Courage used to mean a sort of blindness: acting 'with disregard for one's personal safety', a mad rage, to be admired (from a safe distance) rather than emulated.
Then it meant stoicism, like the wounded soldier who was asked by the general how he was "Well, I've lost my left leg, my right hand, and an eye, but, you know, can't complain". When people talk about 'brave' children this is usually what they mean-uncomplaining, untroublesome. This sort of courage allows those around them to deal with the suffering in their own way, interpreting it as part of The Plan, or the wages of sin, or just stuff that happens, or bad luck. You might also say this allows those who insist on looking on any available bright side to continue in their belief that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
These days there are different sorts of heroes, what you might called post-modern heroes. Yes, they say, I will probably get killed, because I am a rational person who can weigh up the odds, but I am going to do it anyway. No nonsense about not minding, or not being scared, or angry, or sad; being all these things but still insisting that the biggest defeat would be to accept defeat.
A heartbreaking example of this is Cancer, baby which is a beautifully-written harrowing account of someone's cancer and its effect on her and her life, which manages to be clever and funny and clear-sighted while also being profoundly moving (keep your tissues handy).
Friday, June 24, 2005
The home life of the famous
At home with the Shakespeares
"For God's sake, Will, don't be so dramatic! Why does everything have to be some great tragedy?"
Locked outside the home of illusionist Paul Daniels and his lovely wife Debbie McGee
"Oh Paul, I thought you had the keys!"
"I can't help it if they're inside- I'm not a magician!"
[significant silence]
At a party with mentalist Derren Brown and his girlfriend
"Derren, you should have known I wanted to be home to watch Desperate Housewives"
"Well, I'm not a mindreader!"
[significant silence]
In a car on the way to the Horoscope Writers Ball with Russell Grant and Mystic Meg
"How was I supposed to know you'd leave the directions at home- I'm not psychic!"
"I knew you were going to say that!"
"For God's sake, Will, don't be so dramatic! Why does everything have to be some great tragedy?"
Locked outside the home of illusionist Paul Daniels and his lovely wife Debbie McGee
"Oh Paul, I thought you had the keys!"
"I can't help it if they're inside- I'm not a magician!"
[significant silence]
At a party with mentalist Derren Brown and his girlfriend
"Derren, you should have known I wanted to be home to watch Desperate Housewives"
"Well, I'm not a mindreader!"
[significant silence]
In a car on the way to the Horoscope Writers Ball with Russell Grant and Mystic Meg
"How was I supposed to know you'd leave the directions at home- I'm not psychic!"
"I knew you were going to say that!"
Providence is a place in Rhode Island
John Lennon is dead. Paul Macartney is alive.
Eric Morecambe is dead. Ernie Wise is alive.
Jim Morrison is dead. The rest of the Doors are alive.
John F Kennedy is dead. Edward Kennedy is alive.
Tony Hancock is dead. Ken Dodd is alive.
Janis Joplin is dead. Cilla Black is alive.
Is it just me, or is there some sort of pattern here?
Eric Morecambe is dead. Ernie Wise is alive.
Jim Morrison is dead. The rest of the Doors are alive.
John F Kennedy is dead. Edward Kennedy is alive.
Tony Hancock is dead. Ken Dodd is alive.
Janis Joplin is dead. Cilla Black is alive.
Is it just me, or is there some sort of pattern here?
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Almost famous
or "Some of these poems have previously appeared..."
Modesty is a natural thing, so much so that people assume that you are being modest when you are sticking to the literal truth. When I put in my Self definition in 30 statements that "I have published a handful of poems in very obscure places", readers instinctively interpret this as "I have published quite a few poems in a range of quite well known places but don't want to appear big-headed". And they are wrong, as I shall explain, by going through the list.
1. Ampersand
Although there have been several magazines of this name, the one to which I refer was published for two issues in 1984, in Cambridge, England. Each contained a poem by me, one worth forgetting, the other "Student Poet":
In the void before the nicotine dreams,
Noises and thoughts collide and merge
Until the random racket seems
Like a Muse's whispered urge.
Arise, young man, turn on the light,
Before the self-deluding moment goes,
Take up your fountain pen, and write
The sort of stuff too transparent for prose:
Of rain and night, love and aircraft noise,
Of barbed wire, holocaust and tanks -
Find again the self-important joys
Of borrowed woes and teenage angst.
Then lie back, turn the light off,
Dream of suicide and post-mortem fame,
To wake in the morning light, and cough,
And file the page with others, much the same.
