The Roar of the Canon

The full phrase was "drowned out by the roar of the canon", used , if I remember correctly, by a correspondent to a local paper. He was having a rant about the difficulties encountered by young ("experimental"!) poets in their attempts to make their voices heard, about the "carve up" of so-called poetry competitions in which poets belonging to the exclusive club of those who have "made it" award each other prizes (I've heard that one a few times since), and about several other beefs, the natures of which escape me for the moment. He seemed, though, driven by the belief that we(e) poets who don't quite make it into the anthologies are poetry's equivalent of canon fodder. I was reminded of the article a week or so back by what struck me as something of a coincidence: The Guardian newspaper announced that it was to give away booklets on The Great Poets of the Twentieth Century and it was launching the said give-away with a plea to bring back the canon. Meanwhile, the Independent was announcing the launch of its free booklets on the great poets from Chaucer to Hardy. And how was it launching its bonanza? With a plea for the restoration of the canon!

The word canon comes to us, as does so much, from the Greeks. Their word kanon meant a measure or a rule. Our derivation of it was first applied to those books of the Bible that were accepted as authoritative. So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John became the canonical Gospels. Later, it came to be applied to an agreed body of work, say poetry, against which other such works could be measured. It had another benefit: any well-educated young person would grow up becoming familiar with the canon, and this would give him or her a way in to other, newer, works. Poets frequently borrow from other poets or allude to their works in their own poems, and the frequency with which a particular work is alluded to or borrowed from is one of the factors that may, or may not, see it included within the canon. So, any reasonably well-educated person reading in Eliot's The Waste Land

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man
You cannot say or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

would realise, at least in broad terms, that we are entering Biblical territory here, Ezekiel country to be precise; but still there is work to be done, for a poet may allude to works in order to disagree with them as readily as to enlist them to his cause. The Gospel according to Eliot equates Ezekiel with The Son of Man, but then states that the prophet knows nothing of the roots or branches that grow out of the "stony rubbish" because all he knows is a place where the "sun beats" and there is no relief. In the Bible the prophet is commanded by God to stand up and listen. Eliot marginalises God's listening prophet, saying that he knows nothing. God leads Ezekiel through a wasteland of bones. The reference is from Ecclesiastes 12 and is followed by another biblical allusion, "and the dry stone no sound of water", a reference to Moses in Exodus. So we have two images: the dead tree and the dry stone. Both speak of people being forsaken, of a place where there is no relief, no water. Eliot ignores the original meaning of Ecclesiastes 12 to make the point that even a prophet can not know the feelings of freedom introduced briefly near the end of the previous verse (In the mountains, there you feel free) because it is eclipsed by the place of no relief.

A poet writing today could not assume that his readers would have such familiarity with any book or poem, never mind the Bible, and would know that to rely so heavily upon allusion would be to render his work a closed book to most. Which, I suppose, is simply another way of saying that there is no agreed canon upon which the poet can rely for his allusions. Ask why that should be and you will receive a variety of answers. Some will say that Eliot rewrote the canon - or tried to. Others will put it to you that the canon fell into disuse because all the poets included in it were white males, and that the effort to redress the balance led to such an expansion that it became too all-inclusive, too unwieldy. Nearly everyone was in somehow or other! (Interesting that, seeing that between Chaucer and Hardy, The Independent could find only one woman, Emily Dickenson, whilst in its selection of Great Poets of the Twentieth Century, The Guardian also found only one woman, Sylvia Plath. And just don't ask how many non-whites!) Some might tell you that the canon does not exist today because it has never existed.

Obviously, the canon means different things to different people. A canon certainly did exist in the eighteenth century when Erasmus and other humanists demanded a universal knowledge. Later, it was put to good use by the universities. Some will say it was easier then, that the canon more or less chose itself. After all, how many classical works had come down to us ?
Similarly, the Elizabethan canon, in terms of poets, caused little controversy. Something like:
Edmund Spenser
Sir Philip Sidney,
Christopher Marlowe,
Wiliam Shakespeare,
Ben Jonson,
John Donne.

But still today academics refer to poems and write books on particular works or poets, and as, inevitably, their subjects and their quotations coincide or overlap, and as the same works become anthologised again and again (or don't), a sort of canon begins to emerge. So some will contend that, as each different purpose tends to produce its own canon, we end up with too many canons for them to be of any real use. A modern canon, for example, might select works in terms of traditional characteristics; the Alexandrians, to take a different example, chose works that displayed good grammatical usage; a canon could evolve that was socially or environmentally inspired; and so on, you could think of many more, I have no doubt.

So: there are many competing canons and there always will be; or there is no canon, never has been a canon and never will be a canon. It all depends upon your particular viewpoint, but what I truly cannot fathom is how one could bring back the canon! Who would do that, seeing that, as far as I am aware, no canon was ever created by someone sitting down and deciding what was in and what was out. Neither is it a matter for a committee. For many, particularly for those involved in teaching, The Norton Anthology (scroll to 15/11/07) is perhaps the nearest we have to a canon just now, but new voices being drowned-out by the roar of canon? I don't think so; more like some distant, sporadic musket fire! But what do others think?

The Short official Guide Book

I have decided to publish my only long poem, here on my blog. Big deal! I hear you say, and for me it is, if only because until very recently I did not think I ever would. What brought about the change of mind, I have no idea. However, I am not publishing it in one go, but a "page" at a time, in serial fashion. An earlier version was on my web site until recently. Indeed, "Short Official Guide to Ancestral Home" has had been around in one form or another for quite a while. It began as the germ of an idea while on a guided tour of an ancestral house. Our guide was excellent in that he was lucid, witty and patient with questioners. He knew his material thoroughly and had a fund of anecdotes, each of which was associated, in his mind at least, with a particular room, and he kept the group interested and wholly amused. Occasionally he would bring from his store a colourful character we had not met before and would not hear of again, but mostly it would be past owners or residents already introduced to us, who who would be the subjects of some new anecdote. However, because the stories were linked to the various rooms, they were in no chronological order, so, for example, I would find myself wondering whether the "Captain George" of the present story was the "Captain George" who had escaped ignominiously through the kitchen window, or would that have beent his father? And did Fanny's wedding come before or after the accidental shooting of the Viscount? Would Lad May have known about the twins when she wrote the letter, or did the party take place at a later date? And so on. In other words, the details fascinated, but the broad picture escaped me. Sir Frank was obviously in fine fettle when he set sail, and in a bad way at the funeral, but which was the earlier occasion? Had his condition made good progress or had it deteriorated? I remembered having similar difficulties getting the broad picture from my school history lessons, but on the guided tour the ambiguity of it all struck me as a metaphor for society. Civilisation even. Indeed, it occurred to me that the house might itself be a metaphor for civilization. Taking that a step further, some of the house's major players began to assume roles corresponding to those of various figures from history, some historical, some mythical.

I should say that today I can recall almost nothing of the house itself or of its many occupants over the years. None of them appear in the poem - as far as I am aware! The slowly developing imagery of the poem has obliterated all the images of its source. I should also say that it would probably be unhelpful to look for symbols of the usual kind in the poem. Symbols are by definition constant. They stand for what they stand for. In the poem, though, these symbols, like those in the poem's meeting between Caedmon and The Abbess Hilda, are subject to change. The house, for example, may stand for different things at different times.

The drawings (not illustrations in the true sense) are by my grandchildren.

Short, Official Guide to Ancestral Home

Preface to the second edition

In houses such as this
was history shaped, were
revolutions planned. In rooms
like these great men and women
honed their special skills, found
passions ready-made -
and not just ready-made: arranged
like books on shelves for easy reference
and, ultimately: choice. All that are here:
dust, furniture, fine paintings speak
of other days and other ways; of past
explorers, knights to the Crusades,
missionaries of many faiths and creeds
(or none), exploiters, slavers,
traders, smugglers and murderers,
fools and vagabonds; all grew
within these walls, and then set forth
to work their wonders or disasters.
Inventors, torturers and doctors,
men of science, dancers
and romancers, artists,
artisans and engineers,
politicians, parasites and public
men of all descriptions,
bishops, generals and thieves,
all in their day
and in their various ways
lived here.


