ICONIC WOMEN POETS by Janet Cameron

Ebook (free with Kindle unlimited, or 99p) or paperback, £3.99.

Women's poetry is also the story of feminism with all its historical baggage and angst. The women in this book include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Mary Borden, Edith Sitwell, Stevie Smith, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich and Eavan Boland, all of them committed, passionate and even a little eccentric! And why shouldn't they be?

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Iconic Women Poets: Their Trials - Their Triumphs - Their Pain

One of the aims of the feminists during the 1960s was to challenge the accepted concepts of masculinity and femininity and to eradicate the cultural disadvantages suffered by women. They asked why the traditional tendency of the male poet in pursuing the abstract was more highly regarded than the more personal, emotional approach preferred by women poets, and which suited their psychological inclinations.

It was argued that to favour the idea that elevating the feminine tradition of personal and emotional discourse would be to accept that women were incapable of a more masculine and formalised writing, and therefore to devalue them as poets. This was a dilemma for the feminists, perceived as a choice between competition and diversification.

Read about how iconic women helped to address these difficulties for future generations. Women's poetry is also the story of feminism with all its historical baggage and angst . The women in this book include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Mary Borden, Edith Sitwell, Stevie Smith, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich and Eavan Boland - each one of them committed, passionate and also more than a little eccentric. I have chosen them because they are not only courageous but immensely interesting women.

My Favourite Piece of Prose Ever - by Adrienne Rich from "What is Found There."

I pulled from the bookcase a guide to Pacific Coast ecology…. As I sat there, my eye began to travel the margins of the book, along the names and habitats of creatures and plants of the 4,000-mile Pacific coastline of North America…. I found myself pulled by names: Dire Whelk, Dusky Tegula, Fingered Limpet, Hooded Puncturella, Veiled Chiton, Bat Star, By-the-Wind Sailor, Crumb-of-Bread Sponge, Eye Fringed Worm, Sugar Wrack, Frilled Anemone, Bull Kelp, Ghost Shrimp, Sanderling, Walleye Surfperch, Volcano Barnacle, Stiff-footed Sea Cucumber, Leather Star, Innkeeper Worm, Lug Worm. And I felt the names drawing me into a state of piercing awareness, a state I associate with reading and writing poems. These names – by whom given and agreed on? – these names work as poetry works, enlivening a sensuous reality through recognition or through the play of sounds (the short i’s of Fingered Limpet, the open vowels of Bull Kelp, Hooded Puncturella, Bat Star); the poising of heterogeneous images (volcano and barnacle, leather and star, sugar and wrack) to evoke other worlds of meaning. Sugar wrack: a foundered ship in the Triangle Trade? Volcano Barnacle: tiny unnoticed undergrowth with explosive potential? Who saw the bird named Sanderling and gave it that caressive, diminutive name?... These names work as poetry works in another sense as well: they make something unforgettable. You will remember the pictorial names as you won’t the Latin… Human eyes gazed at each of all these forms of life and saw resemblance in difference – the core of metaphor, that which lies close to the core of poetry itself, the only hope for a humane civil life. The eye for likeness in the midst of contrast, the appeal to recognition, the association of thing to thing, spiritual fact with embodied form, begins here. And so begins the suggestion of multiple, many-layered, rather than singular, meanings, wherever we look, in the ordinary world.

I began to think about the names, beginning with the sound and image delivered by the name “Great Blue Heron,” as tokens of a time when meaning was poetry, when connections between things and living beings, or living things and human beings, were instinctively apprehended. By “a time” I don’t mean any one historical or linguistic moment or period, I mean all the times when people have summoned language into the activity of plotting connections between, and marking distinctions among, the elements presented to our senses. This impulse to enter, with other humans, through language, into the order and disorder of the world, is poetic at its root as surely as it is political at its root. Poetry and politics both have to do with description and with power. And so, of course, does science. We might hope to find the three activities – poetry, science, politics – triangulated, with extraordinary electrical exchanges moving from each to each and through our lives.

