Poetry

George Herbert, a Blackbird, the Midwife and still battling Couchgrass

drjanedavis

blackbird

I am going to continue my reading of George Herbert’s ‘Affliction III’. Anyone here yesterday will have seen that I spent nearly an hour on the first line, a record of slowness, even for me. Today I’ll try to do line two!

MY heart did heave, and there came forth, “O God !”
By that I knew that Thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,
Making a sceptre of the rod :
Hadst Thou not had Thy part,
Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.
But since Thy breath gave me both life and shape,
Thou know’st my tallies ; and when there’s assigned
So much breath to a sigh, what’s then behind?
Or if some years with it escape,
The sigh then only is
A gale to bring me sooner to my bliss.
Thy life on earth was grief, and Thou art still
Constant unto it, making it to be
A point of honour, now to grieve in me,
And in Thy members suffer ill.
They who lament one cross,
Thou dying daily, praise Thee to Thy loss.

I’m struck by Herbert’s idea of God being ‘in’ the grief. As if grief were a complex mixture of  compounded elements that only seems, at first glance, to be one solid thing. When you look more carefully, or in more dimensions, ‘grief’ contains lots of different elements, time-zones, experiences, meanings.

An example: yesterday and the day before I was complaining about my battle with couchgrass, an interminable struggle which I know I can’t win. It’s grief all right.  But if I only see it as grief (which I’m afraid is oftentimes the case) then I can feel overcome. It’s a one-dimensional experience, which is all sadness. Yesterday when I was working at it, a young male blackbird started visiting the patch I’d cleared, picking out worms and grubs to take back to his demanding  family in the big Hebe at the side of the garden. We spent a companionable hour or more  together, working alongside each other. I’ve never seen a blackbird so close. He came with inches of my boot and then of my hand.

I  love blackbirds, the sharpness of their outline and eye, the determination of their songs flung  from the high gable, the top branch, the telegraph pole. They are usually rather distant birds. So I was moved by his presence and as he worked  right beside me, I thought this wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for the battle against couchgrass.

But I don’t want to give the couchgrass too much credit, that’s to say it could have been any pernicious weed: it was my struggle, not the enemy, that contained the potential for the lovely experience. But there is no denying my struggle was provoked by the enemy. Thus evil has a place in creation? I always find I baulk against that – in the end  I’d like no evil, only good. I want a garden without couchgrass!

But a yin and yang view of the universe and all that’s in it is certainly part of George Herbert’s experience. For me, the blackbird experience was ‘in’ the couchgrass experience. Other things, too. The comforting smell of the spring earth was ‘in’ it, the close-up contemplation of  the ornamental strawberry plant root-system, the finding my favourite geranium in flower, hidden there amongst  choking weed. (Read a good post about Geranium Pyrenaicum ‘Bill Wallis’ here.)

If you translate Herbert’s word ‘God’ into ‘good’ (as I do) then you have a helpful thought. If ‘good’ is ‘in’ any bad experience, then bad does not have such great, such overpowering, dominion. I am resolved to  weed out the couch, but in a more accepting frame of mind. I’ll be looking for (and finding) good while I am doing it. 

When Herbert sighs ‘Oh God’ and realises God is ‘in’ the situation, it  presages  relief. Something beyond him and his pain is in control of (guiding) what is happening. From ‘guide’ Herbert’s mind leaps to the word ‘govern’. It’s almost as if he feels now someone else (‘Thou’) has the management of the situation, will handle it. For us it’s a hard leap to King (ultimate leader) but  for George Herbert, with the word ‘govern’ comes the idea of King. Thus in  line 4, the punishing ‘rod’ of a  bullying schoolteacher, donkey-beater, becomes the symbol of power, not the violent use of it.

To guide and govern it to my relief,
Making a sceptre of the rod :

If you feel something awful is being done to you by someone with power over you, it will feel like ‘rod’, a big stick to beat you with. If you feel you are being led, guided, even (hard word/thought for a modern person?) ‘ruled’ by someone who has no need to beat you, someone who has natural authority, symbolised by ‘sceptre’… might you feel someone else is in control, and might that help?

I waver back and forth here. I want to be in control of my self and my life, and grown-up enough to take responsibility for situations in which I find myself, but I can think of situations in life where I was glad to know there was someone else who was in control – for example the midwife, when I was giving birth.  When we are pushed to the limit, and are breaking, it is good to know someone else is going to care for us and help hold it together. For George Herbert, fearing the ‘unruly’ elements inside himself, the presence of ‘Thou’ is a lifesaver.

Hadst Thou not had Thy part,                                                               5
Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.

The next three lines seem difficult. 

But since Thy breath gave me both life and shape,
Thou know’st my tallies ; and when there’s assigned
So much breath to a sigh, what’s then behind?

I’ll leave it there for today and get back to the garden.

Slowly Unfurling Structure

drjanedavis
feren
Magnificent Buckler Fern ( I think it is called ) unfurling its structure

Yesterday I said I’d be reading George Herbert, and so  here I am, a little later than usual because I slept way beyond my normal waking time, for which I am, as a five and sometimes four a.m. waker, always grateful.

This quiet country village pastor, a poet whose time falls somewhere between Shakespeare and Milton and whose poetry is like neither of them, has influenced my life as if he were a real person, known to me, knowing me for thirty years. If the dead live they live in poetry: here I’ve had a mentor  who has given good counsel, a shoulder to cry on cry, and recognition of my experience.  From him I have learned there are underlying structures in human inner experience, just there are in all nature.

It is hard (for me it was, in the beginning) to get past his religion. Here is a structure I cannot see. But I can see that George Herbert sees it, and that it orders chaos for him. I follow his human footsteps, all the time thinking (as it were in brackets) ‘don’t believe in God’. Translating his religious experience into some kind of analogue for my own inner life has become second nature after all these years, and I am hardly aware of the need to translate. But I can remember the need to do so at the beginning of our relationship.

During some of the very hardest times of my life Herbert was a, literally, inspiration. He breathed spirit into me. I was inspired through  the breath of his poetry. I learned to  believe that  the survival of the heart, scarred but ultimately undamaged, was possible because of his poems. The underlying message: trust in love.  I’m not very good at that, but he is a great teacher and I am a willing pupil.