Walking sticks (unless you are infirm)
and brollies, bags (not handbags),
cameras and overcoats, mobile phones
and parcels, food and drink
must be surrendered in the Entrance Hall.
Whilst doing so, please note
(for we are very proud of them)
the geometric patterns in the floor;
intricate, they are
of Portland stone and Devil's Black.
Beyond (majestic is the only word),
the cantilevered staircase
rises to the upper rooms.
Staircase and the bedrooms may be viewed
on Tuesday afternoons, September
through to January, when
her Ladyship goes south
and you are free
to take the Long Tour, one
we have designed
especially for connoisseurs. Today
should whet your appetite. The door
beyond the staircase is your
open sesame, not just
to our world, but to many.

Ambiguity in Poetry

Good to be back, though in truth I am only partly back, courtesy of a long-defunct, now resurrected dial-up connection that will not do all I ask of it: specifically, it will not allow me to read or write comments. so your indulgence for a few more days, please - and my thanks to those who sent or left messages of support and/or commiseration.

---

In her Times2 column of 3/3/08 Frieda Hughes examined the poem Heart of Cold by Gregory Woods ("Quidnunc", Carcanet), a poem unknown to me until then, but one which I found both strange and strangely compelling. Forsaking her usual form of analyzing a poem's content in terms of opinions expressed, her interest on this occasion was on what is withheld, the ambiguity resulting from demands made on the reader to contribute. "Heart of Cold" describes a male figure, one which those whose voices are the poem's voice, find ravishing. The ambiguity begins in the question as to what form this figure takes: is it a painted figure or a sculpted or a living one. There are indications for and against each - and, I would hazard a guess that there are indications for and against any others you might propose. Here are the opening lines to the second of its three verses:

No part of him has not been fondled, worshipped, kissed or licked
By strangers. Every inch of him has been not only looked
At but assessed by touch and taste, concavities unlocked,
Convexities enfolded, ..............................

Which suggests to me that we are speaking here of a sculpted or a living form - or would be, were it not for the fact that the first verse ends:

We wouldn't have been nearly as excited
If anything unphysical had ever been inserted.

What on earth could that mean? Hughes obviously thinks it indicates that the subject is a painting or a photograph, perhaps in a magazine, and that the poet is suggesting that the introduction of, say, text, would have broken the spell. But if I read the poem in its entirety, I do not find that an easy interpretation to sustain. Furthermore, I cannot think that the word "inserted" would be the preferred word for that circumstance. But the truth is that we do not know for sure.

Looking back to the sentence which immediately precedes this rather odd statement, we read:

...................................Extreme detachment suited
Both him and us.

The nature of the relationship existing between this mysterious figure and the reader is characterized by distance. He may be an object of adoration; it may be that no part of him has escaped the kissing, fondling and licking of strangers; but the relationship between him and them is one of cool, remote physicality. As I see it then, the poet is saying that if something unphysical was ever to intrude into this relationship, say feelings of eroticism, of love or of some mental or spiritual imperative, then the excitement that his body held for them, the voices of the poem, would be over.

The poem set me thinking again about the whole question of ambiguity in poetry. What is it? Where does it come from, and why?

The first question is the most easily answered: it is the lack of a single, clear, incontrovertible meaning. We often speak as though ambiguity belongs only in poetry and literary writing, but, like the other constituents of poetry, rhyme, rhythm etc, it is part of everyday experience. WAY OUT PEDESTRIANS is a sign I saw recently. REFUSE TO BE PLACED IN THIS BIN is another well-quoted example.

As to where it comes from, there are numerous sources, metaphor and the way the poet manipulates the metaphors, for example; the juxtaposition or conflation of conflicting or contradictory meanings is another; then there is the ambiguity arising from puns, allusions, allegories, etc; sudden changes in the poet's perspective can mystify; tautology and contradictory or irrelevant images confuse, as might the use of words such as "let", meaning both to allow and to hinder. Any of these might be either accidental or intended by the poet.

"Why" is perhaps the most fundamental question. Why is it that something which in much prose writing (as in the two notices above) would be thought an error of either diction or reasoning, becomes not merely legitimate for the poet, but prized? Because poetry is such a compressed and information-rich language, with so many parts of speech banging up against one another unprotected by the redundant words of prose, it would be almost impossible to exclude ambiguity altogether. Fortunately, the poet is able to turn it to good account and use it: to increase the richness and the subtlety of the language still further; to hold conflicting thoughts in a kind of balance; to expand the literal meaning of what is being said; or to give layers or shades of meaning. There are others, but it might be more to the point to take an example. I have chosen an early poem of Seamus Heaney's: The Play Ways. It dates from the sixties. Heaney, a teacher for a short time, is writing from experience, and what he describes is a lesson that is very much in the spirit of the sixties: he plays the class a piece of music and then they write. Nothing comes between those two experiences, no guidance from the teacher, no examples, no questions, nothing. He is happy that they should forget him, forget that he is there. Heaney has some notes, but nothing as formal as a lesson plan. Part of the charm of this piece for me, I suppose, is that I was teaching then, and saw and took lessons such as this and was thrilled (at times) by the results. Impossible now, of course: the culture has changed. Nothing is worth teaching now unless the results can be measured - and how do you measure a child's response to a piece of music. Well, yes, you could count how many punctuation marks were in the "right" or "wrong" place, but that somehow misses the point, I do believe.

I find it an interesting example in that much of the ambiguity is inherent in the content rather than either the syntax or the choice of words. It could be no other way unless Heaney had been happy to conjecture about what was happening to his pupils. He doesn't; for the most part he describes what he sees and hears. He tells us, for example, that the pupils are unsure what to do, but also that something (we presume something wonderful) has happened to them such that for the moment he is surplus to their requirements. So he proceeds ambiguously, as he must, given that the whole exercise is ambiguous in terms of expected outcomes, etc. But before even that, the title is ambiguous: does the word Play have to do with learning by play or is it play as in music. Either or both, would be appropriate. And what about that last line? Does it apply to the children, to the notes in the symphony or to both?

The Play Way

Sunlight pillars through glass, probes each desk
For milk-tops, drinking straws and the old dry crusts.
The music strides to challenge it
Mixing memory and desire with chalk dust.

My lesson notes read: Teacher will play
Beethoven's Concerto Number Five
And class will express themselves freely
In writing. One said: `Can we jive?'

When I produced the record, but now
The big sounds has silenced them. Higher
And firmer, each authoritative note
Pumps the classroom up as tight as a tyre

Working its private spell behind eyes
That stare wide. They have forgotten me
For once. The pens are busy, the tongues mime
Their blundering embrace of the free

Word. A silence charged with sweetness
Breaks short on lost faces where I see
New looks. Then notes stretch taut as snares. They trip
To fall into themselves unknowingly.


Finally, and this is for those odd occasions when for some reason you feel unable to go with the flow, to live with Keats's uncertainties, doubts and mysteries; perhaps you have an essay to write (and ambiguity is big with essays) and need something you can sum up; whatever, for all such occasions here, as a possible way in, are a few simple questions to ask yourself before diving into a full analysis of what on earth it means.

• Does the ambiguity matter? Does it add anything? Would the poem be impoverished if the ambiguity did not exist? Try to see the poem without it.


• Could both (or all) the possibilities allowed by the ambiguity be valid? And would that enhance the poem?


• Is there a reference to it? It is ambiguous when you first encounter it, but maybe there is something later in the poem that will refer back to it, or something earlier that upon rereading the poem will throw some light on the passage.


• Does it result from a simple omission, accidental or intended? Words (which the reader is meant to supply) are sometimes omitted for the sake of rhythm or compression. Punctuation may be omitted. Any such may cause confusion as to meaning.


• Is it simply a decluttering? The poet has stripped away all the inessentials to make, say, an image stand out more starkly, but in removing something from the context has opened up the possibility of new interpretations of the passage in question.

Six Word Memoir Challenge

I have been tagged to write a six-word memoir by poet hound, a challenge which appealed to me, the challenge being to sum up my life in six words. I do believe that in the attempt I have learnt a bit about myself!

