Quick summary of events. I attended a private reading arranged by Marilyn Hacker’s friend Marie Étienne for the poet and novelist Hédi Kaddour, who presented his new novel to a small group of writers assembled at Marie Etienne’s apartment on the rue de Turenne. Among these were some I knew—Margo Berdeshevsky, Claire Malroux, and of course Marilyn. New to me were Hédi Kaddour, born in Tunisia, immigrant at an early age to France, and now thoroughly Parisian, with an attractive voice and an elegant personal bearing. I knew about but had never met Marilyn’s friend Linda Gardner, who several years ago retired from editorship of The Women’s Review of Books and settled in her favorite city. There was also Gabrielle Althen, whom I hadn’t met though I had read her complex and refined poems; and Paul Rossi, a critic and the partner of Marie Étienne, whom I instantly liked. Kaddour read for about ninety minutes to a polite and attentive audience, many of whom had incisive critiques to offer afterward. The novel is a braiding of three separate strands: a minimal fictional narrative, a personal journal, and a series of critical reflections on authors and filmmakers. Which I guess means it should be classed as a “metafiction.” I was struck by the fact that the authors he commented on I happened to like myself—Flaubert, Colette, and Racine (in particular his Bérénice, usually overlooked but very beautiful). It’s hard to imagine a similar evening taking place successfully anywhere but in Paris.
This past weekend I spent in Normandy, in the little town of Bayeux. Of course the famous tapestry is there. (Actually, it’s not a true tapestry but instead a band of embroidered linen, 70 meters long, 1000-year-old ancestor of the comic strip.) I’d always wanted to see it and this was my chance. We’re often disappointed when we see something after years of anticipation. But not this time. It’s a magnificent work, and all done with needle and thread.
It was good to have a break from the frenetic Parisian run-up to Christmas, which is now as jarring and abrasive as in any other capital city. You could say that indulgence in Christmas rituals has increased in inverse proportion to actual Christian belief and practice. Which goes some way toward explaining why Jewish and Muslim families also celebrate it nowadays. Santa is folklore, not religion, and he has the special advantage of fitting in perfectly with a consumerist approach to things. Also, the enshrining of childhood as the quintessential, most adored phase of a modern life. After age twelve, it’s all downhill. Ask our angry and disaffected teenagers, who almost overnight have to learn how to live without the feeling that they are the center of the universe. Christmas gives everyone the opportunity of regressing to the golden age. A grateful economy does everything it can to inspire that regression. Before 1950, the French never made much of Christmas. There was the Saint Sylvestre feast on December 24, which involved midnight mass and le réveillon, but gift-giving was put off till New Year’s, where a typical étrenne (holiday present) was a cone of marrons glacés (glazed chestnuts). There’s a wonderful essay by Claude Lévi-Strauss (who recently celebrated his 100th birthday), in which he analyses the Santa Claus figure from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology. The essay begins with an anecdote about the church fathers of a large provincial city some time in the early Fifties deciding to burn an effigy of Le Père Noël on the square in front of the cathedral. That would never happen now. Christmas is part of the carnival spirit that has swept the globe, inflating not only Mardi Gras but also Halloween (which in the past two decades has become a big deal in Europe, too), New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. All of these are good for sales, obviously, but no one has yet explained why advanced Western societies are so addicted to carnival. My guess: It’s an escape from depression, which is also epidemic in our culture. But then, why is everyone so depressed? Boring, yet stressful jobs; failed marriages; envy of those with more money and possessions; aging in a culture that only cares about youth. Finally, it’s just not as much fun to be an adult as a child. Toys “R” Us, and it’s painful to have to stop being one. But you can inhabit the toy universe again next week, if you do the legwork, like the one hundred thousand people I see every night raiding the shops on the Champs Élysées.
That was a long digression. All I was going to say was that the French provinces offer a welcome alternative to the near-hysteria of the capital this time of year. I went to see the Bayeux tapestry but found the cathedral and the timber-frame houses of the town an almost equal attraction. I’d thought there would be a chance to go the Normandy coast about ten miles away, which was the site of the D-Day invasion, but we had rain so I just stayed in town. It’s just as well, I had some restorative downtime. Now I’m in Paris again, and have four more days before returning to England.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Sights
When traveling, you don’t have time to record (or not in detail) all you are doing. Quick summary: Marilyn Hacker arrived this past weekend and immediately invited Margo and myself to dinner, which gave us a chance to exchange news and think of projects. Monday Marilyn and I attended an interview-reading given by Vénus Khoury-Ghata. It was a pleasure to renew acquaintance with her. A Lebanese poet and autofiction writer, she has just published a new collection titled Les Obscurcis.
I saw an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume devoted to the life and work of the American photographer Lee Miller, who was a few years ago the subject of a revelatory biography by Carolyn Burke. In addition to Miller’s startling pictures were portraits of her made by other photographers, including Man Ray and Steichen, and a film about her life. All of this is an avenue to the artistic ferment of Paris in the Twenties and Thirties, a period of inexhaustible fascination. I didn’t know, for example,that she played the Muse figure in Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète. Another aspect of her life was the war photography she did in London during the blitz and on the front once the Allies invaded Europe. She was with the troops that liberated Dachau, and the photographs she took at that moment are the most horrifying she ever made. It’s good that interest in this less well known figure is being revived.
The Musée Maillol, in addition to its permanent collection is currently showing works by a primitive painter named Séraphine Louis (known to art historians as Séraphine de Senlis), who lived and worked a century ago in that cathedral town in the provinces. A new film by Martin Provost (titled simply Séraphine and starring the Belgian actress Yolande Moreau)) tells her story, how she worked as a housecleaner and painted in her free time, her paintings eventually discovered by a visiting German art critic named Uhde. But it’s not a triumphalist narrative, instead it involves mental illness and confinement in a hospital at a period when treatment of the insane was cruel and ineffective. I saw the film first on my own, and then Margo and I saw the show.
Apart from these activities, I fill my day with long strolls through the streets of Paris, absorbing sights familiar and new. One such stroll took me to the Île St. Louis and past a little hotel on rue St. Louis where Ann Jones and I stayed forty-one years ago while we were looking for an apartment to live in during my Fulbright year. (Why did we choose a hotel on the Île St. Louis? Well, it’s quieter than other parts of town, centrally located, and, according to Proust’s novel, it’s where the character Swann lived, which gives it a certain literary aura.) Edmund White and I stayed in the same hotel three years later after a drive we took together from Rome to Paris. In the Eighties, he took an apartment on the island, I believe on rue Poulletier, and when I came to Paris during the decade he lived here, I again stayed in the little hotel, though by then it had been renovated and looked much smarter than it did in the Sixties. As I’ve suggested before, a visit to Paris is layered experience for me, memory on top of memory, and I hope it doesn’t too much resemble archeology when I write about it here.
