tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11276774562390252622011-12-10T03:59:14.645Znothing about this is ordinary at allPITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.comBlogger911100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-33733383571119389472011-04-14T17:26:00.002Z2011-04-21T18:51:51.207Z

Mekong slalom[1]. [1] The argument goes or it tends to go it’s okay to have killed so many people because had we not done more would have died.                This is a utilitarian argument.                It can apply to Germany, Iraq, Japan.                In some cases it relies on good scholarship.                And always a counterfactual.                One philosophical problem is if

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-36391353972102369102011-01-07T04:45:00.002Z2011-11-02T21:21:50.920Z

Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.—George Orwell David Cameron has always had to him a suspicious gloss. His confidence has hardly received its enabling sanction from a dream of a country reordered along conservative lines, or even policy mastery, but from the

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-14590775741918682612010-06-11T15:01:00.012Z2011-12-10T03:59:14.662Z

I want to say that Emmy the Great is good, and how. This won’t be light work. To praise her usefully, I think, you have to describe her with enough accuracy that you’re forthcoming even about her faults; this may give rise to an air of hostility. Let me then vouch for my intentions, and run my own risks with opinion, by reproducing a poem of mine that took a song of the Great’s as impetus and

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-41276695692471607582010-01-18T19:42:00.030Z2011-04-28T23:23:09.077Z

Apologies for the messy formatting: I and Blogger don’t get on. Here’s a somewhat neater version. Whitman thought of making a book: The Leaves of Grass which he, ah—course calling it, when he called himself ‘spontaneous warbler’, I mean it [?] was the least of—those of you who know that wonderful New York Library facsimile of the 19, of the 1861/’62 edition of his poems which he used as a kind

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-86583058864953827802009-10-22T11:40:00.010Z2009-11-27T04:52:27.868Z

The Reception of Hill: A searchable anthology [updated version, 27/11]Philip Horne (1985), ‘Bibliography of works by and about Geoffrey Hill: III On Geoffrey Hill’

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-38795493511452422742009-09-23T07:15:00.021Z2009-11-19T22:16:33.378Z

A resource for scholars of Geoffrey HillI acknowledge Andrew Michael Roberts’ enabling precedent (Geoffrey Hill, Tavistock: Northcote House Publishers, 2004, 110).CONTEXT: Tom Paulin, ‘The Case for Geoffrey Hill’, London Review of Books 7.6, 4 April 1985, 13–4, repr. ‘A Visionary Nationalist: Geoffrey Hill’, Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State, London: Faber and Faber, 1992, 276–84:276: G H

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-9818433079614261572009-08-03T22:42:00.002Z2009-08-03T22:48:47.715Z

From Saturday’s Guardian I learnt that frivolity and seriousness were ‘the same thing’. The same thing.It was repeated like that. And it occurred to me: Adam Thirlwell can only say this with the expectation it will interest us because the two things are what they are, and not each other; or because we assume so. But if he is right — if he persuades us — the statement should become tautologous,

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-84377750337072612842009-06-19T18:26:00.022Z2011-01-25T00:14:34.192Z

I am guardian settle there settle where I am, guardian. That wealth or comfortable living of necessity means remoteness from the lust, the mess, the truth of life. That you cannot, of science, make art. That light is describable, or Shakespeare; or prose prosaic. That there was a fresh tenderness to the fucking. (Which isn’t fallacious I agree but then to define is subjugation, if as well to

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-79942557996382515192009-06-19T18:04:00.009Z2011-01-08T03:04:10.963Z

That the scale of the earth is graspable. To follow, that space is. That livid pre-empting anger, lamplit choler, ever helps. That it was not your fault. That in space everything is not dark but floodlit; in deep space, the nearest star a dying bulb, ships would look like cities from the redeye. The rant is lapidary. That to bequeath is charity. That that which we want there to be something more

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-12430978561862884132009-06-19T17:51:00.007Z2011-01-08T03:35:21.055Z

That the scary thing is the puppetmaster, the devil overhead, not the millions or thousands of us jerking as he yanks. That I contradict myself sustainably. That shtick doesn’t mar most artists, or is not the commonest reason for art’s failure. That suddenly it goes cold. For thinking about the dead is a way of thinking about death, and about dying. That angels are commonly apt synonymy (she

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-87442506560521352132009-06-19T17:38:00.017Z2011-08-05T20:36:49.767Z

That demons and vampires and werewolves are not people imagining other people. That always is ever true. That the internet is full of porn whose deliberate focus (barely legal, schoolgirls, cheerleaders, teens) on age is the calculated provocation of cigarsmoking rottentooth bad guys in perspex wheelchairs behind sequoiawood desks, rather than blank betrayal of the substantial market there is

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-2600153600197039102009-06-19T17:10:00.014Z2011-01-24T23:54:27.805Z

