David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I published booklets of my own poems. The original allocation of ISBN numbers is used up now, though. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf.
The website is now what it has become, often more about music than books and not so often about poems. It will be about whatever suggests itself.
Seek, and ye shall find. And if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. With a little help from a friend, I eventually found Rosemary Tonks. She wasn't really hidden in death any more than she had completely disappeared in life, she just wasn't easy to find.
The grave is first of all not really at the Church of St. Thomas a Beckett, Warblington, as given by Neil Astley in the introduction to Bedouin of the London Evening. It is in the much more extensive adjoining municipal cemetery. We know her inscription has her as Rosemary Lightband, the married name she lived under after she stopped being the writer, Rosemary Tonks, but if I missed her on previous visits it might be because I came from the wrong direction. She's on the reverse side of her mother's headstone, but I had been looking for her mother, Gwendoline, too.
In the end, suddenly, there she was and that was the accomplishment of this project and some kind of ambition achieved. I'm very glad I got there in the end. You go south from the main gate to section 2 before you reach the end and she's about 10 rows in from the path and maybe a dozen from the hedgerow, in between the great, weeping tree swaying in the summer breeze and a more prosaic one. I'm not saying they are a willow and an apple tree.
To be fair to her, she hadn't completely disappeared in life either. Some family knew where she was but they kept her whereabouts quiet so that she could evade the literary world that was wondering where she'd gone.
In the Jewish tradition, I left a stone on the grave in memory. They last longer than flowers. There will be more to say, perhaps, elsewhere in due course.
On the way back I tried what might have been a short cut back to Havant. Warblington is a bus ride and a walk from my house. It probably wasn't a short cut but it was a pleasant scenic route on a Sunday afternoon, joining the shoreline and the old Billy line where trains used to go from Havant to Hayling Island and I was able to add this photo to my very intermittent series of pictures that remind me of lines of poetry. I don't think we've had 'there is a willow grows aslant a brook' in which Gertrude reports the death of Ophelia in Hamlet and I know that this certainly isn't a willow but it could be a brook.
I'm only guessing, 'O' level Latin being now 46 years ago, that one can change 'salvator mundi', saviour of the world, to 'salvator mei', saviour of me. I once thought I had got 9 answers in The Times Latin crossword only to have at least three of them shot down so I don't try anymore. The usual cryptic completion was e-mailed in at lunchtime. They only have to give me the book token once and I'll stop entering.
But I was saved from the impending, enforced return to the Wake when, on returning the previous James Kirkup memoir, my friend abracadabra produced another volume. He is a great read, immediately and comprehensively dismissive of so many literary figures of his time but devoted to Ronald Firbank and Bertie Russell, amongst others.
I don't have much time for his poems but he got by. I do have a lot of time for his 'mis-fit' status, though, even if he connects with more than enough people in a contingent, fleeting way. I don't have much faith in the 'love' he summons for quite so many people when it happens quite so often but there's no point in anybody since thinking they lived in 'liberated' times after reading his stories. I thought the conditions were 'between consenting adults in private' but that doesn't include publishing so much of it aferwards.
But, yes, there might still be a way of getting by when you're not one of those the world has a place for but you do need some confidence in your own convictions, of which he had a few.
He might not have enjoyed it so much these days with so much righteousness on his side but still not making inroads into the supplicant attitude we all have to take towards money, pride and prejudice and the conflict they necessarily lead to. Maybe we could all live up to our radical ideals if we were allowed to but I'm not aware of anybody who does because we're not.
We like to think we get away with it as best we can.
Much of the discussion at an all boys grammar school in the mid-70's centred on 'best guitarist' which meant deciding whether Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton or anybody else was most competent or expressive on the instrument some actually thought was called 'lead guitar'. As time went on, the search for more convincingly researched, abstruse answers led to Robin Trower, Steve Hillage without many mentioning the raw but admirable work of Rory Gallagher, the fast fingers of Alvin Lee or such a more sensitive musician as Richard Thompson.