I saw an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume devoted to the life and work of the American photographer Lee Miller, who was a few years ago the subject of a revelatory biography by Carolyn Burke. In addition to Miller’s startling pictures were portraits of her made by other photographers, including Man Ray and Steichen, and a film about her life. All of this is an avenue to the artistic ferment of Paris in the Twenties and Thirties, a period of inexhaustible fascination. I didn’t know, for example,that she played the Muse figure in Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète. Another aspect of her life was the war photography she did in London during the blitz and on the front once the Allies invaded Europe. She was with the troops that liberated Dachau, and the photographs she took at that moment are the most horrifying she ever made. It’s good that interest in this less well known figure is being revived.
The Musée Maillol, in addition to its permanent collection is currently showing works by a primitive painter named Séraphine Louis (known to art historians as Séraphine de Senlis), who lived and worked a century ago in that cathedral town in the provinces. A new film by Martin Provost (titled simply Séraphine and starring the Belgian actress Yolande Moreau)) tells her story, how she worked as a housecleaner and painted in her free time, her paintings eventually discovered by a visiting German art critic named Uhde. But it’s not a triumphalist narrative, instead it involves mental illness and confinement in a hospital at a period when treatment of the insane was cruel and ineffective. I saw the film first on my own, and then Margo and I saw the show.
Apart from these activities, I fill my day with long strolls through the streets of Paris, absorbing sights familiar and new. One such stroll took me to the Île St. Louis and past a little hotel on rue St. Louis where Ann Jones and I stayed forty-one years ago while we were looking for an apartment to live in during my Fulbright year. (Why did we choose a hotel on the Île St. Louis? Well, it’s quieter than other parts of town, centrally located, and, according to Proust’s novel, it’s where the character Swann lived, which gives it a certain literary aura.) Edmund White and I stayed in the same hotel three years later after a drive we took together from Rome to Paris. In the Eighties, he took an apartment on the island, I believe on rue Poulletier, and when I came to Paris during the decade he lived here, I again stayed in the little hotel, though by then it had been renovated and looked much smarter than it did in the Sixties. As I’ve suggested before, a visit to Paris is layered experience for me, memory on top of memory, and I hope it doesn’t too much resemble archeology when I write about it here.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Paris and Memory
This is being written in Paris in the apartment belonging to Marilyn Hacker in the Marais neighborhood. I’ll be staying here until she arrives from New York this weekend. It’s a pleasant and comfy place, and of course I’ve been reading some of the books lining the walls, especially volumes of new French poetry and fiction. Marilyn knows a number of contemporary French poets, in fact, has translated several—most recently Marie Etienne’s King of a Hundred Horsemen, which won the Robert Fagles translation prize a year ago. Other French poets she has translated include Venus Khoury-Ghata, Claire Malroux, Guy Goffette, Emanuel Moses, and Hédi Kaddour. It can't be long before she will be commended by the Légion d’Honneur?
I was let into the apartment by my friend Margo Berdeshevsky, whose first book But a Passage in the Wilderness appeared with Sheep Meadow last year. Margo has had several distinct but interrelated lives: As a little girl she first came to live in Paris for long stretches while her father worked here. As an adult she enjoyed a successful career on the stage in New York but eventually put acting aside. For many years she lived in Hawaii--and that is where we first met, back in the 1990s, when I gave a reading and workshop at a cultural center on Maui. In addition to writing, she makes beautiful double-exposure b&w photographs, related to her poems in their aesthetic of ambiguity and multiple sourcings.
We had dinner that first evening at an unfussy, old-Paris restaurant on the quai des Célestins, and I was reminded that Paris has resisted (not always successfully) the rush to sweep out the old and ring in the new. Parisians do not insist that every establishment they frequent look as though it were designed tomorrow. Not every surface needs to be scrubbed and polished to a high gloss; materials can be of an older vintage than plate glass and concrete; gilt and red velvet plush are permitted. As for dwellings here, a few go back to the fourteenth century and are still being lived in. Each succeeding century has an increasing number of architectural representatives, at least until you get to the twentieth, when conservationists began to halt the tearing down of old structures for replacement by the new. No doubt the last major overhaul Paris allowed--under duress--was the one Malraux undertook in the late 1960s. In fact, it occurred here in the Marais. I was living in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship that year, and I recall the shock Parisians felt as the work began.
Memories of a city that I have known intimately, and revisited more than a dozen times since my first residence here four decades ago, have naturally come flooding in since I arrived. (See this blog for the month of May, which recalls the insurgency of that era.) An idea that I’ve been turning over in my mind is this: Paris as the Capital of Memory. The theme was important to Baudelaire in poems like “Moesta et Errabunda,” “Le Cygne,” and “Recueillement.” Proust constructed an entire novelistic epic on the phenomenon of involuntary memory. And Apollinaire’s beautiful “La Chanson du Mal-Aimé” includes this ravishing stanza:
Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire
Avons-nous assez navigué
Dans une onde mauvaise à boire
Avons-nous assez divagué
De la belle aube au triste soir
Recollection is also the basis of his “Le Pont Mirabeau,” a lyric at once searing, musical, and nostalgic, where what is summoned up from the Seine under the Mirabeau Bridge is the conclusion of a love-affair with Marie Laurencin. We tend to think of French literature (and Paris) as overwhelmingly concerned with eros and love, an estimate that's accurate provided one understands that the French have a melancholy view concerning love’s chances in a fallen world. It is almost always blocked by social convention, destroyed by circumstance, or worn away by time. And what better setting for this theme than the grey city of Paris, whose classical and Beaux-Arts architecture shows so well in the pearl-grey light of its winter months? In the French tradition, consolation for love's disappointments is found in religion or in art; or in memory, as it is enshrined in art. Or not at all.
This afternoon, as soon as the rain stopped, I took the métro up to the Butte Montmartre and wandered about for while, though the irregular cobbles of that up-and-downhill quarter were contraindicated for a foot not quite yet healed. I found some of the haunts of the artistic avant-garde of a century ago—Le Lapin agile, Le Consulat, Le Billard de bois (used by Van Gogh as the subject of his picture La Guinguette)—and the site of the “Bateau Lavoir,” where Picasso lived for nearly a decade in a state of near-starvation. Which didn’t prevent him from painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon before moving on to the colossal fame that awaited him. What else? Well, the little vineyard of Montmartre is still in operation, producing, I imagine, no more than fifteen cases of wine annually. And the Place du Tertre is there, spoiled by tourism, as you might expect. It was there that Louis Renault drove his first automobile 110 years ago, on December 24, launching one form of modernity and more problems than he could ever have dreamed of. All of France and the rest of the globe is now in thrall to oil, so that the descendants of Renault's machine and its foreign conterparts can function. And, oh, is the globe heating up!
