Alfred De Musset's 'On a Dead Woman' (Sur une Morte)

Alfred De Musset (1810-1857)

Alfred De Musset

The woman in question was not dead. According to the translator, Stanley Appelbaum, ‘The ‘Morte’ of the poem, the Princess Belgiojoso, was not at all dead but coquettishly indifferent to the poet’s advances.’

This is taken from “Introduction to French Poetry’ edited by Stanley Appelbaum, who claims in his introduction that the translations are ‘definitely not intended to be poetic recreations of the original works, but merely aids to the understanding of the content’. In this case the English version seems to stand on its own..

The Archpoet's confession

The Archpoet (12th century)

‘The Archpoet’ is the name given to a writer of a handful of Latin lyrics of which this ‘Confession’ is the most famous. Almost nothing is known about his identity or the details of his life.

Imagine a priest or monk, accused of a string of vices. The ‘Confession’ confronts the accusations and gleefully admits to them all.

There’s a debate about whether it’s genuinely autobiographical or a rhetorical exercise, and that is unlikely to be answered. But the poem was popular in its own time: the attraction of saying, yes, I am all the things you say I am and why should I not be, may have been as powerful then as it is now, especially amongst people who do none of the things they’d like to admit to having done.

The translation is by Helen Waddell and taken from ‘The Wandering scholars’ which is one of the great books about the middle ages. Waddell claimed this poem ‘is something more than the arch-type of a generation of vagabond scholars, or the greatest drinking song in the world: it is the first defiance by the artist of that society which it is his thankless business to amuse: the first cry from the House of the Potter, "Why hast thou made me thus?". (P.265)

Enjoy.

Rudyard Kipling's 'If'

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

There was a time poems entered the language and were recycled in daily usage. And ‘If’ is perhaps one of the best examples of such a poem. It has been voted Britain’s Most popular poem, though I suspect that day has passed.

It’s full of good advice, memorably expressed. Nowhere does it suggest you need counselling or a handbook of excuses. But I can also imagine a Victorian father giving his son such a lecture, and the son walking out thinking, well, that’s that then. Not possible. Can’t do it. Might as well become some kind of debauched failure of a chronic sinner right now.

Federico Garcia Lorca's 'Somnambule Ballad'

A still from Un Chien Andalou

Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)

(Translated by Stephen Spender and J.L Gill)

For those outside Spain, who read no Spanish, Lorca is probably the most famous Spanish poet of the twentieth century.

This is a very different poem to the ones I’ve previously read on the podcast.

It helps, listening to this poem or reading it, to remember Lorca was friends with Dali and Bunuel. There is a story that when those two were making Un Chien Andalou, their ground breaking ‘surrealist’ film, one would sketch scenes and the other would say, no, that means something, throw it out.

‘Avant Garde’ and ‘Surrealist’ are terms that might be useful as pathways to approach this poem without necessarily being definitive or even accurate as labels.

For a long time I used this poem as an example of what happens when readers are confronted with work they find initially incomprehensible. Read it, I’d say, then come back and tell me what you think it means. The answers were often ingenious. They varied greatly. They were all interesting.

So what does it mean they’d ask.

It means what it says. Images that link without narrative, suggesting narrative, cohering because they linked in the writer’s mind at the time of writing. The links are not made explicit. But the images sing together.

Yes, but what does it mean?

Wrong question.

This is taken from ‘The Selected poems of Federico Garcia Lorca’ edited by Francisco Garcia Lorca and Donald m. Allen. A New Directions paperback 1985.

from Christopher Logue's 'War Music' 2. The Death of Patroculus.

Christopher Logue (1926-2011)

This is my second reading from ‘War Music’. In the first, Patroculus has begged Achilles for the loan of his armour. When Achilles reluctantly agrees, he insists that no matter how successful Patroculus is he must not chase the Trojans to their city. Apollo, the Mouse God, is present and on the Trojan’s side.

After a day of staggering success, Patroculus ignores the interdiction and chases the Trojans to the walls of their city. This extract begins as he tries to scale the walls of Troy.

from Christopher Logue's 'War Music'. 1 Patroculus pleads with Achilles.

Christopher Logue (1926-2011)

A fine poet in his own work, Logue’s most lasting achievement should be his ‘account’ of Homer’s Iliad.

Logue never called his work a translation. In 1959 he was asked to translate a section of the Iliad for a radio performance.  In his memoire, ‘Prince Charming’ (p.221), he relates that when he pointed out he knew no Greek, he was told:. ‘Read translations by those who did. Follow the story. A translator must know one language well. Preferably his own.’ It is an unusual piece of advice, and not one usually given to translators.

The results however were spectacular, appearing as separate books, until in 2016 they were collected and published as ‘War Music; an account of Homer’s illiad’. I would describe it as one of the great narrative achievements in English Poetry.

