Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy by Marjorie Perloff

Abstract

1102 Reviews Country Dance, and an emotional history which Evans's biographers have since iden tified as hers. To my mind, Prys-Williams's unexpected choices have enriched her study, but itmight have been interesting to hear more about the rationale behind such decisions, particularly given that she spends some time discussing the consequences for readers of her discovery that B. L. Coombes's ostensibly autobiographical These Poor Hands (I939) was initially conceived of as a novel and still retained fictional episodes and characters when itwas eventually published as autobiography. At times Prys-Williams can seem a little judgemental in her indictment of some of her subjects; placed on the psychoanalytical couch they are grilled for the veracity of their self-representations and often found wanting, particularly if they have been so unwise as to leave behind them more than one draft of their autobiographical writings, the changes inwhich serve to illustrate the extent of their disguises. Not only is truth telling presented here as an ambivalent business in B. L. Coombes's autobiography, but Rhys Davies is diagnosed as a narcissist addicted to painting self-gratifying pic tures of his life inPrint of aHare's Foot (i 969), at the expense of strict honesty. Psy choanalytic theories on loss are also brought heavily to bear upon A Few Selected Exits (I968), Gwyn Thomas's representation of a life darkened by the death of his mother when he was six years old: Prys-Williams interprets both Thomas's humour and his attachment to his Rhondda home negatively under the guidance of such psychologists as John Bowlby, but it is possible to see both traits more positively, as indicators of his resilience and loyalty rather than his fear of seriousness and of the unknown. Courage and honesty in the face of adverse circumstances appear to be the authorial qualities most admired in this text, courage such as that shown by Lorna Sage, both as a teenager in the face of the oppressive gender system of I950SWelsh border com munities and as an adult recounting with honesty her early struggles. Interestingly, though, Prys-Williams does not comment on the curious ambivalence inBad Blood on the question of the subject's ethnicity: Tzventieth-Century Autobiography unprob lematically presents Sage asWelsh, as indeed she must have been, on her father's side aswell as that of her South Walian mother, but few readers of her autobiography are likely to have a clear sense of that fact, for the location of Hanmer, the rural Flintshire village in which Sage was born and reared, and of which her father was native, is referred to ambiguously in Bad Blood. When Sage and her Hanmer schoolfellows first cross the border to attend a grammar school in Whitchurch on the English side, for example, we are told that their difference from the locals is apparent: 'None of us spoke Welsh, but we had broader Shropshire accents thanWhitchurch people, marking us out'. As the children have not previously leftWales, their accents cannot be 'Shropshire': Barbara Prys-Williams quotes Sage's comment (p. I5 i), but does not remark on her interesting error, and so loses an opportunity to discuss the intricacies of border identity. Nevertheless, this book's patient and detailed investigations of its seven subjects offer a wealth of insight to readers interested in autobiography as a genre as well as inWelsh writing in English. UNIVERSITYOFGLAMORGAN JANEAARON Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy. By MARJORIE PERLOFF. Tuscaloosa: Univer sity of Alabama Press. 2004. xxxv+307PP. ?29.50. ISBN 0-8173-5i28-0. Differentials brings together some dozen or so ofMarjorie Perloff's recent addresses, lectures, or articles. The essays here reproduced (sometimes inmodified form) all date from the period I999-2003, and, taken together with the new pieces (on pedagogy) that frame the volume, they demonstrate not only Perloff's quite remarkable skills as a reader of modern and of contemporary poetry, but also her attention to the disciplines of English and Comparative Literary Studies where she has made her career. MLR, 101.4, 2oo6 1103 As we might expect, the range of reference is extraordinary in its scope and ambit. Perloff ranges from outstanding readings of Eliot and Pound through...