Who Would Know?

Description

In a review of my last poetry collection, And Yet¿, Matthew Bulfer wrote: 'One of the many pleasures of Haskell's poetry is it proves-again and again-we may be as intelligently generous, direct and heartfelt as we are intelligently anything else'. This is indeed the way I would like my poems to be read. I suppose that any poet might be deluded about what she or he is doing but after more than 50 years of writing I think I know what I am aiming at, and that has not changed for decades. I want to write, and read, poems of emotional and intellectual power that mostly eschew rhetoric, avoid any sort of gimmickry while making a rich use of the English language, and seem to have demanded to be written. Contra some contemporary theorists I think the lyric is very much alive, rhyme can be a wonderful poetic technique, and in a collection I try to provide variety, including some comic poems. They have long been in short supply in modern poetry, and humour, I believe, is a key element of wisdom.