There are many favourites. Today I’m going to start to read one I have not read for a good long time – maybe ten years.

Affliction III

MY heart did heave, and there came forth, “O God !”
By that I knew that Thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,
Making a sceptre of the rod :
Hadst Thou not had Thy part,
Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.
But since Thy breath gave me both life and shape,
Thou know’st my tallies ; and when there’s assigned
So much breath to a sigh, what’s then behind?
Or if some years with it escape,
The sigh then only is
A gale to bring me sooner to my bliss.
Thy life on earth was grief, and Thou art still
Constant unto it, making it to be
A point of honour, now to grieve in me,
And in Thy members suffer ill.
They who lament one cross,
Thou dying daily, praise Thee to Thy loss.

I am going to look at the first six lines:

MY heart did heave, and there came forth, “O God !”
By that I knew that Thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,
Making a sceptre of the rod :
Hadst Thou not had Thy part,
Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.

Have you ever had a blow, unexpected, frightening? and did you say, ‘Oh God’?

The starting point of this poem is a moment of utter sadness or depression, or brokenness: one of those times when ‘my heart did heave’. I’m interested in that phrase now – because thinking actually of retching, isn’t ‘heave’ another word for ‘retch’ and could Herbert have  meant that? (Online Etymological dictionary). So, to lift up… and yes. retch is in there; your stomach heaves, because it lifts itself up. So, to go back to the poem, ‘my heart did heave’: this physical response to some situation (we don’t know what caused any of it) of a retching sensation, a huge sigh, results in a cry ‘Oh God.’

As it does, under such a blow, or a huge sadness, even for a non-believer like me. But where for me that cry would be understood as meaningless (I say ‘oh god’ because it is a  habit lots of people have: doesn’t mean anything, I don’t take any notice of it) for Herbert, it is a real sign.

By that I knew that Thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,

For a believer, a practising Christian like Herbert, those words could never be meaningless, even if they were uttered without deliberate consciousness as a wordless cry might be uttered. For Herbert this realisation (that the words are a cry to someone, to Thou, that the words put God in the mix, make God part of it, even though, interesting to note here Herbert doesn’t now call him ‘God’, he calls him ‘Thou’) ) is itself an immediate relief. (Remember Wordsworth’s ‘a timely utterance gave that thought relief’ in Intimations? )

What can this mean for me?

Something George Herbert understands by the word ‘God’ (I don’t know what that is, but I know he believes in it and that it helps him) is present. When it’s just me, no Herbert and no God, and I am struck a blow and my heart heaves and I cry out ‘Oh God’, I might now have an extra moment of consciousness, which is hard to see while it is happening but which might be broken down into the following movements:

  1. Though I do not believe in God, and the cry I’ve just uttered is an animal noise, yet it was not an animal noise (though, oh, I’ve made them, too in my time, with griefs). It was the word ‘God’. I  instinctively made a sort of unconscious, undeliberate prayer.
  2. For George Herbert and millions of other humans of all religious persuasions and over thousands of years, such cries have been uttered at times of troubles: people believe help will come. I may not believe as they believe, but their reality is part of my consciousness.
  3. Help is now in my mind as possibility
  4. Instead of only thinking fear, pain and other bad thoughts the thought ‘help’ is now in my mind

Oh dear, time’s up. This is the slowest close reading in the history of reading. Feels sub-atomic in its slowness. I’ll carry on tomorrow.

If you are willing to try him, you’ll find a great resource for reading George Herbert here. But I would recommend buying a book. Slim volume it may be, but going this slowly, it will last, usefully, the rest of your life.

Small Fork Day (and the Wedding, still going on)

drjanedavis
couch
Sneaky undergroud roots of my enemy, with something lovely in the background

Good morning, and for readers in the UK, happy Bank Holiday weekend. I need to get some gardening done! Spring is not in the air, but it is nearly here. I have much work to do to meet it. That work is the Battle Between Good and Evil in the Garden.

My Deeside patch is largely sand, despite 20 years of importing manure from the horse field up the road. And in this very easy-going sandy soil, so easy to slink through, lives my secret and then not so secret enemy: Couchgrass.

Couchgrass! The insidious underground creeper! I realised about 17 years ago that Couchgrass, secretive, entangling, hidden from sight, would never be defeated, would always be with me, whether I could see its brittle white tentacles or not.

A garden is an exercise in patience and courage and hope. There is always something nasty in the garden – ah Milton, thou should’st be living at this hour – you can’t get rid of it, you can’t  create a little clean patch where no bad stuff is, it’s not the nature of the planet! No, our job is to dream, and plant, but also to prop, prune, bind and tie, and to wield the small fork when necessary.

To make the best garden you can, even while the weeds, led by  the ringleader, Couchgrass, keep coming back at you, is the task of a lifetime. Poetry helps. And sharp forks.  Today, Couchgrass, is Small Fork Day. Beware the small fork.

But before I turn to Couchgrass, I turn to poetry. I’ve been reading Prothalamion, and I’m planning to finish it today. We were up to this bit:

Then forth they all out of their baskets drew
Great store of flowers, the honour of the field,
That to the sense did fragrant odours yield,
All which upon those goodly birds they threw,
And all the waves did strew,
That like old Peneus’ waters they did seem,
When down along by pleasant Tempe’s shore,
Scattered with flowers, through Thessaly they stream,
That they appear through lilies’ plenteous store,
Like a bride’s chamber floor.
Two of those nymphs meanwhile, two garlands bound,
Of freshest flowers which in that mead they found,
The which presenting all in trim array,
Their snowy foreheads therewithal they crowned,
Whilst one did sing this lay,
Prepared against that day,
Against their bridal day, which was not long:
      Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

I want to read this very fast now, having broken my fear, and cleared some of my own anxiety about the Greek stuff. It’s not a poem for long and repeated contemplation (like for example Derek Walcott’s Love After Love, a poem much-read in many Shared Reading groups, and which I’ve found I can come back to time after time. Not like any poem by George Herbert, whom I want to read tomorrow.) In the catalogue of poems, it’s a happy song, and the lyrics are sweet, but not deep. The verse above is all flowers (ha! no couchgrass here!). The nymphs dressing the swans in crowns of flowers. One nymph sings the following verse, which I am skipping over. It’s a  blessing and a  looking to a happy future. The bridal party approaches London, and Spenser is moved to remember, for a moment his own situation (remember how at the beginning, he was worried about some workplace matter?). Now they are near the Inns of Court (I’m guessing)

