One of my first pop favourites.
Cheer up, Sleepy Jean,
Oh, what can it mean
to a Dave Green believer
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Never
The other painting I ever did, at the same time as Lips & Bananas, was Never. It is the unregarded, unhappier little brother of its joyful sibling.
If L&B echoes Warhol and Man Ray then Never is not quite Pollock or Rothko, but it is darker.
The idea for a Last of the Great Dancers t-shirt wasn't as well received as the suggestion of a Lips & Bananas garment.
There are any number of websites that we can make such a thing available at but it looks like it would be 18 quid for a t-shirt - and, of course, no cut of that is a royalty for me. So I'm not sure we will bother. But we can if you want.
Cheltenham Festival Preview 2012
The build up to Cheltenham this year has consisted mainly of the favourites for many of the big races enhamcing their positions at the top of their respective markets. Thus, there are a lot of short prices about and it's too late to get some of the ante-post value I hope I secured, now being the holder of one or two pretty trebles and accumulators. In fact, with other interests in the Grand National and Swindon Town FC on long term bets, if my bookie goes bust in the next few months I might go down with them.
Sizing Europe, Grand Crus (in the RSA Chase rather than the Gold Cup), Sprinter Sacre, Hurricane Fly, Big Bucks and Quevega surely can't all win. And yet they all look cast iron. They are preferred in roughly that order largely for value but even stringing the top three together in our annual attempt at a Cheltenham treble won't pay more than 10/1 and we still risk Grand Crus being sent to the Gold Cup because Kauto Star is a miracle but elderly, Long Run hasn't impressed in three runs this year and the rest don't look out of the ordinary in a top class chase.
But Sizing Europe (pictured landing the Saturday nap for us at Sandown) is the nap again, with Grand Crus having Join Together to beat having proved too good for Bobs Worth already and Sprinter Sacre is talked up so much by his jockey, Barry Geraghty, that one can't leave him out, especially as Geraghty rode Moscow Flyer and so should know.
The question would thus be if there's anywhere else to look for a more 'sporting' bet, or if any of these hotpots could get beat. Simonsig in the Supreme Novice Hurdle is 7/1 favourite at present and might be worth a couple of quid, although he's also 7/2 for the Albert Bartlett; Violin Davis is 12/1 for the Mares Hurdle to turn over Quevega, who turns up to collect year on year but can't do so forever; Get Me Out of Here, 10/1 for the Coral Cup, will be an honest and capable vehicle for an interest. I might even break the rule of not betting on races with Kauto Star in by backing Kauto Star, probably as a fond farewell, in the Gold Cup, because there's apparently so little else in it.
After eye-catching performances in recent weeks, my two interests in the Grand National are Calgary Bay and Giles Cross but I read that there is a doubt over the first's chances of lasting the extreme distance and the second is a way down the handicap and so might not get in. So hold fire on that.
Meanwhile, the gambling motto is STPMM, Swindon Town pay my mortgage.
Monday, 27 February 2012
View from the Boundary
I don't know if Guinness will want to use this picture in their next advertising campaign but I'm open to offers in the age of product placement and celebrity endorsements. (Thanks to Laura Chadwick for the picture).
The celebrity isn't me, of course. It's much more subtle than that. The red pen in my pocket there rightly belongs to the novelist Heather Richardson. She lent it to me at Martin Mooney's reading in Marylebone last summer so that he could sign his book for me and then somehow she never got it back. Well, I've treasured it ever since and often show it to people as a 'real novelist's pen'.
The occasion is my dad's 75th birthday evening in The Plough at Fairford. Having shown Heather's pen to my Aunty Chris, she asked if it helped but, no, it doesn't. The words don't appear to come from inside the pen. But it was a fine evening of beer and skittles and trading jokes with Uncle John.
It's apparently been a slow year for poetry so far but it is a slow time of year anyway. Nonetheless, I can find no trace of big titles due that might be contenders for my annual website awards which, after last season's tremendous selection, is looking underwhelming. In the meantime, the best entertainment I can find is the slow release of Todd Swift's Top 100 British Poets on Eyewear, http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html. Some of the photos are interesting. I can vouch for the fact that Geoffrey Hill doesn't look like that any more but there's a great one of a young Carol Ann with Adrian Henri.
Meanwhile, I've plotted my crafty way to a rating of 1400 on Internet Chess Server, 46.2% of the way down their ratings. I only broke through my career highpoint of 1364 a few weeks ago but have gone well beyond that after stumbling across some real chess wisdom.