Cellar Arts Poets - An Anthology of Unique and Inspiring Poems by Members

Cellar Arts Poets 

This delightful little poetry book was published just prior to the onset of the pandemic, and although we have sold quite a few, it obviously didn't get the attention it deserved. It's £3.20 to buy the paperback (and I think they add delivery if you don't have Prime).  So it's not too late to get your copy. No profit accrues to the poets or the editor, we did it for love of poetry. We just want to be read. 💓💓

Thank you. 

You Are Just Too Kind, by Len A. Hynds

Today I discovered this special poem written for me by a student from many years ago, Len A. Hynds, who was a much respected war veteran who wrote movingly about his experiences. He died last August 23, 2017.

I dedicate this poem to Janet Cameron MA., noted Author and Poet, and who was the editor of a writer's magazine that first published my work. When I attended University Janet was my tutor and lecturer on Creative Writing and Poetry, and we became good friends.
During one of her courses I received valuable advice from fellow students at a workshop, who were all ladies on that occasion, and I was mischievously unkind later in writing a series of Haikus making oblique references to a witches coven and whiskers sprouting out of chins, as they laughed gleefully with shrieks of delight, I wrote this poem to make amends.....
Written in three line Stanzas with a repetition rhyme pattern of A - B - A

YOU ARE JUST TOO KIND

By Len A.Hynds

Caress me not, for you are just too kind,
with flattering words, to brighten-up my eyes,
I'm beyond redemption, how can you find,

such lovely words, to ease my troubled mind,
like honeyed balm, soothing my restless sighs,
caress me not, for you are just too kind.

Our writings caused a friendship so entwined,
in syllables and stresses, lows and highs,
as I strive to be writing so refined.

I value those words, which are enshrined,
in my heart and mind, I tell you no lies,
caress me not, for you are just too kind.

Will you please forgive me, what I wrote so blind,
such as the eye of toad, the squash of flies,
a poem that I should never have signed.

That last tercet, oh so carefully timed,
came to the rescue, like a well earned prize,
caress me not, for you are just too kind.

"I Am" by John Clare - to Mark his Birthday Today, Born 13 July 1793

Wikimedia, Public Domain

Today, 13th July, is the birthday of Romantic poet John Clare, who was born in Helpston, Northamptonshire, in 1793 and died in 1864. He was the son of a farm labourer and his poems were generally rural.

He was a depressed, impoverished, insane and, sadly for him, unrecognised for his poetry in his lifetime.

Here's his most famous poem I Am, written when he was confined in the General Lunative Asylum in Northampton.











I am: yet what I am, none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes -
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
And strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - This Day in 1822, on the 8 July, the Much-Loved Poet Died in Italy

Dover, (c) Janet Cameron

Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley had a short, but intense life. Shelley was a rebel and an eccentric, whose outrageous behaviour shocked society.

    

When the Dover steam packet was introduced and crossed regularly from Dover to Calais in the 1780s, it proved a great success with the aristocracy, who began writing about their travels, describing them as "Grand Tours."

Soon the Dover cutters were so highly regarded that they were patronised by bankers, politicians, merchants and lawyers, as well as a love-struck poet. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) who had good reason to be glad of Dover's efficient port. The great poet, who is famous for such sublime poetry as "To a Skylark," was already married when he fell in love with sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin, daughter of publisher, William Godwin and women's rights champion, Mary Wollstonecroft.

Born in Horsham in Sussex, Shelley was a rebel and a rabble-rouser, intense, imaginative and unconventional. At school he was known as "Mad Shelley" or the "Eton Atheist."

Percy Shelley's First Elopement – Harriet Westbrook

Harriet was the daughter of the proprietor of a coffee-house, and when she was sixteen, she and Shelley eloped to Scotland and were married in Edinburgh in August 1811. For three years, the two young people led a nomadic existence. Their relationship was far from conventional, as apparently Shelley tried to share her with his friend T.J. Hogg. It's not too clear from literary references whether he was successful in persuading Harriet to comply.

By 1814, the marriage collapsed – which is unsurprising since Shelley disapproved of marriage, along with eating meat, religion and royalty. The couple had two children and the effect of Shelley's abandonment of them had dire effects on the whole family. Harriet became suicidal, making distressing scenes to try to get her husband to remain with her.

