Gargoyle Poets 7 to 11

Abstract

One of the mixed blessings of recent accessibility of publishers to poets is the rise of the so-called popular poets. This occurs as publishers become more willing to take on poets who haven't yet become 'established'. With these rising stars there often emerges the tendency to startle rather than inform, to gesture rather than reveal. Because these poets may feel their position on the rising wave they may also seem fated to try to capture an audience, when they should be consolidating their art. And also, so much going by the name of poetry abounds. We feel bound to side with issues, explicate, locate, classify, identify. Who are the sincere ones, the misguided, the suicidal? Then there's the will to overcome. Systems emerge. The pocket is hooked into the circuit, and we have the literary industry.

But the old principles remain: art, truth, beauty. Order. Out of the group the voices emerge that rise above the others. The movement becomes the few tenacious names. These are the ones who have related to their culture; they have revealed it, shaped it, widened it. So that we may glimpse the roots we are so confidently destroying. 

The five slim volumes before me offer their contribution to what is such a wide field that they can only be regarded in terms of a common standard. When the poems are spoken of according to traditional values it means that, even though new poetry must be met on its own ground, it must also hold itself within its field, unless it wants to be thought of as something else.

Loves Voyages, Kris Hemensley (7)
A Waltz on Stones, John Griffin (8)
Madam Blackboots, Stefanie Bennett (9)
Saint Kilda Meets Hugo Ball, Eric Beach (10)
Living Alone Without a Dictionary, Carol Novack (11)