The life cycle of the university arts magazine was a short one; essentially, a group of English and Art students would become frustrated at being unable to get their work printed by the cliques running the established magazines; those with rich parents would finance the upfront printing costs for a new one; it would appear, having disappointing sales, relying for distribution on its staff and contributors; the editorial staff would graduate, get bored, or have to start doing some studying; and then it would vanish. Although people often talk about the world of publication as a small gang where knowing the right people is an essential element in success or acceptance, meaning this figuratively, I think, in the case of these little magazines it is quite genuinely the case. So the only two issues of the magazine have vanished almost without trace- my parents I think have a copy somewhere, which now has some rarity value.
2. Gower Society Newsletter
This is perhaps a different sort of obscure. Members of the Gower Society wouldn't call it obscure at all, I suppose, but then the Society is for people who live in or are interested in a small part of Wales west of Swansea. The Society has an annual journal which publishes a range of scholarly articles. At one stage (in the 1950s) it printed topographic poetry about Gower to fill up the gaps at the end of articles, and this is what led me to submit a sort-of topographic poem about Gower (or rather about sin or the end of the world or something, but mentioning Gower) to the editor, who hastily passed it on to the newsletter editor as 'more suitable', and was duly published, sparking off a mini-tradition as subsequent issues included more conventional topographic poems written in verse.
Dead water, Oxwich Bay
The languor of a hot midday in June
Spreads to the sea, where slackwater waves
Slap ineffectually at the sand.
A moment of silence: the humid air unmoved,
All action countermanded by the heat;
And in that moment all the world stood still
A choice to be made: to start again?
Renew the tide of life and thought?
Or else to let it end, worn out
By one too many days and doubts.
My heart drummed out the seconds one by one,
Until at last an answer came -
A breeze across the water cooled the shore;
A Wind forgave the sinful land.
Gabriel unpursed his lips, lowered his horn.
So read things carefully: sometimes people say exactly what they mean!
Modesty is a natural thing, so much so that people assume that you are being modest when you are sticking to the literal truth. When I put in my Self definition in 30 statements that "I have published a handful of poems in very obscure places", readers instinctively interpret this as "I have published quite a few poems in a range of quite well known places but don't want to appear big-headed". And they are wrong, as I shall explain, by going through the list.
1. Ampersand
Although there have been several magazines of this name, the one to which I refer was published for two issues in 1984, in Cambridge, England. Each contained a poem by me, one worth forgetting, the other "Student Poet":
In the void before the nicotine dreams,
Noises and thoughts collide and merge
Until the random racket seems
Like a Muse's whispered urge.
Arise, young man, turn on the light,
Before the self-deluding moment goes,
Take up your fountain pen, and write
The sort of stuff too transparent for prose:
Of rain and night, love and aircraft noise,
Of barbed wire, holocaust and tanks -
Find again the self-important joys
Of borrowed woes and teenage angst.
Then lie back, turn the light off,
Dream of suicide and post-mortem fame,
To wake in the morning light, and cough,
And file the page with others, much the same.
The life cycle of the university arts magazine was a short one; essentially, a group of English and Art students would become frustrated at being unable to get their work printed by the cliques running the established magazines; those with rich parents would finance the upfront printing costs for a new one; it would appear, having disappointing sales, relying for distribution on its staff and contributors; the editorial staff would graduate, get bored, or have to start doing some studying; and then it would vanish. Although people often talk about the world of publication as a small gang where knowing the right people is an essential element in success or acceptance, meaning this figuratively, I think, in the case of these little magazines it is quite genuinely the case. So the only two issues of the magazine have vanished almost without trace- my parents I think have a copy somewhere, which now has some rarity value.
2. Gower Society Newsletter
This is perhaps a different sort of obscure. Members of the Gower Society wouldn't call it obscure at all, I suppose, but then the Society is for people who live in or are interested in a small part of Wales west of Swansea. The Society has an annual journal which publishes a range of scholarly articles. At one stage (in the 1950s) it printed topographic poetry about Gower to fill up the gaps at the end of articles, and this is what led me to submit a sort-of topographic poem about Gower (or rather about sin or the end of the world or something, but mentioning Gower) to the editor, who hastily passed it on to the newsletter editor as 'more suitable', and was duly published, sparking off a mini-tradition as subsequent issues included more conventional topographic poems written in verse.
Dead water, Oxwich Bay
The languor of a hot midday in June
Spreads to the sea, where slackwater waves
Slap ineffectually at the sand.
