John Ashbery in my rediscovered interview said 'there are many more interesting things to do' than read poetry. Are there? Really?
Sunday, February 24, 2008
On Edward Thomas
Newsnight on Friday - bear with me, I'll get to Edward Thomas in a moment - had an interview with Alastair Campbell. It was about a novel he is writing that is not to be published for some time. Campbell was not prepared to talk about the novel in any detail. The big issue was, as the web site puts it, 'So can Alastair become a successful man of letters?' This is, of course, not a big issue, it is not any kind of issue. There was no reason for Campbell to be on the BBC's 'flagship' current affairs show - not only because his novel isn't a story but also because Campbell is no longer a story, he's not even a celebrity any more, he's a curiosity. The item left me stricken with a great weariness with the whole business of British politics and the media. Nothing of any significance is being said or discussed. Compare this state of affairs with current American politics. Five minutes of either The McLaughlin Group or Meet the Press (wonderfully understated and rather genteel titles) are worth more than a whole week of British TV politics. Furthermore, I note that young people are excited about the US election in a way they never are about British politics, a development that should terrify any thoughtful people still working for our parties. Obama, Hillary, McCain and even Huckabee as well as the massed ranks of US columnists and analysts are making our people look like intellectual and imaginative pygmies. I now find myself unable to read or watch any British political coverage. This has happened before, it normally lasts a day or two. But, for the moment, I am a happier man as I have been reading this great poem over and over again. It is as perfect a meditation on the predicament of human consciousness as you will ever read.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I suppose Campbell was on there by way of reciprocity for past interviews, as well as because he exudes a sort of forthright blokeishness that Paxman relates to. Both operate under the delusion that they are 'writers', rather than just media 'celebrities' who get paid a lot of money to write books. Why anyone else should be interested in this cosy circle defeats me; a question surely for Newsnight's editor Peter Barron.
ReplyDeleteI've just watched Andrew Marr interview Ken Livingstone in what was probably the softest interview of a politician in living memory. Marr asked rhetorical questions, gave Livingstone his out before he even had to answer and behaved like he was having a chat with a good friend he had no intention of upsetting. At one point the former (?) red was asked if he would tax 4x4's, Porsche's and other cars of their ilk off the road and he replied, "absolutely". He then went onto contradict himself, realising that this was a completely stupid answer saying people should buy the greenest model of their preferred car. Once a Leftie always a Leftie and Marr's no better. It really has got to the point that AM's Sunday programme has become a joke.
ReplyDeleteTHIS IS NOT A JOKE!
ReplyDelete(I saw it with my own eyes)
When Alistair Campbell was asked on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (ITV1 26.? 8.06) as to which country, in 1973, entertained a space-station called >Skylab<:
France - Russia - UK - USA?
Alistair opted for France. (!!!)
The USA? He categorically ruled that out. He though it might actually have been the UK(!!), but - for the loss to charity of £ 2000 - went for the Gallic option.
Where, moreover, did this member or close associate, for the past ten years or so, of the UK Government, suspect the British Space Station might actually have been situated?
Hampstead Heath?
Lord, give me strength!
Nobody knows anything any more, Selena - it is one of the defining characteristics of our age, at least in this benighted country - in that, at least, the Campbell/Blair crowd were representative.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about poetry, however I enjoyed the skaters much more than the glory.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about politics much either which is probably worse.
I know one thing Edward Thomas does not seem to have known: *Nothing* is sweeter than love.
ReplyDeleteBTW, his is not a name I know, but by his dates, looks like he died in WW I. Should I know this fellow? Is he up there with Rupert, et al?
At least you are not harassed by people trying to make you read Spike Milligan and Pam Ayres.. really my nerves are shot to pieces...
ReplyDeleteI think I conflated Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves and came up with "Rupert." Not that anyone cares, but still....
ReplyDeleteSo who WAS Edward Thomas?
Susan, Susan - Thomas is the greatest of all our WWI poets (and was indeed killed in that spot of bother). Get on to Amazon and buy his surprisingly slim Complete Poems - you won't be sorry. He got better as he went along and, by the time a sniper's bullet had him, he was writing one small masterpiece after another.
