‘On Poetry ’ by Glynn Maxwell

“This is a book for anyone” reads the first line of Glyn Maxwell’s collection of essays entitled ‘On Poetry. ’

A strong start, with a simple declarative sentence making a short paragraph: friendly, welcoming, and straightforward. The first essay is called ‘White ’ and seems to cover the idea of enjoying a poem and its content on a page. Maxwell uses direct address and a formal conversational tone, to make the reader feel at ease and show that poetry is for all, as well as an extended metaphor of a jungle to represent both life and poetry. This use of natural imagery entices the reader by turning the prose into poetry: ‘You see an open space with trees whose branches spread out near the ground and bear fruit. ’ The use of visual imagery, such as the line ‘imagine whiteness, a blank sheet of paper, the white screen… ’ makes the reader feel supported in their quest to learn more about poetry, although the repeated use of imperative verbs does begin to feel wearing.

In his next essay,

‘Black’ , Maxwell focuses on the words themselves, personifying them, instructing the reader to ‘ calm the excitable metaphor down: it’ s our servant after all. ’ Maxwell analyses the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a well-known poem, with language that often appears daunting. However, Maxwell creates a character for the reader to appeal to guide them through the poem: he describes the mariner himself, giving him ‘ a seafarer ’ s voice, Cornish. ’ Unfortunately, Maxwell then decided to divide poems and rank them by four (highly subjective) characteristics: visual, musical, lunar and solar. Whilst an argument could be made that, given that interpreting words on a page is highly subjective, the criteria for examining them should be too, I would argue that this only strengthens the need to have a quantifiable, physical manner of examining poetry.

My favourite essay by far was ‘Form ’ (which investigated the importance of form in poetry.) Maxwell discusses the idea that if ‘You master form you master time. ’ We all want to be remembered, but our ideas, once published, are out of our control. However, the use of form at least allows us to ensure that the order we kept our ideas in remains constant. We cannot control time itself, but

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can control the rate at which people read our words and perceive our message. The use of enjambment, for example, forces the reader to take a breath, whilst also disorienting them slightly.

Enjambment is one of the methods W.H. Auden, one of Maxwell’ s most prominent influences, uses in his poem ‘Doggerel by a Senior Citizen. ’ A wry analysis of the dissatisfaction and loneliness suffered by many elderly people, in which a rigid form and structure mimic the monotonous repetitiveness of life in a care home, whilst rhyming couplets provide a cynical tone, which juxtaposes the poem ’ s meaning. ‘My Eden landscapes and their climes/construct from Edwardian times. ’ This draws the reader closer to the poet, and, by association, those forgotten care home residents, as we realise that we ’ re all being haunted by ‘family ghosts ’ , whose stories are intertwined with our own.

This discordant structure plays into Auden ’ s reputation as an ‘ anti-romantic ’ , and I presume falls under the category of musically gifted in Maxwell’ s eyes. From this, parallels can be drawn with Maxwell’ s own poetry. In his poem ‘Anything but the Case ’ , he shows his frustration at the fluidity of time, ‘Time the clerk/ Goes panting in horror from gremlin to error to glitch/And his screen is stripes and he knows he saved his work/In one of a billion files but f*** knows which. ’ This anger at our own human weakness makes the reader feel Maxwell’ s pain, as they remember the times they spent with loved ones, not remembering that it could be their last, and so letting those precious moments slip away. Similarly, Emily Dickinson (another poet Maxwell credits as an inspiration), also used paradoxes and structure to provide the reader with a morosely comedic tone in her poem ‘I felt a Funeral in my Brain. ’ Here, she scrutinizes the pain caused by mental illness through the use of an extended metaphor about funerals. Like any good poet, this is still relevant today. Where Maxwell uses an extended metaphor of a jungle and the life buzzing within it, Dickinson uses death and mourning.

To conclude, renaming this collection ‘GCSE English: an unhelpful crash course in poetry ’ would be more appropriate. Whilst I do not regret reading this, as it provided me with an opportunity to learn more about poetry, reading Shelley next to Hopkins and Auden next to Dickenson, it would have been easier to randomly select a poem on the ‘Poetry Foundation' website, than to plough through reams of self-congratulatory material, in which Maxwell belittles ‘beginner ’ poetry readers, almost bragging about the fact that ‘I don ’t teach prosody ’ as for a ‘ young writer ’ it is ‘like putting a rock in their way ’ . Nevertheless, it was interesting to explore the impact of different poets ’ use of the same technique.