I walked to the Sacre Coeur (church of the Sacred Heart), from whose steps you get the most impressive view of Paris’s spires, domes, and high-rises (with the possible exception of the Tour Eiffel, but that involves long waits, a steep admission fee, and the risk of acrophobic seizures). I had planned to recite Baudelaire’s “Recueillement” to myself, thinking its brilliant verbality and profound evocation of memory might take my mind off an aching foot. But who could possibly concentrate? There was too much noise, teenagers yelling about nothing in particular, buskers hawking their second-hand covers of pop songs, tourists barking instructions to family members they were downloading into their digital cameras. I’ve noticed this phenomenon at other sites that might qualify as sublime. People just don’t know how to handle the awe they’re in danger of feeling, and so they try to dispel it with trivial pursuits and deflationary comments. Too bad. But I caught sight of a couple of others like myself, silent, gazing, sifting through memories that the cityscape and late light stirred in them. My unknown companions, bound together by the unstated freemasonry espoused by those who can accord to an elevated moment its proper weight; who don’t need to experience their lives as a sit-com and aren't afraid of strong feelings.
I was let into the apartment by my friend Margo Berdeshevsky, whose first book But a Passage in the Wilderness appeared with Sheep Meadow last year. Margo has had several distinct but interrelated lives: As a little girl she first came to live in Paris for long stretches while her father worked here. As an adult she enjoyed a successful career on the stage in New York but eventually put acting aside. For many years she lived in Hawaii--and that is where we first met, back in the 1990s, when I gave a reading and workshop at a cultural center on Maui. In addition to writing, she makes beautiful double-exposure b&w photographs, related to her poems in their aesthetic of ambiguity and multiple sourcings.
We had dinner that first evening at an unfussy, old-Paris restaurant on the quai des Célestins, and I was reminded that Paris has resisted (not always successfully) the rush to sweep out the old and ring in the new. Parisians do not insist that every establishment they frequent look as though it were designed tomorrow. Not every surface needs to be scrubbed and polished to a high gloss; materials can be of an older vintage than plate glass and concrete; gilt and red velvet plush are permitted. As for dwellings here, a few go back to the fourteenth century and are still being lived in. Each succeeding century has an increasing number of architectural representatives, at least until you get to the twentieth, when conservationists began to halt the tearing down of old structures for replacement by the new. No doubt the last major overhaul Paris allowed--under duress--was the one Malraux undertook in the late 1960s. In fact, it occurred here in the Marais. I was living in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship that year, and I recall the shock Parisians felt as the work began.
Memories of a city that I have known intimately, and revisited more than a dozen times since my first residence here four decades ago, have naturally come flooding in since I arrived. (See this blog for the month of May, which recalls the insurgency of that era.) An idea that I’ve been turning over in my mind is this: Paris as the Capital of Memory. The theme was important to Baudelaire in poems like “Moesta et Errabunda,” “Le Cygne,” and “Recueillement.” Proust constructed an entire novelistic epic on the phenomenon of involuntary memory. And Apollinaire’s beautiful “La Chanson du Mal-Aimé” includes this ravishing stanza:
Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire
Avons-nous assez navigué
Dans une onde mauvaise à boire
Avons-nous assez divagué
De la belle aube au triste soir
Recollection is also the basis of his “Le Pont Mirabeau,” a lyric at once searing, musical, and nostalgic, where what is summoned up from the Seine under the Mirabeau Bridge is the conclusion of a love-affair with Marie Laurencin. We tend to think of French literature (and Paris) as overwhelmingly concerned with eros and love, an estimate that's accurate provided one understands that the French have a melancholy view concerning love’s chances in a fallen world. It is almost always blocked by social convention, destroyed by circumstance, or worn away by time. And what better setting for this theme than the grey city of Paris, whose classical and Beaux-Arts architecture shows so well in the pearl-grey light of its winter months? In the French tradition, consolation for love's disappointments is found in religion or in art; or in memory, as it is enshrined in art. Or not at all.
This afternoon, as soon as the rain stopped, I took the métro up to the Butte Montmartre and wandered about for while, though the irregular cobbles of that up-and-downhill quarter were contraindicated for a foot not quite yet healed. I found some of the haunts of the artistic avant-garde of a century ago—Le Lapin agile, Le Consulat, Le Billard de bois (used by Van Gogh as the subject of his picture La Guinguette)—and the site of the “Bateau Lavoir,” where Picasso lived for nearly a decade in a state of near-starvation. Which didn’t prevent him from painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon before moving on to the colossal fame that awaited him. What else? Well, the little vineyard of Montmartre is still in operation, producing, I imagine, no more than fifteen cases of wine annually. And the Place du Tertre is there, spoiled by tourism, as you might expect. It was there that Louis Renault drove his first automobile 110 years ago, on December 24, launching one form of modernity and more problems than he could ever have dreamed of. All of France and the rest of the globe is now in thrall to oil, so that the descendants of Renault's machine and its foreign conterparts can function. And, oh, is the globe heating up!
I walked to the Sacre Coeur (church of the Sacred Heart), from whose steps you get the most impressive view of Paris’s spires, domes, and high-rises (with the possible exception of the Tour Eiffel, but that involves long waits, a steep admission fee, and the risk of acrophobic seizures). I had planned to recite Baudelaire’s “Recueillement” to myself, thinking its brilliant verbality and profound evocation of memory might take my mind off an aching foot. But who could possibly concentrate? There was too much noise, teenagers yelling about nothing in particular, buskers hawking their second-hand covers of pop songs, tourists barking instructions to family members they were downloading into their digital cameras. I’ve noticed this phenomenon at other sites that might qualify as sublime. People just don’t know how to handle the awe they’re in danger of feeling, and so they try to dispel it with trivial pursuits and deflationary comments. Too bad. But I caught sight of a couple of others like myself, silent, gazing, sifting through memories that the cityscape and late light stirred in them. My unknown companions, bound together by the unstated freemasonry espoused by those who can accord to an elevated moment its proper weight; who don’t need to experience their lives as a sit-com and aren't afraid of strong feelings.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
London Today
I’ll be away from London for several weeks, and maybe that’s why it seems a good moment to say something about a vast city that almost successfully escapes description. A friend in the States recently wished me a good time in “merrie olde England,” which was kind but jolted me into an awareness that not so many Americans realize that London differs from Dickens’s depiction of the city (stylized to the point of inaccuracy even for the time when the novella first appeared) in A Christmas Carol. Several things to consider: London is a world metropolis whose only peers are New York, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Tokyo. As for the composition of its population, it is the world’s most diverse. Apart from the descendants of the earliest inhabitants (we can expand the definition by saying that includes the Scots, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish) it has attracted new citizens from the former Empire or current Commonwealth—from Canada, from the West Indies, from Australia, New Zealand, India, the Middle East, from Hong Kong, Singapore, Nigeria, well, the list goes on. Besides that, laws governing the European Community allow citizens from all E.C. nations to live and work in Britain. Therefore all European languages are commonly spoken on the street in London. Every world cuisine is represented in its restaurants, and shops of every ethnicity can be found somewhere in the city.