A moment of silence: the humid air unmoved,
All action countermanded by the heat;
And in that moment all the world stood still
A choice to be made: to start again?
Renew the tide of life and thought?
Or else to let it end, worn out
By one too many days and doubts.
My heart drummed out the seconds one by one,
Until at last an answer came -
A breeze across the water cooled the shore;
A Wind forgave the sinful land.
Gabriel unpursed his lips, lowered his horn.
So read things carefully: sometimes people say exactly what they mean!
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Dooced: the radio play
'tis done, draft 1 at least: and you can read it at Dooced: the radio play .
It is entirely fictional, although since it deals with the sacking of somebody over comemnts on their web site, it obviously nods at Dooce. I have tried to be even-handed on the moral issues involved.
I would be genuinely grateful for comments before I submit it the BBC, especially on the fatal blog entry:
It is entirely fictional, although since it deals with the sacking of somebody over comemnts on their web site, it obviously nods at Dooce. I have tried to be even-handed on the moral issues involved.
I would be genuinely grateful for comments before I submit it the BBC, especially on the fatal blog entry:
Well, that’s ruined my day. I got here bang on time (and therefore was the first in the office), to find a panicky email from Genghis Can’t, head of operations, calling me in to an emergency management team meeting this morning. No, I haven’t been admitted into the League of Very Ordinary Gentlemen of which said team is composed; he needed someone who could plug a projector into a laptop for his Powerpoint presentation, and since the company does not currently employ any monkeys trained for the purpose, it fell to me.
So I got to sit in on their deliberations as they faced the takeover crisis. The last to arrive was Teflon Man- nothing sticks to him. As they went through the Action Points from the last meeting, for his, he first denied that it had been assigned to him, and then blamed his staff for not having done it. He formed a partnership with Inaction Man, whose response to any question was to sigh and say “It’s not quite that simple…” The Silver Sofa was sat upon by everybody. He seemed more interested in my cleavage than in the discussion(understandable, perhaps, but the blatancy with which he was doing it was embarrassing, and totally gross). Eventually they agreed that the only solution to the takeover was for all staff holders of company shares to hold on to them, and they drafted a memo to be circulated to that effect. Being a young female in the room, they mistook me for a typist, so I had to write it for them. I was glad to escape back to my desk and get on with some real work, although now that I had seen our leaders up close, I didn’t give much for the long-term survival of the company.
The United States has a Criminal Justice system...
doesn't it? I ended up last week pitching in to a debate about the right of the US Child Protection Services to take a child into care because her parents refused to consent to medical treatment they considered unnecessary: see Ogres view. (My view is that before a state is granted any more powers to take control of children, it should demonstrate that it can do a good job on the ones it has already: children under the state's care should be the best clothed, fed, looked after, and housed in the country. Of course they should: what excuse has the state got not to? ) It turns out that the CPS in this case were following the law; oddly (from a UK perspective), most of those commenting took the line that they'd be happy to shoot CPS people following their legal duty; my suggestion that perhaps the law could be changed went unnoticed! It is a foreign country.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Self-denying ordinance
Message to self: get on with the other stuff
Namely:
radio play about a blogger sacked for blogging
translation of Alfred de Musset's Nuit de mai
Go on
Update
One down: see Complete and Utter Poetry. It is perhaps worth explaining quite why I ended up translating from the French a poem by a Romantic poet whose work is relatively little known in Britain. Well, I was discussing the biographical influences on the poetry of the Romantic tradition with an international literary panel, and it was suggested that.... NO, NO, NO, that's wrong! that's so wrong! I stopped studying literature formally when I was 16; since then I've only done reading. Early in my career as an archaeological fieldworker, a combination of location and finance meant that I spent a bitter autumn living in a tent in the desolate wastelands of Lincolnshire; our sole entertainment was cheap books from the secondhand bookshop. One was an anthology of French prose and poetry. A working knowledge of French was one of the few practical skills I derived from my education (I have rarely found myself called upon to describe the formation of an ox-bow lake), and so I idly leafed through it, and came across Musset's poem. Knowing nothing about him or his work, I was simply pleasantly surprised that some of it was intelligible to me without much work. After spending a short time playing with a verse translation, I gave up, feeling that it was too 'poetic' to be made relevant, and instead used it as the basis for a poetic poem of my own (Cri de couer). Twenty years on, sorting through old papers, I came across my poem, and thought that it was worth putting on the website. This led me to try to find out about the original poem, and, the volume having long since vanished, I trawled the web, and found, to my surprise, that there was no readily-accessible English translation of the full text. So I have sat down and done one myself. And now I can go to a conference on the biographical influences on the poetry of the Romantic tradition, if I haven't got a better offer, like being shot through the knees and fed raw pigs' brains.
