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Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014 Kindle Edition
Clive James was one of our finest critics and best-loved cultural voices. He was also a prize-winning poet. With his customary wit, delightfully lucid prose style and wide-ranging knowledge, Poetry Notebook draws together his best writing on the art form that mattered to him most.
'Marvellously entertaining' – Observer
'He reminds us that poetry is, or can be, "the most exciting thing in the world"' – Martin Amis
Since he was first enthralled by the mysterious power of poetry, Clive James was a dedicated student. For him, poetry was nothing less than the occupation of a lifetime; this book is a distillation of everything he learned.
From Shakespeare to Larkin, Keats to Pound, James explains the difference between the innocuous stuff that often passes for poetry and a real poem: the latter being a work of unity that insists on being heard entire and threatens never to leave the memory.
A committed formalist and an astute commentator, he offers close and careful readings of individual poems and poets, and in some case second readings or re-readings late in life – just to be sure he wasn't wrong the first time.
Whether discussing technical details of creativity or simply praising his five favourite collections of all time, he is never less than captivating.
'I read Clive James's Poetry Notebook standing by my poetry wall to save getting up and down, and my wall turned out to be just railings' – Tom Stoppard
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication dateOctober 9, 2014
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size2.2 MB
Editorial Reviews
Review
― George Szirtes, New Statesman
"[James] writes with enthusiasm about his favorites―Yeats, Frost, Auden, Wilbur, Larkin…. Here, too, are takes on some fine poets who aren't household names: Louis MacNeice, Les Murray, Michael Longley and Stephen Edgar…. A practical, witty and trenchant assessment of 20th-century British and American poetry."
― Tom Lavoie, Shelf Awareness
"A rousing compendium of short essays about poetry and poets that James has published over the years…. What you will find in Poetry Notebook are charged, idiosyncratic readings of the classics as well as more recent works…. I defy anyone not to be moved by these essays in which a great critic reflects on the works that have shaped him, even as, James says, he prepares himself to head off to ‘the empty regions.’"
― Maureen Corrigan, NPR
"This collection of ‘miniature essays’ on poetry… informs and delights…."
― Publishers Weekly, Starred review
"[Clive James] is a unique figure, a straddler of genres and a bridger of the gaps between high and low culture. He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time."
― Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
"A book bursting with quotable moments, many of them spill-your-drink funny…. Indeed, great poetry thrills James in the way roller coasters and celebrity sightings thrill other people. His enthusiasm is infectious."
― Emily Donaldson, Toronto Star
"As a critic, James is formidable, blending vast reading with the knowledge of practice. He demurs from having an 'aesthetic system,' but this is too modest. There are some clear positions in Poetry Notebook, and they are erudite, strident, but balanced…Poetry Notebook is a stellar collection by a great Australian writer, a man who, '[l]ooking back…with tired eyes,' retains the poetic enthusiasm of his teenage self."
― James McNamara, The Australian
"Clive James's Poetry Notebook reintroduced me to the intense pleasures of close reading. Although he has some hard―and funny―things to say about Ezra Pound, James is firmly committed to celebration. He reminds us that poetry is, or can be, 'the most exciting thing in the world.' And this is what literary criticism, and literary pedagogy, should aim for: not to add a further encrustation of complexity, but simply to instill the readerly habits of gratitude and awe."
― Martin Amis
"Clive James has a fantastic range and depth of knowledge. He is, at times, miraculously funny. He writes knowledgeably and with passion about literature, and especially poetry."
― Sam Leith, Spectator
"[Poetry Notebook is] compact and entertaining… James is still with us and, on virtually every page of Poetry Notebook, shedding sparks. Readers who make the mistake of finding his taste for canonical poems ‘conservative’ should still get a charge from his bloody-minded drive… A breathtaking book by an old master running out of breaths."
― Jason Guriel, The New Republic
"This ability to tell which lines live and which only counterfeit life―call it, simply, taste―is Mr. James’s great strength as a critic of poetry. His focus on the phrase and the line, rather than the large structure or the governing thought, feels like a poet’s way of reading…. Mr. James’s generosity of attention, his willingness to trawl through pages of verse in search of the hair-raising line, is his most appealing quality as a critic."
― Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B00LB89RHC
- Publisher : Picador; Main Market edition (October 9, 2014)
- Publication date : October 9, 2014
- Language : English
- File size : 2.2 MB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 253 pages
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the writing memorable and sharp. They appreciate the author's insightful commentary and genuine enthusiasm for the topic. The book is described as a brilliant, enjoyable introduction to modern poetry that offers great value for money.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers appreciate the poetry quality. They find the writing memorable, sharp, and intelligent. The author excels as a poet, critic, essayist, and raconteur. They mention that a true, successful poem is a self-contained unit. James writes with enthusiasm and a wonderful sense of humor. They also appreciate the lyrical bits and his usual panache and elegance.
"...in the twilight of his career as poet and critic, still has that pure, nourishing, childlike joy and intensity about his subject while his delight..." Read more
"...Add in the fact that these essays are written with James's usual panache and what we have in POETRY NOTEBOOK is a book well worth reading by anyone..." Read more
"A brilliant and enjoyable essay on modern poetry. James writes with enthusiasm and a wonderful sense of humor...." Read more
"...This is top-notch, memorable writing. Highly recommended. Except that inexplicable first essay." Read more
Customers appreciate the author's insights and genuine enthusiasm for poetry. They find the essays engaging and memorable from beginning to end. The book serves as a great introduction for those new to poetry.
"...critic, still has that pure, nourishing, childlike joy and intensity about his subject while his delight as creator and critic in the wooly art of..." Read more
"...a true, successful poem is a self-contained unit, notable and memorable as a whole, from beginning to end -- not just because it contains isolated..." Read more
"...So glad I kept on reading--from that point on the essays have been engaging as hell, positively sparkling on the page, filled with wit and wisdom...." Read more
"Great introduction if you know just enough poetry to be ignorant!" Read more
Customers find the book a valuable and enjoyable read on modern poetry. They describe it as a self-contained unit that is memorable as a whole. The book allows readers to focus on the important aspects of the subject matter.
"...Or, of a poem he can say it is “not only wonderful throughout, it is especially wonderful because it is wonderful throughout.”..." Read more
"...For James, a true, successful poem is a self-contained unit, notable and memorable as a whole, from beginning to end -- not just because it..." Read more
"A brilliant and enjoyable essay on modern poetry. James writes with enthusiasm and a wonderful sense of humor...." Read more
"...This is top-notch, memorable writing. Highly recommended. Except that inexplicable first essay." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015“Youth and health have their virtues even in envious retrospect,” Clive James writes of poets and poems he admired in his student days, “and perhaps some of our early and ridiculous appreciations were pure and nourishing.”
In his book, Poetry Notebook: Reflections on the Intensity of Language, James, writing in the twilight of his career as poet and critic, still has that pure, nourishing, childlike joy and intensity about his subject while his delight as creator and critic in the wooly art of poetry is fully and maturely informed.
James is old school. Educated in Australia at a time when memorizing poetry, knowing something by heart, was something everyone did, he can talk the talk and walk the walk, “when to invert the foot, how to get a spondee by dropping a trochee into an iambic slot, and things like that.”
He’s not living in la la land. There is none of the “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” hyperbole gunking up the whole thing. Poetry, he writes, is an art form where “a limitless supply overwhelms an almost non-existent demand.” And a lot of compost in that limitless supply. “The more a poet’s creativity might be lacking,” he warns, “the more his productivity will be torrential.” James knows what time it is: and he acknowledges that no one, at least no one young, knows much or could care less about meter (although he sees an upside: “all the dull poetry that was ever praised for its technique is effectively no longer in existence.”).
But the pleasure James derives from poetry---he reads it for pleasure, can you imagine?---leads to pellucid concentration on the good stuff. He is erudite (translation: “super smart”) and writes with an elegance that has somewhat fallen out of fashion. He can’t wait to find and point out in a poem what he calls “the moment”---that stanza, line, even phrase, that transcends everything, makes everything worthwhile, “the consciously lyrical bits—what the Victorians would have called ‘the beauties.’”
