Two Summer Poems

The theme for today's virtual (e-mail) meeting of Portsmouth Poetry Society is 'Summer Poems'. 

As it happened, I was making a start on the Collected Poems and so aware of these two fairly similar efforts. The first is from a booklet from 1994 and the second from 2006. And since then I've found a third that isn't quite so insect-fixated.

 

Summer 

  

The quick stirring of stalks marks

the cover a reticent

animal has just vanished 

from, whose curious nerves spark 

thrills ahead of its fervent 

instincts. And it's not ambushed. 

 

It leaves its latest bolt-hole 

faintly warm, like the minute 

heat of my tyre-tracks, cooling 

to nothing on the road. All 

afternoon immaculate 

miracles have been playing:

I ride through insects that fizz
and tremble at the strange gift
of flight, that cannot explain
how generous the light is

and all the world's shadows shift
fractionally up the lane.

 

One Last Summer

 

Although this might be one last summer,

one last outrageous blossoming,

it has the epic nonchalance

to pause in a maze of thought:

 

the dusty, nervous sparrows,

helpless in their careful lives,

look askance and struggle

to understand their restlessness

 

whereas, brought forward from the pre-historic,

the dash and gleam of brief insects,

too clever to know anything,

are perfect in their confidence.

 

It might be an unremitting love,

the unthought presto of passing

thrills and their long, heroic habits

flooded with favourable light.

Flying Finish and other stories

 For the benefit of those highbrows who devote themselves to the likes of Tolstoy at the expense of reading Dick Francis, I'd like to outline the story of Flying Finish.

As is customary in a Dick Francis book, the horse and jockey survive various scrapes and the skullduggery of the villains and each chapter ends cliff-hangingly looking as if they can't possibly make it to Cheltenham for the Champion Hurdle but deep down you imagine they probably will and they do. 

In the last chapter they get there in one piece - okay, one piece each - and set off for a couple of laps of Prestbury Park. It's not quite going to plan but they are in position to challenge for the lead coming to the last but I think they hit the hurdle or don't quite get it right and set off in pursuit of the leader up the hill, closing, closing but the line comes just too soon and they get beat and 'that's racing'.

 

Mark Cavendish's story in this year's Tour de France was no less dramatic.

It's some years since his heyday and Golden Age when he racked up wins in sprint stages and specialized in the final stage on the Champs-Élysées.  He is now 36 and it looked very much like he was a back number, riding in lesser races for smaller teams, not getting into the Tour, suffering depression and a syndrome or two. Nobody expected to see him in the Tour this year until the main sprinter in his team was indisposed a couple of days before it and he came in as a late replacement, four behind Eddy Merckx in the Most Stage Wins list. Still nobody thought he would threaten that. It wasn't something that could happen.

However, with a well-drilled team around him and a convenient dearth of top sprinters there to take him on, each of the absentees with their own reasons, he won a stage to the great joy of his devoted supporters, of which I'm one, no longer having many current favourite sportspersons to follow. He won two more and then equalled Merckx in some kind of fairy tale fashion and still had two chances to get number 35.

Having missed the first of those it was still all set up for a historic finale in Paris and Corals made him 8/15 fav to do so. I didn't back him because I didn't want to jinx him and could hardly bear the tension. Some things are surely more important than cruel hard cash even in this age of monetized sport. But it did look like money for nothing and more than 50% interest on your money in an afternoon is a very competitive rate compared to what you'll get out of an ISA.

Towards the end of a meaningful horse race, which means one with significant money involved, I tend to rise from my horizontal couch position to the 'edge of my seat' and so I did for this in the last 5 kms. 

Where's the Green Jersey. That'll do. That's okay. Lost the ideal position. Commentator says he's got it back. And then the last 500 metres is like the last furlong of a flat sprint handicap at Goodwood and frankly it all happens too quickly. Oh, no, he's boxed in on the rails. I'm sure he missed a beat stuck in behind with nowhere to go before the gap came too late and that's him, in green on the right of the picture in third, beaten maybe a length.