I found it difficult, being no musician myself whatsoever, and so sided with Jan Akkerman because I had an album by Focus, and Jimmy Page because Led Zeppelin were obviously very good in spite of, rather than because of, his dark fantasies. Eventually, I had to be honest and said that Marc Bolan was my favourite guitarist and was laughed out of court by one or two who knew better but, 45 years later, while we can accept that Jimi Hendrix was the right answer then, he was replaced by Prince in the 1980's. But none of that makes me want to alter my decision.
Genius isn't anything you can learn and it might not even be something you can be born with. It has to be self-taught, made up, something nobody else has done before or else it can't be 'genius'.
You will have to go a long way down into lists of 'greatest guitarists' to find anybody listing Marc but it was by no means anything like his main job. His main job was to be a pop star and it mattered little to him, after his teenage modelling career, whether that came about by being the new Chuck Berry, Cliff Richard, Bob Dylan or whatever it took.
And it took several years, through disastrous projects like John's Children, the underground years of sitting on the floor alongside a bongo player like an Indian musician he'd seen, with Tyrannosaurus Rex and doing an apprenticeship as long as but not much like that the Beatles did in Hamburg. In those days, there was time, and it was worth the wait.
In the same way that purist Bob Dylan fans disapproved of the move to electric guitars and the abandonment of the folksy poet idea in favour of something better, John Peel, who had nurtured Tyrannosuarus Rex and been devoted to them, decided he didn't approve of Get It On. And so, that was that and Marc dropped John in a reciprocal arrangement once he'd served his purpose.
It was not the first time or the last that a change of direction brought commercial success to an act that had been trying earnestly but not so profitably before hitting the jackpot by selling a lot more records. Hawkwind were never really Hawkwind any more after Silver Machine, Aswad weren't the same again after Don't Turn Around and Spandau Ballet, Simply Red and even Queen might have seemed interesting at first before realizing that 'professional' means earning money and that's the first priority.
In 1971, being interesting and being able to sell records weren't mutually exclusive. David Bowie was, by all means, the consummate artist that one had to admire but Marc was the one you could love, at least partly for his sheer nerve. It wasn't entirely obvious at the time if it was a joke or not whereas with chart rivals, Slade, with their mis-spelt titles and Nod, never mind Dave Hill, it clearly was. But with Marc, the words were spell-binding poetry, he was completely gorgeous to girls and he played music that might have been suspected of being novelty 'pop' at the time but is more respected now than it was at the time. Not the least of the credit for that should go to Tony Visconti, the producer who made the string of hits from Ride a White Swan to Metal Guru such masterpieces. That work only becomes obvious once Marc becomes so taken up with himself that he thinks he can do it all himself, sacks Visconti and he immediately stops being anywhere near as good as he had been.
None of that prevents Get It On being one of the monuments of 1971 which always seemed pop music's best year, possibly because it was a 'coming of age' year for me, being nearly 12, but it's a proposition supported by a sage like David Hepworth, who even though born in 1950, still puts 71 ahead of 1966. Pop music had learnt it all by then with its Hunky Dory, Electric Warrior, Motown in its last stage of majesty and, as we see in the Top 30 of September, could hardly put a foot wrong. There have certainly been brilliant things since but it's been very gradually downhill all the way since as, like most artists do, pop music itself eventually ran out of ideas, had to repeat itself or re-invent itself less convincingly. But, for those of us who were there, nobody can take 1971 away from us.
From time to time here I say that such and such a writer is one that will be worth returning to, and sometimes I do. Henry James was a pleasant if vague memory and The Turn of the Screw was helpfully only 132 pages long. It confirmed the impression I'd had of him before. He is famous for his prose style but it's a luxurious one. I wasn't clear what the ending of The Turn of the Screw 'meant' but it's a ghost story and ghosts needs must involve the unknown. And so Henry James continues on an upward trajectory.
I do sometimes wonder at the point of all this reading, though, when I can remember so little about the books not long after. I couldn't even remember which Henry James it was I read earlier this year - Portrait of a Lady. I can usually remember whether they were any good or not but with BBC4 showing the vintage dramatisation of the Raods to Freedom trilogy, which I read in January, I had to check back here to see what I thought about it. I thought Nausea was much better and read the trilogy more out of duty and diligence than with relish.
