More Oxford Lectures

Poetry in Translation. One of the more helpful definitions of 'poetry' is 'that which gets lost in translation' and so the whole industry is a little bit redundant. Being staunchly Remain and not nationalistic, I don't read poetry in English exclusively but recognize that I'm nowhere near fluent enough in any other language to appreciate the nuances available in one's native tongue, thus it is valuable to have some idea of what poets in other languages are saying and how they are saying it but accessing the 'poetry' isn't possible. Ovid, Symborska, Baudelaire and Catullus are favourite poets but not as a result of the work of their translators, grateful to them though I am for their versions and their help.

Shakespeare Sonnet 145 looks like an early work put into the book to fulfil the numbers. The only one of the 154 to be written in eight-syllable lines. But it makes use of a pun on the name Hathaway in,
'I hate', from hate away she threw,
   And saved my life, saying 'not you'.
which, for all the world, looks autobiographical, reflecting on the theme that was to recur in Thom Bell's Break Up to Make Up by the Stylistics. It is easy to extrapolate from that glimpse of evidence that it was not a happy marriage, from which one can lead back into the ready-made world of the TLS letter of April 2016, the possibility that the twins, Hamnet and Judith, were not Shakespeare's progeny and all that is outlined elsewhere at DG Books.  

Pop music and poetry. No, I wouldn't have given Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although I have awarded my own tiny prizes here for poetry, it was by way of reviewing the year (which is a lame excuse) and I'd prefer not to have prizes. But even if it was a prize for Best Pop Music Words, I wouldn't have given it to Dylan. He can be very good but he himself nominated Smokey Robinson as the 'poet' and nothing he did is as good as The Tracks of My Tears. But pop lyrics don't need to be as good as poetry because they are supported by, or even only support, other resources and the words aren't the only thing, often not even the main thing, in pop music whereas in poetry, it is only the words.

Poet is not a job. (This is such an old theme I'd almost forgotten it). It doesn't take all day to do, like the occupation of novelist, which is much more demanding. It is not only useful, but also necessary, to be engaged with the world in some other way rather than be a poet all the time. Tennyson's biography provides an example of what one becomes if that's all you are. That's all he was and he become too much absorbed in it, in being himself, and his work, if not his income, suffered as a consequence. When we speak of an 'occasional' poet, it means one who writes poems for occasions rather than one that writes occasionally but all poets would benefit from writing occasionally rather than habitually.

Ending the career with a long silence. Having begun the first lecture by saying there should be no rules, none of these are rules, but just suggestions. Not everybody has the opportunity to stop once they've finished and certainly Sylvia was pouring out great, if ostensibly highly personalized work, in her last days but her demise was untimely. David Bowie might have continued to produce worthwhile work after Station to Station, Low or sometime in the early 1980's but his average score would be much more stratospheric had it been based on the albums from Hunky Dory, maybe slightly before, to Station to Station, maybe slightly later. Artistically, it's best to quit while you're ahead, although you might not know when that is. Even St. Seamus Heaney possibly carried on too long, although he was still the best at it. The examples of Rimbaud, Rosemary Tonks and Sibelius, who for very different reasons all abandoned their creative careers, suggest that you don't have to keep on doing it if you don't feel like it.

I'll think of a few more to finish my tenure in abstracts, I'm sure.