Heart on the Left: Poems 1953-1984

by Adrian Mitchell

A companion volume to `Blue Poems 1985-1996' (available from Dufour), `Heart on the Left' brings together poems from Mitchell's earlier books, thirty years worth of poetry straight from the heart.

Genres: Poetry

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

Adrian Mitchell, FRSL, was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement. The critic Kenneth Tynan called him the British Mayakovsky.

Reviews

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marxist poet James Scully once uttered to a class of mostly snoozing students the following mysterious statement: "Poetry can be a lot of things, but it must never be fictive." I still have no idea what the hell that means -- sure, Bukowski carrying his ruptured sack of empties is not "fictive", but what about that old salt with the albatross? Or Satan hiding inside that snake? Or the Jabberwock!

Anyway, whenever I encounter a political poet, I think of Scully's Sominex pronunciamento and brace myself for the worst. This didn't happen with Adrian Mitchell: I loved this collection, even despite the godawful title (and anyway George Jones got there first). Mitchell is never highbrow, always idealistic, usually very funny. Rather than being earnest and righteous -- both crippling traits for any poet -- he goes for the snarky-trickster persona, a thorn under the saddle of capitalism, etc. Even the vitriolic, misanthropic bits (the "Apeman Mudgeon" poems, or "A Curse Against Intruders") seem rousing and life-affirming. All in all, the best deployment of a William Blake fixation I've ever encountered.

The Ralph Steadman illustrations add some nastiness and hilarity to the proceedings too.

[Hossam Hassan]

JUK