One remembers things more clearly from longer ago, they are solidified permanently like foundation stones. Especially set books for exams when, after all, one had only read a couple of dozen books and assumed that that was most of literature accounted for. Hamlet, The Woodlanders, probably The Catcher in the Rye and as much as you could want of Larkin, I could talk about until the cows come home or, more likely, the audience make their excuses and go to theirs but nowadays it seems books go in one eye and out of the other 'leaving just their picture behind'. While the poetry of Holland-Dozier-Holland and Smokey Robinson readily comes to mind and can be quoted at length, I couldn't give you much verbatim Rosemary Tonks even though her attitude and charisma are compelling, compulsive and glorious.
This post first appeared in 2009 but, having added the label, it has jumped forward to re-date itself as today. That's fine. I'm surprised, but glad, to see how many times the blogspot metrics say it's been viewed in the last 13 years.
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James Kirkup made headline news in the late 70's with a controversial poem which was by no means one of his better efforts. But there was more to him than that and this volume is an example of some of his more circumspect, controlled and thoughtful work.
He was, among other things, a great exponent of the haiku in English but the haiku in English in one of those subjects that I have to restrain myself from expressing a strong opinion on.
One thing Kirkup does best, though, is sign a book. This exquisite example is the neatest signature I have on a book of poems and it refers us back to an age where such style was valued.
'I'll give it you back next week when I see you,' I said. 'Oh, no, don't worry, keep it for the summer,' my friend said. She'll get it back on Thursday okay. Very readable and a couple of days well spent, was James Kirkup's memoir, I, of All People. I knew about Kirkup's poems without being an admirer but I didn't know about his other writing of which I am and am likely to seek out more.
Conscientious objector and mis-fit almost determinedly set against the conservative attitudes of the world he found himself in, he was promiscuous enough to take up prostitution as an income stream when necessary but whereas the easy access availability of 'trade' in the Thom Gunn letters was enough to diminish him, it is such an habitual thing for Kirkup, and is never held up as any solution to his isolation, that it caused no equivalent offence. But since I never held Kirkup's poems in anything like the sort of regard I did Gunn's, there was no such reputation for it to damage.
It is more reason to think of people who write as 'writers' rather than writers of a particular genre. As in Larkin's gravestone, which says 'writer', not 'poet', it matters less what form the writing took but that they were worthy of the name.
Books don't write themselves is a truth soon universally acknowledged by anybody who ever thought they'd write one. In some jobs the day will pass, whether you achieve anything or not, and you'll get paid at the end of the week, or month but a writer, whether doing it for money or not, is on piece work. If you don't do anything, nothing happens. So although this pop music book won't ever be finished, I do have to keep adding to it, bit by bit. It's already not going to be called 'A Pefect Day of Pop Radio' because that's an awful title but it's indexed here as such. Perhaps it will be called 'Playlist'.
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It's become traditional by now for commentators on 70's glam rock to cite the moment that David Bowie and Mick Ronson put their arms across each other's shoulders during Starman on Top of the Pops as crucial, ground-breaking and seminal. By all means, Starman was a tremendous record and for those not yet teenagers while The Beatles were still making records, for those capable of intuiting how great Bowie was in the early 70's, he was more important. Maybe a spaceman, maybe transgender, certainly 'art' and definitely a genius at what he did but the anthem he provided for that generation was All the Young Dudes, very graciously given away to workaday Hereford rock band, Mott the Hoople, who might having been touring and going to lots of places but were also going nowhere. It is a measure of Bowie's talent that he could give away such a song, like Lennon & McCartney had given away the likes of World Without Love and Step Inside Love.
I'm sure every new generation of young people feels lost, left out, alienated and under-consulted but pop music has long since given them a vehicle on which to express as much. Bowie's declaration, 'I'm a dude, dad' is an update of the 50's proclamation that 'it's trad, dad' but it can hardly be one's parents' fault that they don't understand your music when it was specifically designed for them not to. The words are a catalogue of the overblown significance of teenage rebellion which admittedly did seem to catch the zeitgeist and be very much the point at the time. I'm disapponted that lyric websites, possibly quite rightly, say it's,
Oh, man, I need TV when I've got T. Rex.
