The Surreal Solidarity of Metaphor

In a long reply to Chad Campbell's review of Sue Goyette's Ocean, Phil Hall rebuts Campbell's assertion that bad metaphors cause her book to sink like a stone:

Piled up, protean, Goyette's metaphors of ocean and society just make no sense, says Campbell. Clearly.


Which is not the point.


Campbell misses, in his procedure, by his template, the surreal solidarity of metaphor, how it smears logic to expose deeper & wider unity.


This is the alternative tradition of Neruda & Lorca. This is Calvino's Invisible Cities.


Ocean is not coming out of the tradition of Milton's Lycidas & Tennyson's Maud with their track-able system of similes & symbols.


This poem does not come out of the tradition that is being used here to judge it.

Poseur Alert

Q: Do you write for the reader or for yourself?

A: Neither. The reader is a romantic concept. As is myself, I suspect. The quill poised; the head bowed over a small volume. Neither writer nor reader nor text is sacred to me, if I can help it; I prefer a “we” at both ends of the transfer. I hope (or pretend) that the origin & destination of my compulsion-to-not-be-silent — is collective.

Phil Hall, The Griffin Poetry Prize Questionnaire.

GG's A-OK

Paul Vermeersch brushes aside his doubts and finds a lot to like in this year's GG shortlist. I think he's indulging in wishful thinking when he calls it "one of the most balanced poetry short lists" he's seen, but I agree with the motivating premise of his review: namely, that we not let controversy distract us from recognizing the genuine merits of the nominees. To my own surprise, I share his enthusiasm for Killdeer. Phil Hall's poetry has never been my cup of tea. But he has written a captivating odd-duck of a book—part j'accuse, part literary criticism, part autobiography—and I would never have read it had it not been selected. I tip it to win too.