Duchesses

I've just been dragged (ok, winsomely invited) by G to see The Duchess. It was surprisingly good, considering - with a deeply unsympathetic, but not entirely inhuman portrayal of the Duke by Ralph Fiennes. It seemed an unusually steady representation of the combination of social duties and personal authority in a member of the aristocracy. His unflinching response to his wife's infidelity, with cruelty fired by underlying personal jealousy, was reminiscent of another Duke... Sure enough, as I checked when I got home, the parallels to Robert Browning's My Last Duchess were striking:

She thanked men, — good! but thanked

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

--E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together...

Another apology...

Following the link to the review of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, I got an email from a friend, which included the following comment:

I might also say - a challenge, so watch out - that I really didn't like your review of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's poems...your review told me more about you than it did about her poetry: what her strengths and weaknesses are; why they are strengths and weaknesses etc. In short, there was nothing constructive - nothing she or others could learn from - in your review. I did like your use of the Manic Street Preachers: a way of popularising poetry (which I know is one of your intentions) and critiquing Wynne-Rhydderch from an interesting angle. But primarily I thought, 'God, I don't like this reviewer.' You had an ego and an ugliness that surprised me.

Strong words, which prompted me to reread the review and think about it again. I was surprised to realise that what I'd meant as a sharp and entertaining challenge did, as he said, have 'ego and ugliness' - as well as a rather poisonous tone. Consequently, I've amended it to draw out the worst of the poison (at the kind agreement of the editor, who really shouldn't be troubled with writers suddenly realising that they had been unnecessarily unpleasant). And also, in the (what I'm assuming is the unlikely) event that the poet or publisher read this: I apologise. You deserve more respect, kindness and humility from a reviewer. I'll try to live up to that standard better in future.

Disclaimer

Something else I probably ought to say at this point is that although the post in the last review was on digyorkshire.com, which is part of the company I work for, this blog is not connected to Audiences Yorkshire in any way. All views (particularly the erratic and wrong-headed ones) are mine and mine alone (if that, sometimes: I reserve the right to be needlessly provocative) and don't reflect anyone else's individual or corporate opinions. Furthermore, no animals, children or international poetry conglomerates were harmed in the making of this blog.

Please read poetry responsibly and in moderation. Careless poetry reading can seriously harm yourself and those around you. Irregular Margins does not accept responsibility for any negative effects that you or others experience when reading poetry recommended by this blog. We're even wary about taking responsibility for any positive and euphoric effects you experience. You can't be too careful. It could all end in tears.

There: hopefully that's sufficient to avoid being fired or sued. Disagreement, pillorying or ridicule I can just about handle...

Not In These Shoes

I've not been totally idle the last few months. Here's a link to a review I've written of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's Not In These Shoes. I probably ought to point out that I'm not saying I'm against Welsh poetry, just the assumption that there is somethng uniquely poetical about the Welsh (or any other) soul. Ok, I'm protesting too much...

UPDATE: The link is now to a revised version of the review - I'll explain why in another post...

I know it's called Irregular Margins...

...but five months between posts is a bit much! Joking aside, this blog is going to get a whole lot more regular, as of now. After a summer recess to think through future plans and improvements (as well as go on holiday and do the day job), Irregular Margins is back. There'll be a few changes, which will become more evident over time. Please do keep reading and commenting, tell your friends and watch this space.

An apology

Hearing a friend reading a poem of his the other called Pylons, I was reminded of a poem by Stephen Spender that I read over ten years ago. I smirked to myself. The Pylons, I remembered vividly, was one of the worst poems I'd ever read. It included some ridiculous image about the pylons being like naked girls, which even as a teenager I realised they obviously weren't. In one swoop I decided that Stephen Spender was not worth reading - fortunate, really, since I had no inclination to, anyhow.

Rereading it the other day, I feel a small apology is in order. It does have its moments of silliness, but all in all, it's not such a bad poem. Judge for yourself:

The Pylons

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made;
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.

Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret.

The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.

But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightening's danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.

This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy:
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.

Great Poets of the Twentieth Century: No. 4 - Philip Larkin

There's a curious paradox about Philip Larkin. He's probably the most widely admired and accomplished English poet since Auden (with only Ted Hughes coming close), yet most comments on him start with some sort of defensiveness or apology. Take Andrew Motion's introduction here: despite a positive first paragraph, he goes on to say that:

...his reputation underwent a spectacular revision. The loveable Eeyore was really a porn-loving misogynist whose view on race, women, the Labour party, children, mainland Europe (and most of the rest of the world) were repugnant to any fair-minded liberal person.

