An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
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Florist!
Secondment!
Perry’s Troika!
Common sat kid’s, don’t be put off by the overpowering leftist types, have fun here, it s not all serious, I’ve a belly full of piss, how about you? Give a reply!
My belly hurts
Ah, a belly full of piss. That’s what I’m planning for my belly later in the weekend.
Good onya Tim. Ive had a couple. Truth be told.
Possibly then to be filled even more by a perfectly greasy and undoubtedly delicious kebab.
Woke up. Grumpy. Idiot in moderation can’t grasp concept of light, fluffy, no stoushing allowed thread previous to this one. Make tired tigtog more grumpy.
Hmph.
Kim:
G’day. What gives with Weathergirl asking for her posts top be removed? Just curious, that’s all.
Gratuitous link (too lazy to do a post on this today):
“RAAF aircrew involved in coalition operations have been warned that they must have the moral courage to abort missions if they breach Australian laws.
The RAAF’s new air power doctrine also strongly emphasises the need for all personnel to have the courage to give the Government honest advice, even when they know it might be unwelcome or that it could be politicised.
The doctrine amounts to a blueprint for the conduct of RAAF operations and its strong emphasis on personal responsibility of aircrews comes after years of concern about high civilian casualties in Iraq and episodes such as the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/raaf-warns-crews-on-moral-courage-in-war-missions/2007/03/22/1174153254935.html
Gummo Trotsky:
Great news! That means we can resume our rightful place on the side of Good and start winning Victories again.
Now if only the Navy would grow a backbone we might get an informed debate about the treatment of asylum seekers. SIEV X and Children Overboard are a stain on the RAN that should not be washed off lightly.
Dave,
I won’t comment on SEIV-X but on Children Overboard, I suggest that you check the Committee Hansard for the Senate Inquiry into a certain Maritime Incident. The impression that gives is that the stain is on the Federal Government not the the RAN. And Senator George Brandis got himself pretty well egg-stained, facially, on one or two memorable occasions duringthe the hearings.
Sixteen of her majesty’s ever vigilant and watchful mariners on routine harassment duties in international waters of the Persian Gulf(a virtual inland sea) have been held for questioning by Iranian authorities. Details are exceedingly hazy. Is this the Gulf of Tonkin incident one has when one is not having a Gulf of Tonkin incident?
Frenzied rounds of Clayton’s diplomacy are already well underway. The outcome remains uncertain for all not familiar with the extent of Iranian oil and gas reserves, and the covetous and predatory nature of Anglo-American cartels. For others, the incident reeks of casus belli.
Mordant, Unhappy Laughs Dept.:
The other day I was reading James Fenton’s acid, sadly-too-true poem “Jerusalem,” where he cleverly uses all of these idiotic doggerel couplets to slowly tease out all the great unhappinesss of that city, and by extension much of the ME at large. Typical examples…
“This is Gethsemane.
You are my enemy.
That is a minaret.
I am not finished yet.”
It makes one laugh pretty hard, though in a most rueful way.
Speaking of Fenton, I was reading some of his essays on Auden round about the same time, which leads me to a question for those of you with a literary bent…
So here’s a question:
Granted it’s not terribly productive to sit around “rating” writers, but nevertheless it’s awfully fun, in a talkin’-sport sort of way. What do people think Auden’s place is, or will be, in the history of 20th-century English writing?
I hadn’t heard of Dinesh D’Souza before reading this book review which contains lines like this:
” Theoconservatism refuses to accept the notion that government can ever aspire to be neutral with respect to competing visions of morality”.
“D’Souza is admirably more candid about the precarious state of American conservatism than many others. “If the left can convert national security — usually a source of political strength for the right — into a liability, then it has vastly improved its chances for winning future elections….The entire conservative agenda, from tax cuts to school choice to restricting abortion, would be stalled,” he writes. “Moreover, the right’s political loss would be followed by a cultural assault seeking to demonize Bush as another Nixon and conservatives as dangerous fanatics who cannot again be trusted with power. At a time when the right is within sight of complete victory, it risks losing everything and returning to the minority status it held in the years before Reagan.”