Take care. Concentrate. And don't pick a match against anybody who might be any good.
We went and did a charity-raiser quiz in Winchester last Thursday. Won it, needless to say. But you still wonder how you missed some of the answers, like who duetted with Enrique on this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCcthtVbMJM.
'I used to play it over and over again. Brilliant. One of my favourite records at the time. She was really famous. Not quite such a big name these days.'
Didn't get it. Sorry, my dear.
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Re-reading 'Re-reading'
It was a great thing to ask if either of the two regularly featured poets in South magazine from Portsmouth Poetry Society might still have a copy of the issue in which my booklet from 2000, Re-reading Derrida on a Train, was reviewed because, yes, they did.
As far as I know, it is the only review of any of my booklets that I didn't have but I knew it was there.
I remember the story from many years ago when Bob Dylan asked someone to find him every recording of songs he'd written. My project of finding every time I've been reviewed is not quite such a challenge. But one can't ever be sure.
Dave Wood does a brief but consummate job and I've always said I'd rather have a good review, that shows that someone has read and appreciated what one has done, than a medal. I remember those days when I worked hard over poems and Dave noticed. I wish I still did, wish I still wanted to, wish I still thought it was necessary. It's not a bad little collection to look back on but, for various reasons, I wouldn't write anything like it now.
Thanks to Pauline for lending me her copy of the magazine.
Monday, 20 February 2012
Dinesh K. Shukla - Dream Passion
Dinesh K. Shukla, Dream Passion, A Study of the Poetry of Thom Gunn (Adhyayan Publishers)
Eng. Lit. is an international industry, of course, but it was still interesting to see this book on Thom Gunn from 2009 coming from India. One has to have such a thing, and the only obstacle to getting it was persuading oneself that twenty five pounds was going to be thus well spent. Reading it has been an extraordinary experience but a decision on the monetary value of the book is not really possible to estimate.
It would have benefitted from some thorough proof reading. While there is no indication that it is a translation, it reads like one. Not only do references to, for example, Blake Morrison equally often appear as Black Morrison and titles often get misquoted but the academic argot of the text is strangely evasive due to typographical, idiomatic or spell-check mis-use.
While one can get the sense of the argument, it is ironic that a discussion of a poet as erudite and precise as Gunn can be quite so fugitive in its resultant blurring of sense. It is not a comfortable book to read as one regularly goes back over a sentence to make sure, or try to ascertain, excatly what was said, like a bike ride on difficult terrain where one's concentration is so much directed at staying on the bike that one doesn't enjoy the scenery.
The index is madcap. It doesn't contain references to Gunn's collections, like The Sense of Movement, but one can be directed to 'Unquestionably' on page 34, where we are told,
Clive Wilmer's plea in Gunn's favour is praiseworthy, 'His first person like Ralegh's, or Johnson's or Hardy's is unquestionably that of a particular person, but a man who expects individuality to be of interest insofar as it is a quality that reader shares with him'.
The text makes no reference to perhaps Gunn's most successful volume, The Man with Night Sweats, or his last book, Boss Cupid, not even in the bibliography but we are not tempted to think that it was written before their publication because it does mention a 2003 book of 'inspirational' essays, The Passion Driven (Faber), that I have tried and failed to find any mention of on Google, Abebooks, Amazon or the British Library catalogue.
That is curious. Although having summarized only some major curiosities of what is surely a Ph. D. thesis put into hard covers, there is a very worthy, perceptive and sometimes profound approach to Gunn to be detected in amongst this unorthodox presentation.
One can appreciate the analysis of the 'Movement' while feeling that it takes pains to show how Gunn was not an authentic part of it when, each for their own different reasons, neither were any of the other names associated with it. It is much easier and more useful to argue that there wasn't a 'Movement' at all.
The chapter on the early Gunn books argues that he was more 'Romantic' and less 'C18th' than other 'Movement' poets, but that denies his obvious debt to Shakespeare and Donne. And, later, when making a case for Gunn as a 'contemporary' poet, it continues to ignore the sense he always had of being a poet with deep historical predecessors.
Shukla seems to still think that Gunn should be bracketed with Ted Hughes, as they once were, 50 years ago, on account of a shared interest in latent violence but Hughes is the most significant among many who since realized that Gunn was a poet of gentleness. Gunn's early interest in tough guy swagger was a 'pose' and knew it was at the time whereas Hughes' primitive forces were from nature. They could hardly be more different.
