This review is taken from PN Review 150, Volume 29 Number 4, March - April 2003.
on George MacBeth and U.A. Fanthorpe
John Ennis, Heinrich Heine, Salvador Espriu, Charles Tomlinson, Peter Bland, Carole Satyamurti, Andrew Motion, Michael Longley, David Scott, Michael Longley, John Riley, Mark Strand, Denise Riley, John Montague, Clive Wilmer, Matthew Sweeney, Peter Abbs, George MacBeth, W.S. Graham, Francis Ponge, Douglas Clark, David Gascoyne, Christine Evans, Derek Mahon, Frederick Seidel, Geoff Page, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Hofmann, Ruth Bidgood, Kirkpatrick Dobie, Vicki Raymond, David Malouf, E.J. Scovell, Jean Garrigue, Fleur Adcock, Kenneth Koch, Bernard O'Donoghue, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, James Schuyler, Lee Harwood, David Wright, Vivian Smith, Kathleen Raine, Hugo Williams, David Harsent, Michael Hamburger, Mark O'Connor, Les A. Murray, Charles Johnston, Fleur Adcock, Philip Levine, Galway Kinnell, Michael Riviere, Lawrence Lerner, Thomas Blackburn, D.M. Thomas, Fleur Adcock, John Montague, P.J. Kavanagh, David Holbrook, John Silkin, Günter Grass, Elizabeth Jennings, Patricia Beer, Peter Sansom, Jaan Kaplinski, Vladimir Khodasevich, Jack Clemo, Frank Koenegracht, Jamie McKendrick, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jean Bleakney, William Plomer, Colette Bryce, Kathleen Jamie, Selected Poems (Enitharmon) £
U.A. Fanthorpe, Christmas Poems (Enitharmon/Peterloo) £
Popular and widely-published during his lifetime, George MacBeth (1932-92) is now, according to the publishers of this Selected Poems, `in danger of being forgotten'. The present selection of his work - judiciously drawn by Anthony Thwaite from over twenty books of poems - represents an attempt to secure a lasting readership for MacBeth. It excludes the `performance' poems for which MacBeth was well known during the 1960s and 1970s along with material from lengthy sequences such as A War Quartet (1969) and The Cleaver Garden (1986).
The majority of MacBeth's poems are shaped - directly or indirectly - by the early experience of losing his parents (MacBeth was nine when his father was killed in an air raid and ten years later lost his mother to liver disease). The poems are full of the psychological damage that war leaves behind. MacBeth returns repeatedly to explorations of violence and cruelty, game-playing (the pitfalls of chance), lost innocence, guilt, the `price' of love and so forth. An early poem like `The Drawer' catalogues what remains of his parents' belongings, endowing them with personal symbolism so that they function as artefacts:
My father's were in an envelope:
A khaki lanyard, crushed handkerchief,
Twelve cigarettes, a copying pencil,
All he had on him when he was killed
Or all my mother wanted to keep.
The pain of loss also accounts, perhaps, for a number of poems which demonstrate a tenderness for ...
The page you have requested is restricted to subscribers only. Please enter your username and password and click on 'Continue':
If you have forgotten your username and password, please enter the email address you used when you joined. Your login details will then be emailed to the address specified.
If you are not a subscriber and would like to enjoy the 291 issues containing over 11,700 poems, articles, reports, interviews and reviews,
why not subscribe to the website today?