I am stunned by idea that some see the right as being within sight of complete victory.The entire review is at
http://www.powells.com/review/2007_03_15
Yes yes, Dinesh D’Souza, very interesting, quite. But what I want to know is, What would Dinesh D’Souza say about Auden?
In other news, somebody’s brought out a very handsome bilingual collected edition of Cesar Vallejo, who I always liked a whole lot more than Lorca (but not more than Lorca’s plays), and especially more than that vastly over-rated twit Neruda. Hail Cesar!
PollutedSkies:
Heady stuff alright.
but of course it is …. with about seventy or eighty 10 to 50 kiloton warheads – mostly airburst to stop the EU, Russia, India and China complaining about all the fallout – and, say, 20 000 computer-generated letters to all the new Gold Star Mothers because of own friendly-fire/collateral-damage casualties.
See? Easy. And just think of all the money to be made out of reconstruction and clean-up contracts.
Silly mid-on? Centre half-forward?
Ahem. Sorry, JPZ, not only will those mean nothing to you, but the second one will also mean very little to NSW and Qld LPers, who play/watch some incomprehensible other brand of football from real football. Australian Rules rules.
(But I think I’m onto something here — it would say more about writers to deploy them in a cricket or footy team than to rank them. I’m reminded of a competition run once by the New Yorker or somebody, involving taking famous names and changing or removing one letter, and then identifying the person according to the result. The woman who won the competition submitted a double-header: ‘Norman Miler and Henry Miler, two American middle-distance writers.’ My own submission would have been that very famous DH Lawrence novel about assorted awful people, Sods and Losers.)
You want ranking, I’d put Auden somewhere below Yeats and Eliot but above Robert Frost and (though I’m less sure about this) Wallace Stevens; above D. H. Lawrence and Hemingway (both of whom I regard as unfortunate, aberrant incidents in the history of 20thC English writing) but below Nabokov, Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Auden certainly got a new lease of life after Four Weddings and a Funeral (for those who don’t know this, he wrote the poem recited by the bereaved lover at the funeral), but my personal favourite is ‘The More Loving One’:
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
that, for all they care, I can go to hell.
But on earth indifference is the least
we have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
with a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
I’d put Auden as a goal-sneak, a la Kevin Bartlett.
For those who thought Iraq was beyond parody.
http://www.youtube.com/?v=PuEDwcfJPSk
J_p_z,
No doubt about it, he’s a good little player. I’d go with “Young Wyston” on the bench, rather than in my starting line-up. Seems to lack a bit of mongrel in tackles but moves like an angel if allowed space. He’s always on time for training.
Dr. Cat — I like this business about changing/removing a letter. A few swings of the bat…
George Oh-well: He wrote, “All animals are equal, but whaddaya gonna do?”
Hennessee Williams: The dandy full of brandy.
Philip Lurkin’: the greatest commenter who never commented.
Pauline Rage: she liked to hit back.
and, while we’re being French, this isn’t quite in the rules, but I couldn’t resist…
Georges Si-mais-non: his greatest crime was his indecision.
and, speaking of Auden, why not
W.H. Arden: oh he’s a lumberjack, and he’s OK.
Enemy C. — maybe we could organize a rugby or Australian Rules match between, say, the Lost Generation and the Beats. Spanish Civil War writer-veterans versus Vietnam writer-activists. Who would be the starting lines? Who would sit on the bench?
Dr. Cat — I’d say you’re right about Lawrence being a disaster as a novelist, but not as a poet; in poetry, when he was good, he was superb. And liking Hemingway or not, it’s kind of futile to lament him: for good or ill, he is one of six or so writers without whom 20th-cent. English style could not have existed. And besides, without Hem, we might not have had Humphrey Bogart. Something to think about.