The chapter on Touch and Moly is more convincing with its emphasis on sensory experience, the inability of language to capture the 'thinginess' (sic) of things, and Gunn's way of expressing what the limits of language suggest it can't express. There are paradoxes and ironies in such things as Gunn's reversion to strictly structured poems to deal with his LSD experiences and it is dealt with quite well in Shukla's account.
He is regularly quick to praise Gunn's poetry, the talent and 'genius', the lucidity, the philosophical position of the ethical individual in a post-holocaust world. And yet, in conclusion, we are told, quite remarkably,
A poet naturally endowed with poetic genius Gunn, should not have stressed the creative impact of unnatural sexual behaviours as homosexuality and masturbation. His drug addiction has also considerable impact on creative faculty.
( ! ).
But the conclusion insists on the existence of Passion Driven (2003), a book that 'deals with basic issues of human life, written few months back his death'. These essays are, we are told, 'deductive and prophetic.' (If anybody knows where I can get a copy, please write).
It is ostensibly a very sincere and well-meaning study. Just because it falls outside of what one might regard as critical orthodoxy is not a reason on its own to discount it; it makes a contribution to the pile of work on Gunn and is welcome as such.
But, even given that it comes from India (and why shouldn't it), I don't think I've read a stranger book.
Eng. Lit. is an international industry, of course, but it was still interesting to see this book on Thom Gunn from 2009 coming from India. One has to have such a thing, and the only obstacle to getting it was persuading oneself that twenty five pounds was going to be thus well spent. Reading it has been an extraordinary experience but a decision on the monetary value of the book is not really possible to estimate.
It would have benefitted from some thorough proof reading. While there is no indication that it is a translation, it reads like one. Not only do references to, for example, Blake Morrison equally often appear as Black Morrison and titles often get misquoted but the academic argot of the text is strangely evasive due to typographical, idiomatic or spell-check mis-use.
While one can get the sense of the argument, it is ironic that a discussion of a poet as erudite and precise as Gunn can be quite so fugitive in its resultant blurring of sense. It is not a comfortable book to read as one regularly goes back over a sentence to make sure, or try to ascertain, excatly what was said, like a bike ride on difficult terrain where one's concentration is so much directed at staying on the bike that one doesn't enjoy the scenery.
The index is madcap. It doesn't contain references to Gunn's collections, like The Sense of Movement, but one can be directed to 'Unquestionably' on page 34, where we are told,
Clive Wilmer's plea in Gunn's favour is praiseworthy, 'His first person like Ralegh's, or Johnson's or Hardy's is unquestionably that of a particular person, but a man who expects individuality to be of interest insofar as it is a quality that reader shares with him'.
The text makes no reference to perhaps Gunn's most successful volume, The Man with Night Sweats, or his last book, Boss Cupid, not even in the bibliography but we are not tempted to think that it was written before their publication because it does mention a 2003 book of 'inspirational' essays, The Passion Driven (Faber), that I have tried and failed to find any mention of on Google, Abebooks, Amazon or the British Library catalogue.
That is curious. Although having summarized only some major curiosities of what is surely a Ph. D. thesis put into hard covers, there is a very worthy, perceptive and sometimes profound approach to Gunn to be detected in amongst this unorthodox presentation.
One can appreciate the analysis of the 'Movement' while feeling that it takes pains to show how Gunn was not an authentic part of it when, each for their own different reasons, neither were any of the other names associated with it. It is much easier and more useful to argue that there wasn't a 'Movement' at all.
The chapter on the early Gunn books argues that he was more 'Romantic' and less 'C18th' than other 'Movement' poets, but that denies his obvious debt to Shakespeare and Donne. And, later, when making a case for Gunn as a 'contemporary' poet, it continues to ignore the sense he always had of being a poet with deep historical predecessors.
Shukla seems to still think that Gunn should be bracketed with Ted Hughes, as they once were, 50 years ago, on account of a shared interest in latent violence but Hughes is the most significant among many who since realized that Gunn was a poet of gentleness. Gunn's early interest in tough guy swagger was a 'pose' and knew it was at the time whereas Hughes' primitive forces were from nature. They could hardly be more different.
The chapter on Touch and Moly is more convincing with its emphasis on sensory experience, the inability of language to capture the 'thinginess' (sic) of things, and Gunn's way of expressing what the limits of language suggest it can't express. There are paradoxes and ironies in such things as Gunn's reversion to strictly structured poems to deal with his LSD experiences and it is dealt with quite well in Shukla's account.