Although neither finished nor pedantically ‘accurate’, it makes Homer seem attractive. However, as an introduction to Homer its one drawback is that it makes the standard translations of the Iliad seem very dull.

Ovid's 'Pygmalion' trans Arthur Golding

Arthur Golding (1536-1605)

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 Bc-17/18 AD)

Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’ written in Latin in the first decade of the First Century AD, long before England was invented, is ironically one of the key texts in English poetry and Ovid one of its most influential poets. One of the reasons for the popularity of the Metamorphosis after the Middle Ages is Golding’s translation, which influenced so many who read it, including one W. Shakespeare.

The story of Pygmalion lives on in Shaw’s play and the musical version of Shaw’s play, and nothing makes it any less disturbing. It also lives on in ‘The Pygmalion effect’, the idea that high expectations in management or teaching can lead to enhanced results because of the ‘self fulfilling prophecy’.

Whatever the leadership gurus make of it, like most of Ovid’s stories, it’s disturbing. But then you’ve probably met at least one deluded person who recreated a human being as an unrealistic ideal and you might have been unlucky enough to be around to see the damage that caused.

Sappho's 'Fragment 31'

Sappho (c600 BC)

Possibly the most famous female poet in history? Well known and highly respected in her own Greek culture. Her name is still very well known, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. Very little of her work survives, and most of it seems to be fragments.

There are numerous attempts at translating this particular poem: Catullus, Campion, Bunting and others have done their best. I like this version because it respects the fragment and works as a poem.

This is taken from Sappho, Poems and Fragments, translated by Josephine Balmer. Published by Bloodaxe books.

Charles Hamilton Sorley's 'When you see millions of the mouthless dead'

Charles Hamilton Sorley ( May 1895- October 1915)

Sorely was killed by a sniper in 1915 while serving on the Western Front. This poem, written in pencil, was found amongst his belongings.

The few poems he had written were collected and published in January 1916 as ‘Marlborough and other poems’. This is taken from the slightly enlarged second edition of February 1916.

Had Sorely lived and continued to write, most of the poems in the book would probably have been filed away as ‘Juvenilia’. As it was, he didn’t get to revise any of them for publication.

He has been particularly well-served by Jean Moorcraft Wilson who not only wrote a Biography but collected and edited his letters and his poems.

You can read more about Sorely here:

https://ladygodivaandme.blogspot.com/2017/05/charles-hamilton-sorely-footnote-poet.html

Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'.

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

‘Light verse’ is often a dismissive term. Light verse can be clever, witty, humorous, entertaining, memorable and enjoyable but Real poetry should be serious, profound, ‘deep’, emotional….it’s a silly argument. Some of the best poetry of the 19th century is described as ‘light verse’, and Lewis Carroll wrote some of the best examples.

Almost as silly as the dismissal of light verse is the inevitable attempt to find political, religious or ideological themes that would raise it to the level of ‘serious poetry’.

It is what it is.

Carol Ann Duffy's 'You'

Carol Ann Duffy (1955-)

This is the first poem in Duffy’s ‘Rapture’ (2005), which is either a book length love poem or a book length sequence of poems which chart the rise and fall of a passionate love affair. ‘Rapture’ won the T.S.Eliot Prize in 2005.

For many people the relationship between love and poetry seems a simple one. But of the thousands of poems written each day, and the thousands published each year, there are very few good love poems. As an experiment, pick up a general anthology of English poetry through the ages and see how many you can find. As is often pointed out: ‘I love you’ may be the most beautiful thing you’ll ever say, or hear, but it’s not a poem.

Because of this, ‘Rapture’ is an outstanding collection, as the poems move from ‘Love’s first plague to her wintry fever’.

John Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'

John Keats (1795-1821)

John Keats

In Tennyson’s Lady of Shalotte, the metaphor is buried by the story. In La Belle Dame sans Merci, the story is the metaphor. The narrative is as straightforward as a fairy tale, though it also reads like a nightmare.

 There are several suggestions as to what the story ‘means’: La Belle Dame is tuberculosis, Infatuation, Fanny Brawne, male fear of the feminine. You can take your pick.

What Keats thought it meant is a different matter.  The poem first appeared in a long letter he wrote to George and Georgina Keats.

At the end of the poem he wrote:

Why four kisses-you will say-why four because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse-she would have fain said ‘score’ without hurting the rhyme-but we must temper the Imagination as the Critics say with Judgement. I was obliged to choose an even number that both eyes have fair play: and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient-suppose I had said seven: there would have been three and a half a piece-a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side- 

Which doesn’t sound like he was taking it or himself too seriously.

