Thinking about 'the canon', as I reluctantly was recently, this week's TLS includes a reference to how Spenser 'canonized' Chaucer. Didn't actually make him a saint but, oh yes, of course, I never made the connection.
In the same review, Bernard O'Donoghue, who I was lucky enough to meet once in Oxford because I was wandering round with an ex-student of his, draws our attention to The Miller's Tale,
He knew nat Catoun, for his wit was rude.
which is a fine example of why I like Chaucer now if not when it might have been more useful at A level. It doesn't mean that the miller was a bit like Roy 'Chubby' Brown but it sounds to me as if it does.
Also in the TLS last week, an article by Clive Wilmer looking suspiciously like a trailer for his long, long, long awaited Selected Thom Gunn, which is due next week, useful above all else for the photograph of Charlotte, the poet's mother. It is not usual these days for the poetry world to be inundated with good-looking poets but most would probably agree that Gunn was handsome and now we can see where he got it from. So the TLS, providing it goes on providing such things, survives as a subscription.
This weekend should see me finish Missing Fay by Adam Thorpe, a novel about which the verdict is likely to stay in the balance until it resolves itself into what is due. Just can't say yet. And then the decks are cleared to take some minor things, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and the Collected Charlotte Mew (to perhaps have a look at the stories) away while I flatter myself that my input is useful as my nephew obliterates the mark I set 22 years ago for 12 Hours of riding a bike. It's likely he will go beyond my 217.888 miles with about an hour to go, which is fine by me. So we had better make sure he does.
It's hard to believe that I ever did such a thing but I was reminded on the radio not long ago that the cells that comprise us are constantly dying off and being replaced by new ones. I think what has happened with me is that the cells that made me do sport, take an interest in the football or cricket scores or even, once, support Bjorn Borg against McEnroe or Jimmy Connors, have been replaced by others that make me want to buy a CD of The Magic Flute for my new great nephew. Maybe none of us are who we used to be and that might be a good thing. It might be disconcerting but it is more interesting than being the same person now that I was 40 years ago. And I'm grateful for that.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I publish booklets of my own poems, or did. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become. It keeps me out of more trouble than it gets me into. I hope you find at least some of it worthwhile.
