After Ciaran’s surgical procedure it was quite amusing that for this month’s Poems talking, he brought along his Death Poem, which we discuss first.
Then I read the opening of a long poem I wrote a few years ago Human Comedy. This draft has never seen the light of day as I’ve been worried about its style and tone. Ciaran questions its value. I include it here as an example of something that has probably headed off in the wrong direction, and as a warning not to get too preachy or verbose.1
Recently, I was talking to poet Hugh Dunkerley about Keats comment that ‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us...’2 This seems to me an amazingly simple and true comment reflecting a profound complexity of issues. For Keats’ comment could be taken to refer to poetry that is too sentimental, or too political, or too biased politically whatever the bias, or to poetry which is too technical but dry, too constructed by unfeeling. Or poetry that is too philosophical or religious, and so on, It covers a multitude of sins.
So, I think Ciaran rightly questions the whole tone, vocabulary and stance of this draft.
In the light of Ciaran’s opinion on this poem I then moved on to another, lighter poem Incy Wincy. You can find downloadable copies of the poems below.
You can download Ciaran and John’s poems here:
Do watch the video or listen to the podcast for context, before you read the following…
When talking about workshop leaders I mentioned Don Paterson and Ros Barber3. It was remiss of me not to mention Brendan Cleary4 who led a brilliant series of workshops at the University of Sussex, and Jackie Wills5 who set up Brighton Poets in the nineties with Don and Eva Salzman, and who has recently published her own book on ‘reading, writing and working with poems.’6
Over the next few months I’ll send out some extra posts with my notes from workshops led by Brendan, Don and others.
I mention an academic who wrote about an author being ‘the best person they could be’ when writing, and the reader’s perception of this ‘implied author’. That was Wayne C. Booth who was a professor of English language and literature at the University of Chicago. He first proposed the idea of the ‘implied author’ (IA) in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). More recently Dan Shen has discussed Booth’s ideas in, What is the Implied Author?7 I’m planning to post a discussion paper about this.
Ciaran and I talked about the word ‘skidaddles’ as I wrote it originally, which, based on the definition in the OED was probably the original spelling from the Civil War period in the USA.
‘Said to be of Swedish and Danish origin, and to have been in common use for several years throughout the Northwest, in the vicinity of immigrants from those nations’ (Webster, 1864); but there are no forms in Swedish or Danish sufficiently near to be seriously taken into account. There is some slight evidence of the currency of the word in English and Scottish dialect use before it became prominent in America, but it is doubtful how far this is of importance for its origin.’
Ciaran mentions Paul Celan’s poem Todesfugue (Death Fugue).
Black milk of mornings we drink you at night we drink you at midday death is a Master from Deutschland we drink you at dusk in mornings we drink and drink
You can find the whole poem here on the Poetry Foundation website in both the German original and in an English translation by Dean Rader
Although I say it myself, of my own work, it’s a classic John Davies draft, over-written, over-blown, self-important even. However, I’d be interested to know what you think. Please click on one answer or the other. I’ll let you know the results next time.
‘…We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.—How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, ‘admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose! Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this. Each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state, & knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his dominions & has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: the antients were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them.—I will cut all this—I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular—Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh when we can wander with Esau? why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be Eagles?’ On the Aims of Poetry: Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 February 1818
https://rosbarber.com/
https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-26569_Cleary
https://jackiewillspoetry.blogspot.com/
https://poetrybusiness.co.uk/product/on-poetry-reading-and-writing-poems/
Style Vol. 45, No. 1, Implied Author: Back from the Grave or Simply Dead Again (Spring 2011), pp. 80-98 Published by Penn State University Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.45.1.80