Culturally, Britain has as much as anyone could desire: in contemporary visual art, several world-class artists are producing major innovative work, for example, Lucien Freud, Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Anthony Gormley, Sam Taylor-Wood, Paula Rego. And the stage: Partly because it is state subsidized and partly because of a tradition that extends back to the Renaissance and Western culture’s greatest dramatist, theatre in London is stronger than in any other city, both in the standard repertory and in works by new playwrights. The Nobel isn’t often conferred for achievement in drama, but Harold Pinter has received it. London has two opera houses, with the most celebrated performers appearing at Covent Garden, and a more unusual repertory (including newly commissioned works) at the English National Opera. Music performances take place every night at a wide variety of venues such as Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican, Wigmore Hall, and the new venue King’s Place discussed here a month ago. Dance is strong both at the Royal Ballet and then Sadler’s Wells for more contemporary work, plus fringe events elsewhere. And if we turn to pop music, it’s clear that the U.S.’s only real rival in that area is Britain. In fact, there are some of us that tend to prefer British rock to American, exception made, still, for African-American artists.
British literary culture is a national preoccupation, one sign of which is the huge readership for London’s several daily papers, to which Manchester’s Guardian must be added because it is read in every city in the U.K. Magazines, literary quarterlies, and little magazines are found in numbers that would seem hefty even for a country with a much larger population than Britain’s. When a new novel appears, within a couple of weeks of publication it gets reviews in at least half a dozen publications, followed not long after by consideration in publications appearing at wider intervals. The British Arts Council funds magazines, literary festivals, workshops, and individual artists, not only in London but throughout the U.K. Given the intensity of the interest in literature, it’s no wonder that this relatively small country has produced many of the world’s most widely read contemporary authors. There’s no need to round up the usual suspects, we all know who they are.
But there is one topic related to poetry I want to pause over. There used to be an idea that British poets and American poets were twain, that neither could understand the other. The stereotypical American poet wrote shapeless personal narratives in leaden language about terrible things undergone, like child abuse, marital violence, drugs, alcohol, madness, and suicide. The stereotypical British poet wrote nicely composed poems using meter, rhyme and verseform about topics such as nature, pleasant domestic recollections, and exalted moments drawn from cultural history. British and American poets might both adore Latin American poetry, but they couldn’t understand each other. Nonsense. There are temporary barriers to perfect comprehension—differing vocabulary and references to day-to-day phenomena that don’t have counterparts in the other culture, but these are soon mastered. Many American poets (like Marilyn Hacker or Annie Finch) use traditional prosody, and, meanwhile, only a minority in the U.K. do. There are many experimental British poets, especially the group associated with Cambridge U., and British publication now reflects the ethnic diversity of its population. Younger British poets are irreverent, slangy, often working-class in tone and subject matter, uninterested in using polite means of expression. I’m not sure where nowadays you would find merrie olde England, but certainly not in London and not in British poetry.
Culturally, Britain has as much as anyone could desire: in contemporary visual art, several world-class artists are producing major innovative work, for example, Lucien Freud, Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Anthony Gormley, Sam Taylor-Wood, Paula Rego. And the stage: Partly because it is state subsidized and partly because of a tradition that extends back to the Renaissance and Western culture’s greatest dramatist, theatre in London is stronger than in any other city, both in the standard repertory and in works by new playwrights. The Nobel isn’t often conferred for achievement in drama, but Harold Pinter has received it. London has two opera houses, with the most celebrated performers appearing at Covent Garden, and a more unusual repertory (including newly commissioned works) at the English National Opera. Music performances take place every night at a wide variety of venues such as Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican, Wigmore Hall, and the new venue King’s Place discussed here a month ago. Dance is strong both at the Royal Ballet and then Sadler’s Wells for more contemporary work, plus fringe events elsewhere. And if we turn to pop music, it’s clear that the U.S.’s only real rival in that area is Britain. In fact, there are some of us that tend to prefer British rock to American, exception made, still, for African-American artists.
British literary culture is a national preoccupation, one sign of which is the huge readership for London’s several daily papers, to which Manchester’s Guardian must be added because it is read in every city in the U.K. Magazines, literary quarterlies, and little magazines are found in numbers that would seem hefty even for a country with a much larger population than Britain’s. When a new novel appears, within a couple of weeks of publication it gets reviews in at least half a dozen publications, followed not long after by consideration in publications appearing at wider intervals. The British Arts Council funds magazines, literary festivals, workshops, and individual artists, not only in London but throughout the U.K. Given the intensity of the interest in literature, it’s no wonder that this relatively small country has produced many of the world’s most widely read contemporary authors. There’s no need to round up the usual suspects, we all know who they are.
But there is one topic related to poetry I want to pause over. There used to be an idea that British poets and American poets were twain, that neither could understand the other. The stereotypical American poet wrote shapeless personal narratives in leaden language about terrible things undergone, like child abuse, marital violence, drugs, alcohol, madness, and suicide. The stereotypical British poet wrote nicely composed poems using meter, rhyme and verseform about topics such as nature, pleasant domestic recollections, and exalted moments drawn from cultural history. British and American poets might both adore Latin American poetry, but they couldn’t understand each other. Nonsense. There are temporary barriers to perfect comprehension—differing vocabulary and references to day-to-day phenomena that don’t have counterparts in the other culture, but these are soon mastered. Many American poets (like Marilyn Hacker or Annie Finch) use traditional prosody, and, meanwhile, only a minority in the U.K. do. There are many experimental British poets, especially the group associated with Cambridge U., and British publication now reflects the ethnic diversity of its population. Younger British poets are irreverent, slangy, often working-class in tone and subject matter, uninterested in using polite means of expression. I’m not sure where nowadays you would find merrie olde England, but certainly not in London and not in British poetry.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Gay Poetry in Britain
Moving to matters literary, I want to reflect a bit on the scarcity of poetry involving gay male experience here in the U.K. There are several prominent lesbian poets, forthright about their lives to varying degrees. I’m going to hold off giving their names, just in case they’d prefer not to be part of this discussion. The situation with gay male poetry, though, is very different. Two decades ago Jeremy Reed wrote poems with gay subject matter, but no longer seems to, or else doesn’t publish them. Since Reed, I know of only one book-publishing poet (Gregory Woods) who uses that subject matter in his work; but he is not famous. It might be helpful to hear him give an account of his experience. A few years ago Magma magazine (to its credit) assembled an issue on the theme of gay poetry, and Woods was queried about his publishing history. Here’s the link:
www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=16088
His account of what happened isn’t at all encouraging, but it sounds plausible, based on my experience. I’ve noticed that, when books by gay males are reviewed by straight males, the latter do everything in their power to make sure the reader understands that the reviewer isn’t gay. The easiest way to do this is to deplore the subject matter. Not much better is, “Although I’m not myself gay, I can understand…etc.” I’ve even seen, “When I showed this poem to my wife, she said… etc.” Whatever else these dodges mean, they suggest that the stigma of being gay, even in countries where homosexuality has been decriminalized, is enormous. On the other hand, I know straight men who are sometimes mistaken for being gay and who find it amusing or flattering, in any case, no big deal. But that’s not the situation with most, and you have to wonder what secret fears and insecurities make some individuals so touchy about the topic. Oh, and the other fact to take note of is that straight women reviewers are almost always less damning when they review gay male poets.