It says something about the literary classes that disliking a political party which has lost more elections than it's won is seen as controversial. But that aside, it frustrates me that people are so awkward about Larkin.

Yes, he's got his limitations as a writer (his limited range of subjects, his repetitive use of images, the constricted emotional range of his work) and clearly, he had flaws as an individual (it's interesting to track the strands of his personal failures through his work, though a bit like shooting fish). But, bluntly, so what? Given that he's written more, better, poetry than anyone from this country since the War, perhaps we should be asking fewer questions of him and more of all those who failed to match his achievements. Many were probably nicer and even ideologically more respectable (hell, they may even have preferred Kinnock to Thatcher). And yes, he was in many ways a bit of a shit. But he was a major poet (oh, ok: an important minor one). And it's surely preferable to read poetry by someone who's a bad man but a good poet, than a good man and a bad poet (to simplify hugely). The complication with Larkin is that the sources of his human failures were so closely tied to both his successes and ultimate failures as a poet. But looking through this selection, what successes they were.

The poem XX from The North Ship hints at how close Larkin got to being a truly terrible sub-Yeatsian poet. Likewise, in Vers de Societe, the stuff where 'the gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed' warns of a mooning nonsense which is a far more terminal vice in a poet than Thatcherism. And yet the slangy punch and insight of his late poems here (High Windows and This Be The Verse in particular) shows how far from his murky juvenilia he got.

Dockery and Son just keeps growing on me, and not just for the cameo appearance that Sheffield makes, where he 'changed / And ate an awful pie, and walked along / The platform to its end'. Interesting, its 'furnace glares' are picked up in another of his great set pieces here, Aubade, where realisation of death's inevitability 'rages out / In furnace-fear'. Behind the voice that could describe life as 'first boredom, then fear', there was a recognition of his own limitations. He didn't like the big, noisy, messy, industrial, modern world and he was scared of death. In one poem, he travels from Oxford to Hull, questioning his life's journey and having a realisation looking out on 'the fumes / And furnace fires' of an industrial city. In the latter, facing the idea of death raises the same image in a more obviously symbolic context. Larkin was in many ways as tragic a figure as Sylvia Plath, though someone doomed to live, rather than electing to die. Perhaps these 'furnaces' give a glimpse of his hellish self-awareness. But before he's damned, he should be recognised as a damned fine poet.

Well what d'you know...?

There's an article on the winners of the National Poetry Competition here. First place has gone to Sinead Morrissey, who I've recently been raving about on this blog. Now I'm not saying that I told you so, but... well, you get the idea.

Abse makes the heart grow fonder

Dannie Abse and Louis Zukovsky are the book-ends of English poetry: its two alphabetical extremities. For that reason alone, I've been aware of Dannie Abse for a long time. Nonetheless, it was only hearing him on the Oxfam CD Life Lines 2 recently which gave me a particular spur to read his work. It was another Oxfam store which duly obliged, with a selection of his poems from 1963 (I'm aware he's had time to move on since, having published his latest collection, Running Late, in 2006).

The poem which stood out to me was one which provided an amusing commentary to society's current focus on environmentalism. Like the John Wain poem I referred to recently (which was published in 1956, just a year before this one), Letter to The Times provides a comic look at how humans differ from nature. Why do we bother to look after roses, it asks, when they make no effort to look after us? Why do we protest the cutting down of trees, when not one tree wrote 'an angry note in its sly green ink' when London was being bombed? Likewise, rivers are dishonest because they reflect swans upside down and stars 'are even too lazy / to shine when we are most awake'. His tongue-in-cheek conclusions are 'away then with trees and roses. / They are inhuman' and that 'we should pity them no more, / but concern ourselves with more natural things'.

It's a charming and pointed satire of people's hostility to nature and on its own made looking out his poetry worth the effort. There's an interesting commentary on his work by Peter Forbes here.

Childish pleasure

Speaking of Bloodaxe, I've just been to their site and noticed that they've got a 'virtual catalogue' available from their homepage, with turning pages and everything. Ok, so it's useful to have all the information about their titles presented like that, but more importantly: what an exciting little toy!