Ménage à Trois with Mary Godwin and Jane Clairmont

In 1814, when he was twenty-two, Shelley and Mary decided to elope. But first, Shelley invited along Mary's stepsister, Jane (Claire) Clairmont, who was just fifteen years old. The three of them made for Dover, boarding the first steam packet they could find. The carefree threesome travelled through France to Switzerland, where Shelley wrote to his wife, Harriet Westbrook, naively suggesting she should join them.

Instead, in 1816, Harriet threw herself into the Serpentine in London, leaving her unfaithful husband free to indulge his scandalous ménage à trois. His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein, and she began to write her great work in the summer of 1816, by Lake Geneva, where she spent her time with her husband and the poet, Lord Byron. Their ménage à trois continued until Percy Shelley's death in 1822 aged thirty-years.

In his essay "On Love," composed in July, 1818, Shelley says: "What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life; ask him who adores, what is God? The poet concludes: "So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was."

Sources:

• "On Love," Percy Bysshe Shelley, Romanticism An Anthology, Ed. Duncan Wu, Blackwell, 1994.

A Poem for When Everything Changes and Does Your Head In!

Copyright Janet Cameron

One thing is for sure, everything changes. Shelley knew this and right now, I need this poem!


MUTABILITY by Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

Emily Dickinson - Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Tonight I saw the film A Quiet Passion!  Cynthia Nixon was deeply convincing in the role of the central protagonist, Emily Dickinson. The interaction and conflict within this close-knit family was spellbinding, although distressing especially towards the end of the film which showed Nixon's fine exploration of how Emily must have suffered due to Bright's Disease.

Hard enough for her to have suffered from the derision heaped upon her for being a woman-poet. Only 7 of her poems were published in her lifetime.

The film ended with her poem, 497, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. There can't have been a dry eye in the theatre!

Sad to say, this poem was published posthumously. She never knew that one day she would be so admired and held in such high esteem.

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me –  
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –  
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads 
Were toward Eternity – 

A Special Love Poem for April

Public Domain

Always Marry an April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,

I found April in my arms.

April golden, April cloudy,

Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;

April soft in flowered languor,

April cold with sudden anger,

Ever changing, ever true —

I love April, I love you.


By Ogden Nash
1902-1971

It Ain't Easy Being a Poet!

Many Famous Poets had a Tough Time Overcoming Obstacles
Eadweard Muybridge, Public Domain

The poet Wallace Stevens once remarked that he liked being a poet because he could dash off a poem in the morning and have the rest of the day to himself!   Of course, Mr. Stevens had an appealingly skewed wit - and we all know it’s not as simple as that.  No, not even for distinguished poets.

A writing student recently said, ‘Until you write about something, you can't find out what you know about it. I don't even know what I'm thinking sometimes, but I'm finding out by writing. I usually have some order in mind, but I never know what's going to happen.’ 

            Writers have always faced and overcome enormous obstacles in their commitment to writing.  Many nineteenth century women even published their work anonymously to avoid censure from a narrow-minded society.  America’s Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) always listened to her mentor, critic and minister, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who actively discouraged her because he believed her poetry wasn’t good enough.  After her death her sister discovered more than one thousand poems in her room, mostly untitled and undated.  Imagine! only seven were published in her lifetime and although these were well-received, Dickinson would not have experienced the joy of a success her talent so richly deserved. 

            Stevie Smith was a poet who had a tough time.  Abandoned by her father in childhood, her mother died while she was a teenager and the initial success of her work was followed by a sharp downturn in her popularity.  Seamus Heaney said of her, ‘I suppose in the end the adjective has to be eccentric.  She looks at the world with a mental squint’, while Philip Larkin’s view was that she was a ‘feminine doodler and jotter who puts down everything as it strikes her, no matter how silly or tragic.’  It takes guts to carry on when those around you are dismissive of your talent including other writers generally held in high esteem. 

          That’s why you must stay true to yourself and take comfort from your writing as Stevie Smith did.  Take constructive criticism on board but resist destructive comments from those who don’t understand or who have a ‘hidden agenda’.