He is regularly quick to praise Gunn's poetry, the talent and 'genius', the lucidity, the philosophical position of the ethical individual in a post-holocaust world. And yet, in conclusion, we are told, quite remarkably,
A poet naturally endowed with poetic genius Gunn, should not have stressed the creative impact of unnatural sexual behaviours as homosexuality and masturbation. His drug addiction has also considerable impact on creative faculty.
( ! ).
But the conclusion insists on the existence of Passion Driven (2003), a book that 'deals with basic issues of human life, written few months back his death'. These essays are, we are told, 'deductive and prophetic.' (If anybody knows where I can get a copy, please write).
It is ostensibly a very sincere and well-meaning study. Just because it falls outside of what one might regard as critical orthodoxy is not a reason on its own to discount it; it makes a contribution to the pile of work on Gunn and is welcome as such.
But, even given that it comes from India (and why shouldn't it), I don't think I've read a stranger book.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Newbury Report
Free entry for some top class racing at Newbury only made it comfortably busy rather than bustling. I expected a bit more thronging. It was the trains where the real pressure was felt. It's getting to and from venues where the inconvenience makes itself felt.
Two trains worth of punters wanted to get on the inadequately-carriaged 11.12 from Reading and so the passengers of the next express that was going much further were accompanied by the racegoers just as far as the extra stop put in at the racecourse. And then getting home involved the use of four trains.
However, we were there in time to see Sprinter Sacre impressively strenghten his position at the top of the betting for the Arkle Chase at Cheltenham before Long Run only did enough to make little difference to his Gold Cup prospects, beating Burton Port by a diminishing half a length, although giving him 10 pounds and Nicky Henderson specializes in having horses ready after a long absence. Sam Waley-Cohen put a positive spin on the race in his interview but I think I've seen more convincing Gold Cup favourites than what the champion has shown us so far this season. But, luckily, not betting on races that include Kauto Star, it won't affect me either way.
Zarkandar (pictured, with Ruby Walsh) becomes second favourite for the Champion Hurdle after doing what he needed to do in the big handicap hurdle but I wish I'd stuck with my first instinct and backed Get Me Out of Here each way because he did all one could have hoped for in finishing second and getting 20/1 wouldn't have been a problem.
Having gone with the intention of holding a mainly watching brief, it then started to go wrong when I decided to get involved and so in purely acquisitional terms my day out amounted to going to Newbury to pay well over the odds for a bright yellow promotional Betfair scarf. What am I bid for it?
Having gone down to the start for the novice hurdle, I can confirm that when the jockeys show their horse the hurdle in the enclosure there, they do actually say, 'there it is, you have to jump that.' Aidan Coleman told his mount, Tanerko Emery, exactly that. Although looking back at the card, I can now see why. Last time out at Hereford, he didn't. In fact it was at only the second obstacle that he didn't.
Still, it was a nice enough day out. I just need to remember to stick to the plan.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Dory Previn (1925-2012)
It's not been a good year so far for my favourite octogenarian women but it came as a bit of a surprise to hear that Dory Previn was 86, being still for me the groovy, loose-garmented bed-sit songwriter of confession and some distress.
In the 70's, when one had fewer records to listen to, one listened to the ones one had more and, given a few prompts, I could probably still do most of the Mythical Kings and Iguanas album.
If somewhat thin-skinned, Dory's songwriting was marked by imaginative titles (We're Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx) and relationship malfunction but always gorgeously done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTNTSmix09A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTNTSmix09A
Monday, 13 February 2012
Valentine's Day
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/10/love-poems-writers-favourites-valentines-day
Poetry is becoming a little bit too closely associated with Valentine's Day from what I've seen in the media this year. It's an unholy alliance. Of course 'love' is one of the recurrent themes in poetry but poetry can be about anything and everything else and is short-changed by being thus typecast - but this feature at least gives an outing to some excellent choices by those asked to select a poem.
Blake Morrison very nearly got it right. Touch is, of course, a seminal and completely wonderful poem but the right answer was Thom's Tamer and Hawk.
Poetry is becoming a little bit too closely associated with Valentine's Day from what I've seen in the media this year. It's an unholy alliance. Of course 'love' is one of the recurrent themes in poetry but poetry can be about anything and everything else and is short-changed by being thus typecast - but this feature at least gives an outing to some excellent choices by those asked to select a poem.
Blake Morrison very nearly got it right. Touch is, of course, a seminal and completely wonderful poem but the right answer was Thom's Tamer and Hawk.