The game is an interesting twist on a challenge Earnest Hemingway was once offered. He bet $10 that he could sum up his life story in six words. He wrote: For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here are the rules:

* Write your own six word memoir
* Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
* Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
* Tag five more blogs with links
* And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Details at World Class Poetry

My effort:

rambling
signpost misaligned
path more rewarding

I have challenged:
Jim Murdoch
Patteran
John Baker
Maitzen
Orgrease-crankbait

"Illustration" John Minton

With this post it is adieu for a few days. (See previous post)


Towards the end of last year, a very good friend lent me four or five back editions of Illustration, a quarterly magazine that I had not met before. As the name suggests, its area of interest is book illustration. I was at once impressed by the quality of its production; the typography, general lay-out and design had all received generous portions of care and attention to detail, as, indeed, they should have in an art periodical, but that is not always the case. The articles are varied, interesting, well written and well researched. For a publication of its type and price (£6 at time of writing) it is excellent, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone whose interests lie in that direction. Its stated aims are worth quoting, I think: "The aim of the magazine is simple. We wanted a general magazine about illustration - the artists, the collectors, the collections, the exhibitions, the history, the philosophy and the key events relating to this subject. We wanted to discuss the work of great artists from the past as well as new graduates currently coming out of college. We wanted to explore children’s book illustrators alongside those who work on adult novels and classics - or even political manifestos and train timetables. We wanted to consider the humorous, the serious, the sinister and the surreal".

It was nostalgia, I have no doubt, that directed my attention first to the Spring 2006 edition featuring John Minton. I was at art school in the early fifties, studying for a N.D.D. (National Diploma in Design) in book illustration. I would rather have been studying painting, if the truth be known, but it was not to be, and book illustration was a compromise. Painting was on the syllabus, of course, and sculpture, and there were evening classes where I could top-up, but in the illustration sessions I was probably more interested in what the others were doing than in what I was producing. And what the others were mostly doing was polishing their credentials as up-and-coming Mintons, for Minton's star was at its zenith just then. (He was to prove himself something of a shooting star in the very best Bohemian tradition, when, following an unhappy childhood, he would plunged - or find himself plunged - into a life of booze and drugs, resulting in a tragic and untimely death.) It seems incredible that in a life so short and so filled with distraction, he managed to leave so much, but being force-fed Minton at every turn, to the point where his way of representing lush, tropical vegetation was de rigueur, as, indeed, were Samuel Palmer moons and trees with crescent-shaped branches, I was to that extent put off the whole subject. It was all very tight and formulaic and not at all to my taste. It was not until much later in life that I came to see his achievements in a somewhat different light. Had I not come to that realisation, Illustration would certainly have steered me towards it. I do still find the paintings, as I found them then, lacking in substance. He strikes me as an illustrator's painter rather than a painter's illustrator. The illustrations to Kay Dick's novel An Affair of Love for example, and the rather lovely (slightly Lowryish?) paintings to accompany an article on St Helens for Future magazine are both represented in Illustrationby excellent reproductions, as are my own personal favourites, the delightful images for The Snail that Climbed the Eiffel Tower.

Minton : The Tate Collection

going, going...

There is yet one more post that I am hoping to make, either later today or early tomorrow. It is one that has been hiding in the wings for some time, waiting for its turn. Unfortunately, after it has made its appearance I shall be going off-line for a while. For how long, exactly, I am not sure, the reason being that my junk / computer / painting room is to be redecorated. To make matters worse, our decorator has brought forward his start date to Monday. Part of me queries the wisdom of this project, but in essence it an attempt to reclaim our last outpost of disorder for civilization. For the past week or so, between bouts of incapacity caused by a chest condition, I have been consigning books, bits of equipment and other paraphernalia to various forms of temporary storage. A God-sent opportunity to get rid of junk and clear the decks for a new order, you might think...

This morning over coffee I am reading that the Museum Association is trying to persuade its members to do exactly what I have been doing: it wants them to consider selling and / or simply removing unwanted artifacts from their storerooms as a first step to making their collections more dynamic. Unheard of heresy! The big curatorial No-No! Apart from the curator's first commandment of retention, absorbed with the first drops of their mothers' milk and with every breath taken since then, there is, as I have discovered, a practical disincentive: what happens during such a clear-out is that car load after car load (lorry load in their case)of stuff that "could be useful at some time in the future" is removed to some dump or disposal point without the remaining pile of jumble ever growing any smaller. The sole achievement, it seems to me, is that in the new, enlightened order, most of the surviving articles cannot be found.

There is a plus, of course: during the demolition of the old organized chaos, long-lost or long-forgotten books, manuscripts and artifacts of many kinds are rescued from oblivion and restored to some sort of prominence in the heap.

I will not say adieu good friends, as I may yet inflict this one more post upon you. (Trying hard, in my present condition, to avoid words like final or last, you understand!)

Galleries, banks and blockbusters

A long overdue discussion has broken / is breaking / is about to break. Nicholas Penny, the newly-installed director of the National Gallery has stuck his head above the parapet to say that in his opinion: The responsibility of a major gallery is to show people something they have not seen before. Also, he has gone on record as saying: I have a lot of thinking to do about our exhibitions and the direction they are taking. The direction they have increasingly taken over the past thirty to forty years has been for more and more and bigger and bigger blockbusters of artists of popular appeal, the (mostly) dead celebs of the art world, in fact. We have seen Velasque, Titian, Monet (more than once) and their like; we have seen long queues at the box offices and no doubt the galleries have seen welcome improvements to their bank balances. All to the good, of course. Nothing wrong with any of that. It is what is, or might be, sacrificed that is the cause for concern. Dr Penny has now shown us the kind of thing he thinks has been sidelined: his new exhibition is of the work of Giovanni Segantini, Luigi Russolo and Guiseppe Pellizza.

Rohan Maitzen at Maitzen Reads pulls from Wayne Booth's The Company We Keep an interesting quote on the purpose of literary criticism and the critic's responsibility, which, it seems to me, could as easily have been directed towards the point and purpose of a major art gallery and the curator's responsibility. It is not, Booth suggests to pack.... only the best that has been.... but to find those forms of critical talk, that will improve the range or depth or precision of our appreciations. Take out the phrase critical talk and substitute some other that has to do with the display of visual art, and we are just about where I think we should be. And what then of the blockbuster? I see no reason why the two forms of exhibition should not thrive in each other's company, indeed, why they should not support each other. Why not link one of each, not necessarily at the same gallery but have two galleries co-operating maybe, and have each promote the other. Sell joint tickets, for example, or have each selling discounted tickets for the other? I seem to recall that the exhibition of Mexican Art that bowled me over in my student days was the blockbuster of its time. It is now too far back for my memory - or the web, it seems - to date, though I will say the fifties, and was way earlier than any suggestions I have seen for the first blockbuster. It may not have drawn crowds to equal those that went to Tutankhamun, nor put as much away in the bank for its organisers, I just don't know, but the reason I raise it at all is to point out that it fulfilled both requirements: it drew people, including those who did not frequent galleries, and it introduced them to an art they had not seen before.

kicking dead whales down the beach

This post had it beginnings in the discussions following my earlier post on clobbering the language, "The Language is Under Siege". Jargon was a little outside my self-imposed terms of reference, but is definitely worth a word or two.

The word jargon derives from Middle English and Middle French words for twittering, the chattering of birds.
It has two main definitions: either it is a specialised language used within a clearly defined profession, group or culture, especially when the words are not understood by those outside the group (though there are exceptions to this last, which I will note as I come to them); or it is a pretentious or meaningless language. All that follows has to do with the first definition - though it may not always seem so!

Within each user group the jargon has a particular function and/or effect. Here are some examples:-

Trade and Professional Groups use jargon to improve communication. It develops as shorthand expressions for specialised and/or technical concepts, and at its best achieves a clarity and precision which a long description would find hard to match. A good example would be critical path, meaning a sequence of operations in which an error in any one will prove fatal for the whole. The medical and legal professions are well known for their use of jargon. For health workers it eliminates the need for long descriptions, reduces misunderstandings and crosses normal language barriers. Here, though, it is possible to find many of the best examples of jargon used for deliberate non-communication. A doctor may tell his nurse, not wanting to increase your anxiety with bad news, that you have a "bilateral perorbital haematoma", though why you should not be privy to the fact that you have a black eye is hard to fathom. True, the use of medical jargon to obfuscate belongs more to the medics of the past than those of the present day, but no doubt it still does occur, and anyway, it makes a good example. Here, though, is a technical specification not intended to obfuscate, but unless you are an initiate, I bet it does! You find such specifications in advertisements and user guides, so they are meant for the likes of you and me. To a person trained in electronics, though, each word of jargon would be worth a page or more of description.

