For [the New Poets] poetic form was unimportant and they believed that the strict metres were unsuitable for the expression of great thoughts; it was the message and the sublimity of the content that mattered. Alas, the message of the New Poet was often far from clear: his work was vitiated by verbosity and empty rhetoric, by which means he sought to ask unanswerable questions about the meaning of Life and the essence of the Universe.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Free verse: a warning from history
The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (1986):
Wisdom
Zen Buddhism may not be the best religion, but it certainly has the best jokes.
These are from Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:
Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. when the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: 'Why do people have to die?'
'This is natural,' explained the older man. 'Everything has to die and has just so long to live.'
Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: 'It was time for your cup to die.'
Tanzan and Ekido were travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
'Come on, girl,' said Tansan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. then he no longer could restrain himself. 'We monks don't go near females,' he told Tanzan, 'especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?'
'I left the girl there,' said Tanzan. 'Are you still carrying her?'
These are from Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:
Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. when the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: 'Why do people have to die?'
'This is natural,' explained the older man. 'Everything has to die and has just so long to live.'
Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: 'It was time for your cup to die.'
Tanzan and Ekido were travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
'Come on, girl,' said Tansan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. then he no longer could restrain himself. 'We monks don't go near females,' he told Tanzan, 'especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?'
'I left the girl there,' said Tanzan. 'Are you still carrying her?'
Bad ideas don't die
they just move to America. In the 1980s, citizens of the UK were issued with a helpful leaflet on what to do in the event of a nuclear war, called Protect and Survive, ie storm the local centre of government bunker to get somewhere safe, no, lie down and die with a label tied around your neck so the authorities (if any) can dispose of your remains (if any) efficiently. Now the USA has followed suit, expertly parodied at Don't feed the monkeys. Warning: this will make you laugh a lot.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Unfinished novels
As we prepared to leave university, a lecturer asked what our career plans were. I said I was going to be a novelist. "Oh, you write novels?". Well, no, I had to admit, I was keener on the being-a-novelist thing that the writing-novels thing. I had accumulated a small stack of attempts to start one, which I recently found filed away, and place here for your amusement.
Literary illusions, Chapter 1: Straight from the Muse's mouth
Don't be fooled. The Dedication in the book does not Make It All Worthwhile. It makes it worse, really, after all those months living with his work, and then just one sentence with you in it. The rest is I, I, I, and seemed self-indulgent when you first saw it, and now is an unreadable mixture of disloyally-revealing and lies. And as a sop to his conscience, he dedicates it to you. Yeah, ta. Thank God no-one ever notices and blames you for the contents.
Sometimes he's withdrawn and solemn. It's not often a creative trance, though - that might at least have been some excuse. If you knew, if you really knew, he's probably either daydreaming about the day he wins the Booker prize, or else chafing at the unaccountable success of a rival.
(1984)
The Breakdown Zone, Chapter 1
Los Angeles sits in the haze of the Pacific coast, steaming in the endless summer of California, the state where the sun always shines, as they said in the 20s. But now it sprawls out, a hundred square miles of freeways, service stations, parking lots, and screaming fading billboards. This, as much as Detroit, is Motor City, where the car rules supreme. The characteristic smog is thick with the stink of exhaust, and the crumbling housing estates, all so alike, are desolate islands to those without wheels.
Forced back on themselves, the inhabitants, now mostly poor, uneducated and black, fill their jobless days with an intricate knowledge of the maze of dead-end alleys and empty demolition sites that are their walking grounds. Not only theirs by default, because noone else wants it, but theirs by right of arms - it used to be flick knives and chains, but now, like all freedom-loving Americans, they have arsenals of M1 rifles, shotguns, and heaps of hand-guns. Even the tooled-up police have renounced their dominion on the Territories, so gang kills gang undisturbed, the cops relegated to spectators and corpse-counters.
