Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
ISTVÁN D. RÁCZ Memory, Writing, Politics: the Poetry of Peter Reading
14 István D. R i.cz the interest of those who play with other people's lives, whether it is done by experimenting with nuclear energy or by maintaining a high unemployment rate. Epilogue: Reading's Individual Voice The above-mentioned reading is only one of many possible interpretations. There are a number of ways of understanding Reading's texts, and— although he is a solitary poet who does not belong to any group —his poems can easily be related to other life works. It is not without reason that Neil Roberts has compared him to Tony Harrison: the duality of being an outsider and writing in extremely polished literary forms is a feature they share. The latter feature, for both poets, means that they reinterpret classic (mainly Greek) literature, and use it as raw material. The difference is that Harrison "colonises" the culture of Greek antiquity reestabhshing its mythology, heroes, and stones within his own nwginaLed position, which leads to the construction of a new centre. Reading, on the other hand, has remained an outsider: it is no accident that what he has applied from Greek poetry is merely the shape of the poem, whereas his characters and narratives are from contemporary marginal life. He writes about containment in distichs and alcaic stanzas, and with this method he eliminates the privileged position of Greek meter. This is one function of juxtaposing literary and non-literary texts (and the emancipation of the latter) in his verse. The result is that he is a much more impersonal poet than Harrison, who is very explicit about his class struggle; than Douglas Dunn, who has been constructing his identity in confessional lyrics; or than Ken Smith, who writes political-autobiographical poetry. A common denominator is their social interest and responsibility as a central value, but Reading is distinguished by hiding his subjectivity. What I have pointed out in his twin-texts and self-reflections also means that his self is out of the reader's apprehension. In other words, this lack of apprehension is the self. Thus, Reading has deconstructed the illusion of a homogeneous identity. All his life work published so far is organized around this principle, and this is the basis of his diction peculiar only to him. The lack of a romantically conceived self, of course, does not mean a lack of individual style or that of aesthetic pleasure. The function of found texts and of juxtaposition is also unique in his poetry. He is not a poet of transformation, as Edwin Morgan is, and not one of a holistic principle, which forms the basis of James Fenton's poetics. Reading's formal virtuosity can rightfully be compared to theirs, but his poetry is only poetry. His poems are not related to the life work of journalism
