Finding Yeats

I sometimes meet with a group of people who like to write poetry. The theme of place (special places, belonging to a place) was suggested for our most recent meeting. Someone had come up with the phrase dear perpetual place when the theme was being discussed. Later I discovered that the phrase was from a poem by the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. I found the poem and also set out on a journey learning about Yeats. I'll start by typing out the long poem then share my reflections and some of the things I've been learning. This poem was written in 1919.

A Prayer for my Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack - and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatreds driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

Reference: from Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) in W B Yeats Selected Poetry, Macmillan, 1965

Knock Backs

We all have the experience of getting knocked back on some things; hopes dashed, dreams smashed. Writers typically receive piles of rejection letters or miss out on prizes or receive bad reviews for books.

In a letter to the American poet, Anne Sexton, in 1967, the English poet, Ted Hughes, wrote a list of the harms that can come from being reviewed favourably. His comments were meant to console Sexton for the bad reviews she received in England for her book Live or Die. Hughes's comments can be applied as a balm to all sorts of disappointments. It goes like this:

'They [favourable reviews] tend to confirm one in one's own conceit - unless they praise what you yourself don't like.

Also they make you self-conscious about your virtues - just as when you praise a child for some natural charm.

Also they create an underground opposition: applause is the beginning of abuse.

Also they deprive you of your own anarchic liberties by electing you into the government.

Also, they separate you from your devil, which hates being observed and only works happily incognito.'

Sexton's biographer notes that the poet posted this good advice over her desk, but that 'it was, unfortunately, to grow more and more pertinent'.

Anne Sexton. A Biography by Dianne Wood Middlebrook. Virago paperback, 1991. Available from the Book Camel. In good condition. Contains photos, appendix, sources and notes, bibliography, index. 488pp. Price: $15 plus postage and packaging.

Bright Star John Keats

Many friends have been to see Bright Star, the film about John Keats directed by Jane Campion. I wrote a poem about it:

Dressing for Keats

Emerging from my rock of penury
with nothing
and with no-one to inhibit me
I dressed as a poet
and took the train to see
a film about John Keats,
dressing for his memory.

On the silver screen
the storytelling mistress
flung out her mat of mystery
embroidered with flowery stitches
fabrics lifting
to petal faces
in beds of blossom.

She played his songs
in voices soft like pastel palates
words of vigorous youth that note the ghostly spectre
then hit on trees and birdsong rising from the land.
These words lift hearts with every beat
they bid us fly upon the music sweet.



What did Keats think about the purpose of poetry?

His idea of ‘Negative Capability’ now appears under the heading ‘Theory’ in relation to Keats and his poetry (see, for instance, the Wikipedia entry on Keats).

The phrase appears in a letter Keats wrote to his brothers, George and Thomas, in December 1817. He discusses a number of experiences in the letter before he comes to the phrase, and it is as if he is following a thread that leads him closer and closer towards a definition of what he values in life and in art.

He has been to see a painting called Death on the Pale Horse which he considers a ‘wonderful’ picture, especially if the painter’s age is considered ( I assume the painter, West, was young). But the painting does not satisfy him:
'…there is nothing to be intense upon, no women one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality. The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth. Examine ‘King Lear’,and you will find this exemplified throughout: but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness.'

Keats goes on to relate another experience, this time it is a social one when he dined with a group of men, some of whom he was meeting for the first time. This experience also gave him food for thought about what he really valued:
'They only served to convince me how superior humour is to wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have all a mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere handling a decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company. ‘Would I were with that company instead of yours,’ said I to myself!'

These thoughts begin to coalesce as he brings the letter to a close and moves towards that phrase which is now counted as part of Keats’s theory:
'Several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.'

The Letters of John Keats, Vols 1 & 2, are available from the Book Camel.

In with the new

Before January passes completely from view I want to move the Book Camel blog out onto the track once more.

When the English author, Graham Greene, was having his long-standing love affair with Catherine Walston in the 1940s and 50s, he gave her a notebook diary each year in which he handwrote a quotation for every day of the year. Greene was obviously a very romantic fellow.

I was thinking about that endearing habit, and reading about Greene and Walston at the beginning of January and also wondering what quotes would be appropriate for the first few days of 2010. Here in the hills north of Melbourne the new year came in with a great rush of rain and a storm of thunder and lightning. A storm bold enough to wash away the old year and bring in the new. What words could describe that marvellous scene?

Dicctionaries of quotations offer up many possibilities for describing rain, thunder, lightning and storms. I liked Shelley, from The Cloud throwing up the echo of thunder:
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder...
Then his vigorous rhymes:
I wield the flail of the lashing hail
And whiten the green plains under
And then again I dissolve it in rain
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
That, I think, will serve quite well as my quotation for the start of the new year, 2010.

