Acis & Galatea, poem

Acis & Galatea

It seems strange now that I was wrapped

up in the poetry of love,

but I was only human, trapped

with only such that humans have

of world and time and marvelled at

the infinite that made me weep.

What will survive will not be that.

I followed her like a lost sheep.

If love is cruel, the glimpse I had

of happiness was just as brief  

for violence is all we know

for sure. But as a river god,

transformed now, I’ve taken my leave,

teem, dense with amazed fish, and flow.

Oh, Babe, What Would You Show Off

When I saw that President Trump had accused someone of being a show-off and grandstanding, I assumed his use of the internet had extended to reading me. Fair enough, I thought, it does seem a bit jejune to be posting crossword solutions. But then I realized he'd sacked somebody else and it was them he was growling about.
But we will see. I dare say he is saving his humility for when it's his turn to be thrown out, which can't be far away now.
But it was a thrill to finish that TLS crossword, which looked impossible at first. The main reason for beginning it was that there wasn't much else of interest in the comic this week. But the crossword seems to be constructed as an educational aid, leading you to things you never knew if you care to investigate, like Edmund Spenser's poem on the death of his daughter, Daphnaida. Although whether I read it or not remains to be seen.
The flowing, surging Romanticism of the first two Schumann symphonies accompanied the early inroads, Schumann having been judged worthy of further investigation as the favourite composer of Stephen Isserlis and the first instalment of last weekend's windfall from the turf accountant. But, pleasant though Schumann may be, it was instructive to move to Handel's Acis & Galatea, second hand at £0.01 +  £1.28 p&p, can't argue with that, for the vital finishing touches and be reminded quite spectacularly of how much better Handel is than almost anything else.
The simple story of love torn apart by the murder of Acis by the jealous baddie, Polyphemus, and then in a typically Ovid metamporphosis, turned into a stream, is the sort of thing that happens round here all the time and likely to happen even more often once the Liberal Democrats have legalized cannabis. But it is a masterpiece. And tonight, we begin with Simon Rattle's Brahms 1 from his cycle that last week's treble also paid for.
It is magical the way that sensible study of horse racing can be turned into a record library and I'm sure that all those who warn against gambling, as well as the school music teacher who knew I couldn't play the glockenspiel and so expected no more of me than to suggest corrections to his spelling of Dvorak, would appreciate the ongoing project.
The other arrival today is Murakami's Men without Women, so the question is whether to continue louchely with Jean Rhys' fine Collected Stories or break from them temporarily to freewheel my way through Murakami's latest over the weekend.
If only I knew which my faithful audience wanted to know about first. It's Murakami, isn't it.
Okay then.  
A further happy outcome of not much going on elsewhere was the other night when Radio 5 was droning on about football, Radio 3's often studiously eclectic Late Junction was offering some especially dreary jazz, Radio 4 had some of its so-called 'comedy' on and so I turned to Radio 2 and found Suzi Quatro's Quatrophonic, where she was playing an impressive list of doo-wop records which she was saying was what she grew up with. Good for her. Some people insist on becoming successful and don't care how they do it - who knows what sort of poet might belatedly sell a few records as a Country songwriter- and Devil's Gate Drive didn't cause me to swoon over Suzi when, aged about 13, I had a poster of Beethoven on my bedroom wall. But If You Can't Give Me Love soon comes to mind on You Tube excursions these days.
And so, with the compulsiveness not of a fool soon parted from his money but like a judicious magpie that knows what he wants when he sees it, it's a Doo-wop box-set for me and I have a postman who has no idea what treasure he is delivering and how grateful I am to him. Such service should not be demeaned by the profit-motive and, in line with a dreamy Labour party manifesto, it should be nationalized so that we can all enjoy it for what it is.  

This Week's TLS Crossword Solution

By Jove, missus, I impress myself sometimes.
Some use of the interweb, by all means, but very educational it was.
With a couple of Schumann symphonies followed by Acis & Galatea, that is what I call an evening well spent.