He won the green jersey which is regarded as second only to the yellow, confounded any but the most outrageously optimistic expectations and for me only has Gareth Southgate to worry about for Sports Personality of the Year because he is one, charismatic and with attitude, somehow apologetic in manner and apparently vulnerable while being supremely good at what he does. I'm not usually very taken with sporting nicknames and am happy for my litany of heroes to be called Derek Randall, George Best, Alex Higgins, Janet Tebbutt, Michael Holding, etc. but The Manx Missile suits Cav very well.

I didn't wait around for the interviews to hear what he said about next year but I dare say he'll be back aged 37. It's great to see the comeback, like Kauto Star, a few by Muhammed Ali and even Lester Piggott but I'm not particularly concerned about the record. That doesn't really matter. It was a tremendous story as it was. It could have been written by Dick Francis.

Oh, yes. It already had been.

---

Back with the Tolstoy, one can't help thinking that it's mainly about 'how best to live' on some well-intentioned, holistic level.

I think 'a purpose' would come into my manifesto for that and while I'm not complaining about a life of uninterrupted leisure and have no particular ambitions to achieve beyond keeping the turf account in the plus and the chess ratings respectable, even approaching 62 it surely isn't quite over yet.

A big, new project needs many gallons of impetus behind it because it will surely need to overcome difficulties. I heard a 'poet' on the wireless a few weeks ago who had written 14 sonnets and then a fifteenth made up of the last lines of the other 14. Now there's a challenge. So I managed one and then had to have a lie down ever since.

It needs to be worthwhile. It doesn't have to see print and have one traipsing round Ledbury, Cheltenham and all the festivals trying to sell copies. Heaven forbid but one likes to think one's achieved something. While watching the TdF I had little difficulty resisting the urge to get a new bike.

But I have had a sort of place-holding idea that might stretch out for a while.

The Collected Poems, from the late 1970's to now, paring down the booklets from what seemed worthy of print then to what still does now. It might not be a big document if I'm diligent enough but moving into the computer, kindle and download age, I needn't wait any longer for Farrar, Straus and Giroux to ask for the rights. Doing it as a pdf saves on paper, cost, waste, environmental footprint and could be updated for later editions, one imagines, very easily.

So maybe I'll do that.The more recent volumes are on Word docs, it will encourage me to think twice about typing out again any poems that aren't and I can persuade myself I'm editing, if not 'curating', that body of work while thinking of a title, a cover picture and some gentle sentiments for a foreword.

Maybe that's what I'll do.

 Sure is hot out there. I've done my daily ration of Anna Karenina outside and am now allowed in. Long gone are they days of the 1980's when I was a dedicated sunworshipper and the 1990's when I was a long-distance cyclist always monitoring the weather to fit in 200 miles during a summer week. I am the most sun-drenched now that I've been since those faraway days and I hope the sunlight vitamins are proving beneficial. 

Beyond halfway in the Tolstoy I am not yet tempted to put it alongside Proust, maybe Middlemarch and suchlike in the Greatest Novel category. By all means Tolstoy is a great writer but my interest in agrarian reform in C19th Russia isn't a big part of my life. The zeitgeist of the Proust was dominated by the Dreyfuss Affair which is more in my line. I have begun to wonder, though, if there is an underlying template shared by these big novels having noticed that Karenin's role is vaguely the equivalent of Casaubon in George Eliot, that Anna has obvious parallels with Emma Bovary but my memory fails me on so much detail and I can't remember what happens to Ladislaw and how far he compares with Vronsky. I may be the wiser once I move on to the great A.N. Wilson's biography of Tolstoy and find out what it all meant.

--

Following the wonderful performance by Young-Choon Park last week, I availed myself of her recordings of the Appassionata, Tempest sonata and the Mozart that includes the Rondo alla Turca. I'll never regret having done that. Not being any sort of musician myself, I can feel her breathing that music in places with her phrasing and thoughtful shifts of emphasis from gentle touch to a bit more ff. 

What more of a retirement idyll can one require than a day like yesterday, dropping in on another Portsmouth poet on the way to lunch with Yoko, picking up the August Gramophone, noticing the eight cygnets born earlier this year at Hilsea are all doing well and then reading about Josquin to the accompaniment of such gorgeously done piano. If I were a multi-billionaire I'm not convinced I'd want much more than that, like travel to the beginnings of outer space. I once went to Istanbul, which included my few hours outside Europe but 'travel' has never been the point of it for me. What little I took from what I saw of the telly version of War And Peace was the fulfilment of being at home, on one's own land, as it were, surrounded by those things one chose to be surrounded by.  

