Books, Devices, Verbal Chicanery, and Cosmological Range

Abstract

This chapter is structured around close readings of three early poems and sequences. First, ‘Dr Zhivago, Love Poem’ (1966), which shows the thematic interest in law, authority, and fantasy which would prove fundamental to his later writing. Second, a sequence written at the Sparty Lea Poetry Festival in 1967, an important gathering of poets, including J.H. Prynne, Peter Riley, and others, at MacSweeney’s family cottages in the northeast of England. The chapter argues that MacSweeney experienced the event as a dilemma, both testing and confirming his commitment to poetry. Finally, I look at ‘The Last Bud’ in the context of its publication in The English Intelligencer. I detail the way the poem mocks and travesties the discourse of the magazine and establishes a dialogue with Shelley’s Alastor. The chapter concludes by tracing a set of allusions to Villon, and arguing for the thematic and conceptual coherence of MacSweeney’s early work.