A review by Billy Mills of 'The English Strain' and 'Bad Idea'

I’m pleased to say that there is another review of the first two books of ‘The English Strain’ project, by Billy Mills on his ‘Elliptical Movements’ blog. (I list it in my blogroll because there is always something of interest there. One day I’ll post exclusively about the blogroll.) I particularly like this review by a self-identifying ‘sonnet sceptic’ (I would have thought that my sonnets contributed to that scepticism!) because Billy notes the sound of the poems. I’ve just been reading Marjorie Perloff’s Infrathin which analyses sound structures, so this impressed. It also impressed me because I don’t think people have commented on sound and rhythm in my work (partly because they don’t think it’s going to be there).   

Billy's piece is HERE: The English Strain and Bad Idea by Robert Sheppard: A Review | Elliptical Movements (wordpress.com)

Here is me reading the poem he quotes in full, 'The Michael Drayton Companion' where I confuse myself (I was thinking of The Robert Sheppard Companion, see here) with Drayton (full of his real resentments and his supposed relations with Ben and Will). 

There are many inter-linked posts about ‘The English Strain’ project on this blog. You could almost say I wrote it on the blog (particularly in posts that were up no more than a day). Here, though, are several comprehensive ones, with further links to earlier stages of the project.

Read about Book One of 'The English Strain', The English Strain here .

Book Two, Bad Idea, is talked about here . (The final part of Bad Idea is slightly different; called ‘Idea’s Mirror’, it’s described here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-last-ideas-mirror-post-election-poem.html

You can buy both books so far from one source, here: Pages: How to buy The English Strain books one and two together (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Billy finishes: ‘I find myself wondering what he’ll do with the morass of the Romantic sonnet in the final volume.’ Book Three is called British Standards. Unpublished, it is best described here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2021/04/transpositions-of-hartley-coleridge-end.html

Read the first review of Bad Idea, by Alan Baker, in Litter here: Review - "The English Strain" and "Bad Idea" by Robert Sheppard | Litter (littermagazine.com)

 Read the second, by Clark Allison, here, on the Tears in the Fence website: HERE: https://tearsinthefence.com/2021/04/27/the-english-strain-shearsman-books-by-robert-sheppard-bad-idea-kfs-press-by-robert-sheppard/

The third by Steve Hanson for the Manchester Review of Books here: Pages: BAD IDEA reviewed by Steve Hanson in The Manchester Review of Books (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)