TDR Letter
January 1, 2004
Subject: John
MacKenzie interview
I approached the recent TDR exchange with John MacKenzie with curiosity, but I quickly began to hope that Mackenzie’s two posted poems would salvage my time investment in his cautious, vague, and boring responses. I mean, can “So, yes and no: reading was the more important thing then – the force that drove me was curiosity – though in my early teens I was already drawn to poetry. And the more I read (not just poetry, but anything I could get my hands on) the more I was able to apply critical perception to things—not necessarily to the most important things some would say, but still… Another thing…” be characterized as inspired? As erudite? Even interesting? (And ‘another
thing’: if Mackenzie is well-read, that fact certainly isn’t communicated in his tenditiously punctuated prose.)
But the poems, alas, are ho-hum, humdrum, humbug. The first stanza of “In Memory of John Wilson,” needs to drum into the reader’s head what exactly the protagonist is standing next to, alternately a ‘tide pool,’ a ‘barachois,’ a ‘lagoon,’ and a ‘flat water trinity.’ In the third stanza a gull sounds a ‘desolate cry.’ Dunes are ‘shifting.’ The final stanza has the gull repeating the ‘desolate cry.’ One cliché can kill a poem; three make it an embarrassment.
Keep reading, John. And reading. Perhaps you should take another look at
David Solway’s work?
Shane Neilson
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