Evan Jones

“If I can impart one final message, beyond the usual declarative to read poetry and buy poetry books,” writes Evan Jones in his introduction to The Civilizing Discourse, “it is to listen to poets. The real ones offer wisdom and a perspective at odds with prevalent visions.”

In a series of passionate, enlightening, frank, engaging, and sometimes astonishing conversations, thirteen poets—many acknowledged masters—open up about their writing processes, their childhoods and marriages, their regrets, as well as their hopes for and frustration with poetry. From Norm Sibum describing his affinity with a waitresses and cabbies to Nyla Matuk’s wrenching investigations into the Palestinian side of her family; from Don Coles’s obsession with alternative universes to Robyn Sarah’s praise for discarded things; from Elise Partridge describing her shift in priorities after a cancer diagnosis to Steven Heighton’s interest in remaining childlike, The Civilizing Discourse is not only a highly readable record of the literary scene today, but, in its celebration of language, will appeal to poetry readers and poets alike.

Poets included: Daryl Hine, Norm Sibum, Marius Kociejowski, Don Coles, Elise Partridge, Steven Heighton, Robyn Sarah, A.F. Moritz, Robert Bringhurst, Anne Compton, Nyla Matuk, Iman Mersal

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2020 A Review 31 Book of the Year 2020 With The Barbarians Arrive Today, Evan Jones has produced the classic English Cavafy for our age. Expertly translated from Modern Greek, this edition presents Cavafy's finest poems, short creative prose and autobiographical writings, offering unique insights into his life's work. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Constantine Petrou Cavafy (1863-1933) was a minor civil servant who self-published and distributed his poems among friends; he is now regarded as one of the most significant poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an influence on writers across generations and languages. The broad, rich world of the Mediterranean and its complex history are his domain, its days and nights of desire and melancholy, ambition and failure - with art always at the centre of life.

The baby-faced, American Dickman twins rolled into Manchester on a Tuesday - and left that same Tuesday, one stop on their English-city- hopping promotional tour (London, Manchester, and a petrol station loo or two in between), touting their dual-authored Faber release, the red, white and blue tête-bêche (flip-book) Brother. Matthew has a bit of a squeeky voice and tatts on his arms; Michael is more nasal-voiced and may also have tatts, but his sleeves are rolled down this evening; Michael's jeans are ripped, purposefully, and his blazer is brown corduroy with a sort of superhero button on the left lapel; Matthew's jeans are rolled, his New Balance 998 Trainers are very clean, his NYC baseball cap is half-cocked (he takes the cap off for the reading, gentleman that he is, which leaves him with a bit of hathead); Michael wears green socks and a red check shirt; Matthew has a light blue dress shirt on, sleeves rolled (see above) and ankle socks; Matthew's lines are long; Michael's lines are short; Michael teaches at Princeton; Matthew is poetry editor at the American lit mag, Tin House; Matthew is the fun, accessible one; Michael is the serious, academic one; George is the quiet one; Ringo is the drummer. Faber, their publisher, appear to have found here a poetry book with a talking point (suicide...), part of a recent flush of collections that might access an audience beyond poetry's traditional readership by being topical (that readership is, as far as I can tell, limited to between three-hundred and one thousand people per country - size of country making no difference).

DAVID YEZZI, Birds of the Air (Carnegie Mellon University) US$15.95 The differences between absurd youth and wizened adulthood, between what could have been and what has been, are the great themes of David Yezzi's third collection, Birds of the Air. For Yezzi's speaker in 'Tomorrow & Tomorrow', the significance of dramatic and literary moments is apparent - if at all - only years later. Yet this is not so simple as a real-life break-up while studying Romeo & Juliet, a real-life bear attack while performing The Winter's Tale.

The views of modern Greek literature from within and from abroad are opposing ideas. In terms of poetry, the most famous modern Greek poets, Cavafy and Seferis, represent internationally a mythic vision in which they are the modern protagonists of a tradition that goes back to ancient times, capturing the imaginations of a range of international poets in this way. But this version of events ignores other literary developments in modern Greece. One of the most significant, the impact of Surrealism and French literature of the twentieth century, was a major influence for the 1979 Nobel Laureate Odysseus Elytis, for example, a poet read and studied avidly in Greece, but now forgotten internationally because his work, like so many others, falls into the gap between the national literature and the view from afar. These two recent anthologies, however, can be seen as attempts to close that gap, to resuscitate the international audience for Greek poetry by presenting alternatives to the presiding view.