Next whereunto there stands a stately place,

Where oft I gained gifts and goodly grace
Of that great lord, which therein wont to dwell,
Whose want too well now feels my friendless case.
But ah, here fits not well
Old woes but joys to tell
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
      Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Spenser is out of favour, perhaps out of favour with a great Lord (who? haven’t looked up, don’t know my history) ‘whose want too well now feels my friendless case.’ A moment of tricky syntax, where even though we’re motoring now, a reader would want to go carefully and make sure she’d understood. The want of the great lord’s favour: I’m reading want as absence, lack. This lack ‘too well now feels’  – it is interesting that as soon as the idea of the loss, the absence of favour comes into mind, Spenser despite being in the middle of a rather glorious wedding – feels it, feels the nub of it, ‘friendless’. And yet he is at the wedding! so ‘here fits not well / Old woes but joys to tell’. And yet he can’t now get political thoughts out of his mind. Can’t help but wonder why he has let this into the poem, must have some relevance…need to look at a footnote!

Had a quick look at Wikepedia. Hmm, helps a bit. It’s a double marriage! Makes sense that the two swans are the two brides, not the bridegrooms. That’s why they are so white. I should have seen that in the poem itself.  The nymphs are bridesmaids…Wonder if  the next bit  is about the father of the women getting married? It’s a trumpet blast of praise, like raising a toast;

Yet therein now doth lodge a noble peer,
Great England’s glory, and the world’s wide wonder,
Whose dreadful name late through all Spain did thunder,
And Hercules’ two pillars standing near
Did make to quake and fear:
Fair branch of honour, flower of chivalry,
That fillest England with thy triumph’s fame,
Joy have thou of thy noble victory,
And endless happiness of thine own name
That promiseth the same:
That through thy prowess and victorious arms,
Thy country may be freed from foreign harms;
And great Elisa’s glorious name may ring
Through all the world, filled with thy wide alarms,
Which some brave Muse may sing
To ages following,
Upon the bridal day, which is not long:
      Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Here I am near the end but the couchgrass is calling…I feel as if Prothalamion has been a kind of poetry work-out… I like the flowers, the Thames, the slow rich joy of it, and the sunny atmosphere. I’m interested in the poet mentioning but putting aside his own difficulties (but is it odd,  or a pointed  political act, to leave them in the finished poem?). I don’t regret it because spending a couple of hours on it has clarified something: I want a poem that is more than story or song. The bit I’m most interested in here is Spenser’s own state of being. I want more of that. Which is why I’m reading George Herbert tomorrow.

couch2
Forks awaiting the call to arms

Leaving The Eagle for A Wedding

drjanedavis2 Comments
cornflr (2)
Flowers or a dream of flowers?

Before the memory of Tennyson’s eagle interrupted, I had been making a start on reading Spenser’ Prothalamion.  Carrying on with that today. Read the whole poem here, Get yourself back into it by reading it aloud but I’m picking up at this point;

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play—
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan’s beams, which then did glister fair;
When I, (whom sullen care,                                                5
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In princes’ court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain,)
Walk’d forth to ease my pain                                             10
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorn’d with dainty gems
Fit to deck maidens’ bowers,                                                15
And crown their paramours
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

The other day I’d got to ‘walk’d forth to ease my pain’ and will pick up again there.

Walk’d forth to ease my pain                                             10
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorn’d with dainty gems
Fit to deck maidens’ bowers,                                                15
And crown their paramours
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

I see now (didn’t really notice before) that the lovely day bookends Spenser’s description of his own unhappy mental state, with ‘Sweet-breathing Zephyrus’ and calmness at one side, and the delightful  flowery banks of the river of the other. On a quick first reading I had nearly missed his frustrated misery. The final line, which becomes a refrain for the whole poem, is a plea for continued calm, suggesting there’s still more trouble to come perhaps. But he wants to make his song in peace.

I try now to make the situation Spenser describes real to myself, I need to translate it into my own experience. I imagine this: there’s a wedding coming but you are in the middle of loads of difficulty at work – what happens? You put the difficulty aside, mentally, as best you can , and get on with celebrating the  marriage. That’s what’s happening here.

The way he sees the river bank is very much in terms of wedding day – flowers, gems, maidens and their paramours and then the actual mention of a ‘bridal day’. Thinking of all these images and feelings of pleasure and sweetness crowding out his work worries. But the work worries are still there. I note them and move on.

Back to the poem, stanza two, read it aloud again:

There in a meadow by the river’s side
A flock of nymphs I chancèd to espy,                           20
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks all loose untied
As each had been a bride;
And each one had a little wicker basket
Made of fine twigs, entrailèd curiously.                      25
In which they gather’d flowers to fill their flasket,
And with fine fingers cropt full feateously
The tender stalks on high.
Of every sort which in that meadow grew
They gather’d some—the violet, pallid blue,             30
The little daisy that at evening closes,
The virgin lily and the primrose true,
With store of vermeil roses,
To deck their bridegrooms’ posies
Against the bridal day, which was not long:            35
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

Now I am a little perplexed. We’ve gone into fantasy or into seeing the world through the mode of classical Greece. We saw that Grecian stuff in the opening stanza but there they seems  straightforward images of god-like powers – Zephyrus and Titan. What we have here are creatures, a ‘flock of nymphs’ with ‘goodly greenish locks’. I’m going to look up nymphs. (Despite what I said about the footnote killeth). Looked it up,  and I go on knowing that – as I thought, a nymph is a sort of minor deity, often associated with water or specific places. My question is: are these real nymphs, with real ‘greenish’ hair, or  are they figments of Spenser’s imagination – have we entered a fiction?  Are they real people dressed in his imagination as nymphs? The Thames, sweet as it is, is a real river. I don’t know the answer to my question – never mind. I read on.

Each of these figures ( how many is a flock?) remind him brides:

With goodly greenish locks all loose untied
As each had been a bride;
And each one had a little wicker basket
Made of fine twigs, entrailèd curiously.                      25
In which they gather’d flowers to fill their flasket,
And with fine fingers cropt full feateously
The tender stalks on high.