The HK 980 is a traditional integrated amplifier with 80W per channel while the flagship HK 990 (pictured) has 2x 150W amplifier, balanced XLR inputs and outputs, coaxial and optical digital inputs, MM and MC phono inputs, USB connectivity, Real-Time Linear Smoothing Technology (RLS IV), dual subwoofer outputs, 2.2-channel EzSet/EQ room optimisation and a High-resolution Synchronisation Link.

An interesting special case is that of airspeak or air traffic control English. After W.W.II. the airline countries of the world decided that henceforth all commercial flying would be conducted using a restricted form of English. It is concise and unambiguous, using no word that sounds like another or has a similar meaning. The rules allow only short episodes of speech between opportunities for the other participant to talk-back. Frequent check-backs are also built into the system to ensure that what is heard is what was said. No words from outside the code may be used and no other subject matter broached. The conversations are monitored and the rules strictly enforced. All pilots are trained in the airspeak before being allowed to fly commercially.

A fragment of airspeak.
control BA six zero six Alfa: squawk ident.
pilot Identing, BA six zero six Alfa.
(ident = identify, identing = identifying, squawk = reveal, make known)

Certain activities acquire their own jargon, often filching them from trade or professional groups. Computer users have generated more jargon than their screens have pixels. Some very familiar ones are: random access memory, read only memory, low-level language and virtual memory, but what about: backwards compatible change (meaning a hardware or software revision that allows older versions to run without crashes or error messages); backward compatibility (meaning the reverse of the above: crashes will occur); blogosphere, (the totality of all the blogs); misbug (an unintended characteristic of a program that logically should have been a bug, but in fact has proved to be a desirable feature); and parent message (meaning whatever it is that a follow-up follows up)? And then what about liveware and bioware? Both of these are facetious references to people - usually the computer user. There are literally hundreds more, but for the moment I will confine myself to two that I find amusing: ambimouseterous (derived from ambidextrous and meaning "able to use the mouse with either hand" - I was going to include this one in my "affronts to the language" category, but, wholly against my better judgement, I rather like it!); and quadruple bucky (denoting the use of four shift keys together whilst typing a fifth - often with the nose! - not much used now, as modern programming has rendered it obsolete).

Because of the computer's ubiquity and importance, many examples of its jargon have found their way into common usage (e.g. "Let me have your input on this." and a bottom-up approach), however, any particularly useful phrase capable of wide applicability, is liable to make it into common parlance no matter from which walk of life it derives.

Another use for jargon is as a badge denoting membership of a group. As such, its use is to consolidate group identity. The professions have been known to use their jargon to bestow an aura of authority and/or "knowingness". Others may use it simply to impress or to keep non-members firmly on the outside - all powerful effects of jargon used for obfuscation. Not just the professions, though: school children, secret societies, religions and others have all used it to keep the outsider at bay.

A former piece of jargon that has made its way into general use and best describes such jargon is Bullshit - unless you prefer the twittering of birds, that is.

Jargon which becomes highly fashionable within the group (Buzz-words) appears to have as its main function the creation of an air of excitement or a sense of being at the cutting edge (the most advanced or ambitious stage of an activity), no less! Power-dressing (a formal style of dressing as a sign of status by women) would belong to this group

The school playground. is a rich source of jargon used to confer membership and to reinforce group identity. If a child cannot talk the playground talk he or she will miss out on the pecking order which children establish for themselves. Cool (O.K., fashionable), fit (of a girl: sexy, fanciable), minge and mingey (noun and adjective: the opposite of fit - from the taboo word for a woman's genitals) and retard (a stupid person) have all been part of the school jargon in my area recently, some very briefly, for it is often very local and very short-lived. Indeed, fit recently provided a splendid illustration of how this can work. Its use was very prevalent among the youngsters at the local schools, but then, almost overnight it dropped out of the vocabulary. A few weeks later one of the King brothers in Emmerdale was using it in the bedworthy sense.

At this point I am becoming conscious of the fact that this blog is ostensibly dedicated to poetry and the visual arts, so I thought maybe I should include something from those areas. That being so, I cannot resist giving you a few scraps from Henry Reed's Judging Distances. It is from his Lessons of War. In this poem he is having some fun with military jargon - and much else.

.......................................but at least you know
How to report on a landscape: the central sector;
The right of arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
                  And at least you know

That maps are of time, not place....................


The human beings, now: in what direction are they,
And how far away would you say? And do not forget
         There may be dead ground in between.

But what I had intended to give, were some examples of the jargon poets use among themselves, Here are a few: Iambic Pentameters (having five "te, tum" feet to a line); feet, (a term roughly corresponding to bars in music); wrenched rhymes (words forced out of their natural sounds to make them rhyme); envoi, (a short, final stanza); bang, bang, bang, crash. (a phrase sometimes used to describe the alliterative character of Anglo Saxon verse: three alliterated stresses followed by a non-alliterated stress); and alliteration, (the repetition of the same initial sounds in neighbouring words - a great favourite of the school poetry lesson, or was when I was at school. Is it still?) Poets have nearly as much jargon up their sleeves as computer users and Hi Fi enthusiasts.


Clobbering the language. This, basically is where we came in. The following are, in my humble judgment, simply affronts to the language:

Incentivize Giving (usually the peasants) an incentive of some sort.
Disincent The reverse of incentivize.
Commoditize Every tycoon's nightmare: the product loses its status on the high street and becomes just another piece of consumer junk.
Soup to nuts Suppling everything the customer might require.
Disambiguate Deciding on a single meaning for a set of data.
Face time Time spent in face-to-face dialogue.

There remains just the need to explain the title. The expression kicking dead whales down the beach is another that derives from computing. It was first coined as part of a rant about the difficulty of getting things done under an IBM mainframe. It went: Well, you could write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the beach. It has come to refer to any slow, difficult and disgusting process. Incidentally, if you had to look up the references using the three links, it will have given some idea of the shortening and simplifying effect of jargon in general - assuming you understand it.

Art-maker or piss-taker

Imagine you are living a hundred years ago. Ninety one years, to be precise. You are helping to curate the inaugural exhibition of an art society, The Society of Independent Artists that you and a few artist friends have co-founded. You are receiving the members' entries when at the last minute, just as submissions are about to close, Marcel Duchamp walks in and plonks his entry on the table. It is a urinal. Just that, an ordinary, everyday urinal. Indeed, you recognise it as one of those dollar or so jobs from Pans R Us in the High Street. He wants to exhibit it under the title: Fountain. You walk all round it, examining it closely, looking for his input (pun not intended), but no, beyond removing its price tag and signing it R Mutt 1917, he has not changed it one iota. There has been no exercise of skill whatever. It's a wind-up, it's got to be. He's taking the proverbial - only, he looks serious enough, and is very persistent. Reluctantly, you admit to yourself that you can see there is something about its shape, something you had not noticed before, not in all the years you have been using such things (or not, depending on whether you happen to be in that half of the population which uses such things)... even so, your instinct is to reject it, for you do not want to become the fall guy, the laughing stock of the art world. However, a quick look through the society's constitution confirms your worst fears: as a fully paid-up member he is entitled to show any work of his that he pleases. Ah, that might be your get-out clause: his work. You point out that it is not his work, that he bought it, it is some other person's work, someone who is not a fully paid-up member. There is nothing from him, no contribution that would make it his within the meaning of the rules. As a work of art it is still raw material.

He of course, will have none of that. No contribution? Was it not he who saw it, his perspicacity that first recognised its potential, was it not he who rescued it from its former fate, and has he not now, by changing its environment and giving it a title, cancelled out whatever utilitarian significance it may previously have possessed? And by doing all the aforementioned, has he not furnished it with a wholly new and more appropriate point of view? In short, can you not see that he has transformed it into a new work by generating a new and radical thought about it!

But still you are unconvinced; after all, the society is about art, not philosophy, and art is about line, colour, texture, shape, isn't it? New thoughts, new points of view... that sounds like philosophy... and in any case, he didn't actually reel it all off like that there and then, even if he was getting there slowly, making it up as he went along, and even if one month later, when The Blind Man, a magazine he was co-editing, came out, the whole justification was in place and there for all to read. Too late to help you, of course, and doubtful if it would have, anyway. Some thought he was just making a play for intellectual respectability (the stuff he actually made by hand was a touch weak, anyway), but you allowed his entry and the rest, as they say, is history.

