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Chosen for October by Tom Cunliffe
Last week, Nicholson Baker’s new book The Anthologist came my way and has managed to get me interested in poetry again – and one or two poetry books are back on my bedside table. I’m not alone in finding that The Anthologist has this effect – The Guardian books blog had a similar experience and described this book as “an elegant and surprisingly emotional book; one of the finest of the year”
The Anthologist is a strange book. On the one hand it’s a first person account by the fictional poet Paul Chowder of a period of his life in which he was charged with writing the introduction to a new poetry anthology. Paul describes his approach to poetry and spends quite a bit of time discussing poetic forms, great poets of the past and their lives and why some poems “work” and others don’t. But mixed in with this is a personal story of how Paul has lost his girlfriend Roz. She seems to have given up on him, finally finding his chaotic and disorganised approach to life just too difficult to deal with. Paul misses her greatly and throughout the book launches various half-baked schemes to win her back.
The remarkable thing from the reader’s perspective is how Paul’s personal difficulties impact on what he says about poetry, and in a way, almost form a new poem about the inner life of a middle aged man going through a difficult time. The book is very funny, for we get highly involved with the minutiae of Paul’s life – we hear about the de-fleaing of a dog, the making of a bead necklace as a gift to Roz, the practical difficulties of laying a wooden floor and the best way to pick blueberries while on a walk.
I found this a beguiling read. I wanted it to go on and on. Baker’s writing has the Zen-like quality which brings you to a halt in your hurried life and says “take your time” – a quality which must be essential if you’re going to make any sense out of a new poem.
You can read many more reviews at http://acommonreader.org.uk
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