There are any number of songs on which I sang my words rather than the proper ones either because they were indecipherable or because I improbed on them but that should have been,
Oh, man, who needs TV when I've got T. Rex.
Drive-in Saturday was, at first glance, an appalling mistake for Ian Hunter and Mott to turn down when they were offered that, too. It is an entirely credible Science Fiction story and there's not many of those. But, having found a sound and some sort of formula, Mott the Hoople were already away and gone with Honaloochie Boogie,
don't worry 'bout the shirt shine,
Roll Away the Stone and then quickly became nostalgic with All the Way from Memphis, Saturday Gigs and The Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll and they were welcome. They had a lot to be thankful for to Bowie. He owed a debt to Lou Reed, and vice versa, amongst others but by the 80's even the Bowie genius was flagging a bit and he needed the CHIC organisation to inject some disco into the likes of Let's Dance. Well, let's not. We'd be better off dancing to Chic.
But they helped each other in moments of need, I like to think.
I was a little bit surprised by How Much Land Does a Man Need. Not so much the story but the fact that it was so admired by Joyce. One might expect him to like Chekhov and he certainly did like Ibsen but this sort of Tolstoy isn't much like them. A farmer is offered as much land as he can walk round in a day, goes for it, just gets back before sunset and qualifies for the biggest tract of prime, fertile land he can manage but collapses and dies at the finish. It's a parable. As indeed are the other stories in this collection once you realize and then, you think, that's what War and Peace is and it's what Tolstoy does. In understanding anything 'major' one can begin by simplifying down to something too simplistic and build back from that. Finnegans Wake is a vast scurrilous bit of wordplay, Hamlet is two botched revenge plots, Middlemarch is the acceptance of less than she might of had by a diligent young lady.
These Tolstoy stories don't take much reading or maybe it just seems like that in a break from the Wake. Perhaps all such common-sensical fiction will seem like a pushover once one's sat in rapt ignorance in front of Joyce as he indulges himself ad infinitum.
But, of interest to all those who follow horse racing as well as C19th Russian literature, the painting on the cover of this Penguin Classic is Midday by Ivan Shiskin (1832-1898). Not because Midday, trained by Henry Cecil, won some big races in 2009/10 but because Shishkin is the top UK two-mile chaser at present. So now we know.
The painting is mainly sky but not quite as much sky as this masterpiece by Gluck,
In the U.K. we had Top of the Pops and were grateful but America had Soul Train and, being America, they probably weren't. Whereas the dancers coralled into the studio and told to look like they were having a good time on TOTP if and when trying to avoid the attentions of the celebrity presenter included such absurdities as a Penelope Keith look-a-like dressed for Abigail's Party dancing to Get It On, Soul Train was much more the 'real thing' with not only artists worth having, not including novelty hits, the far-too-comfortable likes of Lena Martell or any of the failed half-baked ideas that came and went, unable to make an impression even with the gift of TOTP exposure but only having good music and having dancers worthy of dancing to it.
The S.O.S. Band, I now find, weren't that big in the UK. Just Be Good to Me only reached no. 13 in 1983 before being re-invented as Dub Be Good to Meand making no.1 for Beats International in 1990, 'written by' Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim. I'm not sure about that. The Finest reached no. 17 in 1986 and I'm dismayed to see that Borrowed Love then only reached no. 50 even with my help. Chart positions aren't the ultimate arbiter, though, and nearly 40 years after the fact, these are as good as ever.
It isn't 'soul' as such but we don't need to get hung up on categories. Its Wikipedia entry says it's 'electro-funk' but at least in exchange for that we find that it's an emerging Alexander O'Neal that strolls in at halfway to duet with Mary Davis. It's not impassioned like Ain't Nobody by Rufus & Chaka Khan and it's not frenetic like Ride on Time by Black Box, it's gentler, more relaxed and, in sharing the vocal responsibilities around, a communal effort. It was more often the case that the U.S.A. didn't get some British acts that were all over everywhere in the UK but struggled over there. Cliff Richard, T. Rex. It's not so easy to think of American artists that should have been better appreciated in the opposite direction but the S.O.S. Band were one.
