Shorter notice
The Loving Game Vernon Scannell (Robson Books £2.50 and £1.50 paperback) Nearly twenty years separates Vernon Scannell's first published poems, A Mortal Pitch from his new collection The Loving Game and, as the titles of the books suggest, he continues with his baleful view of life as rough sport — getting rougher in middle-age. If his themes haven't changed much neither has his style; he has not really developed his poetry but he has succeeded in perfecting it. There is no good reason why he should feel obliged to coax himself out of a finely executed if unrevolutionary style just to prove his modernity. So one wonders why he makes an issue of his new faint rhyme scheme (men/rib/spin) by bothering to name it, pretentiously "triadic rhyme." True he uses it with great effect in some of his best poems but by drawing attention to it as innovatory he seems to lack the courage of his own conservative convictions. There are two poems in The Loving Game that could have been written at any time over the last seventy years. 'An Anniversary' is a perfect parody of Thomas Hardy, and 'The One That Got Away', a particularly fine poem-metaphor about a fishing expedition, is a tribute to the influence of Edward Thomas: I wonder if another man More serious, luckier than I, Is richer for my careless loss, As here in The Angler's Rest' I stand, Arms and tongue too short to try To show how vast and marvellous it was.
Mr Scannell is at his best when writing about love's failures and the ensuing contraction of the heart. In the title poem and 'Wicket Maiden', among others, he shows himself to be the most accomplished poet of prosaic 'love writing today. 'The Loving Game' is his most consistent volume to date and with it he undoubtedly emerges as one of the best poets of his generation — candid, resilient, lyrical, N.C.
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