The secret might be in not wanting more than that.

--

But three-quarters of my regular social life has been threatened by positive tests for plague. It didn't prevent the trip to Chichester to see Pavlos and it only meant a circumspect move to outdoors yesterday but it has caused a hiatus in the Tuesday walking.

As we intrepidly approach the relaxation of so many measures put in place to counteract the virus, it is concerning to note that the government are accepting an inevitable kick-up of infections. My own evidence confirms that it's happening already, never mind what exponential co-efficient Freedom Day causes a week or so later.

I realize that libertarians like the Prime Minister don't actually believe in doing any governing. It's just as ironic that Nigel Farage only ever got himself elected to the European parliament he wanted to abolish that Boris only wants to be Prime Minister for vainglorious reasons and prat about without taking any responsibility for anything. But what is meant by this diafanous notion of 'freedom' that he, Trump and the villainous Brazilian President stand for. Death, as a statistical percentage figure, really. It won't have come as any comfort to those who died as a result of government laissez-faire that they were returned to the state of dust from which they came in the interests of the freedom of others to dance, attend indoor events and move about the world by aeroplane to indulge in holidays.

Quite hilariously on the radio the other day it was noted how at a wedding the rings were sanitized and all possible precautions were observed in a show of great propriety as if nobody had given any thought to what the happy couple were going to be trying their best at a few hours later.

Also heard on the wireless was a profile of the heroic Prof. Chris Whitty who is the modern sage and model of self-deprecating nobleness and expertise that does worthwhile things for their own sake and is good at them. You know there's something wrong with the mutation of democracy we lived under when the choice of Prime Minister at an election is between Johnson and Corbyn but, the inevitable fiasco having come to pass, there is a gibbering compulsive liar in charge while the sensible expert is abused in a public place by libertarians.

This is a false summer, it's sinister. I realize that Workington, Hartlepool and Bolsover had their reasons for not wanting the theoretical Marxism of Corbyn but that wasn't a good enough reason to visit such pestilence on us. He says he 'vaccinates, not vacillates'. No, he doesn't. It's not him that vaccinates, it's the NHS, and he vacillates on a weekly basis. And then has the nerve to present it as if he's 'saving the NHS'. No, it saved him.

There is simply no cure for people who believe what they want to believe, including me, and a good proportion of people are doing more or less what they can in the circumstances. It's them we depend on and need to encourage. Next week threatens to be when it flips over and heads back towards Square One, where we were eighteen months ago.

I'm sure our Christian friends have been doing all they can through the power of prayer but quite why they persist in the face of all the evidence is hard to fathom. Christianity is Literature and some of it's very good. I always enjoyed the last thing, late night broadcast of Compline on Radio 4 that was discontinued some years ago,

Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,

while not being entirely convinced about the 'sober' part, I can see how it works here.

Take care. Look after yourselves. Thanks for being there.

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

 Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet (Tinder)

I came into possession of this book unexpectedly. Even though it is ostensibly relevant to a specific area of interest, I hadn't intended to read it but when the opportunity presented itself, I gave it a go. 

Biography and fiction are two quite different things but in the case of Shakespeare biography, the line between them becomes blurred. Shakespeare's life provides some solid facts but plenty of room for his many biographers to fill in the detail as they see fit with their imaginings and suppositions. Some do it more convincingly than others. In Hamnet, though, Maggie O'Farrell is writing fiction and making no claim to historical accuracy. While it is generally thought that the boy attributed to Shakespeare as one of twins born to Ann Hathaway died of plague there is no forensic evidence that shows he did. Published in 2020 and thus presumably conceived and begun before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, Maggie found herself inadvertently the author of a best-selling plague novel in times of plague.

Shakespeare isn't named as such in the book but almost ghosts his way through it as 'the Latin tutor', the absent husband and father and such in the same way that it has been said that there is a Shakespeare-shaped hole at the centre of his own biography. As a winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction it is possible to read it as a female book, written as much from the points of view of Agnes, as Ann is known, and the other twin, Judith. Agnes is from the country, witchy and mystically possessed of intuitive knowledge. John Shakespeare, the father of the dramatist and poet, is unsympathetic and boorish. Shakespeare is impractical, a bit dreamy and not regarded as fit for much responsibility in the artisan, provinicial trades of Stratford.

