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Statement of poetic belief -- theory and
practice
Quoted from:
The
Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets
ed. J. Couzyn, 1985
How
to Write Poetry
N. Bogen, Arco Books, Prentice Hall Press,
Simon &
Schuster Inc. 1991, 94, 98
"I
try to keep the words of a poem close to the feelings and sensations
that inspired it, in the hope that it will inspire the same feelings,
recognitions, and memories in its reader. In this way, she or he
become involved in its reality, even a participant in its creation -
because reading is an active relationship between reader and writer.
But writing is a relationship between writer and language. A poem
develops organically from the first inspiring phrase. That phrase, or
cluster of words, includes every essential element of the poem, and
the poet's work is to allow all its potential of sound and meaning to
realise itself. And like every other living organism, its development
is a unique combination of unassailable laws and the entirely
unexpected."
To See the Matter
Clearly
(Macmillan UK and Dufour Editions, USA, 1968)
Fifteen to Infinity
(Hutchinson, UK 1983;
also published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press USA, 1987)
Sugar-Paper Blue
* * * Shortlisted for 1998 Whitbread Poetry Prize *
* *
(Bloodaxe Books UK and Dufour
Editions USA, 1997)
Burning Wire
(Bloodaxe Books UK and Dufour
Editions USA, 2002)
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"... in Fainlight, we
are in the presence of someone engaged in understanding herself as an
artist more than anything else .... the lyric poet at her most mature ....
and American poets might do well to read (her). Straightforwardness is a
trait I have always valued in our poetry and missed in poetry from across
the Atlantic. Lately, I miss it in ours, but find it in the work of
this expatriate".
Mark Jarman, The Hudson Review, USA
"... her poems combine
Alice Munro's virtues with something more archaic and also, in exact clear
words, give us truly new visions of usual and mysterious
events".
A. S. Byatt, The Independent
"Ruth Fainlight has always been a
painterly poet, sensuous and observant, who has paid particular attention
to myth as it shapes destiny or gives meaning. 'Sugar-Paper Blue' is one
of her finest books to date .... the reader is aware of images being
thought and felt through, the mind winding itself into narratives,
prompted now by pain, now loss, now keen pleasure".
George Szirtes, Times Literary Supplement
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