On the Threshold of a Legend

 

There are more important things going on but so does the daily routine. I spend a lot of time knocking out chess moves but it's not bad for you and so maybe that's okay.

I had set the parameters of acceptability at the lovingly preserved rating of 2000 for Blitz, 1900 for Rapid and 1800 for Classical but I've been playing well at Rapid and have been knocking on the door of 2000.

1999 was the all-time high until I fell, like Icarus, back to where I belonged. That was last May. But this morning I arrived at 1997, with a shot at 2000, drew, went up to 1998 and had another chance but blew it, getting myself all cramped up but I'm back at 1995 with the next game being important. Feats Don't Fail Me Now.

It ain't always pretty. This is no time to lark about. It is to be hoped that my next opponent, whether they be in India, Russia or Uruguay, gifts me a chance. Then it's up to me to nab it.

Two ratings over 2000 would be dreamland since achieving it at one discipline was a minor ambition achieved. It would mean only ever playing Classical, 30 minute games, henceforth but I'd rather do that than be 2000+ at only one format when I had once been it at two.

 From time to time in This Reading, and Writing, Life one can see the end of the current plan coming into sight. One's whole life doesn't consist of reading other people's accounts of their worlds and how they saw them, or providing further versions of one's own, since the necessity of earning a living came to an end but having reading, and writing, projects on the go provide the foundations for fighting off the 'existential' angst of being alive without ordained purpose which can then be augmented with the music, the horse racing and the walking for the sake of coming back again.

Sometimes, despite the vast landscape of literature still left unread - the Cervantes, the Edmund Spenser, the biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins - nothing seems urgent and, coming to a stage at which C20th can be left, like all such big projects of mine, in a first draft on which further work seems beyond me, it's not obvious what I'd do instead.

But then there are days, like yesterday, when anything seems possible. In the most vivid of these brief epiphanies, a poem sometimes emerges but I'm happy with less. It had been suggested that Dylan Thomas should have a chapter in C20th which wasn't the original plan but, yes, he should and without it the account would lack that dimension.

I thought a contrast with Alun Lewis would bring out the salient features of the two of them and give me the chance to side with the lesser-known underdog against the fraudulent windbag which, of course, Dylan wasn't really. And so the 'book' can keep me occupied for a little longer yet and reach 30 thousand words and creep into the category of 'short book' when Motion's book, admittedly only on Larkin, looks a similar length. And early signs are that putting together some pages on Dylan will be as useful to me as setting out some thoughts on Eliot, Heaney and the others that I have. It might make a pdf yet and be regarded as a job done, if not especially well done.

--

Meanwhile, there is never a downside to extending the Elizabeth Bishop section of the library. David Kalstone's Becoming a Poet is as good as any other commentary, and better than some, at re-directing one back to the poems and further enhancing her position among the very most complete poets of the last, and any other, century. It's only now, perhaps, that I feel some sort of grasp of the overall point of what she was doing beyond being impressed by one poem after another without being able to define what it was.

Poetry is at its best when some element remains elusive but unless one can find a certain amount of 'meaning' to nail down it might as well be John Ashbery on who there is no chapter in my monograph. I've sometimes thought of buying his Collected Poems to paddle about in but I don't need hundreds of pages to be mystified by when one poem will do.

 

Karen Kingsley at Lunchtime Live!

 Karen Kingsley, Portsmouth Cathedral, Jan 25

Five yards in front of where the notes come out of Portsmouth Cathedral's Bosendorfer under the finely-modulated hands of Karen Kingsley is an excellent place to sit to hear music. I'd recommend it except I want to sit there. As she pointed out, her programme today was all-English on Burns Night. 

Lennox Berkeley's Six Preludes, op. 23, alternated between Allegro and not quite so, either lively, dashing about or vivacious or less energetic and more thoughtful but never escaping to be entirely at peace.

We are sometimes lucky enough to have one of the composers with us and today Benedict Blythe, ex-Portsmouth Grammar School and now at the Royal Academy, was present to hear a new version of his The Abbey, originally written for Romsey Abbey but now adapted to abbeys more generally. 

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces,

one might have thought, after T.S. Eliot, and I did, followed possibly by some mysterious footsteps. There could be some loose relationship with Debussy's cathédrale engloutie that Karen has also played not too long ago but this is spacious, no less atmospheric, and rises to some crash and rumble before settling on an unsettled ending. Karen gave it a concentrated performance, her fortes benefitting from the contrast with her elegant pianos.

We are normally out of the cathedral by 2pm so this was extra value, finishing at 2.15, but the choice of which piece to end on defines the mood one goes home in. Not too intense of an ordinary, winter Thursday afternoon in Old Portsmouth, perhaps.

Hubert Parry's Shulbrede Tunes are a set of ten miniatures at times picturesque and descriptive after their expansive opening. The sprites in Bogies and Sprites that Gambol by Night were spritely, maybe quoting Three Blind Mice, and there were echoes of laughter in Children's Pranks and to end, Father Playtime paid homage to Pachelbel's Canon if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. As George Harrison said of one of the Neil Innes Beatles pastiches in The Rutles,

Oooh, it's a bit close, that one.