‘Most things are still in the dark.’ Just to begin, that historians are scholars of lost news. That interpretation of art is not emotional response. That any pear supervised to ripeness when bitten will be ripe. That many films are loved for much more than the beauty of their actors. That beauty is not insult, nor ugliness pain. If we are responsible for meaning and not for life unless in

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-86337668266696033342009-05-19T22:52:00.009Z2011-02-26T23:32:33.337Z

Here is an odd, half-year-old post on the great The Wire from the New York Times’ youngest op-ed man. Although Douthat shares with David Simon his evident sad anger at the fall of America’s (or Baltimore’s) printed journalism, it seems he doesn’t approve of how season 5 addresses it. Douthat would rather Simon had retreated in both emotional and narrative terms from the experience on which we

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-46692641044000705552009-05-18T02:25:00.017Z2009-09-28T00:11:39.557Z

Hier levitiertder Schwerste. Poetry is the fun of the intellect, wrote Scaliger. People often say that it is difficult. This is true: some poems are difficult, as are some novels and some experiences. With this I have no problem. But when people suggest that a poem’s difficulty is like an elaborate cloak hung to conceal a simple frame, I am disconcerted. Daniel Mallory in his review* of Geoffrey

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-79571275895946052212009-05-17T19:01:00.006Z2009-06-19T17:31:12.643Z

That irreverence is not reverencejudiciously given out.That the sea is anything otherthan a massive, annihilating, alien context.That consciousness is a small accidentpreventing bliss. That the fallaciesdo not write themselves. That to be haunted by certaintyis not insane. That joking is not in dead earnest.That you understand, even, your own failure.That there is a system for judging value,or

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-53553204377211504272009-05-17T18:28:00.016Z2011-01-08T03:58:29.071Z

What, readers, does this mean? ‘The nebels burn.’ Fogs are reported. Work of getting there under way. The lights are vague. The other is kissed and cherished. The bed evokes her softness, so sleep is loneliness. The fogs are vague. Philosophy can take you through, has many ways to lose. The other is unnavigable – as is this weather. Others are weather! Poetry thinks we cannot die.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-70686251033988204092009-05-15T17:57:00.016Z2009-09-27T23:35:41.908Z

(I warn, this is the bloggiest piece of writing I’ve ever posted here. I didn’t have the energy to twist and pose it into writing written. It is influenced by Empson and Yglesias and Brad DeLong.)Considering an application for the Harper-Wood studentship, I thought I might submit my intimations of Celan, promising to make a book of them could I learn the language. But the terms of the studentship

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-91116158777062374502009-05-07T17:44:00.015Z2010-06-11T13:05:58.772Z

Stars turning up all the time in poetry. The literality is all there somewhere. One can’t just write, smack and go on. She is a mess you make and she Asks to be reckoned, conned. Write theology of her but ignore the stars Turning out all the time in poetry. The literality is all here somewhere. I couldn’t do a smack just at Empson.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-41336804971502919382009-04-20T18:29:00.009Z2011-10-22T01:17:57.257Z

fully undeturned I don’t usually post up poems I’m happy with and this is no different. The occasion seemed good though because I have a companion-piece in the form of some notes on Milton transcribed from a Paperblanks. The two bomblets might just make a blam. Theatre i. m. John Milton The magictrick we call the ‘full vole’, it enlists the gluteal through the heart muscles to fold

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-89078482387972918642009-04-20T17:23:00.005Z2009-04-20T17:29:23.893Z

Caesar inspired Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’, a poem told by five voices, and throughout it is marked by heterogeneity of discourse important (I speculate) to represent in small the rich breadth of historical experience. History’s people were of course as diverse as today’s, but dramatic portrayal tends to shrink them as allegorical walnut, leeching individuality for compression’s sake. Thus, in

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-81933991798493255142009-04-09T18:06:00.009Z2011-01-06T22:03:16.657Z

‘The mind is a terrible master.’ If God is infinite where is evil but in God? What is will if the choice is rigged? Since before he’d created us he’d created us he knew his creatures would freely choose to eat. ‘All-good’ by God’s standard of good? He chose to set a test he knew we’d fail. History to him is a static image: results of a game whose rules you guess. We should obey what our free

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-79008036201940177522009-04-08T15:54:00.005Z2011-08-15T00:30:35.103Z

Behind the gleeclub-in-recording, on the pink lastness, Wanes an unsudden moon, Subtlety: A tramp not trying to shelter from sleet.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-67470844059041339632009-04-03T15:29:00.006Z2009-04-09T18:21:07.658Z

An April Fool a day latewins cloture on the billagainst a global currency. O they who might have yachtless tacked the foam,O who might have retooledwithout the dollar the boardroom chairs consider Bachmann, who was once random and small as due.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-33109725977754438392009-03-28T18:45:00.008Z2009-04-09T18:23:11.823Z

Prices are low because spirits are, to make them high again we have to raise spirits by raising prices. The bankers lost all our money buying worthless things for trillions, so the economy's shrinking and we're all upset. To fix the problem we as a state have to borrow our future money (and print money) to give the banks (and to ourselves directly) so we don't lose all our money and so we

