explicit to convince me. If other poets ‘affiliated with
him have expressed scorn for the larger poetry outlets’, does this mean that such “scorn”, as you put it, was born of
offers of publication from such quarters? I seriously doubt it. Such a reaction is likely to be because of a lack of such
overtures.
‘As Side has so unequivocally demonstrated, pretty well everything Heaney writes in his criticism clearly comes from
a defensive attitude towards his posthumous reputation. What could be clearer?’
All I can do is to ask you to read my article more closely, and less defensively yourself, and to do some exploration of
the sources mentioned in the endnotes.
‘And it’s good to see that point about Heaney’s aesthetic subservience to the Movement reiterated-an argument on
which figures like Robert Shepherd have lavished much critical care-for surely no-one can now doubt that the
principles of composition learnt at the feet of Eric Hobsbawm [McKendrick means Philip Hobsbaum], when he was a
teenager, have shaped and powered Heaney’s entire “career”‘.
I think this is something of a red-herring. Because an area of research has been well mined doesn’t invalidate the
veracity of its conclusions, indeed, quite the contrary. Hobsbaum’s poetic ideas (which I have detailed in my article,
and elsewhere at even greater length) are reiterated in Heaney’s critical writings, if you would care to look more
closely into the matter.
‘In this respect, it’s also wise of Side to refrain from quoting a single line of Heaney’s poetry because that would
unnecessarily complicate his brilliant insight about Heaney’s un-connotative use of language’.
Rather than quoting Heaney’s poetry, I chose to quote from his critical writings, as it was this mode of discourse that
my article was grappling with. It is possible that connotation, to some degree, is present in his poetry. Language is
naturally connotative; no matter how hard one strives to make it less so. The matter for me is not that connotation
can be found in Heaney’s poetry, but rather to what extent Heaney has controlled its affects. Again, my article
demonstrates something of Heaney’s cautious approach to connotation regarding his views of John Clare’s poetry.
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