I think that you’re right about Yeats and Eliot being above Auden as a poet; but w/r/t Frost and Stevens, I think one needs to make a further distinction between a ‘writer’ and a ‘poet.’ As poets, that is to say as beings who are marinated thoroughly in poetry as such, I think both Frost and Stevens tower over Auden. Auden’s great strength I’d say is as a ‘writer,’ who chose poetry as his most reliable vehicle, though he couldn’t make it hug the curves at 110 mph. The greatness that he has, I think comes in large part from the way that he lived in painfully close communication with all the great public crises and struggles of his times, in a way that Frost and Stevens did not. Auden is a great human, and a great civilizing force in the English language, but he is not half the poet that the other two are.
Here’s some characteristic Auden:
“What have you done to them?
Nothing? Nothing is not an answer…”
A perfectly valid piece of thinking, though lacking I think in the peculiar vitamins that only poetry has. Here’s characteristic Stevens:
“Nothing that is not there,
And the nothing that is.”
I guess it’s a matter of taste, but it seems to me that Auden could have just as easily expressed himself in an essay, whereas Stevens could ONLY write his poem; and that to me makes the difference. It will be interesting to see, as the new century progresses, whether Auden outlives his times, which will become increasingly incomprehensible to the future…
More fun with this whole letters/authors schtick…
Anais Pnin — a spy in the faculty lounge of love.
Philip K. Dice — he saw the future with snake eyes.
Kathy Ocker — she defined “down under” rather differently.
Mario Ouzo — his characters were drunk with power.
Righto j_p_z, yer on.
I’ll take the Beats with the SCW vet scribes, you sir, should you agree, select from the Lost Gen and Vietnam Vets.
RollerBall-WriterBall:
Manager, Coach, Zambuk(para-medic), eight on the ‘drome to start, and five substitutes a side. RollerBall-WriterBall is an equal opportunity literary blood sport. We post our selections on next Saturday’s open thread and let the readers decide the “winning” team.
Wanna rumble, orwot?
Salman Hushdie: Here was a guy who knew when to shut it.
20th-cent. American English style, maybe, but to me he is a kind of America-specific aberration in a way that, say, Fitzgerald and Stevens transcend.
True; you said ‘writing’. No fair shifting the goal posts, to stick with the footy imagery. (Apropos which: Katz, thank you so much for that YouTube trip down Memory Lane. I’d forgotten all about KB and the mystery of why someone that good with the footy should be so clueless about the comb-over. The late, great former Collingwood captain and then coach Bob Rose’s son Peter is a poet and also a mate of mine, so I will ask him where he thinks his dad would have played Auden.)
Absolutely, but not only, I would argue, for his own times — for any historical/political crisis or struggle, and therefore the opposite of dated. How very, very 2007 is this, for instance, even though written in 1955?
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
Its tones as dry and leevl as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
‘dry and level’.
Way to screw up a good poem …
Dr. Cat: “20th-cent. American English style, maybe, but to me [Hemingway] is a kind of America-specific aberration…”
Sorry, but this couldn’t be more mistaken. Hemingway is everywhere in all modern English prose; he’s so omnipresent, you can’t even see him any more. And I’m not even a Hemingway fan, it’s just a fact of life. Look at those sentences I just wrote; Oscar Wilde or H.G. Wells would NEVER have written a sentence like that. This whole blog is filled with him (and not just Hemingway of course, there were a bunch of writers at work making the style; but Ernie was at the forefront). Martin Amis comes from Hemingway, so does Tim Winton, whether they like it or not. Look at virtually any sentence on this blog, including one of your own; look at the forthrightness, the spareness and cleanliness of approach, the way the author does not sink into the soft cushions of their syntax, even when the sentence gets complex. Look at the way the author stands inside of the sentence, the writer’s posture, as it were. That’s all Hemingway. Read a page of Woolf or Conrad, and ask yourself whether the prose you read and write every day comes from there. Not a chance. In the same way, the skyline of any modern city comes from Mies van der Rohe, not from Louis Sullivan, even though it was Sullivan who invented the damn skyscraper. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good thing, I’m just pointing out that it’s true.