The issue also comes up outside the realm of reviewing; it affects publishers’ acceptance of the work. My friend Mimi Khalvati told me the story of a gay poet (whose name I will leave out, since I don’t know if he’d like being mentioned). He was associated with an important poetry magazine, published gay poems and poems on other topics in many other magazines, won prizes, gave readings, etc. He tried for ten years to get a book published, to no avail. Eventually, he gave up trying. That is too bad.
At the Chroma magazine party mentioned a couple of blogs back, I met a young poet who received one of the annual prizes given by the magazine. His name is John Mccullough. He has published two pamphlets, won prizes, and has appeared in many magazines, as well as The Guardian. Some of his poems involve gay subject matter, but not all. He has decided, though, not to censor himself nor to worry about public acceptance, which strikes me as courageous and admirable. In an e-mail exchange, he said:
“I hope that the British poetry world is ready for a first collection with lots of poems featuring gay speakers - most successful poets have written them after already having proved their poetic worth with other successful collections rather than trying to prove it with poems which investigate gay history and such. Sometimes I don't know if maybe I should be moving away from it and trying to be relevant in other ways. I hope that love is something which transcends gender and that my love poems are sufficiently universal. I know that gay poems comprise less than half of what I write but I don't want to be tidied away into the drawer labelled 'gay poetry - for gay people' - it's even tinier than the one labelled 'poetry'.”
John’s comment about the “universal” appeal of poetry reminds me of something I read in an essay by a very prominent British gay male poet in whose work you can’t find any evidence of the nature of his sexuality. (And he is not a political conservative, in fact, is sited on the far left of the political spectrum.) He was discussing love poems written in the second person rather than the third, and noted that this allowed the reader of whatever gender to identify with the poem’s speaker—as presumably some of them couldn’t do if the pronouns were gendered. In fact, this poet uses the approach himself; all his love poems are written to “you,” never about “him.” And yet I don’t find the argument convincing. “Upon Julia’s Clothes” is written in the third person, and I’m able to identify with the speaker instantly; it’s quite a sexy poem. Just as easily I can identify with Wyatt’s “Whoso list to hunt” or his “They flee from me who sometime did me seek.” And I'm aware that straight women readers also respond to these poems. Further, I know some straight men who read Cavafy’s poems about men and find them fully engaging. But, obviously, not all do.
When you consider that British (and Irish) fiction includes gay male authors who are celebrated (Alan Hollinghurst, Colm Toibin, Adam Mars-Jones, Jamie McNeill), you have to wonder what forces here operate against gay male poetry. I should point out, too, that the American poet Mark Doty has a considerable following in the U.K., and that Thom Gunn, during his lifetime, was almost universally admired here. So there’s no automatic and incontrovertible rule saying gay themes cannot interest the British readership. (That's assuming of course that the work has literary merit apart from its non-routine subject matter.) My guess is that if more poetry book editors were women, we’d see more books by gay male poets. That isn’t the situation right now, but perhaps it will change. For John Mccullough’s sake, I hope it will, and for others’.
www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=16088
His account of what happened isn’t at all encouraging, but it sounds plausible, based on my experience. I’ve noticed that, when books by gay males are reviewed by straight males, the latter do everything in their power to make sure the reader understands that the reviewer isn’t gay. The easiest way to do this is to deplore the subject matter. Not much better is, “Although I’m not myself gay, I can understand…etc.” I’ve even seen, “When I showed this poem to my wife, she said… etc.” Whatever else these dodges mean, they suggest that the stigma of being gay, even in countries where homosexuality has been decriminalized, is enormous. On the other hand, I know straight men who are sometimes mistaken for being gay and who find it amusing or flattering, in any case, no big deal. But that’s not the situation with most, and you have to wonder what secret fears and insecurities make some individuals so touchy about the topic. Oh, and the other fact to take note of is that straight women reviewers are almost always less damning when they review gay male poets.
The issue also comes up outside the realm of reviewing; it affects publishers’ acceptance of the work. My friend Mimi Khalvati told me the story of a gay poet (whose name I will leave out, since I don’t know if he’d like being mentioned). He was associated with an important poetry magazine, published gay poems and poems on other topics in many other magazines, won prizes, gave readings, etc. He tried for ten years to get a book published, to no avail. Eventually, he gave up trying. That is too bad.
At the Chroma magazine party mentioned a couple of blogs back, I met a young poet who received one of the annual prizes given by the magazine. His name is John Mccullough. He has published two pamphlets, won prizes, and has appeared in many magazines, as well as The Guardian. Some of his poems involve gay subject matter, but not all. He has decided, though, not to censor himself nor to worry about public acceptance, which strikes me as courageous and admirable. In an e-mail exchange, he said:
“I hope that the British poetry world is ready for a first collection with lots of poems featuring gay speakers - most successful poets have written them after already having proved their poetic worth with other successful collections rather than trying to prove it with poems which investigate gay history and such. Sometimes I don't know if maybe I should be moving away from it and trying to be relevant in other ways. I hope that love is something which transcends gender and that my love poems are sufficiently universal. I know that gay poems comprise less than half of what I write but I don't want to be tidied away into the drawer labelled 'gay poetry - for gay people' - it's even tinier than the one labelled 'poetry'.”
John’s comment about the “universal” appeal of poetry reminds me of something I read in an essay by a very prominent British gay male poet in whose work you can’t find any evidence of the nature of his sexuality. (And he is not a political conservative, in fact, is sited on the far left of the political spectrum.) He was discussing love poems written in the second person rather than the third, and noted that this allowed the reader of whatever gender to identify with the poem’s speaker—as presumably some of them couldn’t do if the pronouns were gendered. In fact, this poet uses the approach himself; all his love poems are written to “you,” never about “him.” And yet I don’t find the argument convincing. “Upon Julia’s Clothes” is written in the third person, and I’m able to identify with the speaker instantly; it’s quite a sexy poem. Just as easily I can identify with Wyatt’s “Whoso list to hunt” or his “They flee from me who sometime did me seek.” And I'm aware that straight women readers also respond to these poems. Further, I know some straight men who read Cavafy’s poems about men and find them fully engaging. But, obviously, not all do.