The book about Greene and Walston is The Third Woman - The Secret Passion that Inspired The End of the Affair. It's by William Cash and available from the Book Camel.

What's hot?

I don't have a lot of money to spend on new books these days. But I do like to keep up with new writing and the ideas going round. My solution is to spend money on a few subscriptions to magazines and journals that keep me in the loop. Add to this a glimpse at The Age book pages on Saturdays (minimal info there, alas), a free subscription to Readings monthly magazine and blessed Radio National (especially the splendid Book Show), and I feel I have my finger slightly on the pulse of our local literary culture.

Occasionally I will buy a new book if it's something I really want to add to my collection, and I'd love to be able to buy more new books, but I try to do my bit to support the new book trade by ordering them at my regional library which provides an excellent service. I find many of the titles I want to order in the Australian Book Review which is one of the magazines I subscribe to. Apart from alerting me to books I might want to read, I enjoy the quality of the writing in the magazine's reviews, essays and poetry. My other current subscriptions are to Meanjin, Island and Overland, all of which contain a variety of interesting writing.

I've subscribed to Meanjin on and off over the years and have been drawn back to it under its current editor, Sophie Cunningham. She's doing an excellent job with Meanjin which has been given a very pleasing new look and continues attracting some excellent writers and visual artists. The summer edition has just arrived in the mail and it's a lovely fat issue which promises hours of enjoyable reading.

The issue opens with a short essay by Chris Wallace-Crabbe in the 'Newsreel' section of the journal. Entitled Poetry and the Future, the piece explores the question, What can poetry do?- specifically, what poetry can do in response to the unhappy civic situation we find ourselves in today and a still grimmer future that appears to be opening up. For Wallace-Crabbe poetry's strength and its ability to influence its readers lies in its '...capacity to notice, and not to pass over the local or the familiar'. He offers a poem of his own, The Different Scales of Morning that ends with
Warm Gaia...grown sick of our
Casting the usual vote for selfishness
And flipping credit cards instead of thought.
This poet's keynote to the summer issue of Meanjin felt visceral as I read it on one of the hottest November days ever.

Chocolate Chip

I made chocolate chip biscuits for Orla's second birthday. The recipe is from the Aussie cooking bible, The Cook's Companion, by Stephanie Alexander. For all those who don't have the book on hand, here's the recipe.

Ingredients
125 g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
120 g roasted nuts (walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, almonds), chopped
170 g bittersweet chocolate, chopped
110 g softened unsalted butter
1/3 cup castor sugar
1/3 cup raw or brown sugar
1 egg

Method
Sift flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. Add nuts and chocolate. In an electric mixer, cream butter, castor sugar and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add egg, then fold in chocolate mixture. Form into 2 logs about 4cm in diameter and wrap tightly in plastic film. Chill for 1 hour before baking.

Preheat oven to 175C and line a baking tray with baking paper. Unwrap logs and cut into 1.5cm thick slices. Place on baking tray, allowing room for spreading, and bake for 12 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

They're easy to make and they taste great. Stephanie adds that the mixture freezes well for at least a month. I substituted hazelnut meal for the nuts for the kids' party. That worked well too, but it makes the biscuits a little more crumbly.

Tis the season to be thrifty

What a gap I've had in blogging!

Now that Spring is finally arriving, and the footy season is finished, I hope I might get back into it with this small message that Christmas is coming along towards us and a shameless advertisement for buying secondhand books for Christmas presents in this era of austerity.

I was prompted to this thought by a list I read recently in an issue of
Zadok Perspectives, a magazine put out by the Melbourne-based, Zadok Institute for Christianity and Society. This handy list contains ideas for giving cheap, recycled, hand-made, but welcome Christmas gifts that do not chew up too many of our planet's resources. Good second-hand books are on obvious inclusion. Here's the list:

• Make a gift (make a card, frame a photo, bake some biccies, cook some chutney, collate a recipe book, write out a poem, bottle some jam - apricots are in season in December!)
• Give a voucher (babysitting, home made cake, a night at the movies)
• Recycle an old treasure (book, lamp, kitchen canisters, groovy retro plate)
• Pot a plant (take lavender, pelargonium or daisy cuttings, sow seed in a small pot ready to give away, prune and uproot an unwanted rose bush and give it to someone who'd love it)

• Reduce needless consumer spending (give a gift to a charity in someone's name, draw names instead of buying for everyone in a family, buy an edible gift and pay a fair price for it eg fair trade organic coffee).

You can also follow up with other suggestions at www.buynothingchristmas.org