–j_p_z, who will return to Auden later…
Oh, and Enemy C. — Salman Hushdie is classic! (and, you’re on for writers rugby — or did you pick Australian Rules? Shit, now I have to learn the rules and the team structures….)
btw, Can I get away with “NASCAR Wilde,” or is that one letter too many changed?
I’m mistaken about my own personal opinion?
If you say so.
He had said so. She was mistaken, he said. She looked at the screen. There it was. It was a sentence that said she was mistaken. It was a good sentence, as sentences go, and as sentences go, it went … No, no, that was H. H. Munro. Munro was killed in the Great War. Hemingway was not killed in the Great War.
She was not thinking very straight. She was disturbed. Perhaps he was right, and she was mistaken. She picked up the cat. It was a good cat. It looked her in the eye. Whatever you say, it said. If you say so, I said.
“I’m mistaken about my own personal opinion? If you say so.”
Truly, Madame, when tasked to weigh the great and vexatious question of the probity of ever-changing personal Opinion, surely it were best to look first for guidance to those Fixed and constant Lights of veracity whereby one might glean, were one’s Eye thus suitably trained up in wisdom, some kind ray of guidance in a thicket of cruel Doubt. Taking, as it were, an example from the gallery of Experience: were I so inclined to affirm that ’twas my own Opinion that the illustrious works of the noble hand of James McNeil Whistler, that paragon, had in truth come into Being thro’ the Influence, artistic, Aesthetic, moral, &c., of that notable practitioner of the sculptor’s Art (I mean none other than Donald Judd), which of us thinks I might be so fortunate to meet with th’acclamations of even the humblest voices of Credulity? I vouchsafe to your Ladyship, ‘twould not be so. ‘Tis ever thus with fancy.
It was a good paragraph. I had no idea what it meant, but I was sure that people in another time would know. A time when no one had read A Farewell to Arms. Or H.H. Munro. Or Dashiell Hammett. This was enough, and I was pleased. And now it was time. Time to make more coffee, and listen to Charles Mingus. Then it would be time again to work. And work was good.
Please remember, some LP’ers, to put your clock back , one hour, as daylight saving is about to conclude, in some areas. In areas that it is not about to conclude, check with a regional administrator who will confirm otherwise. Upon confirmation of other, than otherwise, move your clock forward or backward, one hour, depending on advice. Hope that’s clear.
I’ll tell you a true story Pavlov’s Cat. Whenever my partner reads this blog, she just flicks through lookiing for the Pavlov’s Cat writings.
That’s cause Dr Cat is the bestest evah, and I’m not sure to whom this sentence owes its debts.
Advice needed: how do you know when it’s a good time to buy a house?
Clearly neither Steve’s partner nor Kate is an old student of mine.
Kate, you can’t second-guess the future about interest rates or anything else — first you wait till after the election, then you wait till you get a pay rise, then you wait till we’re out of Iraq, and before you know it you’ll be 65. Shut your eyes and jump, is my advice.
How do I rate thee? Let me count the ways… Auden is a technically brilliant poet, with an instinct for all of the elements of poetry that is unmatched, IMO, by any of his contemporaries or modernist forebears. His understanding of line, metre, form, metaphor, rhyme (etc, etc) is astonishing, and there are moments, in leafing through an Auden anthology, that you will sit up straight with surprise and wonder at what he is able to do. His villanelle ‘But I Can’t’ is a personal favourite.
Presumably because of his familiarity with all of the tricks of the poetic trade, and his willingness to engage with current events and crises, he was a splendid comic poet. His satire is frequently topical, incisive. And on a purely technical level, the word-play is delightful. I have an enduring fondness for his early work ‘Law Like Love’:
Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I’ve told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.
Perhaps Auden didn’t produce work of such rhetorical force as Yeats. But can anyone doubt that Auden’s gifts all came brilliantly to the fore in his elegy for Yeats?
he disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
O all the instruments agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day
I think history will look on him kindly.