I’ve decided I’m treating it as a fiction. I’m in a story.

A few weeks ago here on this blog I started to think about  different types of poem – direct, personal, thinking, story etc. I’m assuming this is story and so the part of me that loves narrative – what’s going to happen – is firing up now. I  still have some language to untangle as lots of words  seem unfamiliar and I have to keep looking up some of the Greek stuff, but I’ve stopped feeling worried. This is not beyond me. The nymphs are picking flowers for vases back at home. (Looked up flasket, nice old  word). They gathered flowers

Of every sort which in that meadow grew
They gather’d some—the violet, pallid blue,             30
The little daisy that at evening closes,
The virgin lily and the primrose true,
With store of vermeil roses,
To deck their bridegrooms’ posies
Against the bridal day, which was not long:            35
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

Had to look up ‘vermeil’ but shouldn’t have bothered ,should have just guessed. It’s  vermillion! It’s a red, red rose. Which makes me think of a love poem. These girls are getting ready for a wedding – but why are ‘nymphs’ they turning into girls in my mind? They are fictions, and unreal, but they are also real. Why? Partly, the flowers, like the Thames, are real, here and now flowers, not parts of Greek mythology, partly perhaps the mention of their bridegrooms, and the bridal day – ‘which was not long’.

At the end,  the stanza closes with the invocation to the Thames to ‘run softly’. Is this asking for a moment of peace? After all the Thames runs through London, where the court (his workplace?) Spenser was so  frustrated in (stanza 1) is based.  Let’s have this interlude, perhaps he is saying, let’s enjoy this.

I’m racing through it now.

With that I saw two swans of goodly hue
Come softly swimming down along the Lee:
Two fairer birds I yet did never see;
The snow which doth the top of Pindus strow 40
Did never whiter show,
Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be
For love of Leda, whiter did appear;
Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he,
Yet not so white as these, nor nothing near; 45
So purely white they were
That even the gentle stream, the which them bare?
Seem’d foul to them, and bade his billows spare
To wet their silken feathers, lest they might
Soil their fair plumes with water not so fair, 50
And mar their beauties bright
That shone as Heaven’s light
Against their bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

But that third stanza takes me over the days word limit. And introduces the myth of Leda and the Swan, of which I’ll remind myself before tomorrow.

The footnote killeth

drjanedavis4 Comments
The Japanese Garden at Calderstones

Yesterday I was  thinking about what a novice reader in Shared Reading needs to know, and made a list of 9 things to do, most of which were, read the poem aloud. Heather commented on the importance of No. 3, ‘Check how you are feeling’.

Heather writes, ‘This is the key that can begin to unlock a scary-looking poem. I have seen people being astonished by feelings that have emerged after initially having said things like ‘I don’t get this’.’

Yes. It is  important that we feel able to stay in that creative place of uncertainty. At that place, ‘I don’t get this…’ we are on the very cusp of new thought, new understanding. The reader and the text are trying to find each other. The reader stands face to face with the words, an equal. As when we meet a new person, we try to find  out who they are – not by references, but in their own terms. A man (new to his Shared Reading group)  said to me yesterday, ‘It’s just us, and the words, and something… happens…’

The model of brave uncertainty characterised by, ‘I don’t get this… but I’m beginning to feel…’ may be a one of the contributing factors to one of the key outcomes shared Reading Group members report – feeling more confident.

Often, in more experienced, or more educated, literary worlds (I’ve seen it  in literature courses, in talks at Lit Fests, in lectures, at Book Clubs ) there is a reaching after fact to put-off  or smooth over those feelings uncertainty, of not-knowing, as if fact could do it for us and save us those worries. But it doesn’t. It might sometimes add to something we are experiencing in the reading but, very often, it intrudes, and the experience becomes something else, almost corrupted.

If I said to you, I’ve looked up ‘The Eagle’, and Tennyson wrote it to celebrate the adoption of the american eagle at the end of the American Civil War (I’ve just made that up, but say it was historically true). Your relation to the poem is now a historical  one. It’s no longer just you and poem, the words on the page. It’s art, Jim, but with footnotes. And, particularly at the beginning of  an experience, of a relationship with a work of literature (perhaps any art?) , the footnote killeth.  It certainly affects the democracy of reading.

I spent years reading and teaching and sharing my readings of three  of the greatest poems ever written – The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost and The Prelude. I like to have an edition with  good footnotes, and I like the footnotes to be at the bottom of the page, so you don’t have to flip backwards and forwards. Alastair Fowler’s edition of Paradise Lost is excellent for this. I read the footnotes quite often. But what I’ve found over thirty years is that they don’t help. Not when you are really struggling. That real struggle is the struggle to enter the mind of the author, to follow, through language, form, syntax, the experience of the author’s thoughts.

In this respect reading is like eating or dancing. No one can do it for you. There are things to learn about dance and food and what other people like or believe, and learning that extra stuff might well add to your experience. But you don’t start there. You start by doing it yourself. And no one, however expert, can do your eating or dancing.

Back the The Eagle. Yesterday I’d read some of the first stanza, now I’m going to read the second and try to understand why  it makes me afraid.

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The first thing in the second stanza that frightens me is ‘the wrinkled sea.’ That sea is very far down: I feel vertigo as I read. Height changes time on cliff tops. Tennyson uses the verb ‘crawls’ to get at that feeling. If you were walking on the shore, the waves would be crashing, the tide moving at  a speed. From very high above,  (I’m remembering cliff tops on a Greek Island, the Aegean seeming miles below) the sea seems to move a very slow speed.  The eagle ‘watches’ and I’m seeing something alert, intelligent, deliberate and very very far above everything else –  as in the first stanza, when  he seemed god-like.  the giving way implied in ‘falls’ is what frightens me most. It is absolute abandonment. It is power too, because this is not an uncontrolled fall. This is the power, and self-control of the high diver. The diver, the faller, becomes an object –  cannonball- submitting to gravity in this way, terrifyingly making of their own body a weapon.

The ‘thunderbolt’ connects me back to the sense of him as out-of-this-world, godlike, ‘ring’d with the azure world.’