“It’s the moment that gets you in,” he writes, with “in” being the magic. Poetry Notebook is full of show-stopping moments, and incisive explanations as to what makes them so. He sees clearly that “whether in a formal poem or an informal one everything…depends on the quality of the moment.” (He’s no fool: it’s all show business. He refers to Frank O’Hara’s Lana Turner poem as “a coup.”)
No doubt because of his background, formality is privileged. James allows that things don’t “have to” make sense, but for him they do have to be consistent. He sides with skilled work versus unfettered expression. Free (or abstract) poetry is suspect. “Like abstract painting, abstract poetry extended the range over which incompetence would fail to declare itself.”
But he’s equally tough, if not tougher, if not at times merciless toward the poets he likes. As though they’ve got it coming just for being so important. He can praise and promote Ezra Pound without feeling the least bit guilty about also calling the Cantos “a nut job blog before the fact.”
He isn’t shy either about bringing giant reputations down a peg, such as this introductory sentence: “Early in the twentieth century, e.e. cummings was as hot against materialist society as only a poet living on a trust fund can be.” But his praise, also, is unabashed and uninhibited. “How did he think of that?” he’ll ask rhetorically about the writer of a favorite “moment” he is sharing. Or, of a poem he can say it is “not only wonderful throughout, it is especially wonderful because it is wonderful throughout.”
One obvious weakness in the book, one he mans up to because, he says, he cut his teeth on poetry when “men dominated the art,” women poets do not figure prominently in the manuscript. He rightfully worships Elizabeth Bishop, and spends more than a little time on Sylvia Plath; a couple of other women are mentioned honorably. But it is definitely boys’ night out (and mostly old boys at that): Yeats, Auden, Keats, Eliot, Shakespeare, Milton, Pound, Frost, Siedel, and a number of his Australian mates, not to mention some odd choices (the poetry of John Updike?).
I remember at college when I would attend physics department symposia, not because I understood a damn thing they were talking about (I didn’t), but because I delighted in the enthusiasm with which they conveyed their discoveries. It’s fun to be around such an overflow of genuine enthusiasm for a topic. In James’ case, stylistically, the deft use of absolutes (“No poet has ever…” “He has always been”) combined with a breezy scanning attitude (“In Canto XLVI there are a catchy few lines about snow and rain…”) and the prejudice toward the lyrical makes for enjoyable reading.
There’s a bittersweet, melancholy aspect to this as well, involving Clive James personally, but you can Google him for that. Poetry Notebook: Reflections on the Intensity of Language itself is a symposia; all you have to do is supply the wine.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2016Clive James is best known for his books of essays on literature and culture, of which I have read four or five (his "Cultural Amnesia" is one of my desert-isle books). He also is a poet, with five books of poetry among his many publications, and he has immersed himself in poetry for his entire life. That gives James a better foundation than some commentators to write critically about poetry. Add in the fact that these essays are written with James's usual panache and what we have in POETRY NOTEBOOK is a book well worth reading by anyone interested in English-language poetry over the past century.
The book consists of two dozen essays written between 2006 and 2014, almost half of them for the magazine "Poetry". There are brief "interludes" between the essays that James wrote specifically for this book to provide context and help tie the essays together.
James draws a distinction between writing poetry and writing a poem. (We live in a time, he says, "when everyone writes poetry but scarcely anyone can write a poem.") For James, a true, successful poem is a self-contained unit, notable and memorable as a whole, from beginning to end -- not just because it contains isolated lines that are striking. (I am doing a poor job of explaining the distinction; you really need to read James for yourself.) Further, to be a self-contained unit a poem almost invariably requires some sort of structure or form -- a rhythmic framework in which the transcendent poetic moments are contained. Thus, as regards the current split in the poetic universe between formalism and informalism (loosely, "free verse"), James is firmly planted in the former. This, in turn, means that he values technique, and without ever being didactic the book contains a fair amount of insight into technique. Finally, a poem must have something to say, something that the conscientious reader can discern. James gives words to my complaint about too many contemporary poets: they are "less interested in meaning than in just sounding significant. In pursuit of significance, they would say anything apparently in the belief that they [are] saying everything."
