Tibullus Elegies

Tibullus, Elegies, a new translation by A.M. Juster (Oxford)

The original Augustan Age in poetry included Vergil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. Among other things, it idealized a life of leisure in the country rather than going to war. But one comes away from reading Tibullus feeling that he never quite got his way in his short life.

He does not have Ovid's self-possession. Where Ovid seems to know what he wants and knows how to get it, or else he will dramatize his destitution, Tibullus paints himself most often as a victim of love and its situations. He is a meeker and less expectant personality although precisely how autobiographical these poems are can't be said for certain.

Book 1 of the Elegies might remind the reader of the shadowy story behind Shakespeare's Sonnets with their fair youth and dark lady and triangle of rivalry. Most of the book is devoted to Delia but, in a second episode, Tibullus appears to suffer when, in 1.9, his boy betrays him with an older, rich man whose wife dresses herself up for another younger man.

In Book 2 Tibullus is reluctantly involved in a military campaign and his ideals are compromised by necessity and civic duty. In love, he is also reduced in ambition, apparently more desperately in thrall to Nemesis but in 2.4, locked out by her madam, and given any excuse as to why he can't see her,

Whichever God gave beauty to a greedy girl,

alas, he brought much evil with the good,

and so the sobs and brawls resound; in short, it's why

Love is a god who's disrespected now,

Although Ovid is equally capable of theatrical tantrums in despairing moods, he is also bullish and confident whereas Tibullus only seems to cherish his dreams rather than believe in them and then they become tainted and degraded. But one can't help but like Tibullus even if he is overshadowed by his brash successor.

This translation by A.M Juster achieves a fine, lucid expression while maintaining the metrical pattern and so covers more than one of the several options and responsibilities of the translator. Robert Maltby's introduction and notes are also exemplary in this convenient and clear edition. As a compact version of the poet with useful context and background, one couldn't hope for any more. Highly entertaining, enjoyable and excellent.

Neil Powell - Proof of Identity

Neil Powell, Proof of Identity (Carcanet)

Neil Powell's new collection describes itself well enough. The theme of the book is an exploration of who he is and where he came from.

The Journal of Lily Lloyd is a 29 page story of his grandmother's itinerant life in 1920's South Africa, when his mother was born. It took a while to start to enjoy this narrative written in an act of ventroloquism but it grows in stature as one becomes asccustomed to its adopted voice. Don't get too attached to the horse. I knew it would end up getting shot.

Blackborough Park is nowhere near as long at 120 lines but still 'extended' by today's standards. But the 'long poem' is making a gradual comeback, like fish into a cleaned-up river. Few will so successfully make as much out of so little as this, which does no more than watch watch and speculate upon a few figures in a park but it works for me now as well as it did when it first appeared in PNR.

But, back with the thematic thread, the title poem considers some old photographs of the poet's father, loving and respectfully, but with enough in them to allow room for one or two questions.

And then The Break is a quietly moving poem about leaving the family home. Powell is never overstated and never ostentatiously clever. The more you read of him the more one appreciates that in him and is grateful. He does a nice 14 lines, the best of these being Kempas Highway, 1966, ending,

For first love never disappears: it sets,

A pearl one neither loses nor forgets.

But it's not the only one worthy of mention. In In Sudbourne Wood, there is,

A blackbird clacks and flaps at whatever has fired

His tiny anger.

There is a lot to like about this collection. There's always been plenty to like about Neil Powell's writing.

Top 6 Symphonies, selected by Phil & Mary Green

In special circumstances, this joint selection in our festival of symphonies has been allowed to run to seven. Those special circumstances are that the guests here are my mother and father and I don't want to be sent to bed with no tea on my next visit to them.

Beethoven: 7th. Noteable for being Richard Baker's signature tune on Radio.
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique. Dramatic music
Brahms: 4th Particularly 3rd movement
Haydn: 94th Surprise As he wrote 107 (according to Groves) he's better have one in
Mendelssohn: 4th Italian Great minds think alike
Sibelius: 5th Great finish
Tchaikovsky: 4th Final movement exceptional and often played by a brass band as a finale

Top 6 Symphonies, selected by Dave Moxham

Mr. Moxham also included his choice of Symphonies.