But a bit of further elaboration on the baroque masterpiece was a hugely enjoyable party piece, too.

There will be more Karen Kingsley, very gladly, later in the year and it is to be hoped that there might be more Benedict Blythe on a future programme, too, one day. Contemporary classical music was suffering a bit when I first heard some of it in the 1970's but while the world as a whole hasn't obviously improved much, music has found a way back and I'm sure we are all glad to hear it.

Angela Zanders and Mikhail Ledzkan in the Menuhin Room

 Angela Zanders and Mikhail Ledzkan, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, Jan 20

By way of introducing an all-Rachmaninov programme, Angela Zanders read from a contemporary article in Grove's, 'the unsurpassed authority on all aspects of music', that amongst other things described his music as 'artificial, gushing'.

That's fine by me. All art is 'artificial', it just might sometimes choose to sound 'natural', and by all means we can all 'gush' a bit if we see fit. As Angela said, he remains very popular. We don't have to worry about that either. To re-work the famous quote about Wagner, music is as good as it sounds and the first few notes of Mikhail Ledzkan's cello in the Prelude, op. 2, announced all that we needed to know about the pleasure of being back for a further year of the Menuhin Room series. I'm sure he could play the telephone directory and make it sing.

The Prelude didn't gush but grew gently to a considered lyricism and then without Mikhail, Angela played another for piano, op. 23 no. 4 which was loosely redolent of the Fauré Berceuse, perhaps, again extending towards something more rhapsodic. 

Not everything needs to be in top gear but the programme moved through a few to arrive at the main feature, the Sonata in G minor, op. 19. The early activity was more on the tumbling array of notes on the keyboard while the cello did what it is best at in contrasting longer lines. I do have a question for all ensemble performers about how much they rehearse together because in some cases I think it might be surprisingly little but the expertise of performers like these doesn't let it show.

The Allegro scherzando is almost panic-stricken with its powerful theme emerging from amidst the agitato and the cello moving through its range of available effects but this is a 'large-scale' work even if for only two instruments. The Andante was given an impassioned hearing before the Allegro mosso finale was dramatic, energized and a triumphant finish to a glorious performance from two who are already Menuhin Room stalwarts and very much part of the foundations that Andrew McVittie has built his fine series.

Perhaps we should all be artificial and gushing. And I mean that most sincerely.

 

Katy Evans-Bush, Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle

 Katy Evans-Bush, Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle (CB editions)

Politics and poetry don't mix well, or not for me they don't. Politics is a low art of devious half truths and manipulated appearances, slogans and undercooked promises - perhaps never more so than in recent years- whereas poetry, when it's any good, suggests more rather than less and remains of value beyond any sell-by date. Everything is political, I dare say, but not everything is art.

Katy Evans-Bush has come out at the other side of some crises a changed writer on the evidence of this new volume of poems. There always had been a compelling energy in her work and an expansive ability to make more of the language than its constituent parts, which is exactly what one wants, but the opening poem here, From lines by Kenneth Patchen #1, kicks off with a vitriol not seen before,
You think creativity is a different activity from everything else,

you clever, lifeless little coward, my little phony, you professional

partisan with no ideas; you think restlessness is energy. 

 

The poems' titles go from #1 as such to #51.  Kenneth Patchen was 'an important countercultural figure in the US. A defiantly working class poet whose life spanned the first and second world wars, the Depression and Vietnam'. All of #1 to #51 are poems 'prompted' by lines from his which is a remarkable achievement whatever one thinks of such a 'creative writing course' way of making poems. 

I don't buy, or buy into, anywhere near as much new poetry as I did, say, ten years ago because me and it have lost much of what connection we had and some of Joe Hill Makes His Way is symptomatic of why. Some of it is one-dimensional and that dimension is anger. Entirely justifiable anger but at times one-dimensional nonetheless and I'm already feeling that I'm one of those guilty as charged in #1 for being such things as,

You tired, sad, bedtime little phony, you namby-pamby,

fake reader, you’re terrified of caring! Worse, you’re terrified

of seeming to care.

I'm not. Honestly, I'm not. I recognize the sentiments immediately and it's everybody else, not me. It's as if two of my favourite poets, Rosemary Tonks with her virulent dismissal of social niceties and Sean O'Brien with his recurrent theme of us all being guilty of being ourselves had joined forces at their least forgiving and told us what they really thought.

But while these poems, and #1 more than most, have an element of one-off, live 'performance' about them they are more convincing than Kae Tempest's stagey outrage and we know that Derek Mahon had a point,

What middle-class twits we are

To imagine for one second

That our privileged ideals

Are divine wisdom, and the dim

Forms that kneel at noon

In the city not ourselves.  

(and it doesn't say 'twits' in all available versions).