Do you see a film of this unfolding  moment in  your mind as you read?
I’m asking myself Do you see anything human? The long distance of a very far-off encompassing gaze, the seeing of things in a large pattern, the ability to move with great certainty and very fast…it’s the difference between the long far off gaze and fast,’ terrifying action, the ‘thunderbolt’ that unsettles me.

I’ve noticed the way each stanza has three rhymes. That makes the rhythm of the poem act strangely, I think. I read it aloud to myself a couple of times. You sort of expect a fourth line, that’s what it is. The lines themselves are very regular, four beat lines:

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

And you’d expect each stanza to be a four line stanza, to match , as it were. But you don’t get the fourth line. When you don’t get it, it’s like the great down-swoop of the bird. Something is suddenly not there.

This poem is a sketch, a small one, in pencil. Its  full of a moment of life and it shows Tennyson’s skill. But I want something bigger. I move on the next picture. Tell me more about humans.

A Room Full of Snakes and a Very Big Bird: How To Read A Poem

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20160913_111656.jpg
Agnes playing with leaves, Calderstones, September 2016

How do you read a poem?

Many of us, readers and non-readers, seem to believe that knowledge, expertise, years of practice are needed to understand those human artefacts we call poems. A world industry has evolved to promote that  view.

Attentive readers will have noted how I have slipped from ‘read’ to ‘understand’.

‘Bah,’ as D.H. Lawrence may well have said (don’t  have time to check this morning) ‘the mind understands and there’s an end to it.’

Is reading poetry an art? Is it a skill? It is certainly true that, as in almost all human actions, practice helps. We can talk about that another time. But for today, because the question arose for me yesterday, I ask myself what does a novice need?  Look at the picture of Agnes playing with leaves. That’s what we’re aiming for today. Get the feel of poems. Gaze at them a lot. Chuck ’em about.

Here are 9 tips for reading a poem:

1. Enter the room

If you said to a snake-fearer, ‘Enter this room with a snakes in it…’ your snake-fearer would probably say, ‘No thanks.’

That’s what most people say to reading poetry.

But you are reading this. You are over your fear enough to have looked in this place for help. You are in the room with a live poem!

And here it is, chosen because it was the first or second grown up poem I ever read, and it came to mind in conversation yesterday. I was ten  when I found it in Palgraves Golden Treasury, which I’d been given  for my birthday. Almost every poem in the book seemed incomprehensible, though I wasn’t yet old enough to be afraid of them. I simply couldn’t get into them at all, and despite its lovely name, the Treasury seemed to me like reading an engineering manual, or Chinese. But I could read this one, I thought, and it was about something I could picture. And it was short;

                             The Eagle
                             He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
                                                                             Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(Note to self – need to write a separate post on  how to choose a poem)

2. Read it aloud

Poems are songs and it is good when they pass through your body and out of your mouth. You want to feel the rhythm, not by counting syllables, but by tapping your feet or fingers. Often, in poems, the rhythm does something, I mean, it makes something happen, and you want eventually to know what that is, so you need to get into the habit of feeling it.

Read the poem aloud, as slowly as you can. Where there is punctuation, take a pause. In this poem that is easy because the commas and semicolons come at the line endings. That means you only have to think in one dimension, which is helpful for a beginner. Later we’ll come to poems where the line-endings and punctuation work together in a different way.

3. Check how you are feeling

Poems are messages, communications, from other people’s hearts and minds. As with any human communication, you need to be aware of  how you feel as it unfolds. In this poem, as I read it aloud, now, as I write, I feel exhilarated at the end of the first three lines, ‘Ring’d with the azure world he stands’, but I feel afraid  at the end of the poem ‘And like a thunderbolt he falls.’ I thought he might be a very dangerous creature. And he felt quite close. ‘Thunderbolt’= Aiieee.

One of the things that has been so wonderful about running Shared Reading groups, or listening to other people telling me about their Shared Reading groups, has been seeing how  often people who are new to poetry are astonished and delighted by the strong feelings they feel when they recognise themselves in a poem.

But I didn’t see myself in this poem when I was ten. I only felt something like (and it was a feeling,  not words) ‘I get it!’ then I felt the feelings of the poem, which are:  wow, and then, agh. Which may be something close to what Tennyson may have wanted his readers to feel.

Don’t get stuck on, or too attached to, these opening feelings: reading is a dynamic exchange, a live unfolding. You want to be free to go with whatever the flow of this day’s reading turns out to be.

4. Read it aloud again

Check in, see if anything has changed, see if you see more as the  mental film of the poem unfolds. Try to notice something you didn’t notice before. I notice ‘hands’, because eagles don’t have hands, they have claws. Humans have hands. When you’ve noticed something,  have a pause and think about it.

5. Believe the poet  did what s/he did on purpose

You might say, ‘Ah, it only says ‘hands’ because he’s got to find a rhyme for ‘lands’…’

And if you said that, I’d say, ‘Well-noticed! they do rhyme, don’t they?’  But I’d try to persuade you that even a half decent poet could either find another rhyme for ‘lands’ or have put the word ‘claws’ and found word to rhyme with that. This poet chose ‘hands’, on purpose, because he wanted to put the word ‘hands’ (with all their associated human powers of action perhaps) in our minds. Why?  Perhaps because this poem is not simply about The Eagle?

6. Read it aloud again.

Reading the poem is the reality of it. Go back to it as often as you can. In this respect reading a poem is a meditation. You wander, which is natural, and then you say to yourself, now go back to the poem.

7. Notice things

You started by noticing a word, (‘hands’) so now notice another in line two.

Poems work in 3-D, up and down, back and forward, as well as in a linear, narrative fashion. Having seen the human word  in line one, you’ll have noticed the human word in two: yep, it’s ‘lonely’.

This adjective, ‘lonely’ (yes, it’s good to know some technical words such as ‘noun’ ‘verb’ ‘adjective’ and  ‘enjambement’. You don’t need them. But they can be useful, just as a Guide to Snake Markings could be useful in the Snake Room. More of this another day)…

This adjective, ‘lonely’ is a human word. Yet  it’s used to describe an inhuman landscape. The eagle is about as far from human settlement as it is possible to be, in fact, he seems almost a god, ‘ring’d with the azure world, he stands.’

