One Way Of Looking At It...

Sean O'Brien, in today's Guardian, writes of the affliction of poetry - not, in his way of thinking, a career at all - but rather, a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't kind of thing: one either writes poetry or goes mad, or writes poetry and goes mad, as he memorably, and dramatically, suggests.

I find much of this article convincing, and thoughtful, and useful reading, especially for non-poets, who often don't consider the immense and usually near-useless sacrifice that most poets make of their lives (as O'Brien reminds us Eliot had noted); for every two or three poets in each generation that continue to be read 50-100 years later (name three poets of the 1890s who are really read widely now, other than Yeats, Wilde and Swinburne; okay, now name ten; now name twenty.... now make a list of the 100-200 poets writing now...) the hundreds who also spent their lives on poetry (and it is a spending) are mainly lost to indifference, or studied, if at all, from a purely academic perspective. Most poetry is good, not just good enough, and few poets know, while alive, whether their work will last.

So, O'Brien is reminding the doctors, the lawyers, the civil servants, that, while they may have the villas and the jaguars, they also have the certainty that their careers are defined by a limited but sane purpose; poets have no such safe basis on which to plan or build. This way can lead to "madness" - is madness, arguably, from the get go.

What I should like to add is, that, while the verbal drama of invoking the poet as chief genius of madness (as the Greeks and romantics both believed, as John Berryman knew, and Plath and Lowell and he and Delmore and others not so long ago proved), is both vaguely satisfying to poets (it is one thing to be mainly ignored and potentially useless, it is another to be so but know oneself to be at least part of the agonistic drama that is creation) and even perhaps attractive to non-poets, it is only part of the story.

As I have argued on these posts and pages before, poetry is a recognised isolating, difficult, path (I do call it a career but mean by that simply it has its professional, life-long elements - poetry is a vocation and a career, as the priesthood or teaching, two other Calvaryesque callings) - but it need not be so painful as it often is. If poetry leads to madness, then what can poets do to make it less terrible? Surely, all people who live face the same terrible end - death. The key is to secure a viable way to live, a philosophy, that allows for some consolation, even sanity, in the face of the terror that is our one-way ticket out of here.

Thus, I feel poets should reflect more on their duty to other poets. This is not the same as their duty to poetry, which may be as individual, rigorous and austere as any forty days in the wilderness if they wish - but it is a complementary duty. Poets are too often antagonistic to their fellow practitioners, seeing them (incorrectly) as rivals for laurels. Instead, our fellow poets form a community of the similarly-afflicted. They are our comrades - no other word will do - on the arduous long march to - what? - an unsure, unknown victory, or defeat. Mad we may be, but we needn't be alone in the madhouse. Poets should, as the actors did in Hollywood, form a more solid union, to support each other in times of need. Those times are never far away.

A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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