Dear March, come in! by Emily Dickinson

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

The First Spring Day Brings Hope

Copyright Janet Cameron

The first day of Spring is not too far away. (Yes, I know it is incorrect to use capital first letters for the seasons, but sometimes I do what I like rather than what is correct.) Besides, I am in good company as Christina Rossetti agrees with me. Need I say more?

The first day of Spring will be 20 March. In preparation, and in addition to the image, here is a poem by Christina Rossetti. It's a sweet poem, with a lot of sadness in the words but a hint of hope in the last line. What Spring is all about really.


The First Spring Day

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun,
And crocus fires are kindling one by one.
      Sing, robin, sing,
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

I wonder if the Springtide of this year
Will bring another Spring both lost and dear,
If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:
      Sing, hope, to me;
Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

The sap will surely quicken, soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or, in this world, or in the world to come:
       Sing, voice of Spring,
Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.

Poetry - A Subject as Precise as Geometry - but Wait for the Echo!

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron

People are always asking, "What is poetry exactly?" Recently someone even said, "Can't stand poetry. Why not just write an essay?" I explained this was a completely different art form. You might as well ask why a sculpture isn't a painting. But the lady didn't see that at all!   Hmmm...

Still, some thinkers do try and succeed quite well.

I always quote Philip Larkin, "The best possible words in the best possible order."

Here are some lovely allusions to poetry from my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations:

Boswell: Sir, what is poetry?

Johnson: Why Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is, but it is not easy to tell what it is.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: It takes it origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity ~ William Wordsworth.

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. ~ John Keats.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. ~ Percy Bysse Shelley.

Prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. ~ Gustave Flaubert.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. ~ Don Marquis.

And finally, from the incomparable Wendy Cope:

I used to think all poets were Byronic.

They're mostly wicked as a ginless tonic

And wild as pension plans.

Well, in the end we have to try to keep our feet on the ground, don't we?

INVICTUS by William Ernest Henley

With all the chaos going on in the world at the present time, while the Brits fearfully contemplate the consequences of Brexit, while the US President appears to come closer day by day to being impeached, to the agony of Syria, of Africa, and the abuse suffered suffered by black, female politicians, (just to name a few items from today's news) I really need poetry.

Like this one, which inspired Nelson Mandela and provided the title of the wonderful film about him.

William Ernest Henley, Wikimedia Commons

INVICTUS by William Ernest Henley


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Great Poets Shouldn't Have to "Dumb-Down"

Ezra Pound, Bing Images

This is what James I is claimed to have said about John Donne. It was recorded by Archdeacon Plume:

"Dr. Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding."

I often wonder if that's fair.  Great store is set by how accessible poetry is - the question always being, "accessible to whom...?"

When I was studying modern poetry at the University of Kent, I often felt frustrated at Ezra Pound, who wrote such stunning pieces, then wandered off into foreign snippets and allusions, so that you had to be highly educated in classical literature and language, including Latin, to understand his work. Or else you needed a very patient teacher with plenty of time to instruct you.

Some of his prose is even expressed as musical sheets. I love music, but only as a consumer. I can't sing. I can't play. I can't read music.

I was lost, stumped, angry. How dare he write stuff I couldn't understand? It isn't my fault I didn't get a great education. How would I ever catch up?  Why should these works be beyond my reach?

Ezra Pound wrote a wonderful haiku:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

— Ezra Pound

What a beautiful, precise image, how full of energy in its very shifting-ness. It's both here and far away, both distinctive and fragile. You feel you might grasp this image only to find it shimmering away into the distance.

I feel differently now. I take what I can and I'm glad for it. I try to fill the gaps where I can't understand, but there's no use in fretting about it all.  How can we expect such intellects, with their great, seeking, reaching, unfathomable thoughts to dumb down so everyone can get a bigger piece of them.

No, we need to dumb-up.  Great poets should just carry on as they see fit.

Oh, and wasn't he so handsome? But I do so wish I understood more than I do.