Neil Powell - Was and Is

Neil Powell, Was and Is (Carcanet) 

One needs the Collected Powell over and above the Selected to give him a fair hearing, some of the best poems come in the section that have been written since those in the selection. As well as the way any selection will omit poems that some readers prefer to those included and a Collected, rather than the sometimes overly complete Complete, is really the only way to see anybody's work.
Neil Powell's poetry is pared down to the most pared-down definition of poetry, much favoured by me, that poetry is writing where the author and not the printer decides where the lines end. It is largely free of extended metaphor, metaphysical argument, challenging allusiveness or any other difficulty that other poetry might be admired for. While never being culpable of the charge that it is 'chopped-up prose', it observes many of the principles attributed to 1950's Movement poetry, like the avoidance of grand gestures, a refusal to be flashy or unnecessarily literary and doing only what it needs to do. There's much to like about that and it can come as a welcome relief if one has been struggling with the likes of Craig Raine or Paul Muldoon. But then the thirty pages of The Journal of Lily Lloyd, presumably a memoir of his mother, can be read as prose. It defies any high-flown ideas of poetry as something sublime, intense or finely-wrought through its thoughgoing understatedness as poetry.
One wouldn't immediately think of calling Powell an extremist but he takes his undemonstrative method to an extreme. It's likeable, one appreciates the even temper but the Collected Poems lacks, as far as I can see, even the layers of qualifying irony of An Arundel Tomb, the sustained build of The Whitsun Weddings or the rigour of Thom Gunn's metrical verse. Larkin and Gunn are Powell's primary exemplars and yet he declines to be even as showy as them.
In The Picture of the Mind, as circumspect and well-made as any twelve lines, he says,
      half-disclosing is what poems do,

and, yes, I like those that do that but Powell discloses, explains and doesn't leave very much mystery to wonder about. It would - thankfully- be a difficult body of work to set questions about because there is precious little interpretation left to ask of the reader. That can be something to be grateful for and one can appreciate the thought, the clarity with which it has been set out and empathize entirely with the sentiment expressed but, appreciation apart, no much else is asked of the reader.
Thev Lunatics' Compartment is one of many poems of anecdote, friendship and sincerity and its ordinariness generates something gently extraordinary, or at least of value.
Shell is memorable for being quietly ahead of its time in the light of books now appearing on the subject of life in a certain type of school for boys of Powell's generation and, I'm sure, before and since. It implies considerably more than it says but we know now even if the culture of the time inhibited revelations then.
Powell likes his music but sometimes tells rather than shows. For Music looks a bit like an exercise in name-dropping that any record collector might indulge in.
Without checking the dates, I'm sure that Outing is a reply to an Anthony Thwaite poem about the abundance of contemporary poets, and lists the perceived preponderance of male homosexuals in C20th culture. So, what,
That wasn't too exciting, was it?

are Powell's words, not mine. They could, for many, sum up the whole book but I think Neil Powell can be credited with being better than that. There is a time and place for gentility and while a new generation of creative writing graduates strain to find their next stunning, imaginative way of stretching the language, he is comfortable in what might look like a bygone style that nevertheless is less likely to become quite so quickly completely unfashionable.
I once heard Anthony Thwaite, in his characteristic way, throwing out the remark that Larkin was a Great Minor Poet (and I apologize if that is not verbatim but it was twenty years ago) and that may or may not be true. I think he compared Larkin to George Herbert in terms of 'status'. I wonder where that leaves so many others.
Being 'minor' is no offence. There is plenty to enjoy and maybe not all of us ever thought for one moment we would be the poet of our generation. Neil Powell offers a Collected Poems that is entirely coherent, lucid and sustained, that happily doesn't aspire to be anything it isn't and is the better for it compared to many that do.  