The Portsmouth Poetry Society will be celebrating its 50th year, which was really last year, with a reading at St. Francis Church, Hilsea, PO2 9LX next Tuesday, 19th at 7.30. Anybody in the area with an interest in poetry is invited, and encouraged, to attend. It is free and even Calliope, the accompanying book of poems by members is only £2.
An even more attractive selling point is that I won't be in it. I'm not sure I'm not doubting that decision and I should really be doing it but once one has decided that one doesn't have to read one's poems out loud in public or even see them in print, it is a weight off one's mind. I was glad to hear of Derek Mahon's abdication from the lectern or microphone. He was a model one could do far worse than imitate and I took it as some sort of endorsement. It's stagefright, it's false modesty, it's no longer seeing the point.
But if poetry is not quite the raison d'etre it once was for me, I'm glad it is for those of PPS. The meetings and programme have retained very much the same format as they had when I first attended in 1982. It doesn't need to change, and shouldn't, because it works. It's never been broke and don't need fixing. Inclusive, sympathetic and with no artistic agenda, having been to other groups in other cities many years ago, I never found one as easy access, supportive and resourceful as them.
The Wake is a tall story indeed. One of the tallest. The Guide has gone back to the library now so I'll make my way in my own time to the end with only the help of my basic and sporadic notes, sporadic because there were times I didn't even know which bits to make a note of. On the upside, in among the torrent of infinitely inventive, jauntily rhythmic wordplay, there were a few parts I understood well enough for them to trigger a memory of what it said in the Guide, which is hardly a spontaneous reaction to literature but it's as much as I can manage in this most unconquerable of literary quests. I've reached a suitable place to stop, about two-thirds of the way through, and so will take a break.
Returning to something more accessible will be like that most refreshing first slug of cold beer or fizzy water on a hot day, and we know what that's like at the moment. It might be like taking off tight-fitting shoes or listening to Haydn after Pierrot Lunaire. At the library I exchanged the Guide for Tolstoy's How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories. In it, I expect one thing to happen followed by others and then to interpret the concatenation to ascertain some meaning. A story, written by one of those most often lauded as the best at compiling such things rather than a consummate prose writer who many thought had surely lost his mind.
It is to be hoped that the Conservative Party, once more selecting a Prime Minister for us among themselves are in the process of doing a comparable thing but they can't be trusted. Look what happened last time. And Liz Truss is only a 4/1 shot. It's a volatile race and my MP, Penny Mordaunt, can be no value as short as 8/13. She's not my fault but she does have the considerable endorsement of my neighbours and a majority of 15000. She would be a vast improvement on her predecessor, needless to say, but I'd be a Rishi man if I had to back any of them although that would be like nominating my favourite golfer, formula 1 driver, Top Gear presenter or coffee.
...would be the title I'd use when I finish Finnegans Wake. That isn't quite yet but I've finished the Readerr's Guide by William York Tindall and thus will gain no more understanding of it by reading the rest of the Wake itself although I will do that, all in good time, if only to say that I did. The Guide is from the library and due back soon, which was a good enough excuse to press on and finish the commentary I could follow rather than do it alongside the text I surely can't. I will sit and let the words of the second half of that wash over me in the same state of abstract oblivion that so much of it is set so maybe will get some of the artistic effect.
I come away from Tindall with 'some idea' of what the Wake is. Some idea of its shape, reference points, methods and, to say the very least, its complexity. Proust is like Janet and John in comparison and Tolstoy a mildly diverting short story. But it's Tolstoy I'll go to next, on the tip from Joyce's letters, that How Much Land Does a Man Need? was the best story he'd ever read. Possibly before he read the best story he ever wrote, The Dead.