This is the secret city, the grimy ragged mess that sprawls like a bloated, wrinkled sunbather beneath the chic veneer of the Hollywood bikini. The Boulevard youths are a world away from their models- they dress for style, all in a Beach Boy party that goes on until the WASP enfants terribles fade into account executives, PR men and all the other high-pay occupations that finance their small-scale dream house lives. Hollywood, its larger-than-life nameplate peeling in the sun, smirks down from the tropically-lush hills, a shining forbidden city where dreams are knocked together by the sunglassed visionaries, and where even the air costs money.
Los Angeles, the city of angels, tanned, blonde, always just seventeen, has had its share of sunshine now, and the fretful balance has finally cracked irrevocably: either the glass-and-concrete towers will boil in a crackling furnace of savage noon, or the night will come at last, with all the hidden warriors creeping out from their forgotten pasteboard caves, guns in hand, to take vengeance on the city that ignored them, fired with the bitter wrath of those shown a dream and then denied it. This is as far as America can get: the car-ruled coast. If that falls apart, all you can do is tear it all down and start again. And the people on the top, the penthouse dwellers, the rooftop-garden idlers, will go down too, crushed among the rubble, or hiding in furtive cellars, while the new masters walk proudly abroad, the mad lust for destruction in their eyes- for they have seen the good life, and prefer the blessed-out nightmare world of drugged trips and dark adventures to the patio'n'pool long afternoon siesta.
It's a hard city to know, stretching as it does for seemingly endless miles past dilapidated blocks, each housing some unknown world, and alien sky filled with hidden loyalties and blatant treacheries. No scientist could get to the truth: it is too various, too strange. But some can pick up on the atmosphere, feel the acid wounds rotting underneath the ugly but healthy scar tissue, smell the future inferno in the rancid grease and Coke-and-coke fizz, see the blood-happy vultures circling in the clear blue sky above the ridges. Those that came and saw this were few, but they, alone, were not surprised when the great crash came, not from some underground geological Act of God, but from the city itself, killed off by her bastard sons.
(1984)
Literary illusions, Chapter 1: Straight from the Muse's mouth
Don't be fooled. The Dedication in the book does not Make It All Worthwhile. It makes it worse, really, after all those months living with his work, and then just one sentence with you in it. The rest is I, I, I, and seemed self-indulgent when you first saw it, and now is an unreadable mixture of disloyally-revealing and lies. And as a sop to his conscience, he dedicates it to you. Yeah, ta. Thank God no-one ever notices and blames you for the contents.
Sometimes he's withdrawn and solemn. It's not often a creative trance, though - that might at least have been some excuse. If you knew, if you really knew, he's probably either daydreaming about the day he wins the Booker prize, or else chafing at the unaccountable success of a rival.
(1984)
The Breakdown Zone, Chapter 1
Los Angeles sits in the haze of the Pacific coast, steaming in the endless summer of California, the state where the sun always shines, as they said in the 20s. But now it sprawls out, a hundred square miles of freeways, service stations, parking lots, and screaming fading billboards. This, as much as Detroit, is Motor City, where the car rules supreme. The characteristic smog is thick with the stink of exhaust, and the crumbling housing estates, all so alike, are desolate islands to those without wheels.
Forced back on themselves, the inhabitants, now mostly poor, uneducated and black, fill their jobless days with an intricate knowledge of the maze of dead-end alleys and empty demolition sites that are their walking grounds. Not only theirs by default, because noone else wants it, but theirs by right of arms - it used to be flick knives and chains, but now, like all freedom-loving Americans, they have arsenals of M1 rifles, shotguns, and heaps of hand-guns. Even the tooled-up police have renounced their dominion on the Territories, so gang kills gang undisturbed, the cops relegated to spectators and corpse-counters.
This is the secret city, the grimy ragged mess that sprawls like a bloated, wrinkled sunbather beneath the chic veneer of the Hollywood bikini. The Boulevard youths are a world away from their models- they dress for style, all in a Beach Boy party that goes on until the WASP enfants terribles fade into account executives, PR men and all the other high-pay occupations that finance their small-scale dream house lives. Hollywood, its larger-than-life nameplate peeling in the sun, smirks down from the tropically-lush hills, a shining forbidden city where dreams are knocked together by the sunglassed visionaries, and where even the air costs money.
