At the moment the biggest news in British poetry is the "Martian" school, a group of young poets headed by Craig Raine and Christopher Reid…. This fashionable gang owes its extraterrestial sobriquet to James Fenton, who, when his friends Raine and Reid shared The New Statesman's poetry prize, pointed out the unusual stylistic traits they had in common. Borrowing the central conceit from Raine's prize-winning "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home," Fenton summarized their mission as an attempt to make the reader see the familiar world in an alien way, especially by using bizarre metaphors for everyday objects.

Book reviewers love nothing more than a new school of poetry. It gives some shape, however illusory, to the depressingly vague mass of contemporary verse that crosses their desks. Not surprisingly, therefore, no sooner had Raine and Reid been playfully nicknamed "Martians" than the term worked its way into general critical parlance. Reviewers fiercely debated the merits of the so-called "school," and for a while any poet who ventured a fancy metaphor was comfortably pigeonholed. The resulting publicity made Raine and Reid famous in the attention-starved world of poetry. Their books sold; their poems were anthologized; their imitators proliferated; and Raine, the undisputed leader of the group, emerged as the most influential poet of his generation—not only the E.T. of English poetry but its Audie Murphy as well, having won nearly every honor and award short of the Laureateship.

A skeptical reader might justifiably complain that there is nothing especially new in the "Martian" theory of poetry, their method being only the latest variation of the many Entfremdung techniques that have characterized modern literature. But poetic theory ultimately matters very little and practice very much. And in their practice Raine and Reid have created a tangibly new and different poetry, even if the differences are more of degree than of kind. How is this possible in a period when the average poem is bloated with imagery and metaphor? The "Martians'" metaphorical density and ingenuity of language is not in itself as new as their ability to use it to produce poems of suave and graceful transparency. Their best poems are extraordinarily rich without being cloying. Likewise if critics complain that the "Martian" aim of making the familiar world seem new is the traditional mission of poetic metaphor, this too is to be expected. All poetic schools earn their reputations by announcing old truths as new discoveries and claiming private patents on general techniques. (pp. 12-13)

If Raine's importance has been overrated by the media, it has also been underestimated by his critics. He is a remarkably inventive poet with a fine ear. The problem with his work—and indeed that of the whole "Martian school"—is not so much one of present performance but future development. The poetry is often bright, fresh, and entertaining; the question is, how long will it remain so? How long can the "Martian" style be exploited before it becomes tired and predictable? How long can metaphor alone command a reader's attention and hide the frequently mundane content of the poetry? As one critic mused, "Metaphor as a way of life. One wonders if it is quite enough."

Raine himself must sense these limitations, for his latest work, A Free Translation, shows him tentatively broadening his scope. While this small pamphlet may not mark a new stage in his career, it does reflect a difficult maturation. These six new poems all written in thin three-line stanzas are quieter and more somber than his early work. The sharp metaphors are still there but less densely, and they no longer serve as the driving forces of the poem. Most importantly, however, Raine now shows more personal involvement in his material, more humanity in his approach. As the enfant terrible has become a family man, he seems more keenly aware of the responsibilities people have toward one another. But while this humanity adds weight to Raine's poetry, he has not yet mastered it as distinctively as he has imagery and metaphor. A Free Translation is a curious book. It contains much wonderful writing but no whole poems as captivating as his best earlier work. Almost every line works well, and yet the poems as a whole are disappointing. They are not bad, just not good enough. (pp. 13-14)