I estimate my understanding of the Wake at maybe 10%and certainly nothing like 20%, and nearly all of that depending on the guide. We were always warned off the editions of exam-passing notes that one could furtively smeak a look at to clarify set books and told to engage with the text. That was, no doubt, right in a puritanical way but I'm sure we all did it at one time or another. But it also depends on the complexity of the text. No, I don't think students should need ro refer to cribs as an aid to Hardy or Dickens or George Eliot but I can see why, when books are deliberately written in a difficult way, students needing things to say about them need to be shown the way. And by the time you get to Finnegans Wake, we surely all do.
Any number of 'progressive' rock artist could have been said to be self-indulgent but they were as nothing compared to James Joyce.
Given the standards expected these days to achieve a degree in Literature, I reckon I might get a 2:1 on the Wake on the strength of having read the notes. First of all, the examiners need to find somebody who knows enough about it to say I'm wrong unless they mark it on a check list of points made.
Does he say that H.C. Earwicker stands for 'Here Comes Everybody'. Yes. Tick.
Does he say that it's based on Vico's cycles of history. Yes. Tick.
Does he say anything about D.H. Lawrence's reaction that it is was 'deliberate journalistic dirtry-mindedness. Yes. Tick and I'm on my way to a first because if professors who have spent their whole lives on it say they have maybe only de-coded half of it, how much can they expect from an under-graduate who has other courses to do.
No, that's fine. I'm glad to have got as far as I have and it'll be fine. Whichever other art one has thought attempted to breach the frontiers of madness - Dali, Bosch, Wagner or Val Doonican, they can all be excused and put into the mainstream in the light of the Wake. It hasn't done Joyce any favours as far as I'm concerned except for the wonder at the vast intellect and neither did the letters. He's betterr off being known for Dubliners and the Portrait but, having admired them to distraction, one can't help but go further and, whenever one goes further one eventually goes too far.
We can't help but enquire into our heroes furrther and then we find out enough to diminish what we had thought of them.
My own autobiographical note says I was born in Nottingham in 1959 and now live in Portsmouth. It says what my last book of poems was and says I'm here doing this. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
The Renaissance Choir, Protest Against Oppression, Church of the Holy Spirit, Southsea, July 9
The range of music on this evening's programme in Southsea served among other things to be indicative of the wide range of oppression suffered throughout history and it goes on. All these pieces, then, were acts of resilience and undaunted optimism.
Starting from behind us, Peter Gambie, the genial host and conductor, introduced Lysenko's A Prayer for Ukraine which was a soulful and contemplative beginning before the seasonal Sumer is icumen in was both processional and a 'round'.
Short pieces by Dowland, Sheppard and Dering were 'rebellion in action'. Flow my tears extended hyperbole in the premise that,
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.
The Sheppard Sanctus was spacious and Factum est silentium more muscular with its dragon fighting Archangel Michael.
Paul Hindemith left Germany in 1938, his wife being part Jewish and his music, as far as the Nazis were concerned, 'degenerate'. Karen Kingsley, piano, and Rob Blanken, clarinet, as the Monington Duo were jaunty and subversive in the shifting rhythms of his Sonata in music far too dizzying and vibrant for totalitarians.
There was a Taverner long before there was a Tavener and a Peter Philips some 350 years before the Tallis Scholars. Taverner's Dum Transisset Sabbatum was expansive with the sopranos powerful and making good use of the re-verb of the Holy Spirit acoustic, which was a benefit throughout. It is a fine venue, one of the best in the area, for that. In the Philips and the Lamentations of Robert White, the choir were smooth and flawless before William Byrd bestrode the interval like a colossus.
Solve Jubente Deo was full and upbeat, opening the kingdom of heaven to the blessed before the break but after it, surely the stand-out item was the Ne irascis domine, the choir spaced out, as it were, for its hypnotic adagio. Art is always bigger than doctrine and sectarianism and Byrd's music will always override whatever one thinks of his religion even if that's why he wrote it. But I had a second-ever moment of recognizing my very favourite Francois Couperin when, bless me, Jer-u-sal-em at the climax is exactly as it is in the Lecons de Tenebres. The first time that happened was in the string quartet Tenebrae by Osvaldo Golijov that quotes Couperin but perhaps he in turn knew the Byrd.