FREAKS OF FASHION BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

FREAKS OF FASHION  BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Such a hubbub in the nests, Such a bustle and squeak! Nestlings, guiltless of a feather, Learning just to speak, Ask - "And how about the fashions?" From a cavernous beak. Perched on bushes, perched on hedges, Perched on firm hahas, Perched on anything that holds them, Gay papas and grave mammas Teach the knowledge-thirsty nestlings: Hear the gay papas. Robin says: "A scarlet waistcoat Will be all the wear, Snug, and also cheerful-looking For the frostiest air, Comfortable for the chest too When one comes to plume and pair." "Neat gray hoods will be in vogue," Quoth a Jackdaw: "Glossy gray, Setting close, yet setting easy, Nothing fly-away; Suited to our misty mornings, A la negligée." Flushing salmon, flushing sulphur, Haughty Cockatoos Answer - "Hoods may do for mornings, But for evenings choose High head-dresses, curved like crescents, Such as well-bred persons use." "Top-knots, yes; yet more essential Still, a train or tail," Screamed the Peacock: "Gemmed and lustrous Not too stiff, and not too frail; Those are best which rearrange as Fans, and spread or trail." Spoke the Swan, entrenched behind An inimitable neck: "After all, there's nothing sweeter For the lawn or lake Than simple white, if fine and flaky And absolutely free from speck." "Yellow," hinted a Canary, "Warmer, not less distingué." "Peach color," put in a Lory, "Cannot look outré." "All the colors are in fashion, And are right," the Parrots say. "Very well. But do contrast Tints harmonious," Piped a Blackbird, justly proud Of bill auriferous; "Half the world may learn a lesson As to that from us." Then a Stork took up the word: "Aim at height and chic: Not high heels, they're common; somehow, Stilted legs, not thick, Nor yet thin:" he just glanced downward And snapped to his beak. Here a rustling and a whirring, As of fans outspread, Hinted that mammas felt anxious Lest the next thing said Might prove less than quite judicious, Or even underbred. So a mother Auk resumed The broken thread of speech: "Let colors sort themselves, my dears, Yellow, or red, or peach; The main points, as it seems to me, We mothers have to teach, "Are form and texture, elegance, An air reserved, sublime; The mode of wearing what we wear With due regard to month and clime. But now, let's all compose ourselves, It's almost breakfast-time." A hubbub, a squeak, a bustle! Who cares to chatter or sing With delightful breakfast coming? Yet they whisper under the wing: "So we may wear whatever we like, Anything, everything!"

No Thank You John - Christina Rossetti

This poem makes me think of that Cilla Black song, "Anyone who had a heart?"  Why do human beings always think that because "we" love "them", that "they" must love us back? What a sensible woman Rossetti was!


NO THANK YOU JOHN

By Christina Rossetti

I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me day by day?
And was a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray."?

You know I never loved you, John:
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face so wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you, if you'd ask:
And pray don't remain single for my sake
Who can't perform that task.

I have no heart? - Perhaps I have not;
But then you're mad to take offence
That I don't give you what I have not got:
Use your own common sense.

William Wordsworth – London 1802

William Wordsworth

Romanticism was a shift in literature, art and culture during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, involving a pulling away from the philosophical rationalism of the Enlightenment. There was a resistance to formal conventions and rules, and uninhibited self-expression and authentic feeling were encouraged and admired. This fostered the development of poetry that was generally natural and free, with an emphasis on nature and sensibility.

It is easier to understand Romantic poems if we can place them within their historical context, and sometimes the relationship between the poem and the circumstances in which it was produced are not entirely self-evident.

"London 1802" by William Wordsworth

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

England - a Land of Corruption and Political Upheaval

"London 1802" by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is a sonnet, written in iambic pentameter, that invokes and eulogizes the seventeenth century poet, John Milton, in order to make his essential political point: "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee." This political message is intended for a wide general readership and emphasises Wordsworth's great respect for John Milton and his admiration for Milton's republicanism. These bold first lines are a cry from the very soul of the poet for deliverance from a crisis encapsulated in his shocking metaphor for a ruined England, that follows in the latter part of the third and beginning of the fourth lines: "She is a fen / of stagnant waters."

The poem, read in its historical context, takes on a deeper meaning if we understand that it was written six months after the Peace of Amiens in 1801. It was the "Peace of Amiens" that allowed Wordsworth to visit France in 1802. The sonnet partly reflects the contrast the poet felt between France and the more materialistic England.