Friday, 10 February 2012
Bryan Ferry - Carrickfergus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha93wpA0264
Well I'm drunk today and I'm seldom sober
A handsome rover from town to town
But I am sick now my days are numbered
Come all you young men and lay me down
Well I'm drunk today and I'm seldom sober
A handsome rover from town to town
But I am sick now my days are numbered
Come all you young men and lay me down
Radio Snow Elsewhere
Radio Snow Elsewhere
During the night the radio
reported snow falling nearby,
in the next town.
And so because their weather there
is what we’re due to have here soon,
the world was a ghost of itself
and we were due to wake to white.
Except it didn’t happen
and the morning was cold, moist
and quiet and any snow we might have had
was already already gone
and the world was no more than the ghost
of the ghost that we didn’t see.
During the night the radio
reported snow falling nearby,
in the next town.
And so because their weather there
is what we’re due to have here soon,
the world was a ghost of itself
and we were due to wake to white.
Except it didn’t happen
and the morning was cold, moist
and quiet and any snow we might have had
was already already gone
and the world was no more than the ghost
of the ghost that we didn’t see.
Monday, 6 February 2012
10 Things about Poetry
Even the great Michael Donaghy issued a list of axioms or advice about poetry. And he was probably the best among many recent lesser lights who thought that advice was necessary, who thought that wisdom was possible, who seemed to have this sub-conscious need for 'rules'.
Have we really come this far and yet still feel we need a rubric. Isn't poetry, among all other things, the thing that is always in rebellion, even against itself.
How many times have you read a review or blurb that claims that this poet is the one that is different to all the others. All the time, isn't it, all the time. Who are all those others that are all the same. I've never seen a critique of any poet that said they were just like all the others. I'd love to be the poet who is just like all the others, but only the good ones.
One would love it, wouldn't one, if poetry was a world without manifestos. And yet, in such a small world, it seems to have as many of them as it has participants. It might even have more, if it could.
So, you either take part or you don't. Let's see if we can make it to the recognized number of ten 'things about poetry'. It hasn't taken me long to retrieve this much from a few decades of prejudice and side-taking. The worst thing about it is that I think they're probably right whereas I know on a profounder level that 'if it feels good, do it' ought to be the only maxim.
So,
The only thing that doesn’t change is the avant garde. It is the same now as it was in the 1960’s and 70’s. It might contribute to the mainstream, which develops all the time, but it is only a minor tributary.
The teaching of Creative Writing is dubious at best. A proper poet will teach themselves from their own chosen predecessors or exemplars.
The language is already there. The poet must use it to effect rather than assume it does the job for them.
Poetry in translation is, sadly, a lost cause.
Poetry is not by definition a good thing. In fact, in many hands, it’s a much worse thing than it thinks it is.
Poems on the page are fine but are enhanced exponentially by hearing them read aloud, preferably by the author even if they are not a good reader.
Form doesn’t mean ‘sonnet’, ‘villanelle’ or ‘rhyming couplets’. A poem can take any form it cares to but it will be a bad poem if it can establish no form at all.
A poem succeeds or fails on its own terms but is less likely to succeed if it doesn’t aspire to the condition of music.
If its author isn’t thrilled by a poem, it is unreasonable for it to expect anybody else to be.
Every poet inevitably thinks that their poems are special. But that’s unlikely. Most poems are a bit like other poems. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s best to be aware of it. We are not all Seamus Heaney.
Have we really come this far and yet still feel we need a rubric. Isn't poetry, among all other things, the thing that is always in rebellion, even against itself.
How many times have you read a review or blurb that claims that this poet is the one that is different to all the others. All the time, isn't it, all the time. Who are all those others that are all the same. I've never seen a critique of any poet that said they were just like all the others. I'd love to be the poet who is just like all the others, but only the good ones.
One would love it, wouldn't one, if poetry was a world without manifestos. And yet, in such a small world, it seems to have as many of them as it has participants. It might even have more, if it could.
So, you either take part or you don't. Let's see if we can make it to the recognized number of ten 'things about poetry'. It hasn't taken me long to retrieve this much from a few decades of prejudice and side-taking. The worst thing about it is that I think they're probably right whereas I know on a profounder level that 'if it feels good, do it' ought to be the only maxim.
So,
The only thing that doesn’t change is the avant garde. It is the same now as it was in the 1960’s and 70’s. It might contribute to the mainstream, which develops all the time, but it is only a minor tributary.
The teaching of Creative Writing is dubious at best. A proper poet will teach themselves from their own chosen predecessors or exemplars.
The language is already there. The poet must use it to effect rather than assume it does the job for them.
