{"id":1107,"date":"2011-05-22T20:25:02","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T19:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2016-01-23T19:16:45","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T18:16:45","slug":"roy-fisher-selected-poems-ed-august-kleinzahler-flood-editions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1107","title":{"rendered":"Roy Fisher, <em>Selected Poems<\/em> ed. August Kleinzahler (Flood Editions)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><strong><span lang=\"EN-GB\"> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The first thing to say is that Fisher\u2019s texts have never been as well served on the page as they are here.<span> <\/span>The poems are given real space and the movement of Fisher\u2019s breath, rhythm and cadence is as clear as it possibly could be. Fisher has found a publisher who has finally done him proud, and that publisher happens to be American. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">That said, the volume\u2019s editor, August Kleinzahler has constructed a resolutely American Roy Fisher.<span> <\/span>In doing so, Kleinzahler has wrested away much of what makes Roy Fisher\u2019s poems very, very English.<span> <\/span>The most important loss is Fisher\u2019s very dry, very English irony.<span> <\/span>Fisher\u2019s light verse satires, often, but not only, on the poetry business itself, are totally absent from this book.<span> <\/span>Another absence from this book is much of Fisher\u2019s engagement with the British and European landscape \u2013 from ossuaries in Brittany to the landscapes of the English Midlands. And engagement with landscape and nature is also part of Fishers\u2019 intimate relation with British and European romanticism. What Kleinzahler shows, perhaps for the first time, is how Fisher uses the American poetic line, and how Fisher\u2019s eschewal of the regular stanza gives his writing such a transatlantic feel. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Kleinzahler selects a number of Fisher\u2019s poems about jazz musicians, largely but not exclusively American players;<span> <\/span>a selection that evidently mirrors one of Kleinzahler\u2019s own interests.<span> <\/span>What Kleinzahler suggests in this is how Fisher\u2019s aesthetic and poetic has, in part, emerged from his detailed, almost obsessive listening to the American piano style that emerged from Chicago and New Orleans in the thirties; and how that poetic returns again and again to engagement with both precision and ornamentation.<span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Kleinzahler selects most of the important pieces from the early middle period of Fisher\u2019s writing: \u2018After Working\u2019, \u2018For Realism\u2019, \u2018The Memorial Fountain\u2019 and \u2018Of the Empirical Self and Me\u2019, as well as a generous selection from Fisher\u2019s most recent book <em>Standard Midland<\/em>.<span> <\/span>He also includes strong selections from <em>City, The Ship\u2019s Orchestra <\/em>and a slightly odd section from <em>A Furnace, <\/em>which Kleinzahler himself acknowledges to be Fisher\u2019s masterpiece. In addition, Kleinzahler has included four pieces from <em>Interiors with Various Figures, <\/em>a book which is much undervalued in Fisher\u2019s writing. Thus, the reader new to Fisher, and that may well be the American audience to which this book is oriented, will find a good, strong collection of Fisher\u2019s work.<span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">One final comment:<span> <\/span>in his introduction, Kleinzahler describes Fisher\u2019s writing as \u2018the voice denuded of personality and with all the warmth of a lens, exploratory, restless, difficult:<span> <\/span>it is poetry almost entirely without charm.\u2019 That is simply not true.<span> <\/span>Fisher\u2019s poetry appeals to both sides of the poetic divide in British poetry because for the avant-garde it is indeed, \u2018exploratory, restless, difficult\u2019, but for the \u2018mainstream\u2019 it has immense charm.<span> <\/span>Fisher is witty, warm and often laugh-out-loud funny. It is the sheer range of his writing which propels him to the top of a lot of people\u2019s \u2018must-read\u2019 lists.<span> <\/span>Fisher is a very great poet, and, I suggest, won\u2019t go away.<span> <\/span>Buy this book as an excellent, <span> <\/span>basic introduction to Fisher\u2019s work and for its wonderful production values, then go to the collected, <em>The Long and the Short of It, <\/em>for the range of Fisher\u2019s immense achievement. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first thing to say is that Fisher\u2019s texts have never been as well served on the page as they are here. The poems are given real space and the movement of Fisher\u2019s breath, rhythm and cadence is as clear as it possibly could be. Fisher has found a publisher who has finally done him [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[40,112,216],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Roy Fisher, Selected Poems ed. August Kleinzahler (Flood Editions) - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1107\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Roy Fisher, Selected Poems ed. August Kleinzahler (Flood Editions) - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The first thing to say is that Fisher\u2019s texts have never been as well served on the page as they are here. The poems are given real space and the movement of Fisher\u2019s breath, rhythm and cadence is as clear as it possibly could be. 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