Los Angeles, the city of angels, tanned, blonde, always just seventeen, has had its share of sunshine now, and the fretful balance has finally cracked irrevocably: either the glass-and-concrete towers will boil in a crackling furnace of savage noon, or the night will come at last, with all the hidden warriors creeping out from their forgotten pasteboard caves, guns in hand, to take vengeance on the city that ignored them, fired with the bitter wrath of those shown a dream and then denied it. This is as far as America can get: the car-ruled coast. If that falls apart, all you can do is tear it all down and start again. And the people on the top, the penthouse dwellers, the rooftop-garden idlers, will go down too, crushed among the rubble, or hiding in furtive cellars, while the new masters walk proudly abroad, the mad lust for destruction in their eyes- for they have seen the good life, and prefer the blessed-out nightmare world of drugged trips and dark adventures to the patio'n'pool long afternoon siesta.
It's a hard city to know, stretching as it does for seemingly endless miles past dilapidated blocks, each housing some unknown world, and alien sky filled with hidden loyalties and blatant treacheries. No scientist could get to the truth: it is too various, too strange. But some can pick up on the atmosphere, feel the acid wounds rotting underneath the ugly but healthy scar tissue, smell the future inferno in the rancid grease and Coke-and-coke fizz, see the blood-happy vultures circling in the clear blue sky above the ridges. Those that came and saw this were few, but they, alone, were not surprised when the great crash came, not from some underground geological Act of God, but from the city itself, killed off by her bastard sons.
(1984)
On Hecataeus
I realised when writing my Obligatory Google Search post that I have been guilty of obscurity. Some people say that there is a place for it, but I disagree- unexplained references may give a thrill of recognition to the cognoscenti, and inspire a few others to explore a new name or concept, but everyone else is left perplexed and excluded. Again, some people would say that to write for an intelligent audience both allows and requires a complexity of discourse, and that you cannot be forever stopping to explain what a cat is, what sitting is, and what mats are. There is something to this point, perhaps, but even so, I would rather people were understanding and thinking about my ideas rather than puzzling out what those ideas might be.
As I have said before, there was a time when society placed some moral weight on 'knowledge', and implicitly criticised those who lacked what was called 'general knowledge'. But increasingly it was realised that the 'general knowledge' syllabus was arbitrary and out-dated, based on preconceptions about culture (perhaps one of the first indicators was the time (1967?) when it ceased to be possible to expect that all middle class children would know something about Classical music and Shakespeare. And so general knowledge became 'trivia', where knowing who won the FA cup in 1976 was of equal value (nil) to knowing where Samuel Pepys was buried. Which is right, of course. Facts are just facts.
I have a good memory for quotations. I have a terrible memory for many other things: friends and relatives' ages, birthdays, names, anniversaries; shopping lists; phone numbers. And I do not even try to remember anything about sport or current music or celebrities or films, so there's a bit of space spare. So what can seem like erudition may not be.
Which is a long way round to disclaiming whatever credit (or deflecting whatever debit) for bringing in Hecataeus as the author of my by-line. Feeling that I was missing out by not having read Herodotus's Histories (a near-contemporary account of the Greek-Persian war of 480BC (featuring the Battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea), I came across a copy and picked it up. Herodotus, known both as 'Father of history' and 'Father of lies', borrowed from earlier sources, including Hecataeus of Miletus, who lived in the 490sBC. Hecataeus's work (which has only survived in quotations by Herodotus and a few later writers) is 'said to have opened with the majestic statement: "I write what to me seems probable; for the tales told by the Greeks are both various and absurd"' (Penguin Classics ed., 1954, 27). This was a disclaimer for him to minimise offence caused to the various gods, cities and rulers he wrote about, since he was forced on occasion to say outright that Athens' version of how they won the war was wrong. (Incidentally, both Hecataeus and Herodotus were from Asia Minor (now Turkey), which perhaps accounts for their willingness to take an objective view of Greek claims). You could almost say that Hecataeus was the first post-modernist, since he is effectively disclaiming any monopoly on the truth.