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-63742337871639503002009-03-03T20:08:00.014Z2011-10-14T00:25:36.803Z

IRIE That I have time to walk across the crop stair That I have time, into your sleep to walk the sleepscree, time to cut grass low on the lands of the heart, in the morning YOU WERE my life: you I could let go of as everything swam here AT THE rainedon waymark little silence soapbox-hoarse: It’s as if you’d remembered and I knew that you had.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-8300149165772643502009-03-02T14:37:00.007Z2010-12-18T11:20:01.665Z

Editor: I write with regard to William Logan’s letter of Vol. 193.3, and with no stake in the controversy, since I have never seriously read Hart Crane. In fact I found the letter accidentally—I was browsing the magazine shelves—and without the internet would not have seen the writings of which it argues in defence. The letter, it seems to me, confirms Marjorie Perloff’s accusation that ‘

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-90105702278975225412008-11-28T09:37:00.014Z2009-05-20T00:12:38.779Z

What he called the ‘ineluctable infantilism of faith’ I was less reconciled to. But I loved him so I went along. He would usually wear this foodstained jacket with epaulettes and come out with, ‘I like neither Scaliger’ quite haughtily, or ‘Britain’s claim I won’t rescind’ to annoy you. And fall to momentary emphases—one day ‘hybridity’, another ‘trash-talk’—never bearing them out; it being the

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-12280775138471518262008-06-09T18:23:00.040Z2008-11-28T09:07:05.464Z

Oxford Poetry ’08 has arrived. Christopher Ricks ‘hastily but hugely enjoyed it’; Landfill Press call ours ‘the best BritPo critical section of the year’. Click for cover and contents. If you’re in Oxford, Cambridge or London, copies are available at Blackwell’s, Heffers and the London Review Bookshop. There are two alternatives: you can fill in this order form and send a cheque, or you can pay

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-15158185984206544572008-05-15T20:49:00.007Z2008-06-23T09:18:39.149Z

Came upon this during Finals revision.I distrust these ‘at once’ statements as much as any other sensible middle-class bloke. They are consistently an annoyance in Ricks. One room cannot be dark and light; a ball cannot be light and heavy; according to Ricks, though, hyphens in poems can at once pull to and push apart. Ricks is wrong—hyphens only link where a whitespace had divided. They mark

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-4288010532822780892008-04-06T00:34:00.011Z2011-02-26T23:30:37.717Z

Spin is nothing new. A metaphor which so comfortably settled into the language that calling it cliché would be redundant, the word is a vibrant Englishing of ancient means and ideas of persuasion. When used precisely, it is synonymous with ‘rhetoric’ as used colloquially; it denotes a class of rhetoric that would use language to shade facts that, bare of such tuned language, we would perceive

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-2008594420743025062008-03-22T03:19:00.007Z2008-03-22T04:05:21.768Z

Excepting playschool stuff, I'm ignorant of the philosophical context, so it's likely I've been anticipated / in anticipation refuted. Nevertheless—We cannot know there is something outside ourselves. Yet the concept of an 'outside' to self derives from the very illusion which, if there is nothing outside ourselves, disguises this nothing. Does the concept of a self derive so too? Does something

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-39905531991013085502008-02-28T04:04:00.018Z2008-03-22T04:07:10.218Z

Craig Raine writes entertaining criticism, and it entertains rather as a fictional trial — Anatomy of a Murder, or the TV series Shark — entertains. I hedge with ‘rather’ because Raine gives us half a trial: the prosecuting counsel, his witnesses, their interrogations and the judgement. Proceedings proceed without defence or jury, and you kind of know who’s going to win. The recent Areté,

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-33665870320821940742008-02-13T00:27:00.015Z2008-02-21T05:33:26.066Z

Were those tenterhooks starting to sting? Apologies, readers, but when as much is riding on your preference as on ours, to decide conclusively the angle of your dangle is tricky, and the decision to advertise that decision trickier still.It took something wonderful to dislodge us, Library of America Hart Crane and all, off the drystone wall of vacillation — to push us arse-first into certainty's

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-84506310519370519652008-01-22T12:08:00.000Z2008-01-22T12:31:17.253Z

There’s a treble-volumed pikestaff—sitting bleary at my laptop, I said—There’s a … pikestaff, and Johnston, if truth is what you’re betting for, will remember—but there’s a point, for what is memory but a mangle of mis-stitches and invented patterns on the throw of life!—Johnston, scorecard pictured, biro poised, will remember the trails (less beaten, the better) and corner-bushels of that

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-70448008677361613472008-01-21T15:22:00.000Z2008-01-22T06:32:33.769Z