The poem is also a candidate for the prize for worst editing of a poem by the person who wrote it. When Keats published the poem in The Indicator, he changed the first line to: 

Ah what can ail thee wretched wight…

Which is awful.  His defenders claim that by this time his illness was so advanced his judgement was impaired.

The poem, even more than the Lady of Shalotte, appealed to painters in the 19th century.

Thomas E. Spencer's 'How McDougall topped the score'

Thomas E. Spencer (1845-1911)

I know nothing about Spenser except he wrote this poem and I own a signed, 1906 copy of ‘How McDougall Topped the Score and other sketches and verses’. I don’t even know why I have the book.

According to Wikipedia Spencer migrated to Sydney, Australia in 1875 and became a successful builder and contractor, winning government contracts for work on Goulburn gaol, the University of Sydney's physics laboratory and the sewerage system in Sydney.

‘How McDougall Topped the Score’ is a fine example of a recognisable type of Australian poem from the first half of the last century. An entertaining story, not meant to be taken seriously, but enjoyed for the pleasure of the thing itself. It’s also very enjoyable to read aloud.

Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott'

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

The Lady of Shalott by George Edward Robertson

Another poem in which the poet has taken a story and adapted it.

Tennyson was a great poet, if technique is a criteria of greatness. Try writing stanzas using the rhythm and rhyme scheme he does here and see how hard it is. He doesn’t put a foot wrong if you pronounce glow’d/trode/flow’d/rode to rhyme.

There’s a sung version by Loreena Mckennit which brings out how melodious the lyric is far better than any reading can.

But being a great technician is not everything and for all the memorable lines, there’s something unpleasant about the story which is characteristic of Tennyson’s treatment of Arthurian material in general and the women in it in particular.

You are almost compelled to read the poem as a metaphor because as a story about people, even people in a fantasy pseudo-medieval world of magic, it doesn’t work unlike Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’. The poem asks to be understood in a symbolic fashion. But precisely what is symbolised isn’t clear and attempts to naturalise it, one essay on the web claims ‘she freezes to death as she floats down the river’, emphasise how unreal it is.

it’s not irrelevant that so many male painters in the 19th century liked painting dead women or that this particular story was so attractive to them. (Do a google image and you’ll see how popular the subject was.)

There are two versions of the poem. One published in 1833, one in 1842. The earlier poem has an extra verse and ends:

They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest,
  Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.
   There lay a parchment on her breast,
   That puzzled more than all the rest,
                 The wellfed wits at Camelot.
     'The web was woven curiously,
      The charm is broken utterly,
       Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
                 The Lady of Shalott.'

which is awful and a tribute to Tennyson that he cut it.

Although it may not have been his source, it’s revealing to compare this poem to Malory’s story of Elayne of Ascolat. The comparison illuminates the limitations of Tennyson’s version. Tennyson may have been a great technician, but Malory was great.

C.P. Cavafy's 'The God Abandons Anthony'

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)

This is the second of Cavafy’s poems on the Podcast. Like the first it plays off a classical story. In this case it takes an incident from Plutarch’s life of Anthony, and shifts from the particular historical event, when Anthony is supposed to have heard his patron God, DIonysus leaving the city, to a more universal poem about loss and defeat. How should you behave when faced with failure?

The poem offers advice to an unnamed protagonist.

Leonard Cohen used this poem as a starting point for his song Alexandra Leaving, turning Alexandria the city into a human Alexandra and turning the general defeat into a romantic one.

This is taken from ‘C. P. Cavafy Collected Poems, revised edition’, trans Keeley and Sherrard, edited by George Savidis (Princeton University Press)

David Jones from 'The Fatigue'

David Jones (1895-1974)

Why me?

In this particular case, why is this soldier on duty at The Crucifixion and not that one?

More generally, why did some soldiers sign up for the first world war and find themselves in units sent into action on their first day at the front while others, signing up on the same day, found themselves transferred to garrison duties?

Why me? What impossible string of accidents and co-incidences caused me to be here at that particular place and time?

This extract from ‘The Fatigue’ answer that question. It begins a long way away in a guarded room. Anonymous decision makers make their decisions for reasons that are hidden, influenced by anything from bad wine, a broken heating system or a cold draft. It’s not personal. They didn’t choose you for a reason related to ‘who’ you are. But gradually the results of each decision pick up momentum. There’s an increase in the rhythm as the decisions move inexorably closer to their final unintended target.

It’s the best answer to ‘why me’ that I know.

A Note on Pronunciation

Jones’s writing is characterised by his use of non-English words. With the Anglo-Saxon and Welsh I’m reasonably sure how close i am with the pronunciation but with Latin I have no idea. Jones was at pains to point out that ‘inconspicious’ in this extract was not a misprint for inconspicuous.

