Academia and the Sad, Blue Blade

Listening to New York Counterpoint - Steve Reich

As I am listening to this, some deep bit of it cries out to be written down, to have its detail defined in words so that you can hear how it is.

I have gone back to reading the Andrew Motion Biography of Philip Larkin after finishing The White Stuff. There is a passage, which I cannot recall in detail where Larkin defines poetry as something like a tenth of the intensity that the poet originally intended when he thought of the moment that he was trying to describe. I took my daughter to a party this weekend, and while I sat ostensibly keeping an eye on her as she sailed through the air on the bouncy castle, I wrote in my notebook. The stuff I wrote was just what was in my head at the time and it seemed to burn into the pages. I am not saying that it was good poetry but it certainly meant something to me at the time and conveyed images to me. Larkin, despite his being a cantankerous old sod with unsavoury prejudices, sometimes said things that were just so correct and beautiful that you have to bow to his superior knowledge of things. See The Whitsun Weddings. I was possibly on the point of giving up on the book but that has renewed my vigour and determination to complete it. Thank you Martin.

The White Stuff was a wonderful book by the way. A book with a defined solution that then returns to your mind later to say well that wasn't a proper solution - leaving the way open for a whole new book. Not that there will be one; I think that is the point.