'Romanticism', maybe coming soon

It came to me midweek,

Now I might do it pat

and, unlike irresolute Hamlet, I think I will.

It's a very similar feeling to those rare occasions when a poem presents itself, demanding to be written. It's almost a 'categorical imperative', without being too Kantian about it. There is no point sitting down to write a poem if one doesn't have an idea for such a thing. There's equally no point in going to the printer's with a new book(let) when the poems aren't right but then, suddenly, it's almost now or never and, on the most modest of scales, there is a tide in the affairs of men- if in this case only this one.

So, we will see within what timescale Romanticism can be expedited. I think I'm a week or so behindhand to make Christmas but not to worry. The final analysis of Eng Lit is unlikely to fall down over whether these poems are officially published in 2024 or 2025.

I've just read it and am thrilled with it, as most parents also are of their offspring. Good Heavens, did we do that?  Many will find it downbeat, I'm sure, but that didn't do Hardy or Larkin any harm. It's all irony, just as being inexplicably cheerful would be, but whereas I don't mind being misunderstood as downbeat and non-committal, I certainly don't want to be misunderstood as artificially cheerful. 

 

It could be a last hurrah, as it were, because thereon in, David Green (Books), having used up its allocation of ISBN's, would be over and any further titles would need to find an imprint to make them happen and after so many years of doing it my way I can't see me accepting any terms and conditions. But, let's be thrilled for now. I'm possibly more excited, and certainly more confident, about these poems than I was about Museum in 1990. To be sure, if no progress has been made in the interim then there was even less point in the enterprise than I ever thought.