Here the PITCH review presents the two arses of (ordered bypriority) infrequent guest contributor, novelist, screenwriterand poet, Paul T. Abbott.Ars poetica1) Description does not replace thought.2) Don’t censor out the details.3) Intelligent metaphor.4) The line-as-a-unit.5) Struggling to recreate an iambic pentametre.6) What the scholars would call, “colloquial syntax and lexis”.7)

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-46198116184610048952008-01-20T23:59:00.000Z2008-01-21T00:08:56.889Z

|In the camp that day fifty of themThere is in you small faultSuch advice as I haveContinue, children, with the argumentsEssentially there is a rapidlyGo-getters tonight feel strong to riskWhat, that doesn’t add up?In the grave tibias, a skullfragment used as a hatSilence of the desert is holdingTheir man, sure he would not run out, wasted timeFor snow hurried, livid having waitedThe river ran

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-31078382266559680462008-01-19T23:35:00.000Z2008-01-21T00:02:37.067Z

or, Question for an EthicistI’d never given Bennett much thought. Having never read him, to me he was tea-cosy, Establishment. I knew he’d done a successful play about sixth-formers applying to Oxbridge, Talking Heads, that ancient and originary revue Beyond the Fringe; but I’d never seen any of it. Imagine therefore my surprise: 2 August. Chris Langham is found guilty of downloading child

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-77933541941033568362008-01-19T22:59:00.002Z2008-01-19T23:11:34.993Z

|Oxford Flyer 1+ pretentious quoteOxford Flyer 2less pretentious quoteOutside Oxfordposter versionOutside Oxfordhandout versionDistribute at will.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-27031859296076893502007-12-05T04:00:00.000Z2007-12-10T00:10:56.633Z

Here's Franklin Foer, in discussing the reports of Scott Thomas Beauchamp:I hadn't worked with Stephen Glass, who made up stories out of whole cloth, but I knew the lessons derived from that scandal. Fabulists are often nabbed by the little lies, the asides they assume that no one will check.Here's Wikipedia, quoting Glass's 1998 article 'Hack Heaven' — the one which it says 'triggered his

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-44559331535337466402007-12-01T10:53:00.002Z2011-01-19T20:58:31.462Z

Ghost Work for the formatting’s sake. by Jameson Farley guest blogger

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-36288188815162965842007-12-01T02:15:00.102Z2011-08-12T21:14:48.602Z

1) from: Oxford Poetry to: jhp13[at]cam.ac.uk date: Oct 7, 2007 6:57 PM subject: OP08 Dr Prynne, We are committed admirers of yours here at OP. If there is one thing which bugs us about the state of English literary culture, it is that poetry of the quality you write goes relatively unacclaimed. We understand you must receive many such harrying requests, but still we are determined to ask if

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-47480995615988918382007-12-01T01:57:00.000Z2007-12-01T11:15:04.593Z

Kafka, of a woman (I don't know where): how short must be life, if something so fragile can last a lifetime. But sentimental! Kafka’s words betray a watcher’s remoteness, for women’s bones are strong; women of beauty are still flesh, as you are when you stub your toe, or knock your head on a shelf. You would not want to touch a thing that would shatter or dissolve in your hand. I see there’s

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-8551416392703470712007-11-18T01:07:00.001Z2008-07-16T08:35:26.545Z

Very often my beliefs have been best expressed by others, and this is not an admission but an acknowledgement, since only a humble man will plagiarise. The less of myself, the better! The whole thing is, the difficult matter, to shrink back to this: We are small, and cannot bear much improvement. Did not even St. Paul the Apostle name himself “Little Thing”? Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-61635316267339281492007-10-20T01:40:00.001Z2007-10-20T01:43:21.411Z

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-63951697575084681592007-10-16T22:35:00.004Z2011-01-29T20:45:02.261Z

The difference between verse and prose is self-evident, but it is a sheer waste of time to look for a definition of the difference between poetry and prose. —W. H. Auden When Prose Is Poetic Prose is seldom poetic. When prose is poetic, this isn’t of itself a good thing. More often it is bad. Indeed, a healthy maxim might be: Good prose is never poetic. But this would miss the point—which is

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-74088463257565626032007-10-12T15:32:00.001Z2011-01-14T17:15:27.901Z

my second, if you can't use that, is: prowar blogger Oliver Kamm has written: 'Poetry is a medium, not an instrument, of ideas. If your interest in poetry is the cogency of the ideas, then you might as well be reading prose.' what I've read of Oxford students' 'poetry' has been mostly prose, and at that uncogent.* my third, if you can't use that, is: the writing of good poems is difficult,

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-68000563674084648272007-10-06T14:10:00.000Z2007-10-08T16:29:12.149Z

Anecdotal(1) Clive James is holding a volume of Catullus in the Latin, and mentions in passing he's about to go on a beach holiday. He leaves and Martin Amis says, 'Poor Clive, he'll spend all his time on the beach worrying about when it looks plausible to turn the page.'(2) Clive James, at a dinner party, discourses on the literature of Russia, making much of the fact he can read it without