          

Kathryn Gray - Flowers

Kathryn Gray, Flowers (Rack Press)

There is a lot to like about this new pamphlet. I'm not a big admirer of the term 'pamphlet' but apparently that is what the industry calls publications like this and so I must stay with the protocol.
It is 'some poems', isn't it, never mind how many.

It is evidence that Kathryn Gray hasn't gone away. I'm sure I wasn't the only one looking forward to her second full-length book of poems but I had by now just about forgotten, it having been 2004 ( ! ) when her debut, The Never-Never, appeared. Oh, my giddy aunt.
But she is to be admired for having waited for some poems that she wanted to arrive rather than press on regardless with the 'difficult second album'. Many wouldn't.
It happily comes signed and numbered and thus adds to the Signed Poetry Books collection without the rigmarole of queueing after a reading and having to exchange a few words of polite conversation or being hailed by the poet as 'European Man of Mystery'.  It's been some time since the collection was added to.
It consists of nine poems over ten pages and so makes me feel better about my own frugal booklets.
The best poem in it, for me, is Bournemouth, with its reference to Rosemary Tonks which also makes me feel good about being one of the in-crowd that would know such a thing, as well as,
                           And my tears
will be nothing new, and the stars - 
our startlers - the stars impossibly accrue.

On first reading, I read 'sparklers', which may or may not be intended to echo inside but I'm stuck with that forever now.
It rhymes when it feels like it but doesn't feel as if it has to and achieves enough of a casual sublime to make the short list for my Best Poem of the Year.
And it also references Brandon Flowers, more explicitly, and I was equally pleased with myself that I had to look up which band he was in.
Within its handful of poems, there are various signposts suggesting which way Kathryn Gray's poetry might be moving, like perhaps towards something more allusive than before but, if we are going to allow ouirselves to anticipate a fuller volume one day, it need not be restricted to any specific definition of what her, or any other, poetry should be like.   

What is there to talk about

It's a fine Oxford Professor of Poetry I'd make, having to think up lectures of great profundity and pertinence. It is to be hoped I never get elected.
It is the custom with Portsmouth Poetry Society that members suggest subjects for the next year's programme and then, to a greater or lesser extent, introduce that subject when it comes round.
I don't usually give it any thought until I've delivered the previous one, for which I write a short essay to offer an approach before everyone else lays before the group what they have found and have to say. But, increasingly, the notebook for ideas returns my dubious gaze as if it knows I'm struggling for an idea.
I've done the Avant Garde, which was huge fun; Francois Villon; was glad to stand in as Thom Gunn scholar; I withdrew Marvell once I'd had a further look at him, I wasn't sure I could do him justice. I think there was e.e.cummings. But now I'm at a loss.

I'm sure there's always mileage in Tennyson and, unfashionable as he seems to be, that might be the answer - to relish that gothic darkness but reflect on the age in which he lived in which a poet could be such a household name. It's a while since there was an equivalent figure.
What about 'the poetry of Place'. Is that a subject, or would it produce a disparate list.
I might try Wislawa Symborska, leave her books by the bedside and see if she retains whatever it was that made her a favourite several years ago.Or maybe pop songs,
Since you left me have you seen me with another girl,
seeming like I'm having fun,
Although she's cute she's no substitute
because you're the permanent one.

It was the subsequent Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan, that called Smokey Robinson a poet. I might even make it Tamla Motown.
Okay, I'll take the job. I'm sure the gathered Oxford cognoscenti, having previously appointed such luminaries as Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, John Carey and Paul Muldoon would be delighted for me to turn up with a pile of old Motown 45's. And, if it goes down well, perhaps after that the song words, rather than the less successful 'poetry', of Marc Bolan.
It's amazing how a glass of Chilean Merlot can kickstart a reluctant imagination.    

You darnce {my spelling]
With your lizard leather boots on
And pull the strings
That change the faces of men
You diamond browed hag
You're a glitter-gaunt gangster

I don't think asnybody's going to have the nerve to say that's not poetry.  