When you consider that British (and Irish) fiction includes gay male authors who are celebrated (Alan Hollinghurst, Colm Toibin, Adam Mars-Jones, Jamie McNeill), you have to wonder what forces here operate against gay male poetry. I should point out, too, that the American poet Mark Doty has a considerable following in the U.K., and that Thom Gunn, during his lifetime, was almost universally admired here. So there’s no automatic and incontrovertible rule saying gay themes cannot interest the British readership. (That's assuming of course that the work has literary merit apart from its non-routine subject matter.) My guess is that if more poetry book editors were women, we’d see more books by gay male poets. That isn’t the situation right now, but perhaps it will change. For John Mccullough’s sake, I hope it will, and for others’.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Forward
The pages here dealing with the recent election reported European euphoria about our new President. Americans living abroad also experienced this, but in a different key, some part of which had to do with being freed from the burden of embarrassment (or shame) concerning government in the home country. We could feel we were a progressive nationality again, no longer despised by most of the world.
Now that the shouting has died down, it’s time to look at a negative political theme that surfaced on the fourth of November. California voters passed (though not be a huge margin) Proposition 8, a measure overturning a court decree earlier in the year that had legalized marriage between people of the same sex. Two other states (Arizona and Florida) passed bans against gay marriage and one other a ban against adoption by gay parents. There are, obviously, no Federal guarantees or protections for gay marriage or gay civil rights in general. From the standpoint of marriage (or civil unions), this puts the U.S. in the rear guard of progressive legislation, behind the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Gay civil rights are of course guaranteed throughout the E.U., just as they are in the government constituted in South Africa under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.
The reason commonly given for the U.S. failure to remain at the forefront of progressive legislation in this area is the power of fundamentalist Protestant sects and the Roman Catholic church in our country. To which we should now add the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), who spent huge sums of money on TV ads during the months before Election Day to persuade Californians to pass Proposition 8. This was done in contravention to Federal law, which prohibits churches or any tax-exempt institution from engaging in political activism. And I gather that legal briefs are being prepared to challenge the Mormons’ right to tax exemption on the basis of their direct intervention over the past months.
But does Christian religion really account for disapproval of gay people and opposition to their civil rights? In Roman Catholic doctrine, abortion is a more serious sin than homosexuality, but no state nor the Federal government outlaws it. Biblical prohibitions against same-sex relations are mostly limited to Levitican law (which Christians are not required to follow) and one or two ambiguous statements made in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Jesus never mentions homosexuality or abortion. On the other hand, in more than one instance, he castigates divorce, and the Roman church has fallen into line with this prohibition—though of course annulment can provide a loophole for practicing Catholics who want to get out of a destructive marriage. But certainly neither state legislatures nor Federal law would ever institute a ban on divorce. And among the fifty-plus percent of couples who have divorced in America, millions must be Catholic or fundamentalist.
So I don’t think the widespread prejudice against gay people is really based on religion. Religion is used merely as a justificatory screen for personal uncertainties and fears. We should also note that many atheists are thoroughly homophobic and opposed to gay rights. The explanation has to lie in human psychology and the near-universal template of the nuclear family: Dad, Mom, and a couple of siblings. Anything that disturbs that template introduces insecurity and stirs up emotions of fear and fear disguised as anger. The populist objection to same-sex couples is expressed as, “It was Adam and Eve--right?--not Adam and Bruce.” That’s about as far as the reasoning goes; in other words, reason isn’t in the picture at all.
The term “marriage” did not always have a religious meaning. Atheists have freely married in civil ceremonies for a very long time. To go back in history, we discover that marriage was primarily a legal entity, set up to regulate exchange of property and guarantee lineage. In the Roman church, marriage was not a sacrament until the 13th century. Before then, it was rather looked down on. Except for the high nobility, marriages were not permitted inside church sanctuaries. In his Epistles, Paul devalued marriage in favor of celibacy but conceded, “It is better to marry than to burn.” If the religious right of the past few decades has decided to regard marriage as primarily a religious rite and to reinforce its religious status through law, then the federal and state government should have nothing to do with it, in keeping with the Constitutional principle of separation between church and state. If marriage belongs only to religion, then, as far as government is concerned, all unions between people of whatever gender should be regarded simply as civil unions. “Marriage” would become the property of our various sects, which could then decide who is qualified for it according to their own canon. Such is now the case in France, where men and women sometimes enter into civil unions without proceeding to religious marriage. So long as the legal rights adhering to civil unions between people of the same sex are indistinguishable from those attached to religious marriage, then I see no objection to civil unions for gay people. Government should also recognize that for state purposes, marriages between men and women are civil unions and nothing more, and legally demote marriage’s definition to a purely religious meaning as is the case with “baptism,” which has no legal status or force. But if government continues to apply the term “marriage” to unions between men and women, it should also be applied to couples of the same sex. The argument that marriage deserves special regard because it is designed to assure proper rearing of children instantly falls apart when we note that millions of married couples have no children, either by choice or for biological reasons. I don’t think that even fundamentalist extremists would deny that those couples are married. There is also the fact that many gay couples have adopted children or are bringing up children of one of the spouses in a process of joint parenthood.
The reasoning above will not convince those who don’t reason, I know. I don’t expect gay civil rights to be instituted overnight. Education is needed, and the schools have to do their part in this and not be swayed by fundamentalist objections. But at the private level gay people will also have to take action, first, by being forthright about their identities and speaking to those who don’t understand sexual difference and therefore fear it. Some of the most rapid changes of heart occur when homophobes discover that a family member belongs to the minority they have been vilifying.
Nearly forty years ago, I interviewed the celebrated British philosopher A.J. Ayer. Among the things I asked him about was his view on contemporary philosophy’s engagement in political issues. He said that it could play a part and cited his own activism with respect to the legality of sex between people of the same gender. He was heterosexual and the change wouldn't especially benefit him. But he had unusual powers of mind and therefore could see past the unreasonable objections to sexual variance. I’m not sure how many people besides gay historians will recall that the U.K. passed the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized homosexuality between consenting adults, as late as 1967. Ayer’s activism deserves part of the credit. He worked for its passage not because it would improve his own condition but because justice and reason required it. It must be that the same spirit of reason and fair play has led the U.K. to make gay civil unions legal in its domain. And this brings me to a question already raised in earlier entries of this blog: Given that no legal disabilities attach to homosexuality in Britain, and that its society is largely secular, why is there so little public expression of gay experience here, and specifically in poetry? But this blog is already too long, so I will postpone that question for a day or two and wait to see whether readers want the question explored before writing further.