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-56272875443627833802007-10-05T06:42:00.000Z2007-10-05T23:49:26.475Z

That Shakespeare is one of the best poets in history is taken for granted by enough people for me to suppose it true as any value-judgement can be. That he is, for this, a significantly greater poet than any of his English-language predecessors and successors is not often stressed. He is outclassed in epic poetry, because he did not consider it worth his money-making time; but in dramatic and

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-85529966943539090462007-10-02T13:25:00.000Z2007-10-05T23:43:23.108Z

THE TORY CONFERENCE‘to which I pay tribute’Blackpool Winter Gardens.Blackwater. Honeyed porridge;heroworship; that is of strangersor characters in plasma. I am burntcoffee only makes me happy.It’s the air of smug entitlement:no, I couldn’t consider voting Tory.Who has the best focusgroup or polling datawins; if every party is populistthere is room for differenceonly in errors of interpretation;

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-27742584215422735422007-09-29T08:10:00.000Z2007-09-29T08:29:29.971Z

On the other hand, Pynchon launches himself into numerous lectures on great-power politics of the day, lectures that would suffocate an audience at a hundred paces. Let a character say, “But you’re itching to be filled in, I can see that,” and the author scurries to the library table to pot some history (he’s suspected of relying on the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-10918317845456668142007-09-28T23:20:00.000Z2007-09-29T06:59:24.968Z

18) From my window I can see across the street. Into a girl’s bedroom. Perhaps 19, red hair and undressing - - her bra doesn’t match her panties - - a thumb hooked gauchely in a hairband, she towels her hair mirrorwise. If I was a gentleman I’d turn away. One never does.19) It was not curiosity that killed the cat, but the car. Let’s be accurate. [...]21) I am writing part of my

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-17406331570048051162007-09-28T17:53:00.000Z2007-10-24T19:03:35.114Z

or: Art is Callous because Life isElegant variation shades into ironical euphemism, which shades into dandaical detachment. Flaubert, in despair at the Franco- Prussian war, and trying to maintain the primacy of art, commented that in the long run, perhaps the only function of such carnage was to provide writers with a few fine scenes. So here, the function of the octogenarian Breton woman who

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-37411661273020643962007-09-27T12:04:00.000Z2007-10-01T00:36:49.448Z

It may be that I'm frazzled on caffeine and no sleep, but I think I just heard the marchingband who’d spent the last week parping Tory bugles — fingers red with paint — in full-throated Socialist singalong. How their temples must've burnt for lying.Well, no. This is image politics. Some BBC chuffer let go a lovely example: there are aides to Gordon Brown, he said, who are urging an early poll

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-56370092124672119412007-09-25T03:11:00.000Z2007-09-25T03:16:35.229Z

On Reading A Treatise of Civil PowerActually you don’t have a shitting clue,Old timer. Geoffrey, heckling busybody,What do you know about the Internet?Or Macro Economics? Or pop music?Reality has moved fast, and you haven’t.Come off it! What did you expect? Who caresAbout the semi-masticated wordplaysOf a pensioner in a University bubble?Civil power is about money. MONEY.Who were you kidding?

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-58338579024903615512007-09-25T02:37:00.000Z2007-09-25T02:51:53.671Z

(1. 15/4) also re initial speech of 12th Night ('notwithstanding thy capacity') - do you follow the Folio punct or Rowe's emendation? editors I think are wrong in preferring Rowe. (2. 16/4) As for 12 N: the difference is clear, isn't it. The Folio punctuation means that the next sentence, 'Naught enters there' etc, is explanatory, and in appostion to the preceding,

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-85783351450978987822007-09-24T07:47:00.000Z2007-09-24T07:49:47.966Z

There's a Ballard story where an alien intelligence surveysa future earth, finding abundant trace of civilisation, a huge,still functioning computer network, and no people. It transpiresthat we downloaded ourselves into computers becausewe preferred living as virtual selves, but exhibited such violentbehaviour there the computers, which had become sentient,decided for the good of the planet and

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-67821504955992458642007-09-02T03:15:00.000Z2007-09-02T03:25:02.606Z

'All was well', the closing words of J.K. Rowling's magical bonanza, can by trifling adjustment be made to read ALL I SELL.All I sell.I am not sure this has not been remarked on previously. But, children, go figure. Go do the goddamn math.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-50693639110538825552007-08-31T16:08:00.000Z2007-08-31T16:41:07.191Z

after MullenThat nothing’s random. (Hear the laughter in man-slaughter!) That I’m a reluctant Liberal.That the best things in life are unrewarded.That Bad Taste is tolerable, if it’s jokingAt YOUR expense. That I’ve never yetLusted after sex and conversationWith the same person. That I’ve masturbatedLike a billion times, with no regrets,But had sex with three women only — and —Regret two-thirds

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-67534239731781566022007-08-14T12:36:00.000Z2007-10-05T14:07:42.703Z

