Peter James
A Look Around, A Look Back, At Critics and Poets
‘You may translate books of science exactly. You may also translate history, in so far as it is not embellished with oratory, which is poetical. Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language, if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.’ Johnson to Boswell, Life of Johnson
The Harbour Beyond the Movie
A thing made is a thing created. Kennard’s poems are hugely intelligent, sympathetic, and moving things, in free verse and prose. We love what we do not understand—the beloved, to begin with, the classics of literature, art, music, and philosophy, too.
Carbon Atom
Hutchison wields total mastery over English (and Scots) and shows imaginative and moving use of it (of them), invention within a gamut of genres and subjects, emotional variety and depth, and unforgettable, inexhaustible words, phrases, images, stanzas, passages, and poems instant in their force and lasting in their significance.
