From time to time I continue the optimistic search for the novels of Rosemary Tonks at affordable prices. I only have to be reminded of her to return to her poems and realize that I love her even more than I did before. It's an interesting exercise to find out exactly what price one will go to but finding Halt During the Chase, the last of the six novels, First Edition (as if there were any others), 1972, for £27.11 inc p+p and VAT because it's coming from France, helped define that.
The other copy available on Amazon New and Used is £174.74.
I can hardly wait for it to arrive and be its new owner because I want to be as much as I can one of that small but elite group of Rosemary admirers. Gathering the other five novels might never happen because they won't all be findable under £30 but, if I ever do, I hope I don't go through what I did with Richard Yates, putting together the complete works for myself, nearly all from America before they were all re-issued in paperback here. I don't think that will happen with Rosemary.
It led me to wonder if I could fit her into my Top 6 Poets. Top 6 was a feature here once and still can be if anybody wants to contribute one. On any theme but literary, musical or art for preference. So,
Top 6 Poets
Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn go in automatically. I might not even be particularly interested in poetry if I wasn't interested in them.
Elizabeth Bishop also has her own shelf here and perhaps only suffers in comparison for not having been regarded as essential for as long.
John Donne. Can't be left out.
Auden. Huge respect. I prefer to judge people on a significant amount of 'best' work rather than an average over an excessively prolix output.
And, so, the sixth place, which had gradually become a bit of a 'wild card', like a Top 5 plus 1. I can get Rosemary in there and that's where she might belong but I spent some time last night making a list of candidates and there's twenty-two others.
The serious contenders for the sixth place are Norman MacCaig, whose Collected can't be opened without something wonderful being found there; Shakespeare, Ovid, and then gradually the case to be made becomes more partial. So that's nine. The six is the five plus one from the repechage.
Bearing in mind that my Top 6 is an odd combination of 'best' in some objective way and 'favourite' in as much as I like them (which is where Rosemary's chance to get in ahead of Shakespeare and Ovid lies), the other 18, in some sort of order but not a definitive order, are Seamus Heaney, August Kleinzahler, Derek Mahon, Chaucer, Sean O'Brien, Sylvia Plath, Edward Thomas, Catullus, Tony Harrison, Louis MacNeice, Roddy Lumsden, Thomas Hardy, Keats, Horace, Paul Muldoon, Eliot, Marvell, Tennyson.
And that is about the 'canon according to me', plus things by Alun Lewis, Douglas Dunn, Julia Copus, maybe Fulke Greville ought to be in the canon, Baudelaire and the list goes on, as lists tend to do, with the proviso that one has overlooked somebody essential like the author of Wulf and Eadwacer.
So, since the point was to see if Rosemary Tonks makes it into the Top 6 or not, let's put her in.
--
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, in a purgatory of indecision worthy of Hamlet or Prufrock, I keep kicking the can down the road on when to pack in full-time paid work. I'm stuck between Larkin's Toads and Toads Revisited in a place that even he didn't envisage.
The concern is what fruitfully might fill the days rather than the further accumulation of cash that I probably won't ever need. 'Fruitfully' is the important word but the fruit doesn't have to be an end result, it can be mere enjoyment.
The other thing I sketched out on the back of an envelope last night was chapter 1 of my Thom Gunn book. How to write a book, as I discovered in writing a 'blizzard of errata' in the one draft of my bike racing novel, is to make a few notes on the back of envelopes, one envelope per chapter, and then sit in front of the bloody computer and bash it out. That is horrendous work if you have to make up a story but it might not be so bad just trying to organize 40-odd years worth of thinking, and assimilating other people's ideas, about a favourite poet. It might just be possible. It doesn't matter if it doesn't see print.
It is ten years, I notice, since August Kleinzahler's book on Music was published and I enquired of him at his appearance at the LRB Bookshop if there were any late, unpublished Gunn poems and he just about said 'no', and I asked if any biography was forthcoming and he said there might be. But it hasn't transpired. If you want a job doing, you sometimes have to do it yourself. It won't be a biography, it will bring together a shelf-full of books into a summary of what I made of them.
Publishers, by all means get in touch. Don't all rush at once.
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
Tuesday, 3 December 2019
Buxtehude in Portsmouth
I had been so undecided about which to go to that I thought I might stay in. Luckily, I found this, at Music in Portsmouth,
Renaissance and Baroque Music (including Buxtehude’s Magnificat), 20th/21st-century carols, including Schofield’s Illuminare Jerusalem, which was written for the choir in 1992.
