The Tension Between Form and Emotion.Jamie McKendrick's Drypoint (2024)
Artist: Jamie McKendrick. Oxford, UK. Donated to Eminia Passannanti in 1993.
Preamble In analyzing Jamie McKendrick's body of work, from The Scirocco Room (OUP, 1991) to Drypoint (F&F, 2024), critics have often highlighted the strengths of this English poet, now in his late sixties. A particularly incisive assessment comes from his longtime friend and fellow writer William Boyd, who observes: "A coolly marshalled, worldly intelligence seems to be able to take on any subject from the quotidian to the arcane. The language is alert to contemporary nuance and opulently, exhilaratingly multi-layered." Over the course of his nearly three-decade career, McKendrick has indeed strengthened his control over poetic form, proving his craftsmanship along with the depth of the widerange knowledge that permeate all his poetic collections. These qualities have remained consistent, at the same time addressing a wide range of topics from the familiar to the esoteric with a language st.yle which exhibits a remarkable responsiveness to our shared European heritage McKendrick’s collection previous to Drypoint, entitled Anomaly (F&F, 2018), was apprised for being “richly imaginative and intercontinental.” Stella Tillyard, Farmleigh's writer-in-residence, perceptively described McKendrick as "an archaeologist of the commonplace," suggesting his ability to imbue the seemingly mundane with significance by examining it through an innovative lens. Tillyard has added that in poems such as “Ancient History”, the poet’s voice engages with an interest into geopolitical dimensions, there specifically with a commentary on the first Gulf War, while weaving historical and contemporary concerns by drawing intertextual inspiration from the Roman historian Titus Livius. We can agree that Jamie’s poetry excavates into the smallest details of life across the broader range of the intersections of the macro with the micro cosmos, and chisels them, proving a good degree of miniaturistic insight into what may seem to most us irrelevant or negligible: but McKendrick does not neglect the insignificance of some aspects of our shared world. However, some critics have identified in his poems certain reticence in the lyric expression of human sentiments. This is nonsense. In a world dominated by social media and the straightforward airing of personal sentiments, Jamie's reserve may puzzle those who have voiced these considerations. To address this aspect, my article will endeavour to situate Jamie within a broader poetic tradition than the contemporary ones. In order to do so, one must first consider whether his work aligns more closely with the Romantic or Metaphysical schools. While his physical appearance and style might evoke the image of a Romantic poet, I would argue that his literary approach aligns more closely with the Metaphysical tradition of Alexander Pope (1688–1744) and Edward Young (1683–1765), whose poetry had a focus on reasoning, moral critique, satire, and a disciplined restraint in emotional expression—eschewing sentimentality in favor of intellectual inquiry and reflection. A close reading of his collections confirms these tendencies as McKendrick’s work tends to emphasize precision, clarity, structure, and objectivity, often keeping away from the emotional intensity and pathos associated with Romantic poetry, particularly that produced in the late 18th century. It seems that for Jamie, eliciting visceral emotional responses is not an essential aim. This may be interpreted as a deliberate detachment but it is in fact a spiritual stance. From the vitality of the young expatriate’s all embracing Eros in The Scirocco Room ((OUP, 1991) and Kiosk on the Brink (OUP, 1993) to the more meditative poems in Drypoint, McKendrick turns his scrutiny inward, offering his personal reflections as a mirror to the human condition—or at least, to his own interpretation of it.
Erminia Passannanti (c) 2024
(Full article published on Academia.edu in November 2024)