(On a personal note: I no longer have to use crutches, my foot is nearly well.)
Now that the shouting has died down, it’s time to look at a negative political theme that surfaced on the fourth of November. California voters passed (though not be a huge margin) Proposition 8, a measure overturning a court decree earlier in the year that had legalized marriage between people of the same sex. Two other states (Arizona and Florida) passed bans against gay marriage and one other a ban against adoption by gay parents. There are, obviously, no Federal guarantees or protections for gay marriage or gay civil rights in general. From the standpoint of marriage (or civil unions), this puts the U.S. in the rear guard of progressive legislation, behind the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Gay civil rights are of course guaranteed throughout the E.U., just as they are in the government constituted in South Africa under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.
The reason commonly given for the U.S. failure to remain at the forefront of progressive legislation in this area is the power of fundamentalist Protestant sects and the Roman Catholic church in our country. To which we should now add the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), who spent huge sums of money on TV ads during the months before Election Day to persuade Californians to pass Proposition 8. This was done in contravention to Federal law, which prohibits churches or any tax-exempt institution from engaging in political activism. And I gather that legal briefs are being prepared to challenge the Mormons’ right to tax exemption on the basis of their direct intervention over the past months.
But does Christian religion really account for disapproval of gay people and opposition to their civil rights? In Roman Catholic doctrine, abortion is a more serious sin than homosexuality, but no state nor the Federal government outlaws it. Biblical prohibitions against same-sex relations are mostly limited to Levitican law (which Christians are not required to follow) and one or two ambiguous statements made in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Jesus never mentions homosexuality or abortion. On the other hand, in more than one instance, he castigates divorce, and the Roman church has fallen into line with this prohibition—though of course annulment can provide a loophole for practicing Catholics who want to get out of a destructive marriage. But certainly neither state legislatures nor Federal law would ever institute a ban on divorce. And among the fifty-plus percent of couples who have divorced in America, millions must be Catholic or fundamentalist.
So I don’t think the widespread prejudice against gay people is really based on religion. Religion is used merely as a justificatory screen for personal uncertainties and fears. We should also note that many atheists are thoroughly homophobic and opposed to gay rights. The explanation has to lie in human psychology and the near-universal template of the nuclear family: Dad, Mom, and a couple of siblings. Anything that disturbs that template introduces insecurity and stirs up emotions of fear and fear disguised as anger. The populist objection to same-sex couples is expressed as, “It was Adam and Eve--right?--not Adam and Bruce.” That’s about as far as the reasoning goes; in other words, reason isn’t in the picture at all.
The term “marriage” did not always have a religious meaning. Atheists have freely married in civil ceremonies for a very long time. To go back in history, we discover that marriage was primarily a legal entity, set up to regulate exchange of property and guarantee lineage. In the Roman church, marriage was not a sacrament until the 13th century. Before then, it was rather looked down on. Except for the high nobility, marriages were not permitted inside church sanctuaries. In his Epistles, Paul devalued marriage in favor of celibacy but conceded, “It is better to marry than to burn.” If the religious right of the past few decades has decided to regard marriage as primarily a religious rite and to reinforce its religious status through law, then the federal and state government should have nothing to do with it, in keeping with the Constitutional principle of separation between church and state. If marriage belongs only to religion, then, as far as government is concerned, all unions between people of whatever gender should be regarded simply as civil unions. “Marriage” would become the property of our various sects, which could then decide who is qualified for it according to their own canon. Such is now the case in France, where men and women sometimes enter into civil unions without proceeding to religious marriage. So long as the legal rights adhering to civil unions between people of the same sex are indistinguishable from those attached to religious marriage, then I see no objection to civil unions for gay people. Government should also recognize that for state purposes, marriages between men and women are civil unions and nothing more, and legally demote marriage’s definition to a purely religious meaning as is the case with “baptism,” which has no legal status or force. But if government continues to apply the term “marriage” to unions between men and women, it should also be applied to couples of the same sex. The argument that marriage deserves special regard because it is designed to assure proper rearing of children instantly falls apart when we note that millions of married couples have no children, either by choice or for biological reasons. I don’t think that even fundamentalist extremists would deny that those couples are married. There is also the fact that many gay couples have adopted children or are bringing up children of one of the spouses in a process of joint parenthood.
The reasoning above will not convince those who don’t reason, I know. I don’t expect gay civil rights to be instituted overnight. Education is needed, and the schools have to do their part in this and not be swayed by fundamentalist objections. But at the private level gay people will also have to take action, first, by being forthright about their identities and speaking to those who don’t understand sexual difference and therefore fear it. Some of the most rapid changes of heart occur when homophobes discover that a family member belongs to the minority they have been vilifying.
Nearly forty years ago, I interviewed the celebrated British philosopher A.J. Ayer. Among the things I asked him about was his view on contemporary philosophy’s engagement in political issues. He said that it could play a part and cited his own activism with respect to the legality of sex between people of the same gender. He was heterosexual and the change wouldn't especially benefit him. But he had unusual powers of mind and therefore could see past the unreasonable objections to sexual variance. I’m not sure how many people besides gay historians will recall that the U.K. passed the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized homosexuality between consenting adults, as late as 1967. Ayer’s activism deserves part of the credit. He worked for its passage not because it would improve his own condition but because justice and reason required it. It must be that the same spirit of reason and fair play has led the U.K. to make gay civil unions legal in its domain. And this brings me to a question already raised in earlier entries of this blog: Given that no legal disabilities attach to homosexuality in Britain, and that its society is largely secular, why is there so little public expression of gay experience here, and specifically in poetry? But this blog is already too long, so I will postpone that question for a day or two and wait to see whether readers want the question explored before writing further.
(On a personal note: I no longer have to use crutches, my foot is nearly well.)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Travels with Charley
“Charley” is the name I’ve given to the stick (crutch) I never go anywhere without these days. Yes, it seems I've reached the third part of the Riddle of the Sphinx, and become a creature who goes on three legs. Someone asked me why I hadn’t mentioned the foot injury in this blog. Actually, I did mention it a while back but didn’t make much of the topic because the barebone truth is people don’t like hearing about ailments. Anyway, said foot is on the mend, and, in my usual way of trying to turn drawbacks into advantages, I’ve been making mental notes (possibly useful later on in some piece of writing) about public response to disability, even if what I’m dealing with right now doesn’t really qualify as that. As you're hobbling along, some people race in front of you with perfect aplomb and may even jostle you, though just possibly they don’t see the crutch. As for public transport, I notice that young women usually stand and offer you a seat. Almost no men do, proving once again that women are nicer than men. Some people are kind, some people look fearful, and some angry. Larkin’s “The Old Fools” is worth rereading in this context.