Thanks for jumping in on Auden, TimT. Good observations. (myself and La Pavlova got a little sidetracked; but for all that, I didn’t think anybody else would join us.)
When you say that Auden was ‘technically brilliant’ I agree; but part of my view of Auden is, that that technical brilliance contributes to his downside. (One speaks in relative terms, naturally; there’s no ‘absolute’ ‘downside’ to Auden, who was unquestionably a giant. But there’s this and there’s that, and so we criticize; maybe ‘limitation’ is a better word.)
Fenton says in one of his essays that “in Auden’s work prose and poetry interpenetrate to a far greater extent than in the work of any other great English-language poet of this century.” I’m inclined to agree. I think Auden’s technical facility ironically often (not always) kept him at arm’s length from the sheer electric shock of poetry. Because he could more or less technically do anything, and he knew it, he didn’t feel as much, the need to go deep into the trance to get there. That and the fact that he could seldom seem to locate the “off” switch for his political-historical conscience (and the courage of it, too, to be fair). One wants to see him let go, and go quite mad from time to time, to just sort of freak out and run with the ball, the way Jimmy Schuyler, who had once been Auden’s secretary, was able to do. Auden’s is a “public” sort of poetic voice, which makes him often far too well-behaved.
Once, in a discussion like this, I pulled up an obscure but technically good poem of Auden’s; then I took a bit from one of his essays, and applied standard prosodic chopping to it, to make it look like a poem. I showed them both to a friend, who’s pretty skilled in poetic technique himself; he couldn’t tell which had been the essay, which the poem. Great as Auden was, I see a problem in that.
Hmm, moderated. Is it because of my tedious “Terry and the Pirates” jokes, or because I dared to criticize Auden? (Meantime, thanks for your interesting comments, Tim!)
Tim T, quite right about the technique. Lovely comment.
JPZ, three things:
1) Let me get this straight — you went trawling for comments about Auden specifically so that you could argue (presumably against the comments you would elicit) that he was not among the great? That’s a bit cheap; I feel like I’ve been dudded. Especially as I don’t really believe in this ranking business to start with.
2) I got sucked right in and read a whole pile of Auden again last night while thinking about this thread, and what struck me — this is apropos your comment about essays — is that Auden is very big on using long and grammatically complicated sentences. That didn’t make me think he was essay-writing; that made me think he had a lot in common with John Donne.
3) You’re applying criteria (’sheer electric shock’, ‘deep into the trance’, ‘off switch for political/historical’ and so forth) that you seem to assume are universal, universally held and universally understood, but it seems to me those are very vague hazy criteria.
(Sure, there are poets who have those effects on one, and sure, those effects can only be described in those sorts of fuzzy metaphorical ways — but every reader gets fuzzied by different things. I get a sheer electric shock from the sight of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, myself, but I have no illusions about what’s causing it.)
Are you seriously claiming that poets who engage habitually with the social and political are by definition lesser poets? And if you are, where does that leave Milton and Spenser and Shakespeare?
It’s certainly true that Auden was more restrained and laid-back in tone than most of his contemporaries. But isn’t it largely a matter of personal taste as to whether this classical style is better or worse than the romantic, exaggerated, fractured emotional style affected by others? I often have a hankering for the classical style, preferring a poetry that articulates interesting ideas simply and entertainingly, rather than a poetry that dwells excessively on fine psychological and emotional points.
This is not to say that Auden was ‘emotionally dishonest’ – quite the opposite. But the usual emotional tone of Auden’s poems is that, I think, is of a restrained, mordant, ironic voice making acerbic commentary on events in the world. It served him well, too, I would argue – in his later years, his voice continued to mature, so he was able to make gentle, probing observations about the personal and domestic life.