One of several things that are less easy to equate with what is known of Shakespeare's life is his devotion to Agnes. That is difficult to read into the accounts of the writer who needs to get away from Stratford and family life to make his name and fortune as the Greatest Writer of All Time in London. Agnes doesn't believe it, either, and is suspicious that there is 'another woman' in London. In this account there isn't but in real life it's hard to believe there weren't other people or else where did the Sonnets come from.

In a brilliant passage in the middle of the book the progress of the plague from Africa via Italy by boat, carried by fleas from monkeys, rats and cats is traced in fine detail that evokes a wider trading world at the end of the C16th. It is Judith that first catches it, given a much more kindly portrait here that she is allowed in most accounts, but Hamnet that dies of it as a result of their close bond as twins that share so many things.

Having been on tour with the actors in Kent due to the closure of the theatres in London, Shakespeare returns to Stratford just too late after which Maggie O'Farrell provides a moving 'poetry of absence' that one might think echoes several highlights in Shakespeare's writing. In a short Author's Note at the end of the book Maggie points out that,

The Black Death or 'pestilence', as it would have been known in the late sixteenth century, is not mentioned once by Shakespeare, in any of his plays or poetry,

and wonders about its possible significance, as if it was taboo or too painful to mention. But what about Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2,

Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world;   

which looks to melike a mention without needing to give it any more thought.

The stresses in a long-distance marriage with Shakespeare away, devoted to his theatre work and Agnes left with the children in Stratford are easy to accept but, to much local surprise, he buys New Place back at home for them to live in. The ne'er-do-well has apparently done very well and the only partially-literate locals can barely credit it.

It makes for a good story but highly unlikely that Agnes makes the trip to London with her reliable yeoman brother, Batholomew, to find him but find him she does, first seeing him on stage in the play that so heartlessly took the dead boy's name for use in an entertainment, playing the ghost. Not much of that is the point according to my preferred account of the life but it is all very much the point in how Maggie makes such an impressive story from the template of the biography as we have it. I had thought that perhaps she could have woven an equally good novel on the same themes without it being based on Shakespeare but the horse comes before the cart and it gains immensely more for being what it is.

If we say it's 'convincing', it convinces as art, by its imagination, its technique, its humanity and conception. It's not the first and won't be the last thing to take liberties with what really might have been. John Shakespeare has generally had a bad press and isn't spared here. Judith, the state of the marriage and Agnes herself can be grateful for being presented more positively than they are accustomed to. But, with Coleridge, we 'suspend our disbelief' and the measure of good writing is is how far it allows us to.

It's great that books like this, and the likes of the recent Ishiguro, can spend so long in the Top 10 Bestsellers, showing that a significant number of people are reading books that are worth reading. My own prejudice against it made me not want to but one doesn't know until one's tried and I am most grateful for being so unwontedly given the chance. I'm never more delighted than when being proved wrong in happy circumstances. It makes one think that more Maggie O'Farrell ought to be worth looking at but the rest of her work will need to look sharp to be this good and I'm a bit occupied with Tolstoy for the time being so I hope she can wait. 

Young-Choon Park in Chichester

 Young-Choon Park, piano, Chichester Cathedral, July 9

If Beethoven had only written the Piano Sonatas he would have been a major composer but he did other things besides. It's easy to believe that Schubert learned a lot from him and his achievement would have been comparable had he lived as long which wasn't all that long in either case. Young-Choon Park's performance today provided an excellent opportunity to compare rather than contrast. Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, the 'Moonlight', was written in 1801 when he was 30; Schubert's Sonata no. 19 in C minor comes from 1828 when he was 31 and wasn't due to live much longer.

There is no messing about in the opening of the Schubert, announcing its arrival with some gusto before the first movement progresses through song-like passages and rippling effects. It could be Beethoven. The second movement is restrained and even sombre before a glorious extended race to the end in a sustained dash. The left hand drives the momentum while the right hits some bright, shiny top notes, the point having been made and embellished further in a bravura composition that demanded power and virtuoso technique from Young-Choon.

