New British Poetry
The poetry in this feature declares not its anxiety toward but its arguments with the tradition. If those arguments seem more within the encampment than without, they are only another mark of the Atlantic divide: the best British poetry is still composed from the constant play of formal ingenuity rather than the exudation of emotional states. These generalizations won’t hold across the range of either poetry; but I admire the allegiance, among younger British poets, to mind before feeling. British poets have in the past been criticized, by A. Alvarez among others, for their reserve; but the reserve that seemed pale twenty years ago, compared with the emotional stringencies of Lowell, Plath, and Berryman, has in the next generation produced poets who believe that feeling is deepest when channeled by mind, not when mastering it. . . .
What most intrigues me about these seven poets is that, though their solutions may be temporary, they prefer a seriousness cultivated by wit. The seriousness guarantees the absence of minimalist anecdotes, the wit of leached-out despair. From the working-class bark of Tony Harrison to the mordant flatness of Michael Hoffman, their lack of sentimentality allows a toughness rare in America. Missing from their poetry, not surprisingly, is a compulsive concern with the self.