Bookaholic

I'm the last person you could call shopaholic. I don't go into shops but for food and the Saturday paper. You won't find me in Moss Bros choosing between their range of cravats.
Ordering books and records via the interweb is a problem, though. It should be a notifiable disease and the NHS, notoriously awash with money, ought to make treatment of it a priority.
Time was I'd have one book I was reading, plus poetry books or magazines and nearing the end of one would realize it was time to decide what to read next. Unfortunately now, over the last couple of years, the addictive ease with which they can be acquired and the thrill of satisfying the addiction has belatedly got out of hand. Those that I never got round to are piling up steadily while Elizabeth Bishops Selected Letters run to 600 pages, the Buxtehude book will have to be left after the biographjy and background sections, Jean Rhys' stories are on their way, I ordered Neil Powell's Collected Poems, having forgotten that I had the Selected and by no means read all of that and the year is already  mapped out ahead with pre-orders of essentials like Danny Baker, Sean O'Brien, Thom Gunn, Arundhati Roy, Murakami and Douglas Dunn.
I'm never quite sure we should be reading people's letters and so I won't be going any further into Elizabeth's after the selected highlights.
Since arranging the 'classical' CD's on new shelves two years ago, they've expanded to fill nearly another shelf and where we go after that is a problem for the librarian I never became. Radio 3 had to play a gorgeous aria from an opera by Bononcini, sung by Lawrence Zazzo, a countertenor not yet in the collection so that had to be found; Record Review's record of the week was The Seasons with Carolyn Sampson and I couldn't hurt her feelings by not buying that and I thought 29 discs of Buxtehude might mean I didn't have to buy any more music for a long time. Don't have to; somehow need to, though.
So I am grateful to poets like Kathryn Gray who writes with great insight about not writing poems. It is Good Grief to think that her first book, The Never-Never, was 2004 and an admirable thing that she didn't try to provide a quick follow up when nothing came to mind. I feel much the same way, that if poems don't demand that you write them, there is not much to be gained by going in search of them. There are enough poets doing that already. But her new pamphlet should thus be the more welcome as it comes with the endorsement that she thought it worthwhile.
Over the weekend, I did a survey of my neglected folder of poems. It hasn't been significantly added to for quite some time so how do its contents look now, having had time to settle and mature.
Not as bad as they could be. Nothing got relegated from the A list to the B list from which nothing ever returns so there are 16 or 17, plenty to meet the usual four year cycle of making a booklet but, then again, a foundation on which to build something slightly more substantial and aspire to pamphlet
status, if ever the fugitive muse were to revisit. Meanwhile, knocking out song words on the off-chance that rumours of a vogue for Country music mean that there's an outside chance I could have a hit record, now there's nice work if you can get it.
Meanwhile, one small initiative to make inroads into the reading has been to not buy a Sunday paper. I hadn't realized until it was pointed out to me that The Observer is no good. The high-minded might point out that The News of the World was the same every week with stories of sordid celebrity liaisons but so is The Observer with its precious concerns. I hope I'm not going to turn into the natural successor to A.A. Gill but, yes, we know, and, no, I don't want to go and see Barclay James Harvest in concert. I don't want to be part of any demographic that thinks I'm the target audience for that.
The proper appreciation of books is the reading of them, not the purchase of them. It's gone far enough. From now on, it has to be essential buying only until I've read about Harold Wilson, Hereward the Wake and Delmore Schwartz, the unlikely trio of biographies that are sidelined and waiting forlornly for my attention.  I'm lucky that the addiction is subsidized by my astute judgement on selected markets at Paddy Power. I could have been more astute yesterday, however. Not prepared to back Mark Selby for the snooker final at the odds available when he was level at 2-2, I thought I'd wait and see if he went behind, which he did, so I backed him when he was 2-4 down. I wish I'd waited until he was losing 4-10, then I could have ordered the Symphonies of Brahms, more Schumann, taken out a subscription to Gramophone, etc.