Kate, I think buying a house is a good idea if you’re going to feel better when you live in it than you currently do (presumably in rented accommodation). You’d feel better because you feel good about owning it, more secure, no landlord, etc. But if buying a house pushes you into a harder place, financially, maybe that would cancel out the goodness of ownership. Maybe you could only afford a house in a place you don’t much like. It’s the usual schtick about pros and cons, weighing up costs and benefits. Good luck.
Kate, I think a good time to buy a house is when you feel reasonably secure in your work, or about prospects for future employment, and…for the rest, I completely agree with suz. When either or both of you begin to feel it’s important. For myself I could happily have kept on renting forever, but Dorian really wanted to stop paying rent.
Ranking writers, or even comparing them to say who’s better, baffles me. I would like to join in, but can’t. I don’t mind DH.
All I can offer is the surely boring information that I’m currently teaching a course in 20th century american lit, and have set no poetry at all, and no drama either. It didn’t seem necessary. Well, nothing ever does seem indispensable, and I would rather concentrate on one strand than flit flightily about over a lot of strands. So we are going in deep on the novel instead. (No Hemingway, either – I think he’s a bit of a byway and in this setting a luxury we can’t afford. Not even reading Fitzgerald since they have read him at school, usually.) So far they liked Djuna Barnes without reservation, and acquitted themselves honourably with the Sound and the Fury. It always moves me when people persist with a book like that, when what they really want to do is chuck it out the window.
Laura, that sounds quite something. Have you got Flannery O’Connor or Eudora Welty on?
Fiasco — I had a bit of a look at that site. I don’t think John Whateverhisnameis understands what Auden was doing — but I would say that, wouldn’t I.
Or, to put it another way:
That’s not a bad poet … this is a bad poet!
It wouldn’t surprise me, Pavlov’s Cat, if j_p_z indeed held to such a view. His loathing of the explicitly political even extends to forms such as LP commentary.
His refuge is the book. And he despises them who would pollute his tower with tawdry news of the world.
Not a chance, Pavlov’s Cat; the twentieth century’s worst poets were without question Lennon and McCartney, especially Lennon.
Henry Lawson threw up on better verse.
Who do you think you are kidding Dr Nelson:
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,21443766-949,00.html
Pavlov’s Cat: “you went trawling for comments about Auden specifically so that you could argue (presumably against the comments you would elicit) that he was not among the great? That’s a bit cheap; I feel like I’ve been dudded.”
Well, that’s a little reductive. (Haven’t done much talking sports in yr time, have ye?) First off, I don’t think I’m pissing on Auden, just looking at him from all sides and angles. (“Great sculpture has no boring views” — Frank O’Hara) Plus it would be a little boring to just elicit encomia; I brought up Auden because a) he was on my mind, I’ve been reading about him, and b) I find him, among the great, to be interesting yet highly problematic (Eliot’s that way for other reasons). Plus anyway it’s just talk, not making an academic point; one of the purposes of talk is plain old fun. You don’t like what I’m saying, great. Prove me wrong.
“If I’m going to ‘argue’ with you, I must take up a contrary position.” — John Cleese
“[Auden's] very big on using long and grammatically complicated sentences. That didn’t make me think he was essay-writing; that made me think he had a lot in common with John Donne.”
A *lot* in common? See, that would make me think he had *one thing* in common with Donne (viz., long complicated sentences).
“You’re applying criteria… that you seem to assume are universal…but those are very vague hazy criteria.”
Of course they are. I’m just a reader, not a professor of this stuff. It’s not my job to prove anything about it, just make use of it, and have some fun. What’s your favorite song in The Wizard of Oz? Defend your position by correctly applying the quadratic equation.
“Are you seriously claiming that poets who engage habitually with the social and political are by definition lesser poets?”
No, of course not. Though the innards of that proposition would make for a pretty interesting discussion in its own right.
And if you want a *really* bad poet, try Jem Casey!
Laura — No poetry in a course on 20th cent. American lit? (I mean, I could see if it was a course on the novel as such, but…) Sounds to me a little like neglecting to mention Detroit during the history of the automobile.