 

Joe Hill Makes His Way wouldn't be a worthwhile book, and it wouldn't be Katy Evans-Bush, if it was only an orchestrated rant. It is of value as poetry as much as politics because she does things with the language.

#39 has,

all our philosophy's a piece

of ersatz Chippendale. 

and,

Art's not redemption. Art's just how we're tuned. 

That might be the most searing opportunity to see ourselves as we are, so satisfied with our Mozart, Vermeer, David Bowie and Philip Larkin and, yes, I am. Not to mention that, in #46,

                   We can't tell what's beautiful anymore.

 

This is writing that has come through a storm and found itself changed and changed utterly. We would mostly prefer not to know and be allowed to get away with it. I wouldn't take it from Piers Corbyn, GB News or the Democratic Unionist Party, for example, but this arrives powerfully in these pages which were a few too many to want to read at one sitting although maybe they should be read thus.

It's not mad. It is what it's really like but most of us are comfortable enough, aren't we, and we can be cross, indignant and incendiary as a part-time pastime when we are not enjoying a Zinfandel or Puccini because to know such things is to love them. And we do and we do and we do.

Top 6 - Handel

 

Ronnie, obviously

3-5 down at tea-time, first to 10 and they're betting 10/11 each of two which tells you all you need to know about how bookmakers work.

But you look and think a moment. Ronnie only has to put his 'game face' on and, at two behind, the match hasn't really started yet. He didn't play his brilliant best but he didn't need to. You get into the mind of someone who knows he's not as good as you and they've gone.

It was a nice bit of completely ordinary business in the absence of any horse racing of pressing interest today and a good day's work.

At 48, he is the oldest of his kind but still mesmerisingly tremendous at what he does, a class apart in his own game and quite possibly as much so as anybody else is in any other.

That was a good day's work for the both of us and now I can sleep the sleep of the just and the righteous with the betting balance consistently on the rise which is to no particular purpose whatsoever except for it being preferable to it going in the other direction.

More 'More Moore'

Something quite satisfying there is about a solid, good condition, 400 page hardback. It feels substantial and, on the subject of Marianne Moore with a supporting cast of all those pioneer American modernists, it is.

Unlike pop singers and musicians, poets are not generally glamorous young gunslingers. For every Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Rosemary Tonks, Mina Loy or Christopher Marlowe there is any number of Larkins, Emily Dickinsons, Stevie Smiths or Christina Rossetti and Marianne Moore belongs with those of the more withdrawn nature,

With her mother beside her, Marianne 'sat back in her chair'...a Marco Polo stayed at home, twisted to silence by some strange repression.  

Life for such people is elsewhere and for poets it is in their poems, not that life isn't often also elsewhere for non-poets.

The most consistent theme through all the reviews is that her poems come from the head rather than the heart.....'Emotion in her is calcined to a thin ash', wrote an appreciative one.

So strongly did Moore feel misjudged on this point that she henceforthdefended the presence of 'gusto' in her own writing...

In 'Novices', ...the suave young sophisticates dismiss as boring 'the detailless perspective of the sea'. Little do they suspect what lurks beneath that placid surface

but they aren't the first or last to struggle to fully appreciate her art. 

Part of the ever-elusive charm of 'poetry' is surely some elusive quality in the best of it. That which submits to easy summary and explanation without suggesting more beyond is unlikely to survive the repeated readings that good poetry encourages.

A poet's selectiveness must have 'more elasticity than logic'...and yet it 'knows where it is going' as surely as electricity flies along to 'areas that boast of their remoteness'

 

It was a good idea to extend C20th further into America rather than just include those Americans who came to Britain. It isn't just to baulk it up a bit in order to make it closer to book length. Before writing anything vaguely coherent, one has to do a bit of reading and check it out. I thus now have a clearer idea of Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and even Robert Frost by looking again with some purpose in mind. C20th might not prove all that useful to anybody who ever reads it but it's been of use to me to write it.

And so the wider enquiry into what is exactly going on when one person writes something and others read it continues.

I've gone to look for America

C20th, my little work-in-progress, is sub-titled Poetry in English, 1898-1999. 'In English', not in England. 

Needing to make Elizabeth Bishop central to it and just about 'top of the bill', one couldn't help but make reference to Marianne Moore. And once Ms. Moore is in then questions would be asked why other Modernist, and even not-so Modernist, Americans weren't and so a chapter on America - Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and thus Robert Frost and wherever we go from there - is required to make my flimsy account of the period more coherent.

I'm learning by finding it necessary to do so, not teaching. I'm not finding that I admire most of them any more than I did already but having to write a few paragraphs on each of them concentrates the mind. And, it seems, the American T.S. Eliot was not accepted as such a sine qua non in his country of origin as he was when he was over here, over paid but possibly under sexy.

One has to look at things and keep looking to understand them better or else what you thought you thought might only have been no more than that. C20th is unlikely to be of much use to anybody else but it's already been of use to me and that is what all writing should be before it's anything else.