But it is history that will not lie down. (Ah, I almost forgot to say you can come back now to 2008.) You must be finding it to be wearing a bit thin by now! Every so often someone pops their head above the parapet to ask again if perhaps the whole thing was a joke, if Duchamp was taking the proverbial - or maybe even conning us all: public, curators, critics, other artists and art historians. Jonathan Jones in The Guardian of Saturday, 9th February is the latest (unless you know of a more recent someone), though he suggests varying the question to ask how Duchamp came by his highly original thought. The question is interesting, but does not seem to lead to an answer to the first question, which is also interesting, but hardly light-creating. Suppose we were to assume for the sake of argument that Duchamp was a joker or a con artist (for it hardly matters which), what does that say of the artists who have worn his mantle since? Not much, for either they too were duped or they saw in Duchamp's displays something that he missed. My father had a favourite saying: Many a true word spoken in jest. It could make the perfect riposte to a sarcastic remark or some other thoughtless barb. Maybe Duchamp's jokes, if that is what they were, had a wisdom that was hid from him. But no matter, the situation is not much changed if Duchamp was being genuine. For us, looking at the situation with which we are faced today, the same two possibilities exist: either his inheritors have seen in him something worthy of further exploration or they have latched on to a way of making an easy buck. So far as he is concerned there does exist a third possibility: that Duchamp began by taking us all for a ride, but then realised that he had stumbled on something more than he had bargained for: an all-time winner. It would change nothing for the present situation, even if we knew.

Ah, if we knew... Yes, it would be fascinating to know what was in the mind of Duchamp, to understand his motives and to know by what stages he reached his vision, but it seems unlikely that we ever will. Nor would it profit those who simply want to understand what has happened since. We are left as we always are, to pick our way through the forest of good, bad and indifferent artists that has grown up in the soil that, for better or for worse, he has bequeathed us.

A Nod to Nabokov

So it has broken out again, the debate as to whether Nabokov's last book, The Original of Laura, should be destroyed in accordance with the author's dying wish, or preserved for posterity - which might make one wonder what rights this posterity has over the rights of a dying man.

But before we get into discussions of general principle, let us first be clear what we are talking about: we are talking about notes for a novel. Not a novel, but notes, notes written on fifty index cards. It seems this was his usual method, he would shuffle the notes around as part of his editing process, but a novel might take a couple of thousand cards, as indeed did Ada or Ardor. So, The Original of Laura was, to put it mildly, unfinished. Furthermore, it was his habit to write the middle of the novel last. This is taking us further and further from anything resembling a novel. The Original of Laura was complete in his head, but far from complete on the cards. It is no more complete in the document sitting in the Swiss bank vault, for that document was typed up from the cards. Posterity has no hope of getting Nabokov's last novel. It may indeed yet be given a novel spun out of Nabokov's notes by someone only too happy to climb on the current bandwagon and produce one of the novels that a deceased novelist didn't actually write, but it will not get Nabokov's last novel.

I feel strongly about this particular case, but as to the general question, might it not depend upon the state of mind of the author making his or her dying wish? (And is the case that Nabokov was hallucinating at the end? And was that when he made his dying wish? If so, that changes the argument mightily, I would have thought!)Famous precedents, on the other hand, can not make it right to ignore an author's dying wish - for example Kafka wanted his works destroyed,but his wishes were ignored, with the result that we became the beneficiaries of what I regard as a wrong act. That a thing has been done before does not make it right to do it again, but in the matter of the value to posterity of the notes,I do have one misgiving: suppose an artist left a sketch book filled with drawings for the magnum opus that was in his head to paint... would I feel differently about that? I think I might. I do believe that, unlike the notes for a novel, we would then be destroying something of inestimable value. Why are the two cases so different?I am not sure, it may have something to do with thinking that the sketches can stand alone as statements, whereas the notes cannot. Am I deceiving myself? Again, I don't know, but I shake off the misgiving with the thought that Nabokov is best known for Lolita, not his best work to my way of thinking, but better that than he be best remembered for a book he never wrote, which I suspect is beginning to happen.

One final point:- It has been claimed that a plot has been produced from the notes. If that is what posterity is to receive, I am not impressed. I am even more inclined to the belief, as I have written elsewhere, that literature is what remains when you disregard the plot.

The Language is Under siege

Carol Anne Duffy has a little gem of a poem called Poet for Our Times, the first four lines of which are:

I write the headlines for a daily paper.
It's just a knack one's born with all-right squire.
You do not have to be an educator,
just bang the words down like they're screaming Fire!

There's more of the same quality. For example, the poem ends:

IMMIGRANTS FLOOD IN CLAIMS HEATHROW WATCHER.
GREEN PARTY WOMAN IS A NIGHTCLUB TART.
The poems of the decade... Stuff'em! Gotcha!
The instant tits and bottom line of art.

A few weeks ago my wife, Doreen, and I decided to grace the local pizza emporium with an order for our evening meal. I rang the order through. The conversation went thus:

Good evening sir, how may I help?
I'd like to order a delivery, please.
Fantastic! What would you like?
An eight inch vegetarian hot...
Fantastic!
...thin base.
Fantastic! Anything else?
Yes, one portion of kebabs.
Fantastic! Anything else?
No, that does it.
Fantastic! How might you wish to pay?
Cash.
Fantastic! It will be with you in twenty minutes.
Fantastic!
Fantastic, sir!

There was more, in point of fact: we had to confirm my telephone number and address. Both of those were fantastic also.

They are both in their respective ways, extreme examples of the same process, my friendly pizza purveyor and Duffy's self-styled poet. Extreme, but by no means rare. For a long time now - four or five decades to my personal knowledge - we have witnessed this process of cranking up the meaning of words or over-using them to exaggerate some aspect of (usually) a very ordinary happening or situation. Now no sportsman or team can ever just lose. You might have said that Andy Murray lost the last of five closely-contested sets 28-30. Not a bit of it :he crashed out. Manchester United may have lost by the odd goal after extra time or on penalties; no matter, they would have crashed out. No team or sportsman ever just loses. Not dramatic enough. Know what I mean? Alternatives to crashing out would include being thrashed or humiliated, but simply losing... never! A browse over the paper stand in my local newsagent shop this morning (Friday) turned up the following headlines: "Archbishop of Canterbury wants Sharia Law", "Winter has gone for ever", "Sold for £100 million : the soul of football", "Our children are being tested to destruction". A while ago, "Nation rocked by blizzards", greeted a rather ordinary fall of snow and strong winds.

Although not in this morning's examples, the hyperbole (hype as we usually now refer to it) will very often centre around the stretching "to destruction" of the natural meaning of a single word or phrase. Such words and phrases gather certain associations or emotions, usually pejorative. The words then become trigger words, releasing their newly acquired charge of emotion whenever they are rolled out for that purpose. Examples from this morning's cull would include Sharia, alien (referring to justice), Muslim and tolerance (as opposed to zero-tolerance, another such word, though usually having welcome associations). Each hype or over-use sucks out a shade more of the word's original meaning. Hyperbole becomes almost hyperbolism, used as an art form.

While I was still mulling over these things the other day, I discovered that Jim Murdoch had weighed in with his post on swearing (Feb 7th)and with a comment to that post, mentioning how swear words were losing their power. Exactly so, they are a splendid example of what I have in mind. I do not doubt that this overuse of words, stretching their natural meaning, and this incessant "shouting" is today's greatest threat to the language, for we have all become guilty of it. Here are some I have heard recently: "I hate men with large knots in their tie!" Really? I take leave to doubt that she meant what she said. She probably meant that she doesn't like to see large knots in men's ties. Not the same thing at all. "I love bald men!" What, all of them? Trivial examples, no doubt, but those two words "hate" and "love" are constant offenders and process is sometimes easier to see in the trivial than in the cataclysmic. (So, why shouldn't I indulge myself once in a while?) One of the basic rules of hype is: never use a comparative when a superlative will do. It's no good having a better car, you must have the best. "Today" was not just warmer than yesterday, it was the warmest this month, even if it is only the 4th of the month. I haven't mentioned advertising, one of the worst offenders, but everyone will have their own examples. Here is mine: "It is more than a car: it is a culture".