Update 2:
Play done too!
Now, what's next- world peace? perpetual motion?
Namely:
radio play about a blogger sacked for blogging
translation of Alfred de Musset's Nuit de mai
Go on
Update
One down: see Complete and Utter Poetry. It is perhaps worth explaining quite why I ended up translating from the French a poem by a Romantic poet whose work is relatively little known in Britain. Well, I was discussing the biographical influences on the poetry of the Romantic tradition with an international literary panel, and it was suggested that.... NO, NO, NO, that's wrong! that's so wrong! I stopped studying literature formally when I was 16; since then I've only done reading. Early in my career as an archaeological fieldworker, a combination of location and finance meant that I spent a bitter autumn living in a tent in the desolate wastelands of Lincolnshire; our sole entertainment was cheap books from the secondhand bookshop. One was an anthology of French prose and poetry. A working knowledge of French was one of the few practical skills I derived from my education (I have rarely found myself called upon to describe the formation of an ox-bow lake), and so I idly leafed through it, and came across Musset's poem. Knowing nothing about him or his work, I was simply pleasantly surprised that some of it was intelligible to me without much work. After spending a short time playing with a verse translation, I gave up, feeling that it was too 'poetic' to be made relevant, and instead used it as the basis for a poetic poem of my own (Cri de couer). Twenty years on, sorting through old papers, I came across my poem, and thought that it was worth putting on the website. This led me to try to find out about the original poem, and, the volume having long since vanished, I trawled the web, and found, to my surprise, that there was no readily-accessible English translation of the full text. So I have sat down and done one myself. And now I can go to a conference on the biographical influences on the poetry of the Romantic tradition, if I haven't got a better offer, like being shot through the knees and fed raw pigs' brains.
Update 2:
Play done too!
Now, what's next- world peace? perpetual motion?
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Martin Amis in "Yellow Dog is good!" shock
Well, not quite. Over at the Martin Amis discussion forum, which contains, or rather consists of, outpourings of bile by ex-Amis fans (see it at AmisWeb), there is one strand that attempts to stick up for Amis and his work. I will join this lone voice of support, in a way.
Yellow Dog does have severe problems. The main plot is driven by the London underworld, much as appeared in The Information (to supposed comic effect) and London Fields, but the sub-Eastender argot fails to convince, even if it's right (and I decline to believe that A is any more likely to know than I am). The banality of evil is sometimes worth pointing out, but this is just the banality of banality. The plane-crash/comet sub-plot feels tacked on, as does the reportage on the pornography industry, which he claims to find shocking even though in Dead Babies, 25 years ago, he professed to be unshocked by worse. At the core of the novel we are asked to accept that a New Man can be re-engineered into an Old Asshole by being hit on the head, and can then get better.
But when I was reading it last year, there were two other things that rang absolutely false: the tabloid-footballer sub-plot and the home-life-of-the-royals. These I think can reasonably be written up now as prescient. The Wayne Rooney-Colleen saga which has dominated the Sunday papers for the last 6 months is following Amis' script to the letter: Rooney goes off the rails, Colleen stands by him, he goes off the rails, she chucks him out, they reunite for the kids, my booze and birds hell... And the royal wedding raised precisely the awkward questions that turning off the queen's life-support did, with the papers unsure which line to take.
So he gets the press right: MA is Clint Smoker!
Yellow Dog does have severe problems. The main plot is driven by the London underworld, much as appeared in The Information (to supposed comic effect) and London Fields, but the sub-Eastender argot fails to convince, even if it's right (and I decline to believe that A is any more likely to know than I am). The banality of evil is sometimes worth pointing out, but this is just the banality of banality. The plane-crash/comet sub-plot feels tacked on, as does the reportage on the pornography industry, which he claims to find shocking even though in Dead Babies, 25 years ago, he professed to be unshocked by worse. At the core of the novel we are asked to accept that a New Man can be re-engineered into an Old Asshole by being hit on the head, and can then get better.
But when I was reading it last year, there were two other things that rang absolutely false: the tabloid-footballer sub-plot and the home-life-of-the-royals. These I think can reasonably be written up now as prescient. The Wayne Rooney-Colleen saga which has dominated the Sunday papers for the last 6 months is following Amis' script to the letter: Rooney goes off the rails, Colleen stands by him, he goes off the rails, she chucks him out, they reunite for the kids, my booze and birds hell... And the royal wedding raised precisely the awkward questions that turning off the queen's life-support did, with the papers unsure which line to take.
