Good, better, verse

It's proving quite the Tennyson-infested winter (see this previous post), the latest manifestation to have swum into my ken being John Carey's delightful review of the new biography by John Batchelor.  You don't need close reading skills to sense that Carey dislikes Tennyson's stab at The Matter of Britain; (while I'm gaily strewing links around, see this post), in that he says:

 'The Idylls of the King....gives the impression of being made out of some high-class decorative material rather than poetry'

and then goes on to assert:

 'However, cleverness is not essential for poets.  What they need is a faultless ear, a gift for phrase and instant access to the human heart.'

before citing some examples.

This struck me as an interesting view of what constitutes a poet, in that it excludes a 
quality - cleverness - that many people would cite as the defining characteristic of the genre.  A reason popularly produced by people for not reading poetry is that it is too 'difficult', which could be interpreted as too intellectually challenging, which in turn is not a condition arrived at in the absence of cleverness.  We hail, it seems to me, many of the poets from the last two centuries (Auden, Yeats, Eliot, Pound) as great because, at least in part, of their philosophical content and intellectual insight. There is also the aspect of 'cleverness' which allows the poets of the highest stature to employ language in a concentrated, precise manner that is not necessarily susceptible to full immediate apprehension.

One can, of course, proceed too far down this road into the unappealing neighbourhood of wilful obscurity, and there is the famous literary joke about someone publishing a volume of poetry and following this with publication of 'the answers'.  I still maintain, however, that we need to keep clear critical dividing lines between great, literary poets and (albeit hugely talented) versifiers such as, for example, John Cooper Clarke or Benjamin Zephaniah, who are among writers periodically presented as representing poetry that is somehow more acceptable (even 'genuine') because it doesn't attempt to embarrass its readers with 'cleverness' that smacks of elitism or cultural snobbery (which seems to me like criticising a racing cyclist for being disconcertingly rapid).

Carey's witty dismissal of 'The Idylls' (apropos of nothing else in particular) reminds me of a typically, brilliantly deranged short story by Richard Brautigan, Homage to the San Francisco YMCA, in Revenge of the Lawn, in which the protagonist decides to replace his domestic plumbing with poetry.  It does not perform well.

Anyone for Tennyson?

Having been dragged like a sulky child to see Skyfall by my wife, I found the film surprisingly enjoyable (although I was dismayed that the opening song rejected the opportunity to use the words 'trifle' and 'eyeful').  I was particularly impressed by the deftness with which The International Tennyson Marketing Board (obviously an organisation with which to be reckoned) insinuated the end of Ulysses into the film, spoken by 'M':

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I remember the commercial frenzy that ensued when some Auden was sprinkled over Four Weddings and a Funeral. I was a bookseller in St Albans then, and a tiny Faber pamphlet which  contained the poems, and which was hardly competitively-priced, flapped out of the the doors in sizeable flocks, its staples glinting in the sunlight, causing many a Poetry section manager to gibber with surprised delight.  I'm at The Bookshop in Welwyn Garden tomorrow and am eager to learn if this phenomenon is repeating itself.

In a time when poetry seems to be threatening a popular rehabilitation - Twitter today, for example, was buzzing with discussions about how to make the great reading public less averse to the form - I wonder if this inclusion in major films is the most efficient vector to accelerating the process.  The estates of our major poets could vie with each other to have Batman and Bourne pause in mid-action to stare reflectively at the camera and quote some Hopkins or Hughes, then sit back and wait for the tills to ring:  'You know what, Joker, at times like this, I always say to myself: 'The world is charged with the grandeur of God''.  What's good enough for Pepsi and Apple, after all...

This post leaves you with a brace of Bond-related books, namely:

Licensed to Kill a Mockingbird and

The Prophecies of Not-Stirred Damus'.

Sorry, and goodnight.