Not everyone will agree with me that the examples mentioned above represent the greatest threat to our language, and it is true there are others. An interesting one I have come upon recently, though not one likely, I think, to prove fatal, comes from predictive texting. Prophets of doom have long bemoaned the "C U l8er" culture, though I see no reason to think that the youngster (it usually is) who sends that will thereby become unable to write "See you later." No, it is the predictive element that might become of interest. The predictive function on the mobile guesses at the word you are wanting to write and changes the letters in the current word whenever you type a letter that indicates to it that its latest guess is incorrect. If when you have completed the word, it is still wrong, you then make the corrections - usually by pressing the * when all the letters will rearrange themselves and form the word you want - or not, when you will have to correct it manually. I find this very tedious, and so, apparently, do some youngsters, for they are developing the habit of not correcting the final word, but leaving the mobile's guess in place. I tried writing (not sending!) a few texts using this system: my intended "Giving Pat a lift." became "High sat a Jjj". On another attempt "Barmaid" became "cabmad", "At the pics with Pat" became "At thief sigh whig sat"The incredible fact is that the kids are learning to read these messages . A new, alternative, language is developing! Handwriting and neologisms are blamed for much that is wrong or going wrong, as is one of my pet hates, the ascendancy of graphics over words. Practically every User's Manual and every set of Assembly Instructions contains either no words or a bare minimum. Instead you get symbols, arrows and drawings of unrecognizable objects. No need to read at all these days, some would say. Nevertheless, I remain convinced about the major evil.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not arguing for stasis. When you have that you have a body on your hands, yet people have tried: governments indeed have set up committees to rule on correct and incorrect use. All such are doomed to inglorious failure. The language goes its own way in response to changing circumstances and changing needs. it has always done so, and long may it continue to do so, but abuse of the language is not a changing condition or a changing need. Even so, it has seen off greater threats in the past and will no doubt do so again. In my view, one group of people charged with the responsibility of acting as guardians to the language are the poets. It is not why we write or try to write poetry, but it remains the case that while there is a body of writing being produced in which such issues are paramount, there remains hope of a full recovery. Seamus Heaney is a good example. His interest in Anglo Saxon poetry, his feeling for each word, knowledge of its roots and, through those roots, his awareness of its associations and allusions, all contribute towards making him the poet that he is and guardian supreme.

The sins of the poet are visited upon the poem

"If a man stinks, his verse is bound to smell". That graphic phrase was said to me once about the poetry of Ezra Pound. It could be thought to sum up well enough the public response to him over the past few decades. Now, though, it seems things might be set to change: one hundred and sixty two of his letters, written over a period of forty years to various Chinese intellectuals, and unearthed by fifteen years of painstaking research, are about to be published, shedding light, it is said, on this very misunderstood man and his poetry.

So where are we at the moment, before their publication? What do we know of this elusive person? What I personally know of his poetry is that before WWII he was responsible for the birth of Imagism. He was also very influential in the development of Vorticism, whose chief exponent was Wyndham Lewis, founder and editor of Blast. For a while during the war Pound lived with Yeats in a cottage in Sussex, studying Japanese,which studies led him to fall under the spell of Ernest Fenellosa, an American academic working on Chinese characters, though in Japan. Although neither of them knew Chinese at all well, and by a process which many have called mistaken, what Pound took from Fenellosa's studies was something he called the ideogrammic method, which he developed to the full in his magnum opus, The Cantos. (This is where, in another life, I came in, so far as Pound is concerned, and for a few years thought there could be no other poetic method - but that, as they say, is another story.) Based upon the pictorial nature of Chinese characters, it was in essence our old friend allusion, used down the centuries by poets everywhere. The Cantos are sprinkled everywhere with simple quotes intended to evoke the work from which they are taken. (Fine, if you are well-versed in literature - as, indeed, you need to be to read, say, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with which Pound assisted, which he edited and which ranks as the first truly modernist poem.) Quotes in such abundance gave The Cantos a certain gravitas, but more than that, Pound was able to juxtapose the quotes the way Chinese characters juxtapose images, a technique which allowed him to express abstract concepts in concrete forms while at the same time shocking and/or puzzling readers with the interconnections and associations thereby created. Meaning became complex and contradictory by turns.

Besides his influence on Eliot, Pound also championed the work of poets and artists such as James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, Jacob Epstein, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Rabindranath Tagore and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. In other words, he was a main player in the develoment of modernism.

So why has a poet whom many regard as having been more important than Eliot been sidelined in comparison with Eliot? Mainly because he made himself unpopular - to put it mildly - by his endorsement of Mussolini. He embraced him and all that he stood for in the early days, the days when what Mussolini stood for was social justice, but he failed to react when El Duce changed tack. But there was more: broadcasts made from Rome and a virulent anti-semitism. The letters show, we are told, that his views were misunderstood and that he had come to realise his mistakes.

To me the interesting question - which will not be answered by the letters - is the degree to which we allow our feelings about a poet to influence our judgment of his or her poetry. Or do we think - and it possibly is a reasonable thought - that a poet needs to be a man above other men? Is the poetry discredited by the life-style or the moral failings of its creator? Was my friend correct in thinking that some smell will stick and mar the poem? Or have the two considerations nothing at all to do with each other? If, for example, a present day, highly regarded poet, went on record as saying that 9'11 was justified, would that immediately render worthless his/her whole oeuvre?

Self portrait for a Modern Masque

The ground breaks open when the spirit wakes.
Between the spheres of Good and Good Intent
the evil that abounds is masked. All flesh lies hollow
on the watery bed, tideway of ensoulment.
From it, cool sedative to human eyes, the floral
tributes, crematorial flames arise. Like unveiled
windows at the dead of night, the eyes stare back.
Reflected gaze. One feed-back loop too far brings death
within our ken. Our inmostness and what of earth
is visible, go hand-in-hand - or marry in
a one-night stand. The eyes no longer laugh
nor cry, nor can they see except the mask
maps out the contours, marks how day and night
break-in. break-up, break-out, like breaker-ripples
on a millpond bursting at its seams. All seem
the same to those who do not wear the mask.

"Does Britain need an Angel of the South?"

The Angel of the North.

Go to The Guardian Poll next week, and you will be able to add your vote to what will no doubt become a lively debate on the above question - always supposing, of course, that you are happy to reduce the issue to a straight forward yes or no. Either way, now is the time to get the thinking done, in order to make your contribution that much more valuable.

Personally, I think it all depends on what sort of angel. The brief tends to suggest an intention to upstage the Angel of the North. Is that why it has to be so much taller - taller, in fact "than any public statue in Britain bar the cockade on top of Nelson's hat"? At that sort of size, and taking into account its position overlooking the two motorways and railway bringing entrants into the country, it surely needs to be a welcoming angel and one that represents something appropriate. Something along the lines of America's Statue of Liberty, perhaps. Angels are supposed to be intermediaries, are they not? (Not that I would want to suggest a line of thought!) I just hope that we do not end up looking at a human thingy with wings. (No, you didn't hear me whisper "Angel of the North"!)

There remains one point that can be made on behalf of The Angel of the South: its would-be creators are engaged in a competitive tendering process to land the commission. That can only be good for the future of art - or would be if the process became more widely adopted. Mr Purnell, when minister for arts, talked about the possibility of a new renaissance. The last one was fuelled by commissions, not by public hand-outs. Patronage and/or competitive tendering must be preferable to the latter. With either of them, the public would at least be able to see what it was getting for its money - and register its approval or otherwise. It would indeed be getting something - and if the result proved unacceptable, it could always be sold on ebay!

Either way, have a look at The Guardian Poll next week, and meanwhile, why not debate the issue here?

In case you think it relevent:

• The Angel will cost £2M


• It will be sited at Ebbsfleet, Kent


• It will rise 164ft above gravel workings, the two motorways and the Channel Tunnel rail link.

If poetry was a team sport...

One of the unfortunate, perhaps inevitable, consequences of Burns Night and all that jazz is the distinct impression it can leave that Scottish poetry began and ended with Burns, whereas the exact opposite is the case. Indeed, if poetry was a team sport I would wager any odds that Scotland would win the U.K championship hands down, and for all I know the European and World titles also. They would certainly clean up where the youth trophies were concerned. Who should be the national coach, might form an interesting topic for debate, though my unhesitating choice would be Edwin Morgan, surely the doyen of poets north of the border. How appropriate then that The Guardian should today, the day following Burns Night, have made him the subject of its Life in Poetry. Excellent timing! Sarah Crown credits him with having helped "shape Scotland's postwar identity and a generation of writers," but concludes that "he will be best remembered for his guarded love poetry".

