Between Virgin And BT
Feb. 12th, 2012 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloWe'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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 01:58 pm (UTC)I would love if you wrote about some of the war poetry that didn't last.
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Date: 2012-02-12 02:31 pm (UTC)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...
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Date: 2012-02-12 02:47 pm (UTC)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?
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Date: 2012-02-12 07:33 pm (UTC)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.