You can't really follow that without doing something completely different. John Rutter's Feel the Spirit is seven alternatingly vibrant and darker settings of gospel songs from American slavery. Done with the most honourable of intentions, Melissa Wingfield is a fine singer in her own right without being Mahalia Jackson, Rob might almost have been Sidney Bechet and, having heard Karen play several different types of piano, that hadn't included anything approaching 'stride' until tonight.
Motherless Child was ghostly. Ev'ry time I feel the spirit went from chapel to full gospel. Bass Andrew Dickinson was the strong current of Deep river while the choir lapped the river bank in his wake. But one could see what was coming and then it did, with all available resources brought together for a tour de force When the saints go marching in, not even needing Kenny Ball when it could rock and sway, even down to the detail of a silvery glint of moonlight on the cymbal by percussionist, Tim Boxall.
I really wasn't expecting anything like that but as the great Errollyn Wallen makes a point of not recognising musical boundaries, neither should we expect the Renaissance Choir to go no further than Josquin des Prez. Boundaries are what oppressors are in favour of. In favour of extending their own while reducing everybody else's.
I only remembered to go to this an hour before it started. I'm glad I did. As ever, the enjoyment of seeing and hearing what these good people do is only multiplied by how much they clearly enjoy doing it.
The nagging doubts I've always had about reading other people's letters are only added to by how often it diminishes their reputation. It was the first volume of Larkin letters more than the Motion biography that made him so non grata for many. I never had as much time for Ted Hughes in the first place but his letters were mostly tragic, funny in places, forever in search of a new money-making project and a lack of awareness that the problem was him. My big hero, Thom Gunn, was reduced in status by the revelation that 'hedonism' and 'moral freedom' are only more positive ways of saying 'helplessly prmiscuous'.
Elizabeth Bishop came across as a much more homely, likeable and self-deprecating figure and Mozart was almost child-like at times, if I remember rightly.
James Joyce, regarded this side of idolatry here, if mainly for The Dead, the rest of Dubliners and Portrait, doesn't fare well but by the end, I overcame some reservations. We've long understood that being a great writer doesn't automatically make anyone great at anything else. He's disputatious in his dealings with publishers and in business, perhaps understandably when they are reluctant to publish his work. He's also quite demanding, asking favours from exile and early penury for books, money and, later, detailed information about Dublin so that Ulysses, as has been said, could be used as a comprehensive guide to it.
However, whether we really need to read the letters to Nora in all their frank indecency is another matter. As with poetry, it's preferable if there's always a bit that we don't know.
But, acerbic rather than amusing, he's rarely got good words for the likes of Oliver St. John Gogarty as a person or the work of George Moore and even at his best, he's not inclined to compromise, like declining to buy tickets for the sweepstake,
The only decent people I ever saw at a racecourse were the horses. The late Shah of Persia when invited by King Edward to go to Goodwood replied: I know that one horse runs quicker than another but which particular horse it is doesn't interest me.
Writing to Lucia, though, he drops us a tip, thatHow Much Land Does a Man Need by Tolstoy is 'the greatest story that the literature of the world knows'. And so we'll maybe have a look at that.
The letters were the easy option, taking a rest at roughly halfway through the Wake. The latest two chapters of that were little more than sitting and looking at the words. One really might as well just read the Guide. So maybe the plan might be to finish the Guide, with notes, take that back to the library and then proceed with the Wake as and when. The point of that really will be to be able to make the spurious claim that I've 'read' it.
Less demandingly, or more rewardingly, is gathering some notes towards an introduction to Thomas Hardy, as poet rather than novelist, for my turn on the Portsmouth Poetry Society programme next year. Being washed by such clarity, coherence and sense is like that first blast of a cold drink on a hot day. Which reminds me that it might soon be time for that, too.