(I’ve suddenly thought of the American Eagle and have no idea if there is any connection and don’t have time to look it up, but if I was reading this poem with more than minutes at my command I would now Google the American eagle, its dates, whether Tennyson was interested in the USA etc. But these things are merely facts. I don’t need them to read the poem. If it was just me and the poem, locked in the room, I’d simply note the god-like loneliness of the eagle with his head  ringed by ‘the azure world’.

Why world? When azure refers to the blue of the sky?

8. Let the questions proliferate

Reading a poem is like entering a room full of snakes and like meditating. (Also, sometimes,  a bit like a more or less controlled bomb-explosion. But we are not exploding today. As far as I know.)

9. Aim for flexible stretch, poetry as pilates

As you read you are moving between modes: sometimes being afraid, not knowing, not understanding. Sometimes you are saying to yourself, ‘Back to the poem’, and breathing and reading and feeling rhythm and feeling unnamed feelings. Sometimes you are asking lots of questions: questions which arise from your core, like bubbles in water or sparks from a fire. They don’t necessarily need answers. They need dwell time, space. They need to be asked. ‘Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.’ Think about your core. How are you feeling now?

Time and word count are up for today – finish this one tomorrow. Then back to Spenser.

A Lovely Day and Some Worries

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grandson no's 1+2 creating
Grandsons nos 1&2 working on something 

A number of problems about writing each day are becoming clear.

First, there’s a  problem about copyright which restricts my daily reading and writing. The question, dear readers, is: would you mind if I simply offered a link to a poem which  you can find elsewhere ? I’d read it and think about it, and quote from it but I would not reprint it…so you wouldn’t quite have it in front of you as you read. Does that matter or not? I think it probably does.

Second, there’s the problem of long poems. I’m not suggesting a reading The Divine Comedy or The Prelude here (yet) but I’m not sure if readers got sick of, bored with my reading of  Intimations of Immortality, which was spread over about two weeks.

I’d like to read some contemporary poems, and I’d like to read some long poems. So tell me what you think, please!

Meanwhile I’m going to jump the gun a little by starting a longish poem. As well as old favourites, long, short, ancient and modern, I also want to read poems that are new to me. So here is one, which I found while browsing in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.

My third problem concerns the length of these posts. Some days I am very constrained by time but I try to have an hour for reading and writing.  If that includes choosing, too, then I am definitely short on time. But I am more bothered about when I’ve got longer. I don’t want these posts to be long. I want to keep them under 1000 words. Going to try to stick to that, which will mean stopping short some days. Today probably.

So, to the poem.

I’m sorry to admit I’ve never found a clear way through to Edmund Spenser, though my great literary mentor, Brian Nellist, has always been vocal in his love for everything Spenserian. I struggled with The Faerie Queene at University and don’t think I’ve ever read it since.  Brian also loves Sir Walter Scott and I’ve never happily read Scott either, so it may be that these are things particularly appealing to Brian’s personality and anti my own. But I wanted to give it another go.

I don’t know much about Spenser, and I’m interested to see if it is necessary to ‘know’.  I mainly don’t want to ‘know’ things about poets or their  worlds, I want to read the stuff itself, not about the stuff. For me it is a practical art and I want it to work practically, moving or enlightening or astounding me. So I’m not going to look up any facts about Spenser or the poem. I’m going to just going to read, ignorantly or  innocently, a bit at a time, and see what happens. (Reserving the right to stop, or even to look up some facts if things get desperate).

Prothalamion

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play—
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan’s beams, which then did glister fair;
When I, (whom sullen care,                                                                 5
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In princes’ court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain,)
Walk’d forth to ease my pain                                                             10
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorn’d with dainty gems
Fit to deck maidens’ bowers,                                                              15
And crown their paramours
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

I have read Spenser’s poem about his marriage (Epithalamion) and remember  that ‘epithalamion’ means something like marriage, so quickly glanced at the dictionary to see what the difference is (epi is written specifically for the bride, pro simply in celebration of a marriage). There! I am quickly past the off-putting title and into the first stanza. All’s well.

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play—
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan’s beams, which then did glister fair;

If you are not a confident reader you might want to look up words that are strange to you, for security, as I did  the title above. In which case, look up ‘Zephyrus’. I  didn’t look that one – it’s something  Greek-god-ish to do with wind, gently blowing (I assure myself and carry on) and Titan is (from the lines here) the sun, and I remember-ish from my (oh so long ago, so forgotten) study of the Classics, that the Titans were the children of the Gods.

I tell you all this so you can see I am no expert, and am just using the ragbag of stuff  I’ve got in my mind already to get through the opening of the poem. I believe this is the best way to read. Get the gist, then look more closely at some of the words.

The gist here is, it is a lovely, lovely day. And our hero, Edmund Spenser, of whom we know virtually nothing, walks into view:

When I, (whom sullen care,                                                                 5
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In princes’ court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain,)
Walk’d forth to ease my pain

We don’t get a full stop anywhere here. I look up at the stanza, yes, it is one long sentence.  But it breaks down into what in music, and on a larger scale, would be called movements.   This second movement brings human discontent and mental affliction into direct confrontation with the lovely day. Spenser is still suffering whatever  has been the matter, though it is hard to tell what is being referred to by ‘which’. It could be any or all of  ‘sullen care’, ‘discontent’, ‘long fruitless stay’,’expectation vain’, ‘idle hopes’  – any or all of these, perhaps, but whatever it is/they are, they ‘still do fly away/like empty shadows’.

Bad feeling, that feeling of flickering discontent, things getting away from you.

My word count has got away from me – time to stop for today.

An Early Morning Walk with an Impatient Tudor Statesman during a postponed family Easter

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Son-in-law John reading with Magnus

john and magnus reading

I’d like to spend a few days with Sir Thomas Wyatt. I know a few of his poems well from anthologies but have never read, never studied, him at length. That’s perhaps an odd state of affairs when one of his poems (‘My Galley, Charged with Forgetfulness’) would probably make it into a list of my top ten poems of all time, certainly into  my top twenty.

