Review: POETRY: Leaving the shore: David Wheatley praises a charmingly elusive poet of wit, weight and erotic playfulness: Hodge by Oliver Reynolds 64pp, Arete Books, pounds 7.99

[Craig Raine] now publishes him again under his own Arete banner, as he did with [Christopher Reid]'s A Scattering last year. In Almost [Oliver Reynolds] coined the word "landsickness", and in the untitled opening poem of Hodge he again inverts our ideas of the fixed and the fluid: as...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Guardian (London)
Main Author Wheatley, David
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 06.11.2010
Subjects
Raine, Craig
Reid, Christopher
Reynolds, Oliver
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Summary:[Craig Raine] now publishes him again under his own Arete banner, as he did with [Christopher Reid]'s A Scattering last year. In Almost [Oliver Reynolds] coined the word "landsickness", and in the untitled opening poem of Hodge he again inverts our ideas of the fixed and the fluid: as a journey starts, "the shore / is leaving / the ship". With its careful quatrains, "Brazil" echoes that great poet of displacement, Elizabeth Bishop, though even Bishop's exoticism drew the line at having the inhabitants of that country speak "Brazilian". Cultures rise and fall, leaving mysterious messages in their wake, such as the "slow-parsing cuneiform" of "Tower". Inevitably in a Reynolds poem, the price-tag of these monuments of civilisation is barbarism. "A Brief History of Criticism" records an imperial response to Apollodorus's critical comments on the Temple of Venus: "Hadrian / had him / hanged". Dictators and their whims loom large in Reynolds's imagination: "Dear Angelo" describes Sixtus V's erection of the obelisk in St Peter's square, "Goethe Twice" invokes the "nervy qualms / of a Quisling", and "Democracy Comes to Iraq" articulates a tyrant's murky efforts at self-justification.
ISSN:0261-3077