tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post4417696476504834131..comments2024-03-27T02:55:10.109-07:00Comments on Irish Papist: Poetry from a DecadeMaolsheachlannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09406722311993627528noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post-8679572085017798212014-06-10T15:06:51.529-07:002014-06-10T15:06:51.529-07:00Yes, I see what you mean - even the modern poets, ...Yes, I see what you mean - even the modern poets, who supposedly reject tradition, have actually created their own - very inward-looking - tradition, which has only their own ideas to take root in. I think a 'high tradition' certainly has its place, and I suppose there is a place even for this kind of poetry, which we would call 'high' these days. But there is a huge gap - or wound - between that and most pop-song lyrics, which which seem to have been written just to provide something for the artist to sing, and haven't been mellowed as folk-songs have. These are all generalisations, but I think there is really quite a lot to them.Dominic Nnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post-73228125768105035132014-06-09T14:48:16.476-07:002014-06-09T14:48:16.476-07:00(I was a little unclear in that comment. Of course...(I was a little unclear in that comment. Of course Housman and Masefield are writing out of a tradition. Everybody writes out of some tradition. For instance, Housman is very influenced by English hymns and ballads. But it's more a folk tradition than a 'high' literary tradition. I mean that they are not really part of the stream of English poetry, in terms of having obvious debts to immediate predecessors etc.)Maolsheachlannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09406722311993627528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post-42098196363639032222014-06-09T14:44:47.712-07:002014-06-09T14:44:47.712-07:00That is a wonderful clip and I greatly admire Pete...That is a wonderful clip and I greatly admire Peter Hitchens for constantly returning to the theme of poetry and its importance.<br /><br />It seems to me that poetry constantly needs writers like Masefield and Housman who aren't so much writing out of a tradition as much as responding spontaenously to the common, universal things. Poems about poems about poems become papery and unreal.<br /><br />I'm afraid the sad truth is that a lot of people are hoodwinked by contempoary poetry because they have never had a genuine poetic experience and they don't know the difference. I believe that whatever appeal they think they find in Ted Hughes etc. is simply projection-- any other text would serve just as well. <br /><br />I may sound utterly narrow-minded but I've skimmed through a massive amount of contemporary free verse during my thirteen years working in a university library, and one tell-tale sign, to me, is that the praise in the blurb and quotations from reviews are so vague they could apply to anything, really.<br /><br />I sometimes find a modern poet who is not bad, for instance, there is a guy called John Mole who is pretty good. But only pretty good.Maolsheachlannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09406722311993627528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post-34804177856360037052014-06-09T13:30:38.620-07:002014-06-09T13:30:38.620-07:00'a grace, a mellowness' - yes, I buy that!...'a grace, a mellowness' - yes, I buy that! It reminds me of that wonderful clip from the BBC's Question Time in which Peter Hitchens disarms everyone by reciting from Housman ('Into my heart an air that kills...') - and changes the whole studio's mood. His answer betrays a certain grace and a mellowness, and even wisdom, perhaps? I think (with the same caveat as yours of not making exalted statements) that there's a great deal of wisdom to be had from poetry - for instance, to quote or recite is hopefully to remember that the same thoughts have run through other minds as well. And the beauty of words is all bound up in wisdom and goodness - as Masefield said (or perhaps prayed), 'Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion, / Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch...' ...Wisdom comes from beauty and I can't help feeling that he has poetry in mind. Not sure whether I've been terribly clear. But in any case I think there's precious little 'bread to the soul' around in modern verse!<br /><br />(Masefield wrote heaps and heaps so I wouldn't blame anyone for not getting round to him - I've hardly scratched the surface myself! What appeals to me is his habit of taking just plain and earthy words like 'bread' or 'bone' and and touching them to light by combining them - 'keen cool rush' or 'broad blue lift'. The line about wisdom and passion was from 'On Growing Old'. ( 'Being Her Friend' and 'Tewkesbury Road' are glorious too I think)).<br />Dominic Nnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post-33371859096743693532014-06-08T15:34:07.010-07:002014-06-08T15:34:07.010-07:00You're welcome! I bought a collection of Masef...You're welcome! I bought a collection of Masefield's poems about ten years ago, in a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead, but I never really got around to reading it.<br /><br />I used to post on the Philip Larkin Society Forum (this was back when it had a lively forum-- it's been more or less dormant for many years now). One lady who posted there, and who very obviously had a sincere love of Larkin and of many other traditional poets, also claimed to be an admirer of Carol Ann Duffy. I just didn't get it. I don't get how Larkin himself admired Conrad Aiken, for instance. Am I simply missing something? For so many years I believed that, but, as I get older, I supposed I'm less inclined to simply take someone else's word for it.<br /><br />I've been thinking what we actually lose when proper poetry ceases to be read and published. I don't want to make exalted claims. A person can be a good, intelligent, deep, fascinating person and yet hate poetry. But, if I would put a word on it, I think I would say "a grace, a mellowness". I'm thinking of the time I heard my French teacher in secondary school quote a snatch of Tennyson-- "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean". Somehow, the fact that she had quoted that single line seemed to make her seem more civilized, rounded, even whimsical. I think poetry softens the soul in the same way curtains and carpets and lamp-shades soften a room. I'm grasping to express it, but I think that will have to do for the moment.Maolsheachlannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09406722311993627528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091756463128804432.post-54019480282880268972014-06-08T13:02:38.568-07:002014-06-08T13:02:38.568-07:00I could have cheered aloud every word of this arti...I could have cheered aloud every word of this article. I feel just the same way about all this, and have felt just as alone in doing so. I could write reams on the subject (but it is your blog, and not mine, so I will try to restrain myself!). <br /><br />I just don't understand why we shouldn't have rhyme and metre and take it seriously, or why we can't praise verse that is easily understood, or that at least invites us to understand it. So much of modern verse is hard to follow, impossible to read aloud, and sits there defying us to draw near, and sneering at us if we just aren't clever enough to make sense of it. Really good poetry can surely be just as clever and just as full of literary references without turning away the uninitiated.<br /><br />And then there is the dearth of poetry that either lifts the heart, or upholds the worth of mankind. So many modern poets speak with a detached or a sarcastic voice - almost as if they don't want to mean what they say, or are speaking in brackets (which isn't the same as speaking with a character's voice, as you do sometimes). Their poetry is an academic or political exercise, of the intellect alone. Any trace of the soul - the movement and urgency of the voice as it is read - the preservation of a feeling - is pared away in the laboratory. So you often hear these poets read in a cold, dead-pan manner. It is enough or even essential nowadays for a poem to be 'problematic' and to 'challenge' and to 'unsettle' the reader.<br /><br />For example, our poet laureate here in the U.K., Carol Ann Duffy, whose job is to uplift the nation every so often with a poem, writes verse that is mainly sour and off-putting and angrily political (even if I suppose it is fairly plain-speaking). How far has our culture fallen if the heir to Tennyson, to Bridges, to Masefield (my favourite), and indeed to Betjeman, can write and have published nothing better than her cynical and just plain awful 'Twelve Days of Christmas'? (while the rest of us are cast out?)<br /><br />And yet we all need poetry to uphold us and to uplift us, just as we need music and laughter and friendship. And that we have lost it is, as you justly say, a 'grievous sore on the body of civilisation, and one for which we pay a high price'. So what a joy it is to read poems like yours (by a living poet!) at last - thank you for being so generous in posting them.Dominic Nnoreply@blogger.com