Moving into the famous opening of the moonlight reflected on the water of Lake Lucerne (as the critic, and not Beethoven, saw it) was an immediate contrast with very much the opposite temperament required from the pianist but she did that even better, if anything. Being so well-known doesn't mean it can't still hit the same emotional spot so tellingly, especially with such a delicate touch. There was a fluid texture to the interpretation that might have come from the sustain pedal but having been one of the first Beethoven pieces I knew, some forty-odd years ago, it was just as alive and vivid now. And that's how you can tell if something's any good.

It's not all moonlit, though, and after a melodic middle, there was the thunder and lightning of the Presto Agitato third movement. 'Agitato' indeed, the moonlight epithet doesn't give you any warning of that which makes it a bit of a misnomer but one is tempted to see where Schubert got his idea from and then did his best to take it further.

These are two huge sonatas, once again illustrating that an orchestra isn't required to provide large scale music. Mozart did what he did exquisitely but the next generation took it that much further and it was a wonderful thing to have Young-Choon to provide them so impressively. If one ever wonders if it's the composer or the performer that is the most important, neither can do without the other.

This was a memorable performance even by Chichester's usual high standards and they've had Steven Kovacevich. It's great to have such concerts back and realize how much one missed them. That might be it for me for a little while there but the plan is to be back on Tuesdays from Sept 14. 

I've just checked and, yes, the 14th is a Tuesday. The programme gave Beethoven's dates as 1712-1773 which are actually the dates of the composer's grandfather. One can't believe everything one reads but one has to know it's wrong before being able to do anything about it. And maybe we could have had the movements set out for us as we usually do, like, Adagio Sostenuto, Allegretto and Presto Agitato in the Beethoven.

I'm only joking. I'm astonished that people are now being asked prices like £27.50 to see T. Rextasy featuring Danielz who must surely by now be twice as old as Marc was when he died but it only cost, like, 75p to see T. Rex at the height of their powers. Even factoring in the travel to nearby Chichester, these concerts for whatever donation you see fit are the greatest offer imaginable.

Pavlos Carvalho

 Pavlos Carvalho, St. Paul's Church, Chichester, July 5

The second of my voyages out for the resurrection of the live music habit was to see the much-loved cellist, Pavlos. My own website comes in useful as my own record of what I saw when and a pattern is emerging by which I see him every two years. Having seen him do nos. 1 and 3, then 3 and 5 and now 1 and 2 of the Bach Cello Suites, it is to be hoped that in 2023 he'll do 4 and 6.

We had our doubts about the acoustics in St. Paul's Church but we need not have worried. The sound was immediately resonant and not much resounds as well as the opening of Suite no. 1 in G major, its relatively simple construction (when you breakm it down) sounding all-encompassing, like the first notes of The Well-Tempered Klavier, and all else follows as if by some pure but inventive logic of its own.

The same music can sound different every time one hears it. I wouldn't want to line up my favourite musicians - Steven Isserlis, Yo-Yo Ma, Natalie Clein, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pablo Casals et al and stretch my limited musical vocabulary to beyond breaking point by saying what the differences were in their Bach suites but Pavlos here began methodically, it seemed to me, setting it out clearly and unhurriedly. That changed in the Sarabande, which quickened the pulse and the dance steps.

Pavlos is always as convincing as a talker as well as a cellist and not only enlightening but uplifting to listen to. He could talk all day as well as play all day and, with a young student of his in the front row, must make for an inspirational teacher. The one word, among the numerous, to save from his talk between the two suites was 'cathartic', and having checked - not wanting to trip over its meaning - it is,

providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions.

 

And, yes, that is Bach more than any other artist and especially in the music for solo instruments whether it is the keyboard work, for preference these days on the piano that he wouldn't have heard it on, violin or cello. It's not that other composers aren't but none are so thoroughly cleansing as Seb.

I was also grateful for the explanation of the 'Neapolitan Sixth' chord although I'm hoping there isn't a question about it in the exam.

