Between Virgin And BT

[poliphilo]

We're in the process of transferring our phone and broadband from Virgin to BT. The BT engineers were here three mornings on the run. The transaction is still not complete. The BT guys say (or hint) that it's because the Virgin guys are being petty. Our internet connection is down this morning (for whatever reason) and I'm hooked up to Sam next door's broadband. (Thank you, Sam.)

I walked up to Tesco this morning. The streets are as icy as they were two days ago. The woman ahead of me at Tesco Express hoiked her wire basket onto the counter and a bottle of German wine jumped out and smashed on the floor. Poor kid.

I was reading Great War poetry yesterday afternoon- not the better stuff, but the sadly insufficient stuff about chivalry and sacrifice and how lovely the Sussex countryside is and how the Kaiser is going to be punished by God. It's remarkable how ill-prepared the versifying classes were for dealing not only with modern warfare, but with the modern world. If you took these poems literally you might suppose that England at the time of the Great War was a nation of shepherds and ploughmen- and that the soldiers they turned into wore armour and fought with swords and lances. 

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I got a book of WWI poetry for research purposes and incidental enjoyment (if that's the right word) and Lord even the poems that were a bit more considered in their historical view were not that great either. And according to the intro to the book, every Tom(my) Dick and Harry(et) fancied themselves as a poet - magazines had to turn down sheaves of poems written by soldiers, former soldiers and sometimes their wives and girlfriends.

I guess the poems were ill prepared because the people in general were ill-prepared. Phenomena like WWI hit you like a huge wave and knock down everything you assumed was true about life.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The collection I was looking at was published in 1917. It contains the famous sonnets by Rupert Brooke, Hardy's "In a Time of the Breaking of Nations" and not much else that has stood the test of time. Sassoon is represented by a couple of short poems and Robert Graves by one.

You wouldn't guess, from scrolling through it, that English language poetry was at the beginning of a Golden Age.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

That whole period is really "the end of one style and the beginning of another". It can be frustrating when trying to imagine a character's appearance, esp as I am a profoundly unvisual person.

Of course much of the innovation was coming from across the pond. The Fugitives, Cummings, Pound etc. Even Graves's style improved immeasurably once he met the American poet Laura Riding. It's unbelievable the difference - like Before and After at Extreme Poets Makeover.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a fascinating period. I love many of its writers.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Graves disowned all his early verse. None of his war poetry survives in the Collected Poems he edited himself.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I don't entirely disagree with his judgement there - some of it is a bit twee. Riding, not the war, knocked the nonsense out of it. But he then included far too much of his late stuff, mostly doggerel composed to women young enough to be his daughters, or even granddaughters in one case. Classic example of logic implementation where Penis > Brain.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Alfred Graves was an Irish/Welsh poet of middle-of-the-road ability. I was surprised when reading Goodbye To All That of Graves's sentimental identification of his Irish heritage - and his utterly dismissive attitude to real life Irish people when he was actually there. But then again the racism in GTAT is pretty awful, and Paddies get off relatively lightly.

I think Riding is underrated as a poet, myself. Some of her use of language is cumbersome, I grant you, but some of her poems are quite well-wrought and elegant and stay in the mind. I think the fact that she was as awful in her life as P B Shelley was in his was what militated against her. It's ok for a man to misbehave, but not a woman.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd be very interested in reading that. The jingoistic stuff doesn't seem to get pubilshed any more (probably with good reason).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The collection I was surfing is here
http://www.bartleby.com/266/index1.html

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!"

Unbelievable.

There's even a section entitled "Oxford". What has Oxford got to do with anything!

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

In fairness, much of the women's poetry appeared, from the representative sample, to be equally execrable - this quality augmented the fact that there was no battle for them to direct some of their pent-up energies.

[sovay]

I was reading Great War poetry yesterday afternoon- not the better stuff, but the sadly insufficient stuff about chivalry and sacrifice and how lovely the Sussex countryside is and how the Kaiser is going to be punished by God.

I would love if you wrote about some of the war poetry that didn't last.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I might.

But, on the other hand, I think most of this stuff is better forgotten. It represents nobody's finest hour.

Incidentally it was your post on The Lighthouse that got me started. I went looking for Wilfred Wilson Gibson and found he'd written war poems and they were in an anthology and...

[sovay]

But, on the other hand, I think most of this stuff is better forgotten. It represents nobody's finest hour.

I still find it interesting, what survives or doesn't (what deserves to).

I went looking for Wilfred Wilson Gibson and found he'd written war poems and they were in an anthology and...

Not his finest hour, I take it?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think Gibson misses the mark. He's got the right idea- and he's trying to tell the truth about war- but he misses the mark. I've only read a couple of his things- but they discourage me.

I'm fascinated by the question of what survives and what doesn't. I think posterity is quite capable of judging wrong. For instance it neglects Barrie (apart from that one play) and it shouldn't. But in the matter of war poetry I believe it has got things right. The war poets we value are the ones we should value. Most of the verses that got into print when the war was actually raging are inadequate- some of them pitifully so. I don't blame the poets. The war was just too big for them. They didn't have the resources or technique to deal with it. I don't want to mock them for that. They tried and failed, but at least they tried.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Breakages before checkout used to be replaceable - is that no longer the case? Or do you mean "poor" because of embarrassment/mess?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of the embarrassment. I don't suppose they made her pay, but she looked mortified.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.