Buxtehude in Portsmouth rarely, if ever to my knowledge, goes beyond some organ repertoire in Lunchtime Live! recitals. There was a Membra Jesu Nostri in Sussex a while ago, Boxgrove Priory maybe, but that's not easily accessible. So, I really must make the effort. It's the sort of occasion that one has to attend because if the likes of me don't, who can you expect would.
Monday, 2 December 2019
Seeing Things
I thought I must be 'seeing things', an hour and a half programme on Saturday night all about Seamus Heaney. So I turned the telly on and there it was.
Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens was more biographical than literary with first hand reportage from Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon and several brothers, Marie and a daughter. So, the early days, the marriage, the television work, the Troubles, a quick rise to star status, Harvard, the Republic, the Nobel Prize, the stroke and noli timere. It was just about what was required for 'the general reader, without saying quite enough about why he was any good.
It's usually the words, you see, that make a poet great, rather than what they say. Michael Longley is a very good poet and would have attracted more attention had Heaney not been there but he is only in second gear in comparison. It's the difference between Shakespeare and his contemporaries and between Mozart and Salieri. There was nothing about the delicate music, the apparent naturalness and the richness of the language that came as standard.
But there's always one, isn't there. In this case it is A.N. Wilson, the doyen of English fogeyness, who I generally approve of for his fey Derek Nimmo-ishness as well as his Jesus book. He wasn't in this programme, of course, but I saw a disparaging remark by him about Heaney recently which didn't seem like the first so I've looked him up on the subject. He's always at it, it seems. There's always one.
Such a programme makes it plain that where the words come from is essential to any understanding of them and the more one thinks about the old 'text is all there is' approach, the bleaker it looks. The Irishness, the bog people and, indeed, the avoidance of anything partisan beyond the poem declining Motion and Morrison's offer of the post of figurehead to a generation of British poets are crucial and one begins to wonder if any poets should be read without a biography to accompany the poems. But few are going to be awarded a book biography, never mind a television documentary. Most are sadly not going to be deemed worth the effort. Although I'd be grateful of a similar thing on J.H. Prynne, I can't see it happening. The very idea. Perhaps it's a podcast for a devoted admirer to do.
But we are grateful for what we are offered, even if the poet needs a Nobel Prize to qualify.
--
So, three and a half years' worth of TLS went upstairs into a room it's not advisable to try to navigate in the dark. The Gramophones fitted onto the music book shelves and that freed up the bottom shelf of the bookcase here in the back room which now reads, top to bottom- poetry biographies, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop/Sean O'Brien, Philip Larkin and Shakespeare biography. And I now have my choice of lying down places in the front room restored and that is that minor crisis resolved. I knew you'd be relieved.
--
The Beethoven and Brahms Violin Sonatas both took their separate times to arrive and then did. You may be aware by now that I've only really got one line on each composer and the Brahms line is that he forever felt overshadowed by Beethoven. But, on first playing these sets, I'm not sure I don't prefer Brahms if we keep it to violin sonatas. Of course, there are three discs of Beethoven (Renaud Capucon/Frank Braley) compared to one of Brahms and so maybe the latter is more readily assimilated but it's smoother, for want of a better word, even if one suspects - knows, really- that there is much more going on in Beethoven.
The recent need to re-aarrange books and records again is a big hint that perhaps I have plenty and less time needs to be spent clicking on things to make them arrive the following week. In the end its the sheer weight of the stuff - but that won't persuade me to move to a kindle and downloads. So those two sets are likely to be the playlist for some time. Something there is that does love a violin sonata.
I suspect a big part in the early Brahms preference is Alina Ibragimova who might be just about the violin player of her generation, and not overlooking Cedric Terberghien on piano with her. In a piano sonata, the piano does all its own work but it is usual for other instruments to have a piano to help which says a lot for the range, resources and completeness of the piano compared to much of the opposition.
--
But, on the subject of buying fewer books and thus borrowing them where possible, it's not got off to a good start. Volume 1 of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews isn't going to be easy to give back. Like the origin of many things (the universe, the Thames, the Prime Minister's tendency towards pathological lying), the origin of the Jews is vague but thereby more interesting. From the start, there was always a debate about what was properly Jewish . In fact, that debate might be what it is. But Ezra, Ezekiel and all those Old Testament writers are made real, mainly because they were. It took a while for the idea that anyone human wrote those words to be accepted ( ! ). I'm only disappointed that it's David that might not have been.
Imagine that. A religion, or anybody with a doctrine, making things up.
But, Schama is scholarly, or at least a great summarizer of other scholars and Vol. 1 should be finished and handed back in time for Vol. 2 over Christmas. Or perhaps I should say Hannukah.
Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens was more biographical than literary with first hand reportage from Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon and several brothers, Marie and a daughter. So, the early days, the marriage, the television work, the Troubles, a quick rise to star status, Harvard, the Republic, the Nobel Prize, the stroke and noli timere. It was just about what was required for 'the general reader, without saying quite enough about why he was any good.
It's usually the words, you see, that make a poet great, rather than what they say. Michael Longley is a very good poet and would have attracted more attention had Heaney not been there but he is only in second gear in comparison. It's the difference between Shakespeare and his contemporaries and between Mozart and Salieri. There was nothing about the delicate music, the apparent naturalness and the richness of the language that came as standard.
But there's always one, isn't there. In this case it is A.N. Wilson, the doyen of English fogeyness, who I generally approve of for his fey Derek Nimmo-ishness as well as his Jesus book. He wasn't in this programme, of course, but I saw a disparaging remark by him about Heaney recently which didn't seem like the first so I've looked him up on the subject. He's always at it, it seems. There's always one.
Such a programme makes it plain that where the words come from is essential to any understanding of them and the more one thinks about the old 'text is all there is' approach, the bleaker it looks. The Irishness, the bog people and, indeed, the avoidance of anything partisan beyond the poem declining Motion and Morrison's offer of the post of figurehead to a generation of British poets are crucial and one begins to wonder if any poets should be read without a biography to accompany the poems. But few are going to be awarded a book biography, never mind a television documentary. Most are sadly not going to be deemed worth the effort. Although I'd be grateful of a similar thing on J.H. Prynne, I can't see it happening. The very idea. Perhaps it's a podcast for a devoted admirer to do.
But we are grateful for what we are offered, even if the poet needs a Nobel Prize to qualify.
--
So, three and a half years' worth of TLS went upstairs into a room it's not advisable to try to navigate in the dark. The Gramophones fitted onto the music book shelves and that freed up the bottom shelf of the bookcase here in the back room which now reads, top to bottom- poetry biographies, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop/Sean O'Brien, Philip Larkin and Shakespeare biography. And I now have my choice of lying down places in the front room restored and that is that minor crisis resolved. I knew you'd be relieved.
--
The Beethoven and Brahms Violin Sonatas both took their separate times to arrive and then did. You may be aware by now that I've only really got one line on each composer and the Brahms line is that he forever felt overshadowed by Beethoven. But, on first playing these sets, I'm not sure I don't prefer Brahms if we keep it to violin sonatas. Of course, there are three discs of Beethoven (Renaud Capucon/Frank Braley) compared to one of Brahms and so maybe the latter is more readily assimilated but it's smoother, for want of a better word, even if one suspects - knows, really- that there is much more going on in Beethoven.
The recent need to re-aarrange books and records again is a big hint that perhaps I have plenty and less time needs to be spent clicking on things to make them arrive the following week. In the end its the sheer weight of the stuff - but that won't persuade me to move to a kindle and downloads. So those two sets are likely to be the playlist for some time. Something there is that does love a violin sonata.
I suspect a big part in the early Brahms preference is Alina Ibragimova who might be just about the violin player of her generation, and not overlooking Cedric Terberghien on piano with her. In a piano sonata, the piano does all its own work but it is usual for other instruments to have a piano to help which says a lot for the range, resources and completeness of the piano compared to much of the opposition.
--
But, on the subject of buying fewer books and thus borrowing them where possible, it's not got off to a good start. Volume 1 of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews isn't going to be easy to give back. Like the origin of many things (the universe, the Thames, the Prime Minister's tendency towards pathological lying), the origin of the Jews is vague but thereby more interesting. From the start, there was always a debate about what was properly Jewish . In fact, that debate might be what it is. But Ezra, Ezekiel and all those Old Testament writers are made real, mainly because they were. It took a while for the idea that anyone human wrote those words to be accepted ( ! ). I'm only disappointed that it's David that might not have been.
Imagine that. A religion, or anybody with a doctrine, making things up.
But, Schama is scholarly, or at least a great summarizer of other scholars and Vol. 1 should be finished and handed back in time for Vol. 2 over Christmas. Or perhaps I should say Hannukah.
Friday, 29 November 2019
Late Bernhardt
Late
Bernhardt
Her every gesture was a monument.
It wasn’t love she gave. She gave herself
time and again, no less magnificent
each time she died. And that was not the half
of it.
Nobody’s
life is masterpiece
on masterpiece and one is one’s mistakes,
quand
même, in which to find such sure release
from what may or may not have been heartaches.
A law unto itself does as it likes,
as exotic as its menagerie
and the reputation it leaves behind,
the imprint that her leaving of it makes
gone far beyond the sort of coquetry
that marries the worst man that it can find.
--
Having said one wasn't going to write poems anymore, it doesn't mean I can't write one if I feel like it.