The second Suite is pre-dominantly darker with the lower register suggesting doubt more than exuberance. Not for the first time one wondered how much, if anything, Bach owed to St. Colombe and Marin Marais, so memorably re-created by Depardieu pere et fils, in Tous les Matins du Monde, because phrases from Jordi Savall's soundtrack echoed regularly for anybody familiar enough with it. 

Again in no. 2, the contrast was between the tempi of the first movements and the sudden energy injected by the Sarabande. I wasn't aware of such a difference before and wonder if this is something Pavlos is emphasizing. Not all of the echoes of St. Colombe's viol support his contention that these suites are not to be taken too seriously but their greatness lies in their capacity to be what you want them to be and find so much in them. Bach reportedly said that all his music was written 'for the glory of God' but it is also suggested that pieces like this, The Art of Fugue, the keyboard Inventions were studies for instrumental practice whereas one book is dedicated to the missus so we had better not worry why Bach wrote what he did but that he did and that, in a long-treasured phrase from Michael Bywater in the Independent on Sunday in the 1990's, he 'flatters us by being of the same species'.  That was in the context of some Bach music being sent out in to space in the hope that other 'intelligent' life would understand it which Michael thought was 'just showing off'.

The Suite no. 2 in D minor carries forward the impetus of the Sarabande to a thrilling ending that gave Pavlos's fingers a good work out on his fretboard.

It's colossal. It's almost certain to make you feel better for having been there. This is one great ambassador for music, for the cello and for Bach. His recording of this music was stalled after finishing the first three for reasons that have been widely reported in the news but those will soon be available digitally before the other three are recorded and, so he says, we might have the discs in six months. Not being an optimist myself, I think we'll be glad of them once we have our hands on them. While I'd love to have Steven's, Natalie's, Yo-Yo's as well as those I do have, I will make a point of having the gospels according to Pavlos.   

Elena Toponogova in Chichester

 Elena Toponogova, piano, Chichester Cathedral, July 2nd

It's been a long time since we rock'n'rolled. It's been 18 months, actually, with only the brief but brilliant oasis of two recitals by Angelina Kopyrina in Portsmouth last September. Just the pleasure of being back was enough but it didn't take long to remember why one goes - because it's tremendous.

The support act was an excellent exhibition of paintings by Michele Griffiths, here,

Michele Griffiths

Chartres was a favourite but there was much to admire in the cathedral stone work and light in all of them. On a day when a bonus was hardly necessary to enhance the occasion, there still was one.

Elena didn't begin with rock'n'roll, though, or anything like it but she did begin where Angelina had left us, with Rachmanninov. Daisies, op 38 no.3 which she was rehearsing as I arrived to get a good seat in the reduced, distanced capacity, is the softest tinkling of a poem by Lotaryov that Elena read first as if to show the difference between music and poetry and how music is usually better at it.

Two of The Etudes Tableaux, again by Rachmanninov, began with no. 2, more rumbling and expansive, and then no. 5, the Sea and the Seagulls, was back in dreamier mode before developing more foreboding from the lower register.

Tchaikovsky's Intermezzo from the Nutcracker Suite was equally rhapsodic but with more notes and 'orchestration' before Elena made the case for Nikolai Medtner, who is not so well known, with the dappled light of Fairytale that shimmered like the Sonata-Reminicenza, op. 38 also did before the turbulent disturbance in the middle and faint echoes of Bach, perhaps, in the final passages. While this was an entirely Russian and Romantic programme, the notes assured us that Elena has won prizes for her Bach as well, which is good to know.

Of course, having been starved of live music for so long, we'd have loved to have had all of the Prokofiev Sonata no.2 rather than just the first movement but the 50 minutes was still enormously good value. The Prokofiev brought together much of what had gone before but with more C20th, Modernist fracturing of the lyrical flow with varying tempi and the dreaminess compromised but it looked forward, to beyond the lush Romanticism, and made a fine end to a well-thought out programme.

It was great to be back, sitting next to the much-loved Arundel Tomb, which I now realize is below a stained glass window featuring the dissolute organist and choir master, Thomas Weelkes to who I've recently been most grateful for providing the subject for a new poem, poems having been difficult to come by in recent months. Maybe more of that another time.

But thanks to Elena and all involved in organizing these things at Chichester. They should be appreciated as a luxury. It is a measure of how spoilt we are if we regard them as essential.