There's a Flap On

The BBC4 programme A Poet's Guide to Britain has been very good with analyses of various little-heard poems which have all been up there with the greats. Last night's programme was about Woods by Louis MacNeice which has a depth that I cannot begin to describe. You have to read it, though I cannot find it for a link. However, that is not the main idea hear - rather the rude interruptions of verses by various modern poets asked to comment on the main feature. These have served to do nothing other that to contrast the depth and plain craft of the historical subjects when compared with the tiny wit of these short and grating wannabe poems. It struck me that over the years, contemporary poetry has gradually removed all the elements, any one of which defines writing as poetry. First to go was rhyme which we can happily do without - Rhyme in anything other than skilled hands, does nothing other than distract from real meaning. Next on the hit list was scansion - again not so much a loss, though rhythm might be seen as pretty much essential to a good poem by most people, it is still possible to make a jaw-dropping poem with something which other than its content is just prose (non-prosaic prose perhaps). However, these little interjections in the show seem to have finally removed the last spark of poetry which is the poeticism. In the struggle to avoid cliche, to seem different, the avant-garde now write poems without any poetic hook, without the "hello-clouds-hello-sky" moments I suppose. So we have progressed beyond playing tennis without the net to playing it without the rackets or ball. To stretch the analogy, some modern poetry is just walking around. Maybe this reflects what has happened in art - if crumpled paper or lights turning off and on can be art then random, scansion-free sentences can be poetry. Even EJ Thribb has some go at making the random splits in his prose give the lines some sort of flow.

Then again you may want to throw my recent efforts such as "A Goth in Mufti" back at me. I have an excuse.

Tom Has Seen Her. Sept. I Must!

(From Chris L. Harris on Flickr)

I should read more plays - I've been trying to get through Taming of the Shrew for years but I eventually located a copy of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard at the library and it's a hoot - deep and interesting, about science, history, literature and sex - stuff about chaos theory and thermodynamics and a tortoise. I'm not sure I'm quite up to understanding all of it and I'm sure that much is lost because I don't read the required nuances into the performance. I was annoyed at missing it on the Radio some months back and this is unfortunately the only way I can experience it. Of course it will be repeated at some point in the future. No links just in case the wiki article gives away the plot, though it's so rich I'm not sure it would matter that you did know what happened - it would just raise your anticipation of a meaty bit of dialogue at the point of revelation. And it has old mad/bad/dangerous-to-know Byron in it as well. Well sort of in it.

And so to poetry - Sylvia Plath is the subject of tonight's Poet's Guide to Britain, specifically her poem Wuthering Heights which was not one I'd remembered in any real depth but which is actually one of her best. Ted Hughes also wrote one with that title - every person with any poetic leanings who walks those moors must feel like doing so but I think his is in Birthday Letters and therefore more likely to be a response to Plath's poem. Birthday Letters is up there with Arcadia as a piece of real depth and importance - so much more that some of Hughes' ramblings about gutting rabbits, the cleansing flow of Devon rivers and how we are all in thrall to the White Goddess.

Good luck to Carol Ann Duffy. I wasn't being entirely serious the other week and I'm actually quite looking forward to something from her. It was ironic that many people knee-jerked about how poetry had gone downhill since Wordsworth, who I seem to recall only took the job of laureate if he didn't have to write anything official - and he didn't. I suppose the argument will then be extended to the idea that CAD has not actually written anything worthy of comparison to Wordsworth even before getting the gig. My reply to that would be that poetry moves on and anything striking a mad-keen Wordsworth fan as wonderful these days would look like parody. Stuff 'em I say. Write what you want Carol.

On Remembering National Poetry Day

Well as you can see from the previous post I did remember. I was reminded by spotting an article by Andrew Motion which unfortunately turned out to be boring and so I won't bother you with a link - Google is your friend if you minded to search for it.

The only things I can possibly link to are this - Pieces of Me by Frieda Hughes and this.

Scotoma With Fortifications

Listening to Loveless by My Bloody Valentine

Reading Whiskey Galore by Compton MacKenzie

A wonderful book is this – dark and satirical but with warm and friendly characters and a to-die-for fade-out ending which now I come to think of it is a bit like Puck’s monologue at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The film is funny enough but the book has real depth and though a might less laughter-inducing overall is far funnier deep down in the long-term humour memory. It pokes fun at the officialdom that beset the stay-at-homes during the war and is in some ways a call to arms for a gentle WI-style of anarchy.

I desperately want to understand how time travel can be realised but it’s all just too paradoxical. I suspect that a childish interest in things that are not possible leads an adult to an investigation of the boundaries of the possible. Einstein started thinking about what it would be like to ride on a beam of light and of course keeping this in mind led him to develop the theories of relativity. My daughter has a friend who asks me all sorts of questions about relativity and time travel when he comes round for tea (before they disappear to play their Nintendo DSs at opposite ends of the room). I just wish I could answer them properly. The big question that get’s asked in the form of an assertion that it will happen is when it will happen. My view has always been that the non-existence of time-travellers proves that it will never happen but then that ignores all the paradox-busting loops and alternate universes that are proposed to do away with the peculiarities that arise from simply imaging a simple trip back. Maybe Doctor Who has got it right in that you will be able to jaunt backwards and forwards without too much damage occurring but I am sure the mathematically inclined amongst the definers of temporal transport will argue with that. I had so many sentences constructed to define what might happen but deep down in my head the illogcality of these ideas just render the statements meaningless – we need new vocabulary to handle it like Douglas Adams invented in THHGTTG. Could it be like the problems of understanding the fourth special dimension – you can define it in terms of mathematics (quite simple maths for the fourth dimension – just Pythagoras I think) but you just cannot see it because we have no mechanism for handling an extra dimension or time travel.

I want to write a poem but I just can’t seem to get started. I have so many ideas but none of them remain exciting enough for long. I have been spurred into thinking about this by some truly awful spoken-word stuff I have heard recently by someone who should no better – no names no see-me-after-school – but this is also what prompted the musing on time travel above. Martin Amis said this week, that poetry was dead – no one curls up with a poetry book at night any more. He is probably right about that but two things come to mind. Firstly the only time I ever curled up with a poetry book was when I read Philip Larkin’s collected poems after reading Andrew Motion’s biography of him which makes me wonder about who actually ever did curl up with a poetry book. Secondly does this actually mark the demise? He did refer to live events and this is probably where poetry is still quite healthy. You could hear poetry every night of the week on Radio 1 when Mark and Lard’s show was on – Simon Armitage and Ian MacMillan – he of the loud shirts and fruity Yorkshire tones. It would be nice to have that sort of commitment from broadcasters but it all seems to be talent shows and the abuse of anyone who seems fair game for the cocaine fuelled young things. And don’t you feel that we have all been got at by some huge practical joke with that Olympic Logo. I’m all for edgy but that looked like the start of some 80’s ‘yoof’ programme like the spoof one Ben Elton presented in The Young Ones. There must be someone laughing over their little mirror in the toilets somewhere over than wool-pulling. How did I get here from poetry? Well a little misdirection is always useful when you can’t think of what to write. I will make a point of reading some poetry tonight as there is nothing on the TV and nothing on disk yet. I will try some Auden maybe.