Rich

by Craig Raine

Book by Raine, Craig

Genres: Poetry

109 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Poet and critic Craig Raine was born on 3 December 1944 in Bishop Auckland, England, and read English at Exeter College, Oxford.

He lectured at Exeter College (1971-2), Lincoln College, Oxford, (1974-5), and Christ Church, Oxford, (1976-9), and was books editor for New Review (1977-8), editor of Quarto (1979-80), and poetry editor at the New Statesman (1981). Reviews and articles from this period are collected in Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990). He became poetry editor at the London publishers Faber and Faber in 1981, and became a fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1991. He gained a Cholmondeley Award in 1983 and the Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award in 1998. He is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté.

His poetry collections include the acclaimed The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984) and History: The Home Movie (1994), an epic poem that celebrates the history of his own family and that of his wife. His libretto The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1986) is based on The Last Summer, a novella by Boris Pasternak. Collected Poems 1978-1999 was published in 1999. A new long poem A la recherche du temps perdu, an elegy to a former lover, and a collection of his reviews and essays, entitled In Defence of T. S. Eliot, were both published in 2000. Another collection of essays, More Dynamite, appeared in 2013.

Craig Raine lives in Oxford. His latest books are How Snow Falls (2010), a new poetry collection; and two novels, Heartbreak (2010), and The Divine Comedy (2012).

Reviews

[Russio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Variable. Split into three sections, as follows:

Rich - tricksy poems. Not very keen.

A Silver Plate - a chunk of autobiography, after Augie March's sketching in of a character from their forbears. Compelling.

Poor - enjoyable, with highlights being A Walk in the Country, The Widower and The Man Who Invented Pain.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some say Raine's poetry is smug and unfeeling, a bit too fond at gawking at its own reflection in the mirror. That's rather true of his recent work.

This collection, published in 1985, is neither. The materials are usually ordinary - taking the kids for a walk, an infant daughter, breakfast. One click of Raine's magic camera, and ordinary things seem anything but. A railway station is a 'terminus of zips', a suitcase trails its labels like 'a synopsis of leeks'. He notes a bored soldier's fist 'frigging the dice all day' and the 'sharply printed' lines left by underwear.

One poem here was refused publication by the Observer, a tender love sonnet called 'Arsehole', which celebrates beauty where ugliness is normally seen (It is shy as a gathered eyelet /
neatly worked in shrinking violet').

There seems to be some kind of unwritten rule that modern poems should never be moving, perhaps for fear of being branded 'sentimental.' Balls to that. 'Inca' and 'The Man Who Invented Pain' are the most moving things Raine ever wrote.

There is also a short, warm memoir about Raine's father, an ex-boxer, holy fool and petty crook that should be worth anyone's attention.