[Adam Elgar]

Tim, your grief at the loss of your friend the artist deserves great sympathy, but it can’t dictate another person’s response to the art. As for whether or not a poet of my insignificance deserves to express an opinion on Michael Donaghy, well Sam Johnson had the answer to that. To a man who said we shouldn’t find fault with Milton because we couldn’t do anything as good ourselves, Johnson replied, “No sir, you may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table. It is not your trade to make tables.” However rickety my tables may be, I am allowed to find fault with another man’s, no matter how eminent.

David, I have no doubt that your essay is admirable. My problem is that that I’m feeling railroaded by the number of encomia that have come out since MD’s death and the appearance of the collected works. If I am told many more times why I must admire him, I’ll end up chewing the carpet. Donaghy is the one recent writer whose entire oeuvre I’ve read, some poems half a dozen times in the past few months. I’ve given him my best shot. Enough, enough.

Brian I don’t know where I’ve seen the Paterson “translations” – Poetry Review, I think, and maybe the London Review of Books. Janice is the oracle, all right.

And Janice, welcome back! How are you???

[John Hutchcraft]

Originally Posted by Adam Elgar

This tendency to undercut, to wrong-foot the reader, is essential to his art, a signature feature. You either like it or you don’t, but it is hugely significant. In this he is thoroughly Post-modern, but I’m an unreconstructed Modernist, and I find the PoMo thing distasteful on the whole.

Well, that's the nub of it, isn't it? Labels and judgments aside, I think Adam's right that one of MD's "signature feature[s]" - is to engage in a sort of trickery. Of course, MD himself knew this, and set out to do it consciously. That his work is shot through with magicians and magic tricks (as well as jokes, another form of misdirection) is not accidental. Speaking of "signature features," see also 'Smith': "Every signature's a trick we learn to do consistently, like Queequeg's cross or Whistler's butterfly." Donaghy's work is in many ways about indirectness, about falseness - if that's what you'd like to call performance, artifice, wit. As you say, one likes it or one doesn’t. I appreciate your taking the time to lay out a dissenting view in what amounts to hostile territory. As one who finds the PoMo thing to be, well, an inescapable part of living life in the 21st century, I don’t share your distaste for MD, and actually find that it confirms what I’ve suspected – that he is a representative poet for our time.

The Paterson poem I think suffers in comparison. The self-conscious allusion to Dante, the overt sentimentality, the bizarre moment of machismo – ugh. The last line I think aims for a cheap shock and, sadly, succeeds. I find it all a bit maudlin, a bit too direct. I read Haunts as Chris does – in fact, precisely as he does, insofar as he’s described his reading – and think it operates much more subtly. Personal knowledge of MD’s early death almost inescapably adds a layer of resonance, though I feel confident that MD himself would cringe at such a biographical reading. I think his defenders, of whom I am one, do him a disservice by emphasizing his biography or personality – MD himself repeatedly stated that they had no real place in reading his work, which is, I think, impersonal in the best sense, much as MD designed it. Haunts of course reads much the same as a poem from any father to any son, or at least from a fictive father to his son. That being said, one need not impute the power of prophecy to say that MD “knew” he would die young, which is to say, he had a reasonable fear of it, given his medical history. Again, though, I emphasize that the poems simply don’t need this sort of information.

In any event, as I said before, thank you, Adam, for expressing a dissenting view. I feel sure that MD’s work can withstand criticism, and yours has been as articulate and cogent as one could hope.

[Adam Elgar]

Many thanks, John. Much appreciated. And that's a very fine analysis of the Paterson.

I should add that there are at least a dozen Donaghy poems, maybe even twenty, that I like very much. For a reader as hard to please as I am, that's a pretty good proportion.

[John Hutchcraft]

Yes, Adam, a dozen poems is a pretty high hit rate, particularly considering that MD completed only three books. What I'm really waiting for is criticism that makes sense of the entirety of MD's ouvre, not just the dozen or so pieces that critics consistently return to, which tend to be (with the exception of Black Ice & Rain) shortish lyrics, often in traditional forms. I think it's worth noting that MD was a strange kind of formalist - he paid a ton of attention to form, and even to tradition, but his notion of both was capacious enough for his books to include, for instance, prose poetry. I know a number of ardent defenders of Donaghy who actually agree with you - that there's about a dozen good poems, and a lot of dross. I think his work is far more even than that suggests. His taste, I think, was broader than that of his critics, most of whom read him as a much more conventional traditionalist than he really was.

Ah, well. Thanks for the discussion. Life outside calls, so bye for now.

[Chris Childers]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

This isn't premonitory. It is certainty. Michael knew he was not long for this world, and I knew it too. I clasped him to my chest and said goodbye.

Hey, as I said, I didn't know him. I don't think I even encountered his poetry, or much of it, until people started posting it after news of his death. Anyway, MD's early death makes "Haunts" a better poem, so it figures in my reading.

By the way, I agree with Clay. It has been useful to me to look at the specific moments in Donaghy to which you object and to think about them. Plus, I've enjoyed it. So, thanks for the discussion, Adam.

[Tim Murphy]

Adam, I owe you an apology, and it is tendered.