I think it is 'being a poet' I don't like having once, so many years ago, thought it such a fine thing to be. Certain poets are fine, as are some poems, but it's the others that give it a bad name.
But it's an enjoyable process once you're into it. Do some of the thinking first and don't start until you're ready and then see what happens. They are rarely as good as one hoped but, like this one, they are often not as bad as they might have been.
Perhaps I'll leave it another 18 months before the next one. I don't want to rush it.
Monday, 25 November 2019
Reading and Nothingness
Having finished the excellent Sarah Bernhardt biography on Sunday, I was aware of that rare hiatus one might reach very occasionally in which I have nothing lined up to read next. Plenty to re-read, of course, but only Les Faux-Monnayeurs in French that I bought to look up various phrases in the English to see what Gide had written and the abandoned biography of Delmore Schwartz on the shelf.
So I've asked my colleague if he can bring me something in to borrow - either Simon Schama's History of the Jews or one of his Ali Smith's.
The situation made me feel all existential and Sartrean, experiencing the freedom to choose what to read next but with more than 99.9% of world literature unread by me, I soon found that the free will that we flatter and delude ourselves that we have soon became anguish. Once I have settled on a title to read, I will become a being-for-others as they objectify me as a reader of that book but I have embarked on a course of bad faith by opting out of the decision of what to read next by asking somebody else to provide a book for me.
--
Perhaps I should read a book about librarianship. The latest crisis was presented by the need for the CDs to take up another shelf, with the Beethoven and Brahms Violin Sonatas due. This meant that either the music books or the Shakespeare biography books need to go elsewhere. Even though my presentatiuon on Shakespeare biography was recently well received and qualifies as a minor specialist subject, the music books won by dint of the powerful case that they should be near the music they refer to. So, the Shakespeare biography books are now on the two-seater settee awaiting a more permanent home.
So I've asked my colleague if he can bring me something in to borrow - either Simon Schama's History of the Jews or one of his Ali Smith's.
The situation made me feel all existential and Sartrean, experiencing the freedom to choose what to read next but with more than 99.9% of world literature unread by me, I soon found that the free will that we flatter and delude ourselves that we have soon became anguish. Once I have settled on a title to read, I will become a being-for-others as they objectify me as a reader of that book but I have embarked on a course of bad faith by opting out of the decision of what to read next by asking somebody else to provide a book for me.
--
Perhaps I should read a book about librarianship. The latest crisis was presented by the need for the CDs to take up another shelf, with the Beethoven and Brahms Violin Sonatas due. This meant that either the music books or the Shakespeare biography books need to go elsewhere. Even though my presentatiuon on Shakespeare biography was recently well received and qualifies as a minor specialist subject, the music books won by dint of the powerful case that they should be near the music they refer to. So, the Shakespeare biography books are now on the two-seater settee awaiting a more permanent home.
Saturday, 23 November 2019
Racetrack Wiseguy back from Ascot
One can't really lose when so much is corporate hospitality but this time, for once, I didn't get the turf accountants to pay my train fare.
The only time I saw Desert Orchid, he got beat in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Norton's Coin being obviously the better horse, and now I've added Altior, returned at 1/3 so a few had expensive days out. It must be me.
But the fact is that, not having landed the double, I'm not really back in business and the plus for the year can't be put at risk so we''ll shut up shop until Cheltenham Trials Day in January and see what we can do with 2020.
This one's for Georgie, wherever she may be,
Friday, 22 November 2019
Racetrack Wiseguy at Ascot
It hasn't been all that wise at Racetrack Wiseguy for the last few weeks and I've surrendered a cosy plus position for the 2019 accounts. Thus, this is one last foray into the betting jungle before I literally quit while I'm only just ahead.
Mr. Henderson's horses are in good order, as the Professor will tell you, and so I'll take Call Me Lord to turn up match fit for his seasonal debut and thus be good enough in the 2.40. And, in hope as well as reasonable expectation, I'd like to see Capeland get compensation for the fiasco three weeks ago and it's a shame Bryony can't be there to help because she goes to Haydock for Frodon. I've put them together in a 14/1 double to restore my fortunes or lie low for what remains of the year.
The Prof goes for Valtor in the first which, at 11/8, might be some value but it's not often a Grand National horse reverts to novice hurdles. It might be an easy opportunity but we'll see. I'm not taking the Prof on, the form he's in, and he surely won't be far wrong with his faithful,
Nicky Henderson should a good day with Altior, Pym and Call Me Lord all having excellent chances.
Jesus had his disciples and Mr. Henderson has the Professor. None of them do badly out of it.I'll be hoping for better luck for my gin and tonic this year after the beautiful vision above got brought down in the early stages last time we were there.
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