Reaching for the Beyond

In his incisive biography of C.S. Lewis (sometime Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge), A.N. Wilson approves of Lewis’s statement: “It is always better to read Chaucer again than to read a new criticism of him.” This may encourage our own, direct reading of the poets and to begin more happily from our own starting points. I also include the aphorism of D.T. Suzuki that Alessio Zanelli uses to introduce his volume. Suzuki wrote, “Fundamentally, the marksman aims at himself.” I read this as a question about the enterprise of poetry.

Oisín Breen is the most difficult or challenging of the eight poets in this review. He is an enfant terrible, as the notes on the back cover indicate. Part of his life is “rip-roaring” and another part is “lived in a one-donkey town”. One peer accords his work some of the intensity of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. I revisited “Howl” to test this claim and, while intense, found Ginsberg more…