The Bookshop Blogger #18
Now That's What I Call Poetry? J.E. finds the top 10 of poems
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
I’m sure that if I worked in a record shop friends would hum tunelessly at me before asking “What’s that song called?” If it was a clothes shop they would doubtless ask if their bum looked big in this or that outfit. As I work in a book shop I am asked about books, and I enjoy the game:
“Have you got that book by that Danish chap? You know, The Girl Who Kicked Dragons?”
“Swedish.” I reply, “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo? Or The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest?”
“No, I’m pretty sure he’s Danish…”
It’s fine and I really don’t mind. What I can’t stand, and this has nothing to do with the person asking the question, is when people ask me what anthology a poem is in. It drives me crazy, simply because it’s virtually impossible to find out!
Obviously, if an anthology is called Poems of the First World War, then it is bound to include Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. That’s fine. But even this is fraught, because for every Dulce at Decorum Est there’s a Boom, Boom, Boom by Private Baldrick.
Then there are the people who know a line - usually they half know a line - and expect you to know the poem and where they can find it in an anthology of general poetry - not even the collected works of that poet. Which is impossible, of course, but two things would make this aspect of my life infinitely preferable: firstly, if there was a database of poetry anthologies and secondly (and possibly even better) if there was a cap on the anthologies brought out, as a way of quality control.
We have all bought a compilation CD for the one piece of music we like and poetry anthologies are just the same. The rest is all filler or duplication. What we need is more thought when compiling these books (or CDs). Is that too much to ask?
So, I am going to leave you with three of my favourites: Being Alive: The Sequel To Staying Alive, compiled by Neil Astley (the founder of Bloodaxe Books.) If you think that modern poetry is boring, gloomy or elitist this will change your mind - great modern poems from the world’s great modern poets, from the popular to the ones you’ve never heard of, but who will become your new favourites! Actually, I am going to recommend you read Staying Alive as well and by the time you’ve finished that one, the third instalment Being Human might be out – so, three recommendations for the price of one!
For those people who remember that half a line, Anna Sampson’s I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud: And Other Poems You Half Remember From School is the book for you - it’s poetry lite, or maybe Now That’s What I Call Poetry. The Oxford Book Of English Verse does the same sort of thing but with a slightly more upmarket cover.
Finally, Read Me And Laugh: A Funny Poem For Every Day Of The Year edited by Gaby Morgan is perfect for children; make them laugh and they’ll enjoy poetry forever, bore them rigid and they’ll never want to look at it again.