I was going to review Cultural Amnesia (he should have called it Not Forgotten), an extraordinary book I'd recommend anyone, but the idea sort of withered. Here's a squib instead.A clue to his thinking behind the book comes when I ask him how he rates his poetry. “I rate it very highly, actually,” says James, who reserves his self-deprecation for the things that don’t matter to him. “And it’s

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-12546825903183553122007-08-11T23:57:00.000Z2007-08-13T04:27:29.000Z

On Reading Selected Poems Hill isn’t difficult as Donneis difficult. (He is of course obscure;that’s a given.) What he ísis opaque as black plastic, orMarmite in the delved parallelsenlisted to make enduringutterance of a tortured exaction –|||||||||but so disjunct,so clipped, drily hemmed, so tauthis pages are ourselvesgazing, reflected as we read.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-32154329029696553172007-08-10T22:33:00.000Z2007-08-10T22:41:39.149Z

On a Bluefly Buzzing at a TelevisionI sit bored in my parents’ house, vegetatingBetween university terms, addictedTo the sofa, watching a bluefly buzz.Life is little and sex sells. InnocenceIs normal. When the fly buzzes, it says:Sic transit Gloria. Rage and so onAgainst the dying of the light or something.I am Buzz Lightyear, Destroyer of Worlds!Hey, I don’t know. Nothing is better than this.The

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-41152389854665955492007-08-09T08:27:00.000Z2007-08-09T08:30:55.462Z

fellowship of balance unrest the starsmoody-hung & spread like towns –that galaxy of leadplanets, clouds of granite, upona buckling clavicleoppressed my arm.Half-drownd beltway flood the cork-strewn delta with oil with salt: floodthe tenpin alleys full of metal, wreckedrollcages, springs & seat-foam hailclouds;yr holed frames & popped bootssadly gappy, hanging wrong. Cross estatesslime parks

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-34748954153328341692007-08-07T06:22:00.000Z2007-08-10T08:44:14.431Z

Even though his was the streamlined horse with rocket engines, I cheered on Rupert Murdoch in the unfought race to acquire Dow Jones — and no, not because I'd bet on it. The pulsatile substance could be anything from coinage to malnourished bone, but I'm sure my heart is made of capitalism.It's not as if I read the Journal. I've read about it, and its hyperright opinionists, in the memorable

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-1271640465331025162007-08-06T04:12:00.000Z2007-08-06T04:14:54.174Z

What is the condition, actually, of a second-rate writer if not one of major rebuff? The first and merciless rebuff is inflicted upon him by the ordinary reader who simply refuses to relish the writer’s works. The second shameful rebuff is meted out to him by his own reality, which he has been unable to express. And the third rebuff, the most shameful of all and a real kick in the pants, is dealt

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-72920959139724315012007-08-06T00:14:00.000Z2007-08-06T02:02:53.430Z

Haven't you ever been scared you would not wake up? I have — every night. Every night I close my eyes and sleep escapes me. Because I'm scared. I can't let it steal me, not yet, not when I'm not ready. If I'm unconscious I lose control, I again relinquish part of myself to the unstoppable decay; I can't stomach that. So though I stay tired, christ, tired as night itself when it comes, I don't

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-14289149595444970502007-07-29T02:07:00.000Z2007-08-01T03:32:05.687Z

Sirs,In his column on Howard Jacobson David Baddiel does not deign to give analysis, preferring to trumpet evaluation. We already knew that some people liked Kalooki Nights and some didn't; all Baddiel adds is he liked it. Does this betray overweening confidence in the weighty value of his name, as attached to his opinion? The morsel of evidence he does offer is praised for its 'quantum

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-29169786554964931512007-07-04T02:14:00.000Z2007-07-13T02:41:22.793Z

First: You bastards. Not one of you responded to my call for essayists. Will I really have to write most of OP myself, like Paul last year?I'm composing pseudonyms already – the less amusing the better.One recent lexical obsession: Scanglish. Which has maybe to do with Wilcox-McCandlish.(1) Our fascination: the ills of America. (2) Ironic that religion wishes us perfectible while exemplifying

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-73926844922255669562007-06-19T12:18:00.000Z2007-06-23T16:35:26.445Z

The scale of it was unspeakable. It crowded forests out of topographic drawings, citykillers off seismographs, the coal-fired powerstations of China out of pollution statistics; one 'day' even the sun out of sunrise. And this is only to refer to it by what it displaced. A scholarly few reckon its pervasiveness was then such that every sixth breath would inspire particles of it, as every ninth

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-40853246261143780722007-06-15T15:36:00.000Z2007-07-04T00:41:42.234Z

People –yearly magazine/journal OXFORD POETRY is lookingfor brilliant critics to write a few medium-lengthreview-features to fill our 2008 issue. If you'rea remarkably astute reader in possession of a wreckingball prose style (NO PRISONERS) you might just bethe kind of shithot potato we want. Think James Wood.Think Thirlwell – without ponderously affected simpleness.Think n+1, Edmund Wilson, JOHN