It's not my sort of race. It's a weird situation and the previous
winner, B. Johnson, was almost a certainty in the circumstances but
baulked a trend for Conservative Party Leader contests to overturn
favourites and find an unlikely outsider. Such prospects as Whitelaw,
Heseltine and Portillo failed and dark horses like Thatcher and Major
came from nowhere to win.
Penny Mordaunt is almost favourite under sufferance, seemingly
competent but relatively quiet and 'under the radar' during the chaos.
Sunak would be an overwhelming favourite had he not got some adverse
publicity and, in my view, if he hadn't stuck by Boris for quite so
long.
It's not impossible that Penny could be the new Thatcher, or at least
Theresa, but in a field as wide open and difficult to judge as this,
I'm not sure she's a worthy favourite.
The value might be to go for one who might have some talent, looks
like he takes it seriously and could be the one to 'steady the ship'
before they all go overboard.
That would be Sajid Javid and you can get 8/1.
Actually, I've talked myself into having a couple of quid on him but Corals were only offering 7's..
The other thing is, we're not sure when the race will be run but it looks like sooner rather than later.
Sajid Javid is Mishriff, the most solid, reliable type in what could be a strange race.
Somebody needs to benefit out of this chaos so me, to the tune of £14, might be the one.
Please, please, now that this story has gone this far, let's see it through.
Let's see Nadine Dorries appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, just for one day, before this most absurd of Prime Ministers resigns tomorrow.
It's only a shame it's taken this long. Some of us knew before he was Prime Minister, before he was an MP and before he was Lord Mayor of London. That he was a disaster was the worst kept secret almost before he started and yet somehow the British Constitution, as was an 'A' level subject once, was derelict enough to allow itself to be his plaything.
Well, that's it. It's got to be over now and forever shame on everybody, Workington and Bolsover included, who ever gave him the time of day. You can't say we didn't try to tell you.
The Chichester Festival is well underway and Elena Toponogova returned to the cathedral with some friends to present more of her Russian repertoire.
She began alone at the piano with an extra item, the traditional Ukrainian folk song, The Willow Board, which was all stillness and thus eloquent.
She was then joined by the ensemble for Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes which was Russian in the string quartet but klezmer in the clarinet. A broad cello theme with busy, light piano accompaniment was introduced before the piece sped to its end under a sustained violin top note, the group tight as a unit as they were to be throughout.
Alex Ross's book, The Rest is Noise, argues that Schonberg was the real revolutionary in C20th music and that Stravinsky only looked like one. The Three Pieces for String Quartet, though are convincingly fragmented and disembodied like modernist counterparts in other disciplines, though - The Waste Land, Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon, perhaps. The first movement makes reference to The Rite of Spring which had caused such consternation not long before, the cello gently percussive in a violin-led Danse. Excentrique possibly gives away its intention to be so in its title because for a composer like Ligeti it would have been perfectly normale and then the Cantique was bleakly funerary. I trusted that a couple of 'noises off' were accidental and not a further step into avant-garde performance. One wouldn't always be sure with some composers but we'll allow Igor that much.
Nikolai Medtner is important to Elena and she's doing a fine job in promoting his music because without her I'd never have heard of him but now I've heard him twice. The Piano Quintet in C major, op. posth. took him 44 years to write which suggests it didn't come easily. He's a much more 'late Romantic' composer than Stravinsky or Prokofiev, this piece being dense with melody. It opens, gently expansive, with the quintet blending as one rather than any taking the lead. A more restrained, almost solemn passage with more flowing piano was pastoral without quite being Vaughan-Williams before some agitato before the piece flowed on a buoyantcurrent to its big, but not quite as big as a Beethoven symphony, ending.
Either this group spend a lot of time together or they adapt readily to each other. In music that must have been demanding at times, it came out very naturally in performance.
Elena is back in the cathedral this evening on a programme with octagenarian beat poet, Roger McGough. Not necessarily playing together, I don't know. Lily the Pink in the style of Shostakovich has yet to be attempted.
So the road well travelled between Portsmouth and Chichester can have a couple of months without me but the Chichester programme for Sept-Nov looks very promising. It's a shame we have to have summer but we'll be back once we've seen it off.