Wordsworth grieves for what England is left with: the corruption of a land ruled by mad King George III after the political upheaval and unrest after the war with France and the recent revolutions in Europe. He shows both nostalgia and an uneasy patriotism in the lines: "Altar, sword and pen / Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower / Have forfeited their ancient English dower / Of inward happiness." The poet laments the glory that has been lost, using strong, masculine nouns (sword, pen.) In calling upon a revered and long dead poet, Wordsworth idealises the lost past.

Idealisation of the England of John Milton

This idealisation indicates the poet's fear for the future. The octet in the sonnet is addressed to Milton in strident terms: "...We are selfish men; / Oh, raise us up, return to us again." The sestet is gentler, as Wordsworth reminisces and expounds upon the virtues of the dead poet: "Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart." Milton's voice is likened to "the sound of the sea" and "Pure as the naked heavens."

The last three lines show Wordsworth's perception of Milton's humility and godliness: "So didst thou travel on life's common way, / in cheerful godliness and yet thy heart / The lowliest duties on itself did lay." For Wordsworth, what England has lost can only be regained through consideration of an idealised past.

Wordsworth's moralising is overt and pessimistic, despite its strident tone, as it laments the loss of an ideal, entreating Milton to return to give us the great qualities of "manner, virtue, freedom, power." Even in the sonnet's poetic devices, such as the use of the terms "thou, shouldst, hath, thy, hadst, didst," indicate Wordsworth's striving to recapture a lost past, for these words hardly fit with the ordinary language of men, as upheld and glorified by the Romantic poets.

Sources:

Selected Poetry, William Wordsworth, Penguin, Ed: Nicholas Roe, 1992.

Romanticism: An Anthology, Duncan Wu, Blackwell, 2000.

Derek Walcott was born - this day - in 1930 - A Controversial Genius

Derek Walcott

Today in 1930,  the poet Derek Walcott, was born in St. Lucia. He won the Nobel Prize in 1992. From 2010 to 2013 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex.

One of his major poems can be found here: The Schooner Flight. In the poem, Walcott represents and works through his own life and issues by assuming the fictional identity of an unhappy man fleeing from the corruption of society. This is a challenging and powerful poem, and not always easy to read. Unsurprisingly, the feminists had a dig at him for his non-pc language. .

You can go to this link to find a summary of the poem.

Derek Walcott suffered a major scandal in 2003 which caused him to withdraw from an important professorship poetry post. This campaign was supported by some but described as a "smear campaign" by others:

" . Miss Niemi, who is now a novelist writing as N K Kelby and living in Florida, told The Sunday Telegraph that she had not forgotten what happened but had forgiven Walcott. She said the campaign against him was “appalling” and he should have fought on – or the university should have postponed the election. “I did what I felt was best to protect young women,” she said. “But poetry is a passionate art.” She said it was Walcott’s way “to be sexual, to push the envelope of both decorum and good taste”.
(Ruth Patel Win Spoiled by Smear Campaign.)

Previous holders of the professorship at Oxford University include Matthew Arnold, W H Auden, Robert Graves and Seamus Heaney..

Ezra Pound - Slates his Critics in his Poem "E.P. Ode"

 

"E.P. Ode Pour L'Election de Son Sepulchre" (E.P. Ode on the Choice of His Tomb) is the first poem in the series of eighteen poems comprising Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, first published in June 1920.

Pound's Contempt for his Critics

Unfortunately, the poems were frequently misconstrued by Pound's readers, who admired the persona of Mauberley and missed the point that Pound used the mask of Mauberley as representative of the critics of the period, who discredited him. Jo Brantley Berryman says, in the "Preface" to Circe's Craft: "The voice of Mauberley echoes many of the prevalent attitudes and judgements that frustrated and antagonized Pound"  Pound's motivation, therefore, is to express his contempt of those critics.

Challenges for the Pound Scholar

Donald Davie questions: "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley is a mask that continually slips... What is the mask for, if, as often as not, the poet throws it off and speak vulnerably as and from himself?"
Berryman blames the confusion between Pound and Mauberley on Pound's own ironic wit. "For more than six decades, Pound has been, in critical commentary, the victim of his own irony."