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-37903109182328640022007-06-03T01:10:00.002Z2008-11-27T21:59:20.820Z

IA poet this good is a genus; a hydra-headed mob; a lord unto himself. Why late Hill is a genus can be explained thus —Genus = ‘genius’ without the ‘I’.Openly cribbing from Whitman, A Treatise of Civil Power ‘contains multitudes’. The term genus refers to the three scales in ancient Greek music.Genus crops up in Horace’s phrase genus irritabile vatum, which the OED cites as a reference to ‘the

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-6635548004206893632007-06-02T03:32:00.000Z2007-06-02T04:55:46.977Z

Poetry memorable speech? Poetry's not speech, it is writing, & though it might aspire to memorability, most of it — even if great — goes unremembered: that's why we need books. Of course, being or wanting to be memorable are not the same as being re- membered, but if you mean to define poetry as such, & the fact is most poetry fails as such, your definition fails too. We don't define things by

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-77275506994573027362007-05-25T15:27:00.000Z2007-05-25T16:47:03.799Z

[...] Langgasse,in Danzig, sparked a short fuse. The massedhakenkreuz-banners appeared as machine-freshrobust street-hangings, crests of the phalanx,terror’s new standards. I do not recall which death-camp it was that sheltered Goethe’s oakinside the perimeter. I cannottell you who told me or in what footnote it sat hidden. This and other disjectamembra, the abused here drawntogether with pain

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-35358959448604093762007-05-14T03:33:00.000Z2007-12-01T22:49:54.511Z

[I hope to write on prosaical prose, on sound — same thing my Owl article's about. I'm helplessly obsessed by it, & reading GH properly just aggravated that. it's very hard to explain. I SEE sound. when sentences are 'imperfect' in rhythm or musical quality I want to cut or change words to set them right by an idiosyncratic, Hill-derived standard. it's worst when I'm the writer: I can't stand

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-84561915825949270802007-05-11T18:51:00.000Z2007-06-19T23:19:58.061Z

Literary criticism, as I have learned from Dr. Johnson, is the art of making the implicit finely explicit —Harold Bloom& why not criticism tout court?There's a singersongwriter whose career I follow with rapt interest (I was first a fan of her poems); her second newest song's called 'Swim Thru', & I've been drawn to write about it. Problem is, according to a soon published (in The Owl) essay, I'm

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-10932113746116282152007-05-04T18:46:00.000Z2007-06-19T23:20:36.951Z

Gorgeous reader, if you don’t live inside the ringroad you mightn’t have had the chance to bag a copy of the latest Oxford Poetry (published this February), whose editor is PITCH supremo Paul T. Abbott & whose attractions can be as little overrated as they can resisted & whose blushless plug will be pulled with one LINKY to the order form. Follow it.

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-69891514610136052792007-05-01T16:30:00.000Z2007-06-19T23:23:28.005Z

(Tone & the signals of intention: two forms of doggerel)The two poems on which I’ll be writing were submitted this Easter to Oxford Poetry at Magdalen College: one (‘DOSSING DOWN WITH DEATH AGAIN / ASKED THE DRIFTERS FROM DISASTER’ by Robert Mills), inside a book-length manuscript with a ‘Volume the Second’ accompanying it, for publication in the journal, and the other (‘Jemima’ by Marian

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-18306911533509305122007-04-27T04:32:00.000Z2007-04-28T03:50:19.651Z

(very-short-stories)The Kisses‘I want to kiss you till there’s nowhere left of you to kiss.’ &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp She appears to assent, so, holding her small body, he pecks a trail down her chest until she bats him away, one leg playfully outstretched. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp ‘God. I want to defile

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-13816282701354764532007-04-20T17:25:00.000Z2007-05-18T03:18:17.985Z

(very-short-story)‘To be or not to be’, the book reads. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The critic frowns, & picks up his pen. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp He writes: ‘Hamlet questions the value of being.’ &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp He crosses it out, unsatisfied, & stares

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-70329594917891491852007-04-20T11:58:00.000Z2007-04-20T12:06:58.634Z

Trinity TermUndergraduates in summer&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Having sex and playing sportGrow sick of their diploma &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp And the lectures they are taughtSick for idleness and sunshine&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Sick for soggy chips and beerFor the moped streets of London&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp For a flat and a careerOxford is over, and overdone &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Only the Old will preserve itBut we, my love, we are

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-71641560381951198602007-04-18T03:18:00.000Z2007-08-16T19:24:16.135Z

From The Guardian:The tragedy at Virginia Tech shocked and saddened the community in the state and far beyond, and once again raised issues about America's relaxed gun laws. George Bush went on air to say that when the sanctity of schools was violated, "the impact is felt in every American classroom and community".But earlier in the day his spokeswoman in Washington was forced to justify his

