Tim Morris Responds to Martin Stannard's Review

Tim Morris sends to E-Po readers this response to Stannard's Review in Stride Magazine of a poetry book (see post with link, here, or in archive of 10/17-10/23) Students will recall that the question for our purposes had to do with what review writing is and how it is done.



Upset

Upset is what nearly all these poems are about but it comes so neatly packaged my interest is no more than if the guy had told me Sainsbury's were out of his favourite coffee. (Martin Stannard, in a review, 2004)


This afternoon Sainsbury's were out of my favourite coffee,
in fact they
often are, the manager is hopeless and on more than one
occasion when
I've cornered him to ask him about the coffee he gets
a look on his face
and claims something needs his attention in
Ready-Made Meals, which
if you ask me is a misdirection if not an outright lie,
not that I eat ready-
mades often, too much aggro, pop open a packet of crisps
and a can of lager
is more like it but Tuesday when I got the shopping home
the crisps were
open and had gone soft and I keep meaning to bring them back
to Sainsbury's,
back to the manager's attention, but it means a forty minutes'
drive on and
off the motorway and the cones up by the heath and the new
roundabout
and drivers who cannot grasp the concept that they are to keep
moving once
they're in but yield to me if I'm in and they're not. Upset
is not exactly the
term I'd use, more like a heightened awareness of insolence
really, a revelation
that the young guy with his eyes set jaws clenched hands
on the wheel is not
trying to get from A to B like me, doesn't have a favourite
coffee, doesn't
need a ready-made meal, he just wants to circle the roundabout
and cut
people off all afternoon, every afternoon, the shopping
undone and the
takeaway uncollected and a smile gathering on his face as he
watches me wait.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poetic response copyright of Tim Morris~~~~~ o~o/ cm