What is an "Epode"?

"E.P. Ode Pour L'Election de Son Sepulchre" contains a pun in the poem's title, which begins: "E.P. Ode." "The term "Epode" in classical literature is a lyric metre or after-song of sombre character following a strophe and anti-strophe," says Peter Brooker. (An epode is a form of lyric poem written in couplets, each of a long line followed by a shorter one, while a "strophe" is a section of this.)
The poem is described by Pound as a farewell to London, which ties up with "epode" in its sense of departure, of being an "after-song." This London is symbolic of a declining, decaying empire and against this, Pound contrasts the beauty and Ariel-like spirit of ancient Greece: 
"Christ follows Dionysus, / Phallic and ambrosial / Made way for macerations. / Caliban casts out Ariel." In the allusion to The Tempest in the last line, Pound is complaining that delightful Ariel is banished by the careless cruelty of sloppy, formless Caliban (the id), symbolic of a declining, uncaring England.

Pound - the Dreamer of Dreams

"Like the "dreamer of dreams" Pound relies on his "murmuring rhyme" to "suffice," and on the reader to read his meaning. It is inevitable he will be disappointed, for even the first line: "For three years out of key with his time," suggests uncertainty of meaning. We must ask: "In what way is Pound out of key?" Berryman says: "Mauberley... suggests that E.P. has been born out of his proper time because he was "born / In a half-savage country."
However, Berryman explains, at no time does Ezra Pound consider himself behind the times or out-of-fashion. On the contrary, he is a forward-thinker, ahead of his time, and any instability in communication between poet and reader/critic is, in his view, the responsibility of that reader/critic.

Art is Always in Advance of the General Consciousness

Pound, born in Idaho, left for New York before he was two years old and he takes issue with the uninformed opinion associating him with the roughness of the American frontier. Pound responds to the critics of Mauberley as follows: "The worst muddle they make is in failing to see that Mauberley buries E.P. in the first poem; gets rid of all his troublesome energies."
Even allowing for the poet's occasional arrogance and indignation at being misconstrued, he is correct in recognising that art is always in advance of the general consciousness and is of little use to contemporary culture. This lagging behind of the general consciousness is a way in which meaning is deferred. It is deferred, simply, until readers are ready for it - and this must have been a blow to Pound's ego.
Berryman explains that the years 1914-1917 were Pound's Vorticist years, a time when he produced work which he regarded as his most important. Pound says, in his essay on Vorticism: "In the "search for oneself," in the search for "sincere self-expression" one gropes, one finds some seeming verity. One says, "I am" this, that or the other, and with the words scarcely uttered, one ceases to be that thing."

Ambiguity in Pound's Poetic Persona 

In establishing who is speaking, one might ask: "Who most admires elegance, Pound or Mauberley?" A passage from Donald Davie's Ezra Pound may help clarify this: "Too much of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley is attitudinizing." Davie explains that Pound elaborately attempts to be urbane, but as he is naturally shy in social situations, his persona fails. "Accordingly, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley is a mask that continually slips," says Davie. It seems that in this initial poem, Ezra Pound is trying to be the fictional character Mauberley, but failing, and that the lines about the elegance of Circe's hair may be a point at which the slippage is particularly revealing.

Pound includes classical allusions from Greek mythology to Shakespearean tragedy, and his use of other languages, including Greek, sometimes blur meaning.
Certainly, the Hugh Selwyn Mauberley poems present a challenge to the Pound scholar who, having unpacked the meaning of language, then questions which opinions belong to Pound and which to the persona of Mauberley. 

Note: Pound sometimes named, and sometimes numbered his poems. Verses numbered II to V are separate poems, and not part of the "E.P. Ode."

Sources:Circe's Craft, Jo Brantley Berryman, UMI Research Press, Michigan, 1983.
Ezra Pound, Donald Davie, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1975.
A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, Peter Brooker, Faber & Faber, London, 1979.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Selected Poems, 1908-1969, Ezra Pound, Faber & Faber, London, 1977.