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-10459579506554902282007-04-16T04:51:00.000Z2007-04-18T01:48:53.889Z

(on ‘Against Email’)n+1 is the only magazine that strikes me as being of the 21st century. It is also the only magazine I’ve read (and I hope this isn’t merely the result of having read not many magazines) more than half of whose articles induced in me a sense of exhilaration – of exhilarating relevance, and of exhilarating disclosure. By this I mean that n+1 tends to tell or show me things about

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-10140787760031116662007-04-04T01:48:00.000Z2007-04-04T06:12:05.126Z

A fraction of PITCH is sad. (The others are somewhere in Hampshire, or London.) Always the hireling of our audience, we were saddened to find we had none. This information, presented by Google Analytics with its cold uninvolvement, we found a grim affront. Though it may be blameable on our infrequency posting, PITCH would prefer to think our heterodox, no-prisoners take on modern poetry has

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-49362274721523474862007-03-22T01:37:00.000Z2007-04-19T02:14:31.132Z

At the age of 20, MORGAN lost faith. He was an IT Engineer for a large digital corporation. He worked, he ate, he slept, he played Half-Life and Deus Ex. He tried not to think about the God he didn't believe in. And so on. It was something.Then one day, he had a vision.The vision was this.The Rhyme of the I.T. EngineerWhen I’m encrypted into my coffinAnd the mechanical crickets are hummingAs if

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-32003736210459932972007-03-14T02:18:00.000Z2007-03-14T10:31:05.698Z

There are a sort of blundering half-witted people, who make a great deal of noise about a verbal slip; though Horace would instruct them better in true criticism: [I shall not quarrel with those faults which we caused either by carelessness or human weakness]. True judgement in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and where the beauties are

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-66107936968074615442007-03-08T06:42:00.000Z2007-03-15T01:01:09.882Z

We at PITCH are editors as much as makers. If we catch a glint of quality in poems we are sent, occasionally we will attempt to sluice out the dross so as better to expose what good we believe is present. We edit by instinct, not by ideal – which is perhaps foolish, foolhardy. We do not know. Reader, why not judge for yourself?The bamboo trapFor Ishikawa Jozan, who set a bamboo trapto keep the

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-37959881077020631752007-03-07T01:58:00.000Z2007-03-08T00:50:36.366Z

At this season, and in this city, the air is tense and chill with spring. Oxford is never really quiet; and now the gathering rooks, as raucous as clockwork, are beginning to tangle and untidy the branches of the high trees in the Meadows and in Magdalen deer-park. Our winter sleep has been short this year, and not deep. Autumn lasted until Boxing Day and beyond; the cold snap which brought

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-55215096679715062272007-03-06T07:04:00.000Z2007-06-11T20:11:05.530Z

the failure of the roster of commentators, in last month's Guardian feature on whom we might anoint our 'greatest living author', even to mention Geoffrey Hill in that context. We were surprised & saddened at the omission, for the only poets they did bring up were Edwin Morgan, Michael Longley (an Irishman) and Zbigniew Herbert (a Pole, and dead) – Edwin Morgan, to risk the Bloomian rasp, has

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-50628600155484409882007-03-05T16:26:00.000Z2007-03-06T07:29:03.711Z

Tabloids are a symptom of society's ills. Tabloids = the Death of Culture. Tabloids are black-mouthed parasites on public life, massive with blood —Or so runs the complaint.We don't accept it. Why denigrate publications with so broad a readership? Why begrudge the tabloids their giant audience, their stuffed barrels of cash? All you do is insult those who see fit to pay 35p every day for a

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-27899967752980384042007-03-05T11:35:00.010Z2011-05-06T16:51:29.658Z

Love-making is a game you win by losing. Yes! Yes! Yes! Only the insecure describe themselves as serious. Doing things properly is the grubby utilitarianism of middle management. Technology perpetuates. Style is all-inclusive. Like a cheapo package holiday. The chameleon who can’t change his skin is unfulfilled. Most of our brain is idiotic. Therefore, we can be mostly swayed by

PITCH reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16296115270992431558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1127677456239025262.post-89106680595967259712007-03-05T05:39:00.000Z2007-03-14T02:16:22.053Z

To fit the meter to the thought is a very difficult art and one the neglect of which is in large part responsible for the ludicrousness of verse. Meter and thought are related to each other as, in ordinary life, life-style is to office.With our fashionable poets it is easy to see how the word has produced the thought; with Milton and Shakespeare the thought always begets the word.As soon as one

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by Paul AbbottPoetry in Oxford is like horseshit on a bridleway: you can’t go anywhere without putting your foot in it. The creative tailback of teenage angst, the nursed ambitions of wannabe aesthetes, a plethora of backbiting Colossi to whom we do or don't look up (McDonald, O’Donoghue, Paulin, Raine, McNeillie, etc) – all these conspire to make Oxford brim with the stuff. It may not be

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