‘The Fatigue’ was published in ‘The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments’ (Faber). I’ve used this version and read the last third or so of ‘The Fatigue’ . In the magnificent new edition of ‘The Grail Mass and other works’ (Bloomsbury Academic) what I have read is presented as a self contained section. In this version it ends

Partee-party, halt.
Party-stand fast men detailed-
re-mainder- steady!
Middle watch-to quarters-Dismiss

Yevgeny Yevtushenko's 'The City of Yes and the City of No'.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933-2017)

For my generation, perhaps the best known Russian Poet. Possibly better known than the more critically acclaimed Brodsky. Whether he was best known because he was marketable in ‘The West’ or because he was the best of his contemporaries in Russia is, for those of us who rely on translations, an unanswerable question. But sometimes, dealing with poetry in translation, you can be forgiven for wondering what’s being valued.

Not in the case of this poem. Even if it were English it would still work.

One strange evening I took a group from the high school where I worked to Brisbane (Australia) to hear Yevtushenko read. He was tall, elderly, wearing a puce suit and a huge, bright yellow tie. He had just published a novel call ‘Don’t die before your death’.

He didn’t so much read this poem as dance it down the aisle.

This is taken from Twentieth Century Russian Poetry. Silver and Steel, an anthology. Selected, with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, edited by Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward (with Daniel Weissbort) Doubleday 1993.

Liam Guilar 's 'Shackleton's Grave.'

This is the last poem in ‘Rough Spun to Close Weave’.

Shackleton’s Grave
(A Wish) 

There will be peace and an end to traveling,
the colour of ocean under a polar sky,
solid as mountains, to bear the brunt
of storms that can no longer trouble
the sleeper in the wind-raked earth.
Time will be glacial, patient as icebergs 
where no rumours whisper, no duty calls,
the strong heartbeat of spring and its flowers:
the tides’ turn, the snow’s fall.

(Liam Guilar)

'Rough spun to Close Weave' is available from online book sellers. Signed copies are available from the shop at www.liamguilar.com

R.S.Thomas' 'Bravo'

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

I first encountered R.S.Thomas’s work in a school poetry text book in about 1975. I’ve been reading his poetry, with admiration and enjoyment, ever since.

In the twentieth century’s three horse Thomas race, I’d back R.S over Dylan and Edward.

Over the course of a long writing life he produced a enormous number of high quality poems. ‘Collected Poems 1945-1990’ and ‘Collected Later poems 1988-2000’ combined run to over 800 pages. Most of the poems, like this one, take up less than a page.

Thomas himself was an interesting man. Photographs usually present him as a wild, wind swept celtic mage, the last of the Druids lowering at the camera or striding over the hills. He spent his working life as an Anglican priest working in small Welsh parishes. He learnt Welsh, wrote at least one autobiography in Welsh, but published his poems in English. Though probably a Welsh Nationalist, he was one of the twentieth century’s leading English language poets. There’s a fine, readable, award winning biography by Byron Rogers; ‘The man who went into the west’.

Many of the poems seem to be addressed to a God who if not absent, is not paying attention, and certainly not responding. The poems are characteristically short, with abrupt, line breaks which look almost arbitrary on the page. Read aloud they lose their jaggedness. Often turning on the precise use of a word, usually containing memorable lines and images, the apparently effortless way in which a speaker addresses the reader hides a considerable art.

Despite decades of rereading, It’s hard to choose an individual poem. I have the irrational sense that if you put the two collecteds together, you might have one of the longest, and most successful poetic sequences in twentieth century English poetry..

Sir Thomas Wyatt's 'Whoso List to Hunt'

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

When does English Poetry begin?

You could argue Caedmon’s Hymn, the earliest datable poem in Old English. But listen to it on the Poetry Voice: Caedmon’s Hymn isn’t written in English.

You could argue for Chaucer, who is readable with patience by any literate modern English speaker.

Or you could go straight to Wyatt. Who is perhaps the first English poet to sound like a modern poet.

He has been the subject of two superb but very different, and therefore complimentary, biographies recently. And there is or was a fine Penguin collected, which may not do him a great service since wading through the lot will remind you of how utterly conventional so much of the poetry produced at the court was.

The fifteenth century is a dead one for English poetry. So you could argue that poetry that is recognisable to a modern reader, both in form and language, begins after Wyatt and Surrey found their models or excellence in Italy. Wyatt Englished Petrarch. You can see the process by comparing this poem with Petrach’s Sonnet 190 which Wyatt is ‘versioning’, it’s part translation, part adaptation, all new poem. You can compare translations: http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/eng208PetrarchSonnet190.htm

But when you’ve got over the sense of an individual voice speaking directly to you and the striking images, you might want to consider the implications of the metaphor of the hunt as romantic pursuit. Think about what the hunters and their dogs do when they have finally trapped their prey. Welcome to the Renaissance.