tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3270024178512866290.post2684351923125042013..comments2023-10-27T07:29:26.285+00:00Comments on Polyolbion: Collected or Selected?Matt Merritthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12371656447328595720noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3270024178512866290.post-41810434580565960452008-11-05T08:54:00.000+00:002008-11-05T08:54:00.000+00:00I'd not come across Valentine's work before, David...I'd not come across Valentine's work before, David. I'll seek some out, thanks.Matt Merritthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12371656447328595720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3270024178512866290.post-46769269202788656422008-11-05T08:53:00.000+00:002008-11-05T08:53:00.000+00:00Thanks very much for the response, David. I agree ...Thanks very much for the response, David. I agree that Selecteds mean you can often wonder what you're missing, and it sounds like we're in agreement about the Hughes book. And linking to what Kirk says, possibly it's those poets, like Hughes, who are willing to go off in all sorts of strange directions, whose Collecteds make the best reading.<BR/><BR/>The Laughing Gnome?! Remember when Bowie did a greatest hits tour, and fans could phone in to vote which songs he played, and NME organised a campaign to get it played?!Matt Merritthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12371656447328595720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3270024178512866290.post-34720833890783814032008-11-04T22:20:00.000+00:002008-11-04T22:20:00.000+00:00Surely its seeing the juvenilia and stuff the poet...Surely its seeing the juvenilia and stuff the poet doesn't want to be associated with that gives a truer picture of the poet? Take as an example (albeit not necessarily poetic) martin Shaw and the Professionals... or Bowie and the Laughing Gnome...Kirk Wisebeardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12868390745287136323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3270024178512866290.post-46449012990386700732008-11-04T17:06:00.000+00:002008-11-04T17:06:00.000+00:00I almost always prefer buying a collected rather t...I almost always prefer buying a collected rather than a selected. For a start, I never quite trust the person making the selection – especially if it’s the poet, whose exacting, sometimes punishing standards for his or her own work can see much material left out because it’s not as good as the very best. But it’s this material that makes large collections such enjoyable reads, I think. The Ted Hughes collected is a case in point: it’s all of the wayward material, the abandoned sequences and uncollected tidbits that make the whole feel so alive, and which help shed all sorts of interest little lights on the better half of his work. <BR/><BR/>I also always wonder about what I’m missing when I’m looking through a selected. If only 13 poems are selected from a particular 40-poem book and I really enjoy those 13, I have to imagine that the rest of it is nearly as good, and the loss is mine. <BR/><BR/>Even among living poets, I count Paul Muldoon’s Poems 1968-1998 and Jean Valentine’s Door in the Mountain (an example of that rare form, the new-and-collected) among my favorite and most-returned-to volumes. (And anyone in the UK who hasn’t heard of Valentine should hunt down a copy of Door in the Mountain now; there is no other living American poet I would recommend as strongly).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com