Book Reviews - Review 327

This book contains a series of lectures that James Fenton delivered during his time as Oxford Professor of Poetry. Most of it consists of analyses of the work of individual poets: Wilfred Owen, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, D H Lawrence and W H Auden. In each case, Fenton is illuminating and insightful, never resorting to one-sided theories to try to find something new to say, but focussing on the personalities and biographies of the poets, and the light these shed on their work. He doesn't shy away from candid criticism of their weaker work, even where the poet was still alive at the time of writing (in the case of Seamus Heaney); and without being mean-spirited, he offers trenchant insight into the often difficult, and sometimes impossible, personalities of artists.

As a former foreign correspondent for the Independent, Fenton is also good in his analyses of the political dimensions of poetry, emphasising that politics can be a minefield for poets when it tempts them to adopt simplistic, rhetorical stances on subjects that are in fact complex and often morally ambiguous.

The first lecture, "A Lesson from Michelangelo", is a more general contemplation of the relationships between established and up-coming poets (and artists in general); concentrating on the relationship between Wordsworth and Keats, Fenton shows that encouragement may be the last thing a talented young poet can expect from his seniors, jealous of their status and their egos inflated by adulation.

Unpretentious, informative and broad-ranging, Fenton's criticism is among the best around. Unlike many poets, he doesn't deny the life of an artist insight into their work. Poetry is, after all, the most personal of art forms, and while knowledge of the background of a poem can't make you like it more, it can make you appreciate it more if liking is given.