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

Jeffrey Side
Aidan, I accept what you say. A part of me sees it this way too. But I get the impression that the writing agendas and
practices of poets who place themselves at a distance to poets such as Heaney, regarding style and technique, do
comprise, if not an organised “avant-garde”, then, a coherent alternative-whatever it can be called.
I do see a “them” and “us” demarcation (at least in Britain) between those poets writing conventional lyrical poetry
and those not doing so.
Aidan Semmens
And now I’ve read your Jacket piece in full, Jeff-fascinating, brilliantly argued and entertaining. I’m-what, amused?
Awed?-that you have bothered to expend such time and thought on Heaney, but very grateful that you have
because you have used it to illuminate so much about the past and present state of the poetic world in these little
islands.
Your statement ‘For Heaney, poetry is primarily concerned with language as unequivocal communication’ is one I
must salt away for the precision with which it defines, by opposition, what poetry is for me. In my book,
“unequivocal communication” is the aspiration of prose, and what defines its distinction from poetry.
The quotes from Hobsbaum are equally well chosen-as is Alvarez’s wonderful put-down.
Jeffrey Side
Thanks, Aidan. It was a labour of love, mostly. I find I learn more about the poets I am critical of than those I like
when writing such things, because a critical stance forces me into research about them. I find I have very little to say
about poets I like.
Yes, “unequivocal communication” is something that should be left out of poetry. For some time now, I have been
trying to get this over to mainstream poets in various poetry discussion forums but with no joy.
I think Heaney’s poetry is an extreme case, in that, strictly speaking, he is no longer representative of the sort of
mainstream poetry that is favoured by the large UK poetry presses-which is quite frivolous, with smatterings of
postmodernism thrown in for good measure.
You could leave a response to my article in Jacket if you want.
Aidan Semmens
I’ve taken up your suggestion of writing to Jacket about your words of wisdom. ;-)
[The discussion ended at this point]
A discussion in the comments area of Andrew Shields’ Blog, about his blog post on Simon Armitage’s poem
‘Night Shift’
February 2010
Andrew Shields’ blog post:
Looking for Simon Armitage’s ‘Night Shift’ (another poem from Zoom!), I found two postings of it in essays by Jeffrey
Side that decry Armitage’s poem from two very different perspectives. In one, Armitage’s poem is used an example
of how weak contemporary poetry is in contrast with Bob Dylan’s lyrics (‘Ambiguity and Abstraction in the Lyrics of
Bob Dylan’ [Side’s essay] from The Argotist Online). In the other, Armitage’s poem is used an example of weak
“empiricist” poetry (‘Empirical and Non-Empirical Identifiers’ [Side’s essay] from Jacket). In both cases, Side argues
that the poem ‘leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination’ and is hence weak. But just because the scene described
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