[Rory Waterman]

I actually reviewed Rain for Agenda, though I'd rather none of you read it, as it is rickety and contains at least one horrible error ('always not' for 'not always'. Ouch). I think Rain is a very fine book, though I wish Paterson's poems didn't so frequently have a tendency to withdraw at the last minute. The title poem is a good example. It is beautifully written, starts with a punch or ten, but boils down to a vague and disappointing nothing ('And none of this, none of this, matters', or something like that). A little masterpiece pedestrianised. Some of the poems are masterful, though. 'The Swing', for example, or 'Two Trees'. And the Donaghy sequence is one of the most powerful 'new' poems I've read in a long time. He's less good when he tries to be too clever, or abstruse. I'm not sure what some of his poems mean and they don't make me want to work them out. The blank poem is a little too papery for my tastes. Actually, when you know who it is about even that wins you over.

I think God's Gift to Women was one of the first poetry books I bought at the time it came out. I was about sixteen. I've lapped up Paterson's books ever since, and always felt the same burning admiration tinged with irritation. Yes, he knows how to win prizes. A friend of mine was one of his MA students at St Andrews. Apparently Paterson is the most ruthlessly motivated and driven individual he's ever met. When I saw him give a reading a few months ago he was charming, but read very badly at about six decibels. A fairly severe cold certainly didn't help him. Still, he stuck it out and so did we.

As for the rhymes and metrical quirks and kinks: the only more famous poetical Dundonian is, of course, a certain William McGonagall. And I think he (er, Paterson) is a fine critic. I love the essay in his sonnet anthology, though I presume some here would disagree about his definition of what counts as a sonnet.

Rory

[Maryann Corbett]

Sometimes, by sheer dumb luck and not knowing enough to be timid, I manage to ask a question that gets people flashing insights around in the wildest ways. I lucked out this time, and I have to express my gratitude.

But don't let this stop you!

[Adam Elgar]

Tim, thank you. I likewise mean no offence in my overstatements - I usually do a better job of separating the personal from the artistic, and will try to do so in future.

Rory, what you say about Don P is very enlightening. I might find it hard to resist reading your review in spite of your wishes!

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Wowie! Well, I heard about this one on the grapevine & thought I'd poke my head in.

Adam, I think I detect a change in your tone from the beginning of the thread; I admit I was shocked at the personal insults - for example, the quoting of an unnamed person who had once done something with Donaghy and "found him thoroughly obnoxious!" This seems a bit snide and secondhand. For the record, though I also know exactly what you mean when you refer to the outpourings etc - to which my couple of essays probably count as contributions - for the record, Donaghy was eccentric, he was a strong personality - though not forceful in the same way as, say, O'Brien - he could be difficult, impossible, drunk, he could be clueless, he would cadge drinks, he was certainly a worry! But it is hard to imagine him being even remotely "obnoxious." He never got in anyone's face.

The love of tricks, illusions and trickery was emphatically not coldness or "PoMo" gameplaying. It comes from a fascination with the mind itself. He loved Borges and the Renaissance Memory Palace, and mnemonics, and little gadgets, and machines. That's why he wrote about them, and constructed his poems like them, and wrote about the nature of thought and knowing and memory and being. Paterson wrote a thing in the paper the other week saying MD has been "caricatured as some kind of charming modern metaphysical", which I think is also a wilful misreading. Metaphysics isn't about being "charming," it's about relating one kind of knowledge to - or through - another. Science and feelings. It isn't a caricature to aply the word to Donaghy; some of his poetry is specifically metaphysical; it's another kind of conjuring. DP was lamenting the cult of personality that's grown up, too, though over half his article was about it, so he was also perpetuating it. There is a definite probem with this posthumous reputation, just as there was - and I'm not making spurious biggings-up here! - with Keats'. The friends were too vociferous; there were spats and feuds; each of them sought to control the Keats he himself remembered. There's a fascinating book about it, Posthumous Keats, and it fills me with a kind of despair.

Now, I'm not saying anyone has to like the poetry. Like a few others here I feel the best of the work will stand. And trying to please everyone is the surest route to hell. But to dislike it properly would be much better - for the sake of the disliker! - than just saying it's difficult and tricksy and anyway he can't possibly have been as sweet as everyone says. Chris Childers has read "Haunts" absolutely accurately, and quite elegantly in fact. The tone is complicated. Donaghy understood the idiom all right. His touch is featherlight and he never lays on the explanation for free at the end.

John Hurchcraft's remark about readers having a narrower frame of reference than the poet is also spot on. Donaghy had a bigger frame of reference - he simply knew more - than anyone I've ever met, and I was brought up by Russian New York intellectuals. If he was clever, he was clever for himself. To impute to him some sort of shallow, showy-offy impulse would be completely wrong.

I also agree with John H's read of Waking With Russell. I can never see it without thinking: "But you're waking among BABIES!" Damn it.

Anyway, 12-20 poems in an oeuvre that size is impressive, so if that's your idea of hating, Adam, I'm content with it! And MD's clearly got to you, for you to put so much effort into this.

I involved my esteemed other in this conversation and he had a comment, btw: he said he's never understood what's supposed to be wrong with "coldness" in art. He said: "Look at Leonardo! Mozart! Michelangelo! Dante!" There is a certain detachment which the BEST art has; all the heat and bluster can tend to burn a work out. I think it's the detachment - another metaphysical trait - that gives Michael's work it's phenomenal grace. He's not cold. He's just not shoving our faces in his feelings.