The above suggests that I haven’t kept to my rooms. Right. I have to go out, limping or not, otherwise the walls start closing in on me. I even taught a class for Kathryn Maris, who is in the Creative Writing department of Morley College in South London. And I attended a party for Chroma magazine (edited by a man named Shaun Levin), which publishes lesbian and gay prose and poetry. The magazine’s annual prizes were given out by the guest of honor, Sarah Waters, an author I very much admire, particularly her London-during-the-blitz novel Night Watch. Its lesbian characters are fully realized, and one of them is an ambulance driver, which is a reminder that women have risked and continue to risk their lives in wars that male leaders initiate. I spoke briefly with Sarah Waters and was impressed by her serenity, naturalness, and warmth. Appropriately, today is Remembrance or Armistice Day, and I was startled to see on BBC this morning that Britain numbers three survivors from the First World War, men well over a hundred years old. Although, if you survived the trenches, what can't you survive?
Last night I went to Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End to hear Mark Lawson interview Seamus Heaney and Dennis O’Driscoll (whom I used to correspond with back in the late 80s, before he had become known), on the occasion of the publication of a book of interviews O’Driscoll conducted with the great laureate from the North of Ireland. It was a house packed all the way up to the rafters, further evidence that no one cares about poetry. All ages, sorts, and conditions attended and applauded wildly at the conclusion. I wonder what it’s like to be the object of so much adoration; probably intimidating, but not altogether disagreeable. Heaney led things off with some prose poems, then Lawson put a series of questions to both participants; and finally Heaney read a few poems, including an impressive recent one based on the gospel account of the paralysed man who was lowered by his friends on a pallet through the ceiling of a room where Jesus was speaking, a room too crowded for them to enter any other way.
I knew that Heaney had recovered from a minor stroke a couple of years ago, and indeed he looked thinner and rather more fragile than the young man I first met back in, I think, the spring of 1978. The occasion was a reading he gave at Yale. He wasn’t well known in the States then. Perhaps only forty people made up the audience. At that time I was living with J.D. McClatchy at Silliman College, in one of the suites of rooms allotted to faculty who were willing to serve as Resident Fellows for the Yale’s colleges, a responsibility McClatchy had briskly signed on for. I believe Heaney read several of the “Glanmore” sonnets, one of his loveliest sequences. Anyway, considering no one had arranged a reception, it seemed natural to invite him and some of the audience to have a drink at Silliman after the reading. When he came in, I recall shaking the hand of a vigorous, hesitant man with prematurely gray hair nearly down to his shoulders, wearing bluejeans and a cotton shirt. I don’t think he was fully comfortable in those surroundings, and who could blame him? Harold Bloom, who sometimes attended Yale poetry readings, didn’t attend that one; it was only later that he got to know and admire Heaney’s poetry.
The next meeting came perhaps five or six years later, when we were living in New York. Seamus (the first name seems to suit this least arrogant of poets) had given a reading at the 92nd Street YMHA, at the invitation of Grace Schulman, who was the director of the Poetry Center. Grace had people to her place down in Greenwich Village after the event. By then Seamus was a famous poet, confident, relaxed, and surrounded by admirers. With him was his wife Mary, who I think was glad to have someone to talk to while fans swarmed around her husband. (That was often my role in those years, speaking to the wives of the artists, a practice it seems that Alice Toklas automatically fell into when famous visitors came to call on Gertrude Stein.) I found Mary unaffectedly down to earth, patriotic about her origins in the North of Ireland, with a sharp eye and wit, not to mention being very beautiful. Theirs would seem to be that very rare thing in the lives of poets, a thoroughly happy marriage. (Richard and Charlee Wilbur, and Robert and Ellen Pinsky are other examples that come to mind, along with Anne-Marie Fyfe and Cahal Dallat here in London.) I forget the stimulus for it, but at some point Seamus was moved to recite one of Wyatt’s best known poems, “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind.” It was roughly at that moment that the current revival of interest in Wyatt began—and may that revival endure. I knew by then that Seamus would one day be tapped for the Nobel, there was no mistaking the ability. And perhaps it was just such a certainty that added to my reluctance to attempt to stay in touch in the years after—not that sincere admiration always suffices as a base for a long-lasting association. If I’d had enough brass to pursue the connection, there would probably have been some kind of response. I see many writers acting out their notion that being sharp and condescending is a sure sign of greatness, but Seamus’s example is enough to give the lie to that notion.
Anyway, I could meet him on the page, and that was the main thing. He's one of the few contemporary poets I've read in entirety. It's a piece of luck that we have that work in a time that isn't especially favorable to poets and poetry.
It suddenly strikes me that I haven’t mentioned the availability, beginning ten days ago, of the new collection of critical essays (see the column to the right). What jogged my memory is that one of the essays deals with Heaney’s poetry. Besides Heaney, there are essays on Wordsworth, Virginia Woolf, Auden, Bishop, Derek Walcott, Thom Gunn, Anthony Hecht, Adrienne Rich, Larkin, Marilyn Hacker, Derek Mahon, and one on poems involving travel. Worth the detour, I think.
The above suggests that I haven’t kept to my rooms. Right. I have to go out, limping or not, otherwise the walls start closing in on me. I even taught a class for Kathryn Maris, who is in the Creative Writing department of Morley College in South London. And I attended a party for Chroma magazine (edited by a man named Shaun Levin), which publishes lesbian and gay prose and poetry. The magazine’s annual prizes were given out by the guest of honor, Sarah Waters, an author I very much admire, particularly her London-during-the-blitz novel Night Watch. Its lesbian characters are fully realized, and one of them is an ambulance driver, which is a reminder that women have risked and continue to risk their lives in wars that male leaders initiate. I spoke briefly with Sarah Waters and was impressed by her serenity, naturalness, and warmth. Appropriately, today is Remembrance or Armistice Day, and I was startled to see on BBC this morning that Britain numbers three survivors from the First World War, men well over a hundred years old. Although, if you survived the trenches, what can't you survive?
Last night I went to Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End to hear Mark Lawson interview Seamus Heaney and Dennis O’Driscoll (whom I used to correspond with back in the late 80s, before he had become known), on the occasion of the publication of a book of interviews O’Driscoll conducted with the great laureate from the North of Ireland. It was a house packed all the way up to the rafters, further evidence that no one cares about poetry. All ages, sorts, and conditions attended and applauded wildly at the conclusion. I wonder what it’s like to be the object of so much adoration; probably intimidating, but not altogether disagreeable. Heaney led things off with some prose poems, then Lawson put a series of questions to both participants; and finally Heaney read a few poems, including an impressive recent one based on the gospel account of the paralysed man who was lowered by his friends on a pallet through the ceiling of a room where Jesus was speaking, a room too crowded for them to enter any other way.
I knew that