An occasion for shrieking? 65

Rumens and Fenton, even in Paulin and Muldoon. Plainly this is part of a larger phenomenon, the upsurge in British nationalism, the drift even further from Europe, the endless right-wing wounding of the democratic sensibility: to this extent, indeed, much of the poetry touted in this book implicitly panders to little-Britishness. But if there is indeed an underlying unity in British poetry today, it is in the complex relationship it has with modernism, a relationship that adopts and abhors at the same moment. Hence the curious blends of sophistication and simplicity which we often see in these poets, hence the frequently curious matchings of form and theme, hence even the issuing forth of an awareness of fictionality not into abortive post-modernist fantasy-projections and dislocation but into ’freedom’, ‘daring’ and that ‘new confidence in the poetic imagination’. Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion have assuredly Seen the signs, but perhaps they have not read them thoughtfully enough.

In closing I should emphasise that, warts and all, this anthology &es contain enough attractive poems to make it a bargain at the price, and those who want somewhere to begin finding their bearings in current British poetry ought to buy it, however great the critic’s reservations . . .

MICHAEL O’NEILL

Han dwritin g ’Strange’, you murmur with a smile of insight While deciphering ego-ridden loops That throng the margins of my student Auden. So much hot air buoyed up those inked balloons!

Do you glimpse what I must have been? Do I? As if a trap-door opened, I’m plunged back Between stark walls I know. A gas-fire whistles Through solipsistic teeth. A young man turns

Page after page with tense, devouring fury. He‘s too absorbed to notice when I leave. Just one more tenant occupying the room

Of my life? When you say, ‘I think I like Your hard-to-read, collapsed script better’, I smile And stare towards identity’s abyss.