ReplyDeleteEdward Thomas was also Robert Frost's closest friend when Frost lived in England. I think he even influenced Frost. Certainly Frost can be thought of as an American Georgian.
ReplyDeleteFrost played an important role, as a friend and as a poet, in Thomas's becoming a poet.
ReplyDeleteAs Andrew Harold Morton wrote in his essay "Thomas and Frost at Dymock - August 1914":
'Frost and Thomas had met a few times in London and Leddington (which has, incidentally, three alternative spellings) before Thomas's perceptive and sympathetic reviews of [Frost's] North of Boston -- three in all -- which were published in July and August 1914. Thomas managed intuitively to get to the heart of Frost's great achievement, and in subsequent discussions, the poet and the prose writer discovered that they shared the same ideas about poetics, mainly in the need to eschew "poetic" diction and use the rhythms of ordinary speech. Frost's idea of "the sound of sense" - the idea that natural sentence rhythms are the template for real poetry was one that Thomas shared, even warning Frost to put something in writing on the subject before he did. During the month of August when the Frost and Thomas families lived a few hundred yards from each other across a couple of meadows, Frost took the diffident Thomas in hand, and reading back to him some of his own sentences from his recently published In Pursuit of Spring, showed him that he was already effectively writing poetry. Frost realised that Thomas only needed to pare down his lyrical prose work to uncover the rhythms and themes of real poetry and his contribution was to give focus and direction to Thomas's work. It is clear from the correspondence between the two that Thomas was already anticipating a possible move to poetry, and hoped that Frost could help him. As Thomas's market for travel books and reviews dried up in the early months of the war, he started to produce his first poems, which he tentatively mailed to Frost. He was able to say in December 1914:
"I find myself engrossed and conscious of a possible perfection as I never was in prose…I have been rather pleased with some of the pieces…Still I won't begin thanking you yet, though if you like I will put it down now that you are the only begetter right enough."
'An intense correspondence continued between the men until Thomas's death serving as an artillery officer at Arras, where, one or two days before his death, he was able to read the Times' review of his first book of poetry which said "He is a real poet, he has the truth in him." In less than two years, he had produced roughly 140 poems of the highest quality and for once and at last his prolific quality served him well.'
'In 1920, Frost writes to a friend: "Edward Thomas was the closest friend I ever had, and I was the closest friend he ever had; and this was something I didn't wait to realise after he had died." And, to Helen Thomas, immediately after his death in 1917 he writes hopelessly, "I want to see him to tell him something. I want to tell him, what I think he liked to hear from me, that he was a poet."'
It was thanks to the splendidly named, otherwise forgotten(?) Lascelles Abercrombie, who set up the poetic community at Dymock, that Frost and Thomas came together. Perhaps Abercrombie's greatest contribution to English poetry...
ReplyDeleteI am, indeed, privileged to haver such commenters.
ReplyDeleteBryan - Scots call havering foolish chat.
ReplyDeleteBut 'There was no reason for Campbell to be on the BBC's 'flagship' current affairs show - not only because his novel isn't a story but also because Campbell is no longer a story, he's not even a celebrity any more, he's a curiosity.' He has a remarkable political brain, and knows Bush, Clinton, Blair and Brown personally. He had a mental breakdown so may have something to say about psychiatry. He may also have some useful things to say about the modern media and politics. Interesting.
That's a really good poem. American politics though is very phoney, just listen to Obama's speaches, it's par for the course over there. And why do they always invoke God if it's supposed to be a secular country. It clearly isn't.
ReplyDeleteI clearly have early Alzheimer's. I glowingly reviewed Jay Parini's bio. of Robt. Frost a few years ago, yet can't remember Thomas. (Frank -- that was the occasion of our first communication; you liked my review. At least I remember *that*!)
ReplyDeleteParini did indeed write about Thomas in his Frost biography; see for example pages 179-181.
ReplyDeleteGuess who wrote the Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Poem of the week.
ReplyDelete