And having been so remiss last time and not awarded his Jazz choices an illustration, here is a picture of Jean Sibelius, who I thought might show up well among the selections.

Sibelius 2nd
Shostakovich 11th
Beethoven 6th (Pastoral)
Glass 3rd
Gorecki 3rd (Sorrowful Songs)
and Dvorak 9th (New World)

Top 6 Jazz, selected by Dave Moxham

My friend Dave Moxham has been kind enough to enter into the spirit and provide his choice of Jazz, about which he makes it clear these are 'favourites rather than best',


Horace Silver ..................Song For My Father
Dave Brubeck .................Blue Rondo a la Turk
Thelonius Monk...............Misterioso
Barbara Thompson..........Country Dance
Charles Mingus ..............Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
Jan Garbarek .................Twelve Moons

Top 6 Symphonies

Following on from the BSO concert, Symphonies presented themselves as a topic for Top 6 consideration.
For the reasons outlined in the concert review, Beethoven no. 6, the Pastoral, is an automatic first choice. A teenage favourite but still magical and flawless after all those years, lyrical and powerful. Beethoven is difficult to overestimate and this has all the benefits of both his intense moods and his lightness of touch.
Sibelius is another certainty for the list and no.5 gets the first vote for its cold, clear description of Finland’s lakes and woodlands, its surging themes and leitmotifs. It is powerful as well as beautiful and it is already becoming clear that although my very favourite music comes from before 1800, the symphony, which as a teenager I thought was the Premier League of classical music, is a C19th and C20th thing, only developing to its fullest achievement when building on the earlier masterpieces.
The first LP I ever bought was the Waldo de los Rios Symphonies for the Seventies with its eight arrangements of classic repertoire pieces. Making classical music accessible in user friendly versions is usually quite rightly derided but Waldo did a faithful job on his selected victims. However, I wouldn’t have needed the inducement of his Schubert Unfinished, whatever number is assigned to it, to include it here. Spare, lucid and redemptive, I might say if I went and fetched my thesaurus. What would Schubert have gone on to achieve if he had lived to any sort of maturity is one of those mind-boggling questions which also applies to Mozart.
Waldo’s version of Mozart 40 was the first record I ever bought, in 1971, with its chart position of number 5 and the symphony has to be included for its seminal place in my own musical biography. Mozart, of course, sounds playful and inventive but even then, aged 11, I think it was the dark undercurrents of anxiety and doubt that made me realize that there was something else in all of his music. It isn’t cute, chocolate box music whatever a tourist trip round Salzburg might try to sell you.
And so, with only two places left, it’s already too late for some. I won’t include Mendelssohn only because I think he’s a massively under-rated composer and seems to be dismissed as somehow ‘lightweight’ against more grandiose Romantics. I’ll have the Italian Symphony, no. 4, even more for its soothing and lovely second movement Andante than its bright and lively start.
Gorecki no.3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, makes up the half dozen. I turned on the radio one day last year, or maybe longer ago than that. I had no idea that it was on. I began to wonder if we had suffered a royal bereavement, so grieving and enormous was its effect, unintroduced and speaking only its own mournful language. I heard a great quote on the radio this week, I’m sorry I can’t attribute it to its author, about how music is too precise to be expressed in language. And that is right. It is why musicians will always be held in higher regard than mere writers or poets. Poets and painters are fine but you often have to sober them up a bit to get any sense out of them. Musicians have the rarest talent and the best of them inevitably put it to best use.

I had not thought death had undone so many

When I first came to Portsmouth and saw Kingston Cemetery for the first time I thought of Eliot's line in The Waste Land, 'I had not thought death had undone so many' and so still do now, whether seen from the train or from Copnor Bridge.

I'll keep a look out for any other pictures that illustrate lines from poems.

(I've found that if you click on a photo on here, it brings it up bigger and better.)