Editorial

Jun201201

Written by U.S. Dhuga

THE
BATTERSEA
REVIEW

We are a late blooming generation. In the poets in this first issue of the Battersea Review you will find disparate strains of modernism, romanticism, post-scientific discourse, the disaffectation of a post-modernist world and its ensuing cultural fatigue, and the remnants of a toppled traditionalism, all bundled together into greater or lesser degrees of an intense lyricism that is highly personal and individual with each poet, and yet never backs off from a thorough-going engagement with the world, whether real or unreal, like or unlike the inherited traditions. In the lyricism of a Nikolayev the cynicism is so great, and the lyricism so pronounced, as to never entirely renounce the targets of its irony, as the plain and seemingly innocent Romanticism of a Joe Green slyly longs for much that we have lost or renounced in our disaffectation from traditions. Katia Kapovich gives us the ugliness and humour of life as it is for a dissident expatriate from Moldova, now long-adjusted to life in these States, while the youthful but precociously jaded Stephen Sturgeon stands—if at the most extreme opposition of rebellion—for the most extreme type of individual repect for the ages of tradition which have preceded us, perhaps left us stranded. Word play here is dexterous and significant, as is a canny sultated knowledge of the forms and the traditions. This is an aesthetic poetry—a poetry of sense and experience—and owes a great deal to the still incompletely recognized experimentations and urgent convictions of the poets who made the pages of Fulcrum possibly the most exciting and fertile literary magazine of the first decade of this century. There are younger poets and less familiar names here as well—Ernest Hilbert, Kathleen Rooney, Ailbhe Darcy, Mario Murgia, Nora Delaney, Matthew Silverman, English poet Richard Brammer. Time will tell what they have to offer us as we proceed deeper into the twenty-first century—but we are pleased to offer some of their earlier efforts here with a look towards the future. We must examine and scrutinize these poets for signs of that which is most individual and genuine in the poetry of our time. Poetry for us is not dead; it has hardly begun.

 

Stephen Burt is a critic and a Harvard professor whose inner life finds need for an outlet in poetry. Jeet Thayil, who lived for some time in New York, is perhaps the finest Indian poet writing in English today. Todd Swift is a born Canadian who has made England his home. Many of these poets are editors, such as John Hennessy, who currently edits poetry for the Amherst Common. This is an educated bunch. Greg Delanty comes from Ireland and writes entire books of the Greek Anthology that never existed. The elaborate, yet teasingly simple, constructions of a Mark Schorr require us to look more deeply at the misleading vicissitudes of appearance. Gerard Malanga is a cultural icon about whom nothing needs to be said. The erudite Robert Archambeau is struggling in the most positive sense between the polarities of modernism and post-modernism, with a firm eye on our times. These are the best poets we could find (we wonder if a literary magazine ever came together so quickly—we would be ashamed to confess how quickly) and we not only intend to stay and to continue to do so, but we also hope to obtain the highest calibre of prose criticism about poetry that we can find,—in this issue James Reidel's most fascinating and suggestive examination of the darker side of Weldon Kees' story (and what got left out of Reidel's well-known biography of Kees), Nora Delaney's (Nora is a student of critical editions at the Editorial Institute of Boston University) examination of Archie Burnett's accomplished new critical edition of the poetry of Philip Larkin, and Mario Murgia's (born and raised and residing in Mexico but of Italian descent) exquisite discourse on translating Ariosto of the Furioso. And the editors of this magazine—we leave it to you, curious reader, to decide who they are, and why they have brought all this on us. With the Battersea Review you can expect surprises, and a serious engagement with poetic and aesthetic issues. Other poets than those exhibited here will grace the pages of future issues. We hope to entertain, to give pleasure, and to raise stimulating questions by practical example as to what can be the meaning of poetry in our time. We thank you for having a look.

 

Oh, a few late additions to the proceedings: a brilliant essay by Marjorie Perloff on Picasso/Stein/Duchamp, Todd Swift on the forgotten Terence Tiller, a reel of poems by David Meltzer, and poems by Adam Kirsch. Word has gotten out, and there is the feeling that this is going to be something special. We certainly think so.

 

                                                                                         USD & BM, May 2012.