PoetryAndTradition

1Twentieth Century Games with Tradition in Poetry After Philip Larkin’s “Church Going” presenting the religious tradition from below, but without remaining in the ironic register at all in the last stanza, the mid- and late twentieth century games with the inherited ideas (of religion) will be presented in Stevie Smith’s strident, very witty, dialogic poetry and Ted Hughes’ very embittered and savagely ironic anecdotes in the Crow series (From the Life and the Songs of the Crow, 1970). Quite typically for ironic literature, the games/staged dialogues organized by these poems make their readers responsible for completing the messages put in circulation, though in another mode than the one of paraphrase, because poetry should not be paraphrased, according to “the heresy of paraphrase” (in the New Critic Cleanth Brooks’s book The Well Wrought Urn, 1968). Whereas silence was the element where Philip Larkin’s hushed poem “Church Going” explored the religious space, with its informed, meditative doubt, there are high pitched reproaches resounding in Stevie Smith’s “Was He Married?” (where He-capital letter refers to Christ). The reproaches in “Was He Married?” are addressed by angry, highpitch experience to the overwhelming colossus of conventional innocence as the element of religion in the perception of late, ironic modernity. The poem’s paradoxical movement, on the other hand, is, just as in Philip Larkin’s “Church Going”, one from revolt to a kind of wisdom that makes peace with the grain of existential truth kept in circulation/contained by religion. Lastly, while “Church Going” made its peace with the church as a religious institution, “Was He Married?” eventually becomes reconciled with the message of love after quarrelling with Christ as the Son of Man and the discourse of religion. Religion, as a component of tradition, is exposed for the way it compromises truth. Was He Married? BY STEVIE SMITH Was he married, did he try To support as he grew less fond of them Wife and family? No, He never suffered such a blow. Did he feel pointless, feeble and distrait, Unwanted by everyone and in the way? From his cradle he was purposeful, His bent strong and his mind full. Did he love people very much Yet find them die one day? Did he never feel strong Pain for being wrong? He was not wrong. Did he lack friends? Worse.. But there is no suffering like having made a mistake Because of being of an inferior make.find a sudden brightness one day in everything Because a mood had been conquered. Did he feel over-handicapped sometimes. He had disciples he moulded to his ends. He was not inferior. yet must draw even? How could he feel like this? He was the King of Heaven. Think it was for his fault. spite. He had a future of bliss. . He suffered from others’. He knew then that power corrupts but some must govern? His thoughts were different. It is because they are so mixed.. he did not sin. or a sin? I tell you. Do only human beings suffer from the irritation I have mentioned? learn too that being comical Does not ameliorate the desperation? Only human beings feel this. Did he ask how long it would go on. Wonder if Death could be counted on for an end? He did not feel like this. not theirs? He did not lack friends. . not his own. He was superior. he was right.2 He did not love in the human way. He often has. A god cannot carry it. her real name being Florence Margaret. he is not able. A god is Man’s doll. He makes him up like this on purpose. “Was He Married?” from New Selected Poems. He might have made him up worse. he is not able. (s)he1 moves one step closer to the original debater’s position of mistrust in whatever constitutes the ground of religion according to the moderns: humanity’s own needs projected higher up than man. To choose a god of love. you ass. in the past. The colloquial tone of the dialogue enables an exchange between someone who resents Christ’s exceptional humanity by asking challenging questions (a typically late modern disenchanted believer’s questions) and a traditionalist voice expressing the allegiance to Christ’s exceptionalism and providing curt. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith. The turning point. as he did and does. occurs in the following pair of cues: All human beings should have a medal. with the contrast of the voices sustaining the two sides of the debate. A god cannot carry it. Stevie Smith. Is a little move then? Yes. A larger one will be when men Love love and hate hate but do not deify them? It will be a larger one. you ass. categorical answers to each of the questions. The poem is a lesson in the rhetoric (rules and effects) of dialogue. ideally in a dialogue the participants exchange viewpoints being about to secure agreement. When the first speaker agrees to discuss the origin of the godly image. A god is Man’s doll. 1 Stevie Smith was a feminine Londoner. or simply progress one step beyond the original standpoints which made them disagree. but because she was very short. her nickname was that of a jockey . the point where. He makes him up like this on purpose.3 All human beings should have a medal. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. it is. from 1984. the answer came. in the past. The fact that Stevie Smith received the Chomondeley Award for Poetry in 1966 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969. it is. What’s dood. as he did and does.4 He might have made him up worse. They lisped in accents mild. Is a little move then? Yes. our Bog is dood. proving Stevie Smith’s attachment to. and Geoffrey Hill being the Oxford Professor Emeritus of Poetry between 2010 and 2015. But when I asked them to explain They grew a little wild. How do you know your Bog is dood My darling little child? We know because we wish it so This is enough.2 The next poem by Stevie Smith blends in its playful tone the religious with the nursery rhyme and absurdist verse tradition. And straight within each infant eye Stood up the flame of pride. . A larger one will be when men Love love and hate hate but do not deify them? The poem’s ending. To choose a god of love. And if you do not think it so You shall be crucified. Ted Hughes being the Poet Laureate after Sir John Betjeman. darling little ones. He often has. suppose Bog is? Just what we think. they cried. demonstrates her recognition as a national voice. Then tell me. with the inquirer’s voice in the foreground and the obvious answer to the rhetorical question demonstrates Stevie Smith’s volatile attachment to the Church of England – as one of the distinctive marks of English identity. 2 Notice the token of other poets’ recognition as nationally important poets: Philip Larkin received the Chomondeley Award in 1973. rather than distance from tradition: Our Bog Is Dood Our Bog is dood. until his death. That never yet drowned me. And sweetest of all to walk alone Beside the encroaching sea. The poem evokes the literary tradition of limerick fantasy and absurdism while it clads the categorical statements of religion in a jocose garb. "Which way first?" God's shoulder was the mountain on which Crow sat. ." said Crow. They bowed their heads. the poem recalls Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” – though. the latter concept is cast as ridiculous in satirical/ironic ways. It is interesting to see that the almost classical force of the final stanza is obtained by linguistic punning paired with rhetorical parallelism and limerick like absurdism acting together in a unique combination of tones and styles which allow the secular voice to triumph over the residual religiousness of the poem. then with “Crow Communes”. The sea that soon should drown them all. The next readings will pair Stevie Smith’s “Was He Married?” as an oblique assertion about love . though when “dood” and “bog” are pasted on “god”. Our Bog is ours And we are wholly his. Crow Communes "Well.5 Just what we think it is. "What first?" God. Oh sweet it was to leave them then. both being grotesque parodies of Genesis from his volume published in the 1970s: From the Life and the Songs of the Crow. snored. And sweeter not to see.first with its savagely ironic restatement in Ted Hughes’ poem “Crow’s First Lesson”. exhausted with Creation. and what their Bog They never could agree. its nonsense words come from lisping children’s Bog instead of God and Dood instead of Good . when looked at closer. At the beginning. "Which way?" said Crow. But when they raised them up again They had forgotten me Each one upon each other glared In pride and misery For what was dood. Geoffrey Hill retains the ritual solemnity and seriousness of mythical/religious assertions but inserts the modern presence in them. impenetrable. (Appalled. he suddenly felt much stronger. it's true.or postmodernist fiction was seen to do in the previous lecture). Speechless. a great carcass.) Notice – in all the poems written against the grain of tradition – the artifice of discussing serious religious/mythical matters in a colloquial form (or in childish terms and the limerick form and in jest). which can also be called mythical poems. It is interesting to see what is specific in both these writers’ fair play with tradition  #27 Poet's Page . They take distance from tradition by rewriting it with instruments such as pastiche and parody (just as neo. Dylan Thomas reasserts the proto-themes but renews while expressing them anew in a surrealist form.6 "Come. The challenge of tradition with popular forms which gives its specific character to twentieth century British literature written after the 1950s is contradicted in two ways in the poems on the religious theme written by Dylan Thomas and Geoffrey Hill.) Yet." God lay. Crow tore off a mouthful and swallowed. Half-illumined. Crow. "Let's discuss the situation. agape. "Will this cipher divulge itself to digestion Under hearing beyond understanding?" (That was the first jest. humped." said Crow. the hierophant. In the beginning was the pale signature. Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light The ribbed original of love. red-eyed spark. One bough of bone across the rooting air. pumped from the earth and rock The secret oils that drive the grass. Burst in the roots. Before the veins were shaking in their sieve. The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail Touched the first cloud and left a sign. In the beginning was the secret brain. The brain was celled and soldered in the thought Before the pitch was forking to a sun. Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas.7 Poems In The Beginning In the beginning was the three-pointed star. And. And after came the imprints on the water. Stamp of the minted face upon the moon. Heaven and hell mixed as they spun. the word That from the solid bases of the light Abstracted all the letters of the void. A three-eyed. In the beginning was the mounting fire That set alight the weathers from a spark. translating to the heart First characters of birth and death. blunt as a flower. burning ciphers on the round of space. In the beginning was the word. The substance forked that marrowed the first sun. Three-syllabled and starry as the smile. One smile of light across the empty face.   Quotes Comments    Stats E-Books Biography . And from the cloudy bases of the breath The word flowed up. Hairs of your head. Loves reflection of the mushroom features. he said. You by the cavern over the black stairs. a dog among the fairies. from his fork. Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg. Are but the roots of nettles and feathers Over the groundworks thrusting through a pavement And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers. The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon. With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds. Horned down with skullfoot and the skull of toes On thunderous pavements in the garden of time. The child that sucketh long is shooting up. Rung bone and blade. Dipped me breast-deep in the descending bone. and twice spring chimed. Alone alive among his mutton fold. And. Said the antipodes. The black ram. old winter. Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam. And. penny-eyed.) What of a bamboo man amomg your acres? Corset the boneyards for a crooked boy? Button your bodice on a hump of splinters. I took my marrow-ladle Out of the wrinkled undertaker's van. First there was the lamb on knocking knees And three dead seasons on a climbing grave That Adam's wether in the flock of horns. Death is all metaphors.8  Videos   Altarwise By Owl-Light . shuffling of the year. And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer. Rip of the vaults. that gentlemen of wounds. manned by midnight. Still snapped by night in the bread-sided field.Poem by Dylan Thomas Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house The gentleman lay graveward with his furies. We rung our weathering changes on the ladder. Rip Van Winkle from a timeless cradle.) Which sixth of wind blew out the burning gentry? (Questions are hunchbacks to the poker marrow. shape in one history. My camel's eyes will needle through the shroud. . Jacob to the stars. The planet-ducted pelican of circles Weans on an artery the genders strip. Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream. the verticals of Adam. then said the hollow agent. Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg. Butt of the tree-tailed worm that mounted Eve. Scraped at my cradle in a walking word That night of time under the Christward shelter: I am the long world's gentlemen. The atlas-eater with a jaw for news. And. Child of the short spark in a shapeless country Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle. What is the metre of the dictionary? The size of genesis? the short spark's gender? Shade without shape? the shape of the Pharaohs echo? (My shape of age nagging the wounded whisper. Then. The rivers spawned their sand. And where the streams were salt and full The tough pig-headed salmon strove. The hawk’s deliberate stoop in air. To reach the steady hills above. in the tide’s pull. And the third day I cried: ‘Beware The soft-voiced owl. Ramming the ebb. II The second day I stood and saw The osprey plunge with triggered claw. Feathering blood along the shore. To lay the living sinew bare. Geoffrey Hill: GENESIS I Against the burly air I strode Crying the miracles of God. And the waves flourished at my prayer. Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood. . the ferret’s smile. And first I brought the sea to bear Upon the dead weight of the land.9 Once close-up smiling in the wall of pictures. III And I renounced. V. This fierce and unregenerate clay.10 Cold eyes. Forever bent upon the kill. and bodies hooped in steel. IV The phoenix burns as cold as frost And. on the fourth day. Building as a huge myth for man The watery Leviathan. And made the glove-winged albatross Scour the ashes of the sea Where Capricorn and Zero cross. The phantom-bird goes wild and lost Upon a pointless ocean tossed. the fifth day. A brooding immortality— Such as the charmed phoenix has In the unwithering tree. . I turned again To flesh and blood and the blood’s pain. like a legendary ghost. So. the crypt of roots and endings. is retained in the Mercian Hymns (his poetry collection published in 1971). the hot. With spurs I plucked the horse’s blood. To ravage and redeem the world: There is no bloodless myth will hold.’ IV I was invested in mother-earth.’ said Offa. where dry-dust badgers thronged the Roman flues. the cold. the citadel at Tamworth. from Mercian Hymns I BY GEOFFREY HILL King of the perennial holly-groves. none of whose distinctive notes are overlooked or lost in the poems by Geoffrey Hill. The straight confrontation with monumental tradition. as I rode In haste about the works of God. the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates: saltmaster: moneychanger: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the friend of Charlemagne. They measure up to the great colossus in an attitude of lucid humility and meditative soberness. Though Earth has rolled beneath her weight The bones that cannot bear the light. ‘sing it again. ‘I liked that. Child’s-play. his gold solidus. By blood we live.11 On the sixth day. And by Christ’s blood are men made free Though in close shrouds their bodies lie Under the rough pelt of the sea. . bided my time: where the mole shouldered the clogged wheel. I abode there. the long-unlooked-for mansions of our tribe. the riven sandstone: overlord of the M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch. ’ But I. his snout intimate with worms and leaves. marsh-marigold. Value from a sparse people. the gaunt warrior-gospel armoured in engraved stone. smug-faced. scrapers of salt-pans and byres. its brown-oak inlaid with ebony. sick on outings—I who was taken to be a king of some kind. Crepitant oak forest where the boar furrowed black mould. He tested the little pears. the king’s anger. and the names of his moneyers. assorted prize pens. back to its source. Exactness of design was to deter imitation.’ But I ran slowly. He swayed in sunlight. Tell everything to Mother. What should a man make of remorse. the seals of gold and base metal into which he had sunk his name. Thrall to their freedom. I wormed my way heavenward for ages amid barbaric ivy. They could alter the king’s face. Orchards fruited above clefts. Charlock. ripe for commerce. gave myself to unattainable toys. that it might profit his soul? Tell me. XI Coins handsome as Nero’s. VI The princes of Mercia were badger and raven. And there he exchanged gifts with the Muse of History. the children boasted their scars of dried snot. Exemplary metal. ‘Look’ they said and again ‘look. He reigned forty years. Candles of gnarled resin. apple-branches. attempting to master ancilla and servus. a maimed one. Seasons touched and retouched the soil. XV . and God bless. Exile or pilgrim set me once more upon that ground: my rich and desolate childhood. They struck with accountable tact. darling. wrists and knees garnished with impetigo. of good substance and weight. X He adored the desk. He smeared catmint on his palm for his cat Smut to lick. the tacky mistletoe. in mild dreams. attended to signatures and retributions. I drank from honeycombs of chill sandstone. new-made watermeadow. Offa Rex resonant in silver. scrollwork of fern. here. who had none. one eye upstaring. the true governance of England. It is safe to presume. in the cloakrooms. I dug and hoarded. He wept. In the schoolyard. It was there that he drew upon grievances from the people. ‘A boy at odds in the house. lonely among brothers. the landscape flowed away. Swathed bodies in the long ditch.12 V So much for the elves’ wergild. Heathland. fostered a strangeness. a prodigy. mutilation if that failed. Dreamy. forgave the death-howls of his rival. After that shadowy. Welsh mercenaries. regaled with slaughter. A wasps’ nest ensconced in the hedge-bank. the crux a craftsman’s triumph. full of strategy. They were perfunctory. He was defunct. a hissing. XVI Clash of salutation. he began to walk towards us he left behind coins. the funereal gleemen: papal legate and rural dean. they were all there. The mob received memorial vouchers and signs. Indulgences of bartered acclaim. XXVII ‘Now when King Offa was alive and dead’. a shuffle of house-carls. urine and ashes. two-edged. The ceremony stood acclaimed. Merovingian car-dealers. and traces of red mud. he wrenched at a snarled root of dead crabapple. Metal effusing its own fragrance. a reliquary or wrapped head. Ambassadors. other exchanges. night-soil. It rose against him. Shafts from the winter sun homing upon earth’s rim. Wine. for his lodging. the ghost-bride of livid Thor. retribution entertained. butcher of strawberries. And other miracles. he vanished . Hemlock in ambush. What is carried over? The Frankish gift. XXX And it seemed. The sword is in the king’s hands. the branched god. a variety of balm. Ramparts of compost pioneered by red-helmeted worms. He divided his realm. Earth lay for a while. the corpse of Cernunnos pitching dayward its feral horns. What is borne amongst them? Too much or too little. lightly concussed. An ancient land. an expenditure.13 Tutting. thrashing midsummer hail-storm. pilgrims. In brief cavort he was Cernunnos. Christ’s mass: in the thick of a snowy forest the flickering evergreen fissured with light. It lay there like a dream. and the shire-tree dripped red in the arena of its uprooting. tetanus. Attributes assumed. while we waited. As keels thrust into shingle.