And that is not the end of it, for today thousands of Morgan's books, including fifteen thousand copies of From Saturn to Glasgow - Fifty Favourite Poems will be given away across Glasgow via libraries, schools and bookshops as the city honours its poet laureate and the Scots Makar (National Poet). Furthermore, the heritage Lottery Fund has chipped in with £50,000 to acquire and house his extensive archive. These honours follow the shortlisting of his book Book of Lives for the T.S.Eliot Prize, 2007.

Go to The Poetry Archive to listen to recordings of his poems or to Lt Scotland for a choice between reading and listening. At Glasgow Arts you can read Christopher Whyte's essay on Morgan's love poetry.

Here, though, is the text of Strawberries. Is this not one of the finest love poems ever, do you not think?

Strawberries

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air

in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Burns Night : 25th January

As with many another master poet (cannily avoiding invidious distinctions between great and good, you notice), Robert Burns's fate has been to be remembered for poems that are not among his best. That, at any rate, is true south of the border, the situation might be different in Scotland. As his special night approaches we remember him for Auld Lang Syne (of course) and A Red, Red Rose and maybe one or two others, and we may be tempted to compare him with Shakespeare, though I find the comparison better made with a poet such as John Clare. Like Clare, Burns was very much a man of the soil and a man of the people. Consider Burns's poem “To a Mouse”:

I give only the last three verses:-

That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald.
To thole the Winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

It is easy to imagine John Clare turning up this mouse and his nest with his ploughshare and producing something like the Burns's poem as a result, though I suspect that Clare's would have been a poem on disturbing a mouse”, not one addressed to it. But all the same qualities would have been in place: the warmth; humanity; empathy: intimacy even; the delight in small things; Blake's ability to “See a world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour”; and sheer good, common-sense. (But think what a big deal Shakespeare would have made of it! Burns avoids the temptations - if, indeed, he even felt them - of philosophising, finding sociological parallels or drawing theological conclusions until the last verse, and even then it is a very homely comparison that is drawn.) Armed with these qualities he could take on the world's injustices and be a match for cant and hypocrisy wherever he found them.

When I was growing up, I was profoundly affected by Albert Schweitzer's essay on Reverence for Life. One phrase - a mantra if you like - summed up his whole attitude to life: I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live. I find the same attitude in the poetry of Burns, so much so that he can find in the indignity suffered by a tiny creature such as a mouse, a political imperative - and can keep it at once both light and serious. (Appropriate, then, that he is celebrated each January 25th with the conviviality of a supper, don't you think?)

In slightly different vein, an apparent contradiction, though I happen to think not, a major poem, a satire, no less, Holy Willie's Prayer (story and full text) which I happen to consider one of the two all-time great humorous poems (the other being Hugh Macdiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle - of which more later.)I could find no texts of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle on the web, but four free MP3 downloads of Macdiarmid reading it, are available here...) I would argue that in Holy Willie's Prayer we have Burns doing what he does best: holding up a mirror to society and saying This is how it really is!.

Here,then, the first two verses:

O Thou, who in the heavens does dwell,
Who, as it pleases best Thysel',
Sends ane to heaven an' ten to hell,
A' for Thy glory,
And no for ony gude or ill
They've done afore Thee!

I bless and praise Thy matchless might,
When thousands Thou hast left in night,
That I am here afore Thy sight,
For gifts an' grace
A burning and a shining light
To a' this place.

Three more...

But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I'm fash'd wi' fleshly lust:
An' sometimes, too, in wardly trust,
Vile self gets in:
But Thou remembers we are dust,
Defil'd wi' sin.

O Lord! yestreen, Thou kens, wi' Meg-
Thy pardon I sincerely beg,
O! may't ne'er be a livin plague
To my dishonour,
An' I'll ne'er lift a lawless leg
Again upon her.

Besides, I farther maun allow,
Wi' Leezie's lass, three times I trow-
But Lord, that Friday I was fou,
When I cam near her;
Or else, Thou kens, Thy servant true
Wad never steer her.

... and plenty more to follow.


To one or two readers, the remainder of this post may bring feelings of déjà vu, for it is largely material I posted a year ago. I make no excuse for this repetition, for I had then only just begun to blog and my post would have been seen by very few, if any - and anyway, are we not bidden to recycle everything possible? Say if you will, that I am reducing my carbon footprint by cutting down on the amount of fuel my brain burns (pun unintended).


Mention of Burns always conjures first in my mind a few verses from Hugh MacDiarmid's "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle". This is a deep and complex poem in which the drunk man finds himself lying helplessly on a moonlit hillside, staring at a thistle and meditating on its jaggedness and its beauty. This becomes a metaphor for the divided state of Scotland - and much else, as the meditations become varied and far-ranging.

But here he is on Burns Night (and by implication, on Burns):

You canna gang to a Burns supper even
Wi-oot some wizened scrunt o' a knock-knee
Chinee turns roon to say, 'Him Haggis - velly goot!'
And ten to wan the piper is a Cockney.

No wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote
But misapplied is a'body's property,
And gin there was his like alive the day
They'd be the last a kennin' haund to gie -

Croose London Scotties wi their braw shirt fronts
And a' their fancy freens rejoicin
That similah gatherings in Timbuctoo,
Bagdad - and Hell, nae doot - are voicin

Burns' sentiments o' universal love,
In pidgin English or in wild-fowl Scots,
And toastin ane wha's nocht to them but an
Excuse for faitherin Genius wi their thochts.

A' they've to say was aften said afore,
A lad was born in Kyle to blaw aboot.
What unco fate maks him the dumpin-grun
For aa the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot?

Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name
Than in ony's barrin liberty and Christ.
If this keeps spreedin as the drink declines,
Syne turns to tea, wae's me for the Zietgeist!

If you do not know the poems of MacDiarmid, you should certainly see about putting that right.
You will not agree with all his sentiments, but you surely will enjoy disagreeing.

Here he is, for example, on the common folk:

And a' the names in History mean nocht
To maist folk but 'ideas o' their ain,'
The vera opposite o' onything
The Deid 'ud awn gin they cam' back again.

A greater Christ, a greater Burns, may come.
The maist they'll dae is to gi'e bigger pegs
To folly and conceit to hank their rubbish on.
They'll cheenge folks' talk but no their natures, fegs!


What Burns Night (and to a lesser extent Burns) conjures up in my mind are a few verses from Hugh MacDiarmid's "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle". This is a deep and complex poem in which the drunk man finds himself lying helplessly on a moonlit hillside, staring at a thistle and meditating on its jaggedness and its beauty. This becomes a metaphor for the divided state of Scotland - and much else, as the meditations become varied and far-ranging.

But here he is on Burns Night (though not Burns):

"You canna gang to a Burns supper even
Wi-oot some wizened scrunt o' a knock-knee
Chinee turns roon to say, 'Him Haggis - velly goot!'
And ten to wan the piper is a Cockney.

"No wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote
But misapplied is a'body's property,
And gin there was his like alive the day
They'd be the last a kennin' haund to gie -

"Croose London Scotties wi their braw shirt fronts
And a' their fancy freens rejoicin
That similah gatherings in Timbuctoo,
Bagdad - and Hell, nae doot - are voicin

"Burns' sentiments o' universal love,
In pidgin English or in wild-fowl Scots,
And toastin ane wha's nocht to them but an
Excuse for faitherin Genius wi their thochts.

"A' they've to say was aften said afore,
A lad was born in Kyle to blaw aboot.
What unco fate maks him the dumpin-grun
For aa the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot?

"Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name
Than in ony's barrin liberty and Christ.
If this keeps spreedin as the drink declines,
Syne turns to tea, wae's me for the Zietgeist!"

If you do not know the poems of MacDiarmid, you should certainly see about putting that right.
You will not agree with all his sentiments, but you surely will enjoy disagreeing.

Here he is, for example, on the common folk:

"And a' the names in History mean nocht
To maist folk but 'ideas o' their ain,'
The vera opposite o' onything
The Deid 'ud awn gin they cam' back again.

"A greater Christ, a greater Burns, may come.
The maist they'll dae is to gi'e bigger pegs
To folly and conceit to hank their rubbish on.
They'll cheenge folks' talk but no their natures, fegs!"