So he gets the press right: MA is Clint Smoker!
Friday, June 03, 2005
Office politics saves the world
Or at least, it would appear that Deep Throat's motive for leaking the results of the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in was pique from the acting second-in-command of the FBI that Nixon hadn't given him the top job.
See the article in Slate.
As the article says, this does rather transform the investigative reporters from fearless seekers for the truth into patsies involved in some private jockeying for position.
See the article in Slate.
As the article says, this does rather transform the investigative reporters from fearless seekers for the truth into patsies involved in some private jockeying for position.
Chick-lit fragment
She woke up with a jerk. This was becoming a depressingly common experince. He grunted and rolled over.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Taking a poem apart
As I say in my Self Portrait, I believe that writing poems is, or ought to be, a literary act (ie the application of critical thinking and reason) rather than primarily a creative act. I am aware that my poems run the risk of becoming bland and cerebral from lack of extravagant language, and so I thought it would be interesting to recount from the inside how a poem ended up in its final form.
Here's the poem:
Going back 1
The gate hangs open 2
I walk the mossy path 3
To the door: its paint is blistered
Blotchy with mould 4
The windows are cracked,
The chimneys nested 5
No fire warms the hearth: 6
The guardians have departed 7
They left the gate
Hanging open. 8
1 The title had started out as "An orphan returns to his childhood home" and the poem described the changes in perspective and scale, from a bereaved standpoint. This seemed both melodramatic and over-specific, and so I shifted the focus to the physical location, leaving the context more open and ambiguous. The new title derives mainly from the traditional advice "Never go back". It's a slightly odd bit of advice, and presumably could be clarified as saying "Never go back expecting things to be the same", reflecting the mental jolt that returning expatriates feel when they find that they are no longer 'at home' in their homeland, and therefore are cut adrift, and which everyone, to a lesser degree, feels when they realise that they are now officially grown up and that nobody will kiss their knees better when they fall over. The implication is that the adult is returning hoping for some form of shelter, support, or guidance (and therefore is currently in a damaged state).
The title also echoes two songs, on a similar theme: Goffin/King's Goin' Back ("I think I'm going back/ to the things I knew so well in my youth") which contrasts the troubled adult with a simpler younger self, and Neil Young's Going Back from Comes a Time (1978) which contrasts a happy past relationship with current distance and loss ("I used to build these buildings/ I used to walk next to you/ Their shadows tore us apart/ And now we do what we do/ Driven to the mountain high / Sunken in the cities deep / Living in our sleep/ I feel like going back /Back where there's nowhere to stay").
So although going back may be a physical journey, there are clear reasons for expecting it to be a mental journey too.
2 I used to visit a lot of derelict and deserted houses which were due for demolition in advance of development, and they seemed unbearably sad. The last occupants, knowing that there would be no successors, often left the building in a strange state, either in haste, in protest, or in laziness. Leaving a gate open is an admission that no visitors are expected or that there is noone to visit. This line is intended to create a feeling of unease as well as the straightforward image of a physical gate.
3 This line surreptiously imports agency and the writer/reader into the action: there is an I that is walking (the rest of the poem is passive description). The mossy path implies disuse, reinforcing the implication of lack of human traffic, and introducing evidence of neglect
4 The door confirms neglect and pushes towards actual decay: the house is no longer maintained, and perhaps hasn't been for some time.
5 The other details, as the visitor looks up at the house, confirm not only that there is neglect and decay, but that it has been active for some time. Cumulatively, this evidence leads to the suspicion that the house is deserted.
The first stanza is intended, therefore, to present a sequence of snapshots (you could film it precisely) of someone walking up to a house, but by the accumulation of details creates a lonely, distanced feeling. It seems unlikely that the visitor will get what they came for.
6 On a practical level, this follows directly on from the blocked chimneys. However, the use of the symbolically-loaded word 'hearth' moves the poem from observation into a more conceptual realm. "Warming the hearth" is a very different thing to "heating the fireplace": its neglect implies a failure to perform the key duties of familyhood, and thus focuses the unease of the first stanza on the absence of people in general and parents in particular.
