Summertime

 I was surprised, somewhere below, to be reminded how many summer poems I had available to contribute from the back catalogue to the recent poetry club theme. Two of that very name, which briefly confused the compilation of the Collected, plus others. I think I see it as a passing aberration, or did. All bets are off as to how future generations will understand poems about the seasons written when Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter were known quantities. But as we lean back away from the Sun and make our way to more temperate weather we can look forward to something less jarring.

Not the least of which will be not having to try to understand the cricket season as the main strategy is by now how to monetize, and thereby reduce, the game. Today Trent Rockets are away in Cardiff and Notts are away in York while Trent Bridge hosts the test match. Well, that answers my question, then. I can hardly be expected to support a new-fangled Nottingham-based team if they take a handful of players from Notts, of who I am a lifelong 'follower' (at a distance) and diminish the real thing. It makes precious little difference to me what happens to Notts but following a sport seems to involve taking sides and so they are my side but the sport devalues itself if it expects me to be devoted to Trent Rockets, too, because I'm not going to be and it further undermines what interest I have in Notts when they have to field half a reserve team. I am just about a good enough supporter to know that I've never heard of half the side playing in Cardiff at the moment.

Whether it's the way of the world or just incipient old age, so much seems like Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

 

But at least here we might revive an old practice and review a new book of poems which is something that's not happened for some time. That's partly because there have been fewer, maybe, but also because I'm not finding, or even trying to find, new names to read. As happened with pop music a few decades ago, new poetry by generations that came after one's own seems to be about, or doing, something else. 

One lives in one's own moment as the Rolling Stones have always done and when David Bowie tried to move with the times he wasn't as good. Not even Shakespeare managed to do that.

And so the lights go out, one by one - Heaney, Lumsden, Mahon. All men, of course, but I was a great admirer of Anne Stevenson and Eavan Boland was significant to many. But John Burnside is still at it and never lets us down at the risk of being prolific. I'm promised delivery on Tuesday. That can often mean Monday. It should be just like the old days, reading new poems and wondering what I can possibly say about them to make it look like I 'got it'. 

 

Also, looking forward to the glory days of September and Autumn, although we still await the programme of Tuesday lunchtime concerts from Chichester Cathedral, we do have Portsmouth's list for Thursdays. Thank heaven, as it were, for cathedrals.