Last night after I’d collapsed to bed leaving  a late-postponed-Easter-houseful of children and grandchildren, I calmed myself down by reading some more of Sir Thomas’ poems here.  I began to  be struck how  different poets not only have a  certain recognisable style of writing but also a style of mind. You can tell when you are walking with Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Sharon Olds by how they feel in relation to the world, and ‘poetic style’ is only the top level of it. Reading twenty poems by Sir Thomas, I suddenly felt, Yes! This is you! This is what you are. Sometimes the syntax and thought is very hard and there’s often a particular back and forward to it. I’ll come back to some of those other poems over the next couple of weeks, but here’s one that seemed relatively simple with which to start.

I’ve only got until my ten-year old grandson Leo wakes up – after that it’s play, play, play, so forgive me if I break off abruptly.

Patience, Though I Have Not

Patience, though I have not
The thing that I require,
I must of force, God wot,
Forbear my most desire;
For no ways can I find
To sail against the wind.

Patience, do what they will
To work me woe or spite,
I shall content me still
To think both day and night,
To think and hold my peace,
Since there is no redress.

Patience, withouten blame,
For I offended nought;
I know they know the same,
Though they have changed their thought.
Was ever thought so moved
To hate that it hath loved?

Patience of all my harm,
For fortune is my foe;
Patience must be the charm
To heal me of my woe:
Patience without offence
Is a painful patience.

What tone is Wyatt thinking in here? When I first saw the word ‘patience’ I thought perhaps  he was in an impatient state, trying to talk himself out of it. But as I’ve read on I began to think, perhaps he’s a very self-controlled man who is simply repeating a mantra that  brings patience about. He worked for Henry the VIII, for goodness sakes! He had to be clever, a chess player, tightly self-controlled, surely?

I  don’t know much about Sir Thomas (only glancing saw the Henry connection at the Poetry Foundation). I am going to read a biography, because I’ve got interested in him, but let’s set that aside for the time being and let’s wipe what I’ve said about Henry VIII. What can we tell – think – find ourselves wondering from reading this poem?

Patience, though I have not
The thing that I require,
I must of force, God wot,
Forbear my most desire;
For no ways can I find
To sail against the wind.

The word ‘patience’ is almost used as an invocation, he’s calling it up and calling on it. A modern psychologist might also say we’re seeing brain training here; you put the thought of the thing you want to flood the brain in first: everything else, whether you know it or not, is bathed in its light.

We don’t know what ‘the thing that I require’ is but because ‘require’ rhymes with ‘desire’ I think that for Sir Thomas it might be someone he is in love with. But if so, he’s in a difficult somewhat political situation ‘For no ways can I find/To sail against the wind.’ The fact that the ‘ways’ he’s tried are plural makes me think he has been working at this for some time. He’s stuck or trapped or held in check. Therefore  ‘patience’ is the only thing he can do. The next stanza comes at the same problem from a different angle.

Patience, do what they will
To work me woe or spite,
I shall content me still
To think both day and night,
To think and hold my peace,
Since there is no redress.

I notice that the important pieces of information – the who, what, where and when – of this story are blanks.  ‘The thing that I require’ remains an unknown, as now do ‘they’ who ‘do what they will/ To work me woe or spite’. He’s not committing anything to writing!

In the first stanza there was no ‘content’ but in this stanza he has found some, in some work or action he can perform keeping his thoughts to himself. An active verb, ‘to think’ performed actively, ‘to think both night and day’ and secretly,  ‘to think and hold my peace’.

Blocked, going against the ind, surrounded by ‘they’, Wyatt yet creates a course of action and toughness of stubborn mind. That ‘both night and day’ is the determination of a fighter. In the third stanza we begin to understand some of the background to this:

Patience, withouten blame,
For I offended nought;
I know they know the same,
Though they have changed their thought.
Was ever thought so moved
To hate that it hath loved?

Hard to know if he is addressing himself in those opening two lines?  Self blame? Feeling blamed by ‘they’? Is he telling himself, hold fast, you’ve done nothing wrong? Bad feeling to feel got at by people who say you’ve done wrong and even go so far as to falsely accuse:

For I offended nought;
I know they know the same,
Though they have changed their thought.

The beloved has cast him off for some offense, not real, has changed her mind. But I’m not thinking about the beloved as I read. I’m borrowing from my own experience, thinking of my working life. Thinking of people I’ve worked with in relation to whom  saying to myself  ‘Patience…For no ways can I find/To sail against the wind.’ That cast of mind could be useful.

Perhaps Wyatt is doing that too? in the Tudor Court, love and politics must have been horribly intertwined.

Patience of all my harm,
For fortune is my foe;
Patience must be the charm
To heal me of my woe:
Patience without offence
Is a painful patience.

The last stanza is almost prayer like – he’s calling for help, and I wonder how badly some of this is playing on his mind?   ‘Of all my harm’ seems to suggest it’s playing a lot: ‘harm’ is a serious word. And ‘all’ makes it feel overpowering. ‘Patience’ if he can get it, is the answer, the cure, the ‘charm’. Does ‘charm’ make is seem more magic than cure? Yes ,it does, and as the dictionary shows, there’s also an element of incantation in charm, which is of course what he has been doing through the poem with the word ‘patience’. and it may heal. But the  offense still rankles: he hasn’t done anything wrong! Still, there seems a lot at stake. Being wrongly judged always stings. But there’s a particularly unhappy disjunct between not having done anything wrong and a lot being at stake.

Patience must be the charm
To heal me of my woe:
Patience without offence
Is a painful patience.

I like it, it is worldly, grounded, no more complicated than it needs to be but complicated enough to make me think. This could be a good one for memorising. I need the odd incantation from time to time.

A Slight Glitch and Shakey

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Morning, readers. Today I’ve changed my site format and that’s done something odd with my photos in previous posts. Hope to sort this double vision soon. Advice gratefully received.

But don’t want to let that glitch interrupt my morning reading and writing.

I am still thinking about Thursday’s meeting with Sonya Hale, and about Daniel Magariel’s novel, One of The Boys, (see yesterday’s post) and about the deep resonances and ancient feelings that meeting and that novel provoked into life. For that reason, this poem by William Shakespeare caught my attention this morning. I must have read it before but I really don’t remember it. Why not? Today it is full of meanings. If you are new to Shakespeare read it aloud. Read it aloud anyway.