7 The visitor realises the implication, and can no longer evade it. They are no longer there. (Departed is of course a euphemism for death, although simple absence could be meant)
8 In departing, they were presumably, as noted above, either rushed, reluctant or no longer interested. This is an abdication of their role, effectively their farewell to the visitor. There is a contrast with the expression 'leaving the door open' which means that a return is expected. The line is also an echo of the opening line, so that the poem can be read as a never-ending loop, a sort of limbo.
Thus without at any point describing the emotional state or history of the visitor it tries to imply very specifically the combination of unease, dread and despair that damaged adulthood encounters when trying to solve its problems by returning to what is remembered as a simpler, happier time. This meaning is compressed into 10 short lines. I'm sure it is poetry - whether it's good poetry is another question.
Here's the poem:
Going back 1
The gate hangs open 2
I walk the mossy path 3
To the door: its paint is blistered
Blotchy with mould 4
The windows are cracked,
The chimneys nested 5
No fire warms the hearth: 6
The guardians have departed 7
They left the gate
Hanging open. 8
1 The title had started out as "An orphan returns to his childhood home" and the poem described the changes in perspective and scale, from a bereaved standpoint. This seemed both melodramatic and over-specific, and so I shifted the focus to the physical location, leaving the context more open and ambiguous. The new title derives mainly from the traditional advice "Never go back". It's a slightly odd bit of advice, and presumably could be clarified as saying "Never go back expecting things to be the same", reflecting the mental jolt that returning expatriates feel when they find that they are no longer 'at home' in their homeland, and therefore are cut adrift, and which everyone, to a lesser degree, feels when they realise that they are now officially grown up and that nobody will kiss their knees better when they fall over. The implication is that the adult is returning hoping for some form of shelter, support, or guidance (and therefore is currently in a damaged state).
The title also echoes two songs, on a similar theme: Goffin/King's Goin' Back ("I think I'm going back/ to the things I knew so well in my youth") which contrasts the troubled adult with a simpler younger self, and Neil Young's Going Back from Comes a Time (1978) which contrasts a happy past relationship with current distance and loss ("I used to build these buildings/ I used to walk next to you/ Their shadows tore us apart/ And now we do what we do/ Driven to the mountain high / Sunken in the cities deep / Living in our sleep/ I feel like going back /Back where there's nowhere to stay").
So although going back may be a physical journey, there are clear reasons for expecting it to be a mental journey too.
2 I used to visit a lot of derelict and deserted houses which were due for demolition in advance of development, and they seemed unbearably sad. The last occupants, knowing that there would be no successors, often left the building in a strange state, either in haste, in protest, or in laziness. Leaving a gate open is an admission that no visitors are expected or that there is noone to visit. This line is intended to create a feeling of unease as well as the straightforward image of a physical gate.
3 This line surreptiously imports agency and the writer/reader into the action: there is an I that is walking (the rest of the poem is passive description). The mossy path implies disuse, reinforcing the implication of lack of human traffic, and introducing evidence of neglect
4 The door confirms neglect and pushes towards actual decay: the house is no longer maintained, and perhaps hasn't been for some time.
5 The other details, as the visitor looks up at the house, confirm not only that there is neglect and decay, but that it has been active for some time. Cumulatively, this evidence leads to the suspicion that the house is deserted.
The first stanza is intended, therefore, to present a sequence of snapshots (you could film it precisely) of someone walking up to a house, but by the accumulation of details creates a lonely, distanced feeling. It seems unlikely that the visitor will get what they came for.
6 On a practical level, this follows directly on from the blocked chimneys. However, the use of the symbolically-loaded word 'hearth' moves the poem from observation into a more conceptual realm. "Warming the hearth" is a very different thing to "heating the fireplace": its neglect implies a failure to perform the key duties of familyhood, and thus focuses the unease of the first stanza on the absence of people in general and parents in particular.
7 The visitor realises the implication, and can no longer evade it. They are no longer there. (Departed is of course a euphemism for death, although simple absence could be meant)
8 In departing, they were presumably, as noted above, either rushed, reluctant or no longer interested. This is an abdication of their role, effectively their farewell to the visitor. There is a contrast with the expression 'leaving the door open' which means that a return is expected. The line is also an echo of the opening line, so that the poem can be read as a never-ending loop, a sort of limbo.
Thus without at any point describing the emotional state or history of the visitor it tries to imply very specifically the combination of unease, dread and despair that damaged adulthood encounters when trying to solve its problems by returning to what is remembered as a simpler, happier time. This meaning is compressed into 10 short lines. I'm sure it is poetry - whether it's good poetry is another question.
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