Start at the link I have given - the poems have a glossary running alongside. Enjoy!

The two images are from Auld Lang Syne

The Costa Book Award

Grab any random group of any size from street or mall, and providing only that they are all reasonably well-informed and reasonably intelligent people prepared to spend a moment or two in reflection (i.e. that they are not too random, but all a bit like yours truly), the chances are they will all agree that competitive comparisons in the arts are non-starters, generating more frustration than enlightenment. The finest painting (or painter), best poem of the century, and most beautiful sculpture are all meaningless because impossible to assess, though I have encountered them all at some time.

How much more impossible than just ordinarily impossible must it be then, to justify superlatives when judging between different genres? Yet The Costa Book Award purports to do just that, to choose which is best from between a slim volume of poetry, a novel, a first novel, a biography, and a children's book. How could they possibly do that. They couldn't, of course, but they attempt to get round the insurmountable difficulty by saying that they are looking for something "you could recommend to a friend". I guess that depends upon the friend. I am sure you could recommend all the contending volumes to a friend, though perhaps not all to the same friend. It seems its first sponsors were only too well aware of the difficulty when The Costa was established in 1971: its brief was to recognise the most enjoyable books of the past year. Mmmmm.... Does that take us any further? And does it not depend upon what you mean by "enjoyable". Some books are like some sermons: their prime task is not to provide enjoyment. The winner, A. L. Kennedy, for Day, has herself suggested that her book is harrowing - and that she would not recommend it to anyone suffering from depression. Just a thought.

She also made a plea in her acceptance speech for "libraries" with books in them. Mmmm again. Seems an eminently reasonable request on the face of it. But we all know where it's coming from.

Hoax!

A story has been rumbling on in the media over the past few days concerning thousands of tons of timber that have been washed up on the beaches of southern England. This extraordinary timber slick, is now several feet thick along the tide line and stretches for between eight miles and three counties, depending upon the source of your news. It is the cargo of The Ice Prince which last week sank off the Dorset coast after a heavy storm.

Not so! I have it on the most reliable authority possible, that the timber was towed out to sea in barges hardly pondworthy for the express purpose of being first dumped and then washed ashore to form what is (and will soon be seen to be) a gigantic art installation. The artist behind the venture is as yet unknown, but will doubtless reveal him- or herself in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, the so-called scavangers whom you may have seen making off with huge planks, are in fact performance artists. All in the script and an integral part of the installation you understand. In due course the way in which the media swallowed the hoax, along with the media and public reactions to it when the hoax is revealed will also become part of the story. Word is that these narratives will "sell" the installation to the judges when it is nominated - as, apparently, it will be - for The Turner Prize. There are good precedents: Simon Starling's Shedboatshed for example.

A Hundred, thousand million sonnets

One Christmas, several years ago, I was given as a present a copy of the OULIPO COMPENDIUM. I take it down every once in a longish while, usually when I have just finished a piece of writing or a painting that proved particularly difficult. I relax with it and get a whole new concept of what difficult really means. But for the uninitiated, first some definitions:-

• The name: Oulipo was initially Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle which was soon abbreviated to OU.LI.PO. anf finally to Oulipo.


• It is the name of one of several groups established to renew a literature that its members consider has degenerated to an appallingly low level.


• Their motto is: everything done prior to us is worthless; everything done after us can only exist because of us.


• The dead continue to belong to the Oulio no less than the living. Marcel Duchamp and Italo Calvino are both members.


• Oulipo is not confined to literature, but takes in the arts and mathematics.
  
• It is neither a modern nor a postmodern movement, but claims to be traditional in its methods and intentions.


• The Compendium is its "workshop for Potential Literature".

The compendium is described as a resource book. It is a survey of the group and contains analyses of their works, descriptions of their methods, biographies, bibliographies, overviews of groups working in art, comic strips, and even cuisine. Their (its) methods are based largely on ideas of restraint. Restraints can be liberating. For example, when designing compositions in the visual arts, I have found that being given an awkward shape to fill can be a source of inspiration, but the restraints in the Compendium are often too extreme and somewhat phoney, do not arise naturally from the task in hand. The Compendium has something of the character of a puzzle book. The question arises in my mind, as it does when I hear that someone belongs to MENSA, if so intelligent, why bother? Okay, so it's a bit of fun, and why not? Nothing wrong with that. See what you think:-

One of their proudest achievements seems to be the Lipogram, a procedure in which the writer undertakes to ban one vowel from a text. How difficult this is depends, of course, on the length of the text and upon which vowel is to be excluded. One of their members, George Perec, achieved, you would have thought, the ultimate accolade by writing a full length novel, La Disparition without using a single e. Incredibly, they claim that readers do not spot that a vowel is missing unless given some sort of clue beforehand. However, more latterly they have found a detective novel, L'a dans l'baba by Armand Vadlavant (who,presumably, is not a member) in which no vowels other than the letter a were used. This, indeed, is one of their more extreme procedures. They call it Univocalism (sometimes Monovocalism), though it is more typically to be found in short passages. Here, for example, is Shakespeare's To be or not to be: that is the question rendered in univocalism; no vowels but e:-

Be? Never be? Perplexed quest: seek the secret!

Incidentally, the chapter headings in Vadlavant's novel are univocal translations of famous proverbs
George Perec (again) has produced a novel, Les Revenentes, in univocalism, but it is considered a lax production as the title is not spelt correctly: it should be Les Revenantes.

Another Oulipian procedure is to take, say, 10 sonnets (ten are given in the book) and cut each into its 14 constituent lines. (The pages are conveniently arranged and marked with dotted lines.) The rhymes being same for each of the poems, it is possible to replace any line in any sonnet with the corresponding line from any of the others.
(That would make them nonsense rhymes, you say? Well, they've thought of that: they are surrealistic to begin with.) Therefore there are ten possible first lines, for each of which there are ten possible second lines. You will be ahead of me by now. Ditto for the lines 3 through to 14. So: 10 X 10 X 10 X10 X 10 X 10X 10 X 10 X10 X 10 X 10 X 10 X 10 X 10 = 100,000,000,000,000 = one hundred thousand million sonnets! To be honest, I find that remarkable on several count, none of them artistic, of course. Typically Oulipien!

Now something for the artists: plaited pictures. Take two pictures of equal size and preferably with subject matter in common - the example given if a grey figure and a black figure, both sitting. Cut one into strips horizontally and the other vertically. A better result is obtained if the strips are wavy- rather than straight-edged. Now weave them together by passing them over and under each other in the normal way. The results shown in the book look both simple and intriguing. I did try valiantly to produce a quick example (from magazine photographs) for this post. I did really, you would have been proud of me. It is not as fool-proof as it seems. I shall try again, and if successful, show it at a later date.

Double Whammy!

I refer, of course, to the double whammy facing the arts just now: the reorganisation of The British Council on the one hand, and the Arts Council's changed criteria for the award of funding on the other. I blogged on this latter subject a few days ago and will not repeat myself now, but will add one further thought: James Purnell, minister for the arts, spoke glibly of a new Renaissance waiting in the wings, yet to the best of my knowledge the first one was not launched on the back of hand-outs but on commissions. For me this conjures up (pure fantasy, I know, but in the arts, fantasies have been known to inspire breakthroughs) the idea that commissions might be the democratic, transparent, safer way for a minister to go - not for all art forms, perhaps, but for some. Just consider: the public could see clearly where its money was going, and register its approval or disapproval accordingly; the government would get back something tangible for its cash and if it (or the public) did not like what it got, could always sell it on eBay! As I say, just a thought...

The case of The British Council is rather different. The British Council has an important role to play in the arts at an international level. Its most glamorous responsibility is the organization of the British Pavilion and display at The Venice Bienniale. It selects the artist to represent us, arranges insurance and all the necessary support systems, it smooths the way when exhibitions are arranged in "difficult" foreign climes. Its services are indispensable to those taking part and those services depend upon the expertise and knowledge of a few dedicated professionals.

Yet it is not a dedicated arts organization, it has a political role which, as I understand it, is now showing itself as its primary role. For reasons which have nothing to do with the arts and everything to do with politics, the various "wings" of the British Council are to be merged and those dedicated professionals will have to reapply for whatever jobs will be created by the reformed organization. The great fear is that the necessary expertise will be lost or diluted, and what is fuelling the great fear is a total lack of knowledge. Where now, the government's famed transparency?