In one of the essays, actually a short piece for the "Wall Street Journal", James discusses his five favorite modern poetry books. They are: "The Tower", by W. B. Yeats; "Collected Poems", by Robert Frost; "Look, Stranger!", by W. H. Auden; "Poems 1943-1956", by Richard Wilbur; and "The Whitsun Weddings", by Philip Larkin. James returns to those five poets on numerous occasions throughout the book. Other poets who receive more than passing attention are John Ashbery (on the whole, not favorable), Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Donaghy, Stephen Edgar, T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Louis MacNeice, Les Murray, and Ezra Pound.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2015A brilliant and enjoyable essay on modern poetry. James writes with enthusiasm and a wonderful sense of humor. Some of his metaphors go right over the top but that makes it all the more fun. The book got me rereading classics in a new light and finding new authors I have never heard of. He praises many and skewers a few, Pound, who deserves it. He even manages a backhanded swipe at Sarah Palin probably to assure academia that his conservative poetics do not extend to his politics. The sharpness of his dirk on such an easy target seems unbalanced and makes me question some of his other quips.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2015The first essay is not very good so I almost gave up on the book. So glad I kept on reading--from that point on the essays have been engaging as hell, positively sparkling on the page, filled with wit and wisdom. Who knew reading about poems and poets could be so entertaining? This is top-notch, memorable writing. Highly recommended. Except that inexplicable first essay.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2016James is one of the most intelligent and literate writers of our time. His words about Richard Wilbur are valuable. The book is essential.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2015Great introduction if you know just enough poetry to be ignorant!
- Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2021absolutly not what i expected, interested in, or wanted. too late to refund but removed from library anyway.
Top reviews from other countries
- Robin BrownReviewed in Australia on December 9, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
A brilliant read for anyone seriously interested on poetry. An inspiring guide on how to dodge pot holes in the road when writing poetry!
- Sean SteinfegerReviewed in Germany on July 1, 2015
3.0 out of 5 stars Not for casual James fans
I'm a big fan of Clive James. It's an understatement to say he's a terrific writer.
However, this book of poetry criticism is pretty pointless unless you are very well read and are familiar with the poems he's talking about.
I was expecting to have the poems in question on the page.
For a fun Clive James read, look elsewhere. This is heavy stuff, beautifully written, but very tedious without the required background reading.
- Peter KettleReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars READ THIS BEFORE YOU CALL YOURSELF A POET
Read this before you call yourself a poet. A succinct and eclectic look at the superb world of poetry, which humbles as it instructs. How can one human being hold all this inside him? Clive James is erudite and passionate about this delicate but tough art and this is surely the most enjoyable lesson in writing poetry ever issued. You may well throw your own attempts away after you have read this, but that's not a bad thing. A little more rigour would improve a great many of our current poets. In these pages you can find instruction and, because it is the great Clive James, you will find wit and a wide ranging intelligence. A magnificent and inspiring book that presents poetry with deep insight, and which does that wonderful thing; it makes you seek out familiar and unfamiliar work. Clive James writes about, then goes roundabout, and his deep feelings for the art itself enchanted this reader.
- LexReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars - thoroughly enjoyable!
A thoroughly invigorating and enjoyable read. Worth every single penny.
The chapters are short, humourous, well informed, and so well written that each one is a joy to read. You have Clive James' opinions on particular poets, some of whom you know, others who will be new discoveries. But you also have Clive James' responses to the trend against form in modern poetry. I also appreciated his inclusion of several Australian poets who are worthy of recommendation (I'm not Australian - but if CJ isn't allowed to recommend Aussie poets then who is?).
I do not often finish a book with a sense of regret that it isn't longer, nor having enjoyed every single page. That alone should encourage all aspiring writers and lovers of verse to get this wonderful little book. PS. GREAT cover!
- ReaderinozReviewed in Australia on February 13, 2015
4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely, informative book to keep dipping into.
Beautifully written, insightful and doesn't elevate the subject to the point of intellectual abstraction. This book makes one want to find the poetry he discusses and read it for the pleasure of doing so and to decide if you agree with the author's opinions about it.