Sonnet 110
Alas, ’tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new.
Most true it is that I have look’d on truth
Askance and strangely: but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end!
Mine appetite, I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confin’d.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
I felt a delight in the opening line. There is nothing like recognition for provoking pleasure, even when it is recognition of having made a fool of yourself.
As I read on  the poem seems to be about having been unfaithful yet it didn’t feel to me only about sexual fidelity.
The shame of the opening is about having been disloyal to yourself. And ‘Here and there’ made me think of things Sonya said about the moving about from town to town when she was street homeless.  There is real, sad recognition (as much as guilt) in  ‘made myself a motley to the view’. (‘Motley’ is the name given to clothing worn by fools). It’s not only the humiliation of that idiocy but the shame of having done it to myself.
By the time I got to line 3, ‘Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear’, I was thinking about old mistakes and infidelities, not to my beloved, but to my better self. The violence of ‘gored’ gave me pause to reflect on the self-injury of bad thinking.
Alas, ’tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new.
Now I read the next four lines together, another  little lump of thought:
Most true it is that I have look’d on truth
Askance and strangely: but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love.
Is Shakespeare is responding to something another person has said – in a row, perhaps?  ‘You’ve looked on truth askance and strangely!!’ Thus he begins ‘Most true it is…’ but going off after others, or dishonesties, or cheating  or whatever he means by ‘these blenches‘ , it  ‘gave my heart another youth/and worse essays prov’d thee my best of love.’ Thus, out of bad something good may come? I realised you were the one for me!
The ‘askance and strangely’ is resonant of the ways in which, when you are not able to be true, all things are twisted. In Magariel’s novel, the father’s love for his sons is a twisted ‘askance’ version of something which is more like ownership. Will he one day go into recovery and see what he has done to his sons?
Now all is done, have what shall have no end!
Mine appetite, I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confin’d.
Shakespeare’s saying he’s never going to go off with someone else, never again! I’m back, forever. Would you believe him? Well, no, I wouldn’t, much as I often don’t believe myself when I promise myself I’m going to keep my room tidy.  What? After all these decades of chaos? You’re really going to change?
No, this is the return of a philanderer. Don’t give him welcome. As my friend Shelley once memorably said, ‘Chuck him, love, he’s a loser.’
But say I overrode these thoughts and feelings about the top-level  experience of the poem, the  unfaithful lover, and  went to something under the  lines, something about not being true, not necessarily about love or sexual relationship.
There are many ways in which a person can be unfaithful. Because of my conversation with Sonya, because of Magariel’s book  I’ve been thinking about the way in which one is required to practice faithfulness to a true ideal (I want to be a decent person, I want to be responsible and honest). How many times in that long effort have I ‘gone here and there/ And made myself a motley to the view’?  if you a re not going to get stuck at that point, you absolutely need to believe there is a place to which to return.
Thinking of Daniel Magariel’s book; the addicted parent may try to clean up, to get sober, to become  good parent (in another book!). The boys may grow up and want to learn to be decent men, not easy after growing up with a Dad like that. But these desires for change can and do happen even after we have ‘sold cheap what is most dear/made old offences of affections new.’
Believing in hope and change, you’d have to find a way to say ‘welcome back’ to the sinner that repenteth, wouldn’t you? When that sinner is yourself, when the offences are against your self, the only place you have to come back to is your self. I see the poem is ‘about’  a lover returning after shenanigans with others, and I read that at one level, as if it were a story I can lend myself to. But to understand it, and to feel it, I have to make the underlying connection with my own experience. So  I read as myself, returning to myself, after messing up again.  It would be good to be welcoming, pure, loving.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
And that makes me think of Derek Walcott’s poem, Love After Love.
Excuse me, I need to tidy my room.

‘You Are Tennyson’s Mouthpiece’ : a great poem by Dennis Haskell

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It’s a short post today as I must get out early to catch the 7.47am London train to meet with some very interesting colleagues, supporters and potential new friends.

Yesterday I was remembering the way Tennyson’s poem, Crossing The Bar, had made me realise how powerful poetry could be once it had escaped the long-distance handling of University teaching and learning. Out of the educational context it was a different beast, dangerously alive!  Of course, it  always was dangerously alive for me as a private reader. And in some lectures and tutorials  something powerful did happen ( I mentioned Brian Nellist, my tutor yesterday. Meet him here, but be careful, it  starts with some strong swearing) but mainly, no… university tutorials were rarely the right place to share those personal experiences that made my private reading of  literature so rewarding. Why? Lots of the students were too young and shy, seemed mortified, dumbstruck, or scared of losing their best ideas to someone else. They made a lot of notes but not much noise. And lots of the tutors were strange-ish folk, and seemed equally socially uneasy, some of them dumbstruck, some terrible show-offs. So University tutorials were not, on the whole, occasions on which  to share one’s deepest thoughts. We kept ourselves to ourselves, or, if you were me, you talked too much and  felt an idiot in a different way.

When I started ‘Get Into Reading’ in 2002, I started with years of adult education teaching  behind me, and behind that, my having grown up in a pub, and having been a barmaid, a waitress. There’s a necessary human ease you have to find in those jobs, and it turns out, if you mix that barmaid and waitress, (not restricted to those professions: could be that kindly physiotherapist or creative midwife quality, or the quality of the man in B+Q who helps you find the spiggot without making you feel an idiot) with really great literature you get the most amazing firework mixture.

Over many years along with my colleagues at The Reader – both  staff and volunteers – I have been amazed by the power of poetry to ‘touch’, ‘strike’, ‘move’, ‘get’ and ‘hit’ people  – these interesting verbs come from readers trying to explain what is happening to them as they read.

A great poem about this effect sits alongside Tennyson’s poem in Phil’s out of print ( buy it on amazon for only 1p!) anthology, All The Days of My Life. That’s one of the great things about this  book – the setting together of different poems so that they form a kind of context for each other.

I didn’t have time to write to ask permission to use it here, so you will have to go Dennis Haskell’s own site. Read it aloud.  Take a tissue. I have  found myself moved to tears when reading this (with the Tennyson poem alongside) in Shared Reading groups. In fact I’ve just cried now, rereading it for the first time in several years.

You’ll find Dennis Haskell’s wonderful poem, ‘One Clear Call’  here. The poem sets out what happens when the human situation really makes the words come alive in all their wild animal power.

desk