Poetry in translation is, sadly, a lost cause.
Poetry is not by definition a good thing. In fact, in many hands, it’s a much worse thing than it thinks it is.
Poems on the page are fine but are enhanced exponentially by hearing them read aloud, preferably by the author even if they are not a good reader.
Form doesn’t mean ‘sonnet’, ‘villanelle’ or ‘rhyming couplets’. A poem can take any form it cares to but it will be a bad poem if it can establish no form at all.
A poem succeeds or fails on its own terms but is less likely to succeed if it doesn’t aspire to the condition of music.
If its author isn’t thrilled by a poem, it is unreasonable for it to expect anybody else to be.
Every poet inevitably thinks that their poems are special. But that’s unlikely. Most poems are a bit like other poems. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s best to be aware of it. We are not all Seamus Heaney.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Ian Donaldson - Ben Jonson
Ian Donaldson, Ben Jonson, A Life (OUP)
Quite early in this book, the Stratfordian side of the Shakespeare debate might well consider just how much is known about Jonson's life compared to their man and begin to wonder if the opposition might have a point. I'm sure they don't and one good reason is that Jonson was more assiduous in preserving his own details in both his own poems and plays and his discussions with others but it still registers as a vague irritant.
Ian Donaldson's book is scholarly, which means detailed and thorough, without being captivating throughout. Jonson is a 'colourful' character but Donaldson limits his imaginings to a sensible minimum while accumulating genuine evidence from real sources. A book of this length on Shakespeare's life is filled out with historical context, contemporary facts and figures and speculation whereas this is able to fix on its main subject most of the time.
Never far from controversy, Jonson's first major skirmish is in 1597 with The Isle of Dogs, a play apparently so scurrilous that he and his collaborators found themselves in Marshalsea Prison and destroyed all copies of it. The episode threatened the whole enterprise and future of the theatre but exactly what offence it caused is now uncertain except that it must have marked an early benchmark by which to measure his swings between satire and the expedient glorification of eminent figures. His career continues through the duel in which he kills Gabriel Spencer, a fellow actor, some falling out with Shakespeare and the issue of the coats of arms that hint at the social ambitions of both Jonson and Shakespeare. But Donaldson doesn't see Jonson satirizing Shakespeare's ambition on the grounds that his own rise in status was even more spectacular. I don't know if that would have dissuaded Jonson from making the point, though. However, the unfortunate Spencer had been one of those imprisoned with Jonson before being despatched by him in a swordfight over some disagreement now unknown.
Whereas Shakespeare's allegiance to Catholicism is no more than implied or suspected in places, and John Donne changes religion quite well-advisedly in early adulthood, Jonson remains Catholic for much longer, and one can see his reputation for robust and belligerent attitudes given every justification in these episodes, and yet later in life, in 1625, it was suggested ('jocularly') that he might be made Dean of Westminster.
Jonson's energy and output are prolific, his cynical world-view as portrayed in so many of the plays only equalled by his shameless but orthodox flattery of monarchs and patrons. He became the undisputed star writer of his time, providing, with Inigo Jones- another friend with who he managed to find ongoing differences, the foundations for the Augustan Age before the preference of the Romantic period for Shakespeare replaced the taste for his 'neo-classicism'. Donaldson doubts if the poverty he claimed in old age was quite as dire as his appeals for financial help might have suggested and was in any case evidently brought about by the generous good living that he enjoyed and promoted, as reported by Izaak Walton,
(he) would be sure not to want wine, of which he usually took too much before he went to bed, if not oftener and sooner.
Ian Donaldson has provided an essential account of Jonson, including not only his adventures abroad and walking to Scotland but detailed summaries of many of the masques and plays. The journey from being a poor bricklayer in Charing Cross to the most eminent man of letters in England, in Westminster, went by a circuitous and apparently very lively route.
Thursday, 2 February 2012
Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)
There will be better tributes than I can provide to the Nobel prize-winning poet, Wislawa Szymborska, who died in Krakow this week aged 88. I'd be among the first to question how anyone can appreciate poetry in a language one doesn't understand but I liked to think when I first read her poems that we shared some kinship of themes and approach, which was partly at least prompted by the fact that she had a poem called Museum, just like me. And with a small output of quiet poems, and apparently being stunned into silence by her Nobel prize, there really should be more poets like her. But like her I certainly did.
Also, locally, Portsmouth Poetry Society lost Brian Wells last week, a proper poet and very nice man, a founder member of the society 40 years ago, who will be much missed.
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