No drama, either? No Eugene O’Neill? An interesting thing to try, if you’re dealing with issues of postmodernism, would be to assign O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones,” and then afterwards make the students watch the Wooster Group’s avant-garde Kabuki-like deconstruction of the play (I think maybe you can get a tape of the performance from their site.) That would make for some interesting compare/contrast conversations!
On the other hand, sounds like you’ve got a cool reading list!
wbb — Ack! You’ve got me totally pegged! Now that my agenda has been found out, I must flee, back to the planet Z’gargax-9, to give my full report.
jpz, according to Geoff Page (80 Great Poems, 2006, UNSW Press), Auden is DA MAN – or as he actually said, is ‘one of the most accomplished exponents of verse forms ever to use the language’. (Which at once tells us that Auden was a masterly
poet, and that the book is only about poetry in English.)
And he would agree with all the reasons Tim gave. That was nicely put indeed.
Here’s a lovely, strange bit of Auden; seemingly calm and wistful, but with monsters hiding under the bed…
“Make this night loveable,
Moon, and with eye single
Looking down from up there
Bless me, One especial,
And friends everywhere.
…Parted by circumstance,
Grant each your indulgence
That we may meet in dreams
For talk, for dalliance…”
So far, so good; it’s practically Po Chu-i. The guy’s good: look, he can make “there/where” sound like a downright original rhyme, through sheer craft, honest feeling, and good taste. Whew! Then it takes a curious, rather disturbing turn, which I won’t quote here. Just goes to show he could do it when he felt like it, and I’m not being a total knocker.
Dr. Cat, I’m still pondering your remark about “social and political” poets. In a lot of ways, Auden was a special case, considering the strange collision of his gifts, his perceptive conscience, and the noisy claims of his generation. Fenton says this about him…
“Auden was a rhetorician. He knew himself to be a rhetorician of the highest powers, and, when he saw the power that he had, he recoiled from it in deep horror. And as he recoiled, he filled his followers with dismay, since they could not see the furies that he saw. …he tried to suppress in himself the urge to create a stirring rhetoric which would move men or classes to action. It is no exaggeration to say that the horror he felt at his own powers… was, though in differing degree, the same kind of horror with which he observed the power of Hitler.”
An interesting case, to be sure. Considering the question in a more general sense (social and political poets vs. “romantic, fractured emotional style”), I think the deeper cases are the ones that involve some sort of complex oscillation between the poles, often in a way that is not self-evident. I don’t have much time, f’rinstance, for Robert Lowell’s hand-wringing and nervous breakdowns; and I find his “political” stance generally rather self-serving and myopic. But Plath is a deeply political poet whether she thinks so or not. The tragedy of Plath of course also reverberates off the historical and gender-politics setting, which sets her work in relief against a vast area of study — as opposed to Berryman, quite as tragic, but curiously hermetic, and of an interest that is equally “curious”. Even more interesting, to me, than either of them, from a social/political viewpoint, is Frank O’Hara’s *refusal* to have a nervous breakdown in the face of the troubles of his time (though he certainly had his bouts of depression and hysteria). Politics is where you look for it, in poetry; and is sometimes most strong when it doesn’t seem to be there.
When Whitman says something simple and generous and mildly funny, like
“The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopped for me,
I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time,
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.”
then I start to listen a lot more carefully to what he says about the Civil War. That to me is the beginning of a political and social poetry of importance. (I’m not leaving Auden out of all that, here, just addressing the general question.) There’s also, w/r/t Auden, the sociological question of what it meant to a man of his generation to be an Oxford-educated Englishman who had a social role as poet which had a pre-existing shape, and a set of expectations which Auden courageously examined and sort of defied. Another matter for a May morning.
No Welty, no O’Connor. There is only so much that can be covered in a thirteen-week semester. I have given up even pretending to make representative selections.
The Auden poems I like best are the ones about other writers. His poem about the old Herman Melville is a beautiful and perceptive thing: ‘he sailed at the end into an extraordinary mildness’…