As I have said before, there was a time when society placed some moral weight on 'knowledge', and implicitly criticised those who lacked what was called 'general knowledge'. But increasingly it was realised that the 'general knowledge' syllabus was arbitrary and out-dated, based on preconceptions about culture (perhaps one of the first indicators was the time (1967?) when it ceased to be possible to expect that all middle class children would know something about Classical music and Shakespeare. And so general knowledge became 'trivia', where knowing who won the FA cup in 1976 was of equal value (nil) to knowing where Samuel Pepys was buried. Which is right, of course. Facts are just facts.
I have a good memory for quotations. I have a terrible memory for many other things: friends and relatives' ages, birthdays, names, anniversaries; shopping lists; phone numbers. And I do not even try to remember anything about sport or current music or celebrities or films, so there's a bit of space spare. So what can seem like erudition may not be.
Which is a long way round to disclaiming whatever credit (or deflecting whatever debit) for bringing in Hecataeus as the author of my by-line. Feeling that I was missing out by not having read Herodotus's Histories (a near-contemporary account of the Greek-Persian war of 480BC (featuring the Battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea), I came across a copy and picked it up. Herodotus, known both as 'Father of history' and 'Father of lies', borrowed from earlier sources, including Hecataeus of Miletus, who lived in the 490sBC. Hecataeus's work (which has only survived in quotations by Herodotus and a few later writers) is 'said to have opened with the majestic statement: "I write what to me seems probable; for the tales told by the Greeks are both various and absurd"' (Penguin Classics ed., 1954, 27). This was a disclaimer for him to minimise offence caused to the various gods, cities and rulers he wrote about, since he was forced on occasion to say outright that Athens' version of how they won the war was wrong. (Incidentally, both Hecataeus and Herodotus were from Asia Minor (now Turkey), which perhaps accounts for their willingness to take an objective view of Greek claims). You could almost say that Hecataeus was the first post-modernist, since he is effectively disclaiming any monopoly on the truth.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
The obligatory Google search post
Not all of the visitors here planned to come- some must have been very surprised where they ended up.
Here's a selection of the search terms:
love inspirational poetic lines
inspirational verse
inspirational song words
How desperate for inspiration you must be to put it into Google!
speeding getting caught
tut, tut, a bit late now
andrew motion poetry horrible
tell us what you really think!
blowing in the wind vietnam song
no, it isn't- the US had only just got into Vietnam in 1962, and it wasn't until 1965 that it became a major focus for protest.
commentary of The Warning by Adelaide Crapsey
you don't think that maybe this is for an essay? If so, I'd start by looking at a grammar book under "on" and "of" - which is which.
consumerism illusion
"The Illusion of Choice"
Glad someone agrees.
gwyneth lewis +poem +millenium
Hope they got what they wanted!
hecataeas
You want obscure? I can do obscure.
The odd thing is that having got a mention on a search results page, the link looked close enough to what they were after for them to click on it. Go, as they say in America, figure.
Here's a selection of the search terms:
love inspirational poetic lines
inspirational verse
inspirational song words
How desperate for inspiration you must be to put it into Google!
speeding getting caught
tut, tut, a bit late now
andrew motion poetry horrible
tell us what you really think!
blowing in the wind vietnam song
no, it isn't- the US had only just got into Vietnam in 1962, and it wasn't until 1965 that it became a major focus for protest.
commentary of The Warning by Adelaide Crapsey
you don't think that maybe this is for an essay? If so, I'd start by looking at a grammar book under "on" and "of" - which is which.
consumerism illusion
"The Illusion of Choice"
Glad someone agrees.
gwyneth lewis +poem +millenium
Hope they got what they wanted!
hecataeas
You want obscure? I can do obscure.
The odd thing is that having got a mention on a search results page, the link looked close enough to what they were after for them to click on it. Go, as they say in America, figure.
I grew up in the 70s
and so I know some odd things:
- that Elton John was bald
- that Abba was/were crap
- that punk meant an end to manufactured bands and corporate rock
- that flares were a bad idea
- that Richard Branson was a cool iconoclastic maverick
- that only diehard hippies would use the word 'cool' unironically
- that George Lucas made good films
To quote a Brinsley Schwarz song of the time:
"It's been so long since them days, And time makes its changes in so many ways"
(Nick Lowe, "Nervous on the road")
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Holy writ, Batman!
I don't, in general, like fundamentalism, but one thing about it you have to admire is its clarity: if the Quran says "adulterers must be stoned to death" or "thieves should have a hand chopped off", then that is what you do. No nonsense about 'understanding the criminal's environment', and 'we're all guilty', and 'who are we to say...'
I've been looking at Christian theodicy (the explanation of evil and suffering in a world created by God), in the course of which I've come across a wide range of readings of some of the more problematic incidents in the New Testament. My poem Collateral damage deals with one of these, the Massacre of the Innocents by King Herod, as described by Matthew (2 xv-xx).
This is a tough one to reconcile with a benevolent and merciful deity (as the poem implies). I was very surprised to come across the range of commentaries by Christians, which included:
1. It never happened. Matthew was wrong. He made it up because he wanted to demonstrate that Jewish prophecies were fulfilled.
2. As 1, except that Matthew was taking the prophecy as a symbol of a new covenant, not at face value.
3. It did happen, but shows that God can save the worthy (few) from the evil actions of Man (Herod).
4. It did happen, but was just one of those things. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. (I didn't actually read this one but it seemed implied by various references to the deliberate dropping of the incident from the Nativity story by the modern Church).
But the prize for muddled thinking goes to this argument: "The Bible is true, every word of it. Because it says so in the Bible"
I've been looking at Christian theodicy (the explanation of evil and suffering in a world created by God), in the course of which I've come across a wide range of readings of some of the more problematic incidents in the New Testament. My poem Collateral damage deals with one of these, the Massacre of the Innocents by King Herod, as described by Matthew (2 xv-xx).
This is a tough one to reconcile with a benevolent and merciful deity (as the poem implies). I was very surprised to come across the range of commentaries by Christians, which included:
1. It never happened. Matthew was wrong. He made it up because he wanted to demonstrate that Jewish prophecies were fulfilled.
2. As 1, except that Matthew was taking the prophecy as a symbol of a new covenant, not at face value.
3. It did happen, but shows that God can save the worthy (few) from the evil actions of Man (Herod).
4. It did happen, but was just one of those things. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. (I didn't actually read this one but it seemed implied by various references to the deliberate dropping of the incident from the Nativity story by the modern Church).
But the prize for muddled thinking goes to this argument: "The Bible is true, every word of it. Because it says so in the Bible"
Thursday, May 05, 2005
My award for funniest use of animation
in a website goes to http://www.montypythonsspamalot.com/
(you'll need a broadband conenction and sound to enjoy it, though).
(you'll need a broadband conenction and sound to enjoy it, though).
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Unsourced quotation
I can't find the source of this, but I read it recently: "Every hypochondriac picks a winner in the end".
Monday, May 02, 2005
The death of the book
Those with long memories will recall the talk in the 80s of the "paperless office" that would result from the adoption of IT. Others, if interested, can dig out the magazine articles and company documents from the filing cabinet, or the records department, or the off-site dead record storage warehouse. So it was with some scepticism that I heard the prediction that e-books would replace real, paper, books. Until this week.
I was typing at the computer, and wanted a quote from Shakespeare ("Rosemary, that's for remembrance", from Hamlet). Glancing around the room, the Complete Works wasn't there-must be upstairs. Rather than go and get it (taking perhaps 2 minutes at most), I typed it into Google, and got my answer.
But on the bright side, it must be said that Google was not definitive: a good half of the quotations were mis-worded, or attributed to the wrong character, and in some cases to the wrong play.
I was typing at the computer, and wanted a quote from Shakespeare ("Rosemary, that's for remembrance", from Hamlet). Glancing around the room, the Complete Works wasn't there-must be upstairs. Rather than go and get it (taking perhaps 2 minutes at most), I typed it into Google, and got my answer.
But on the bright side, it must be said that Google was not definitive: a good half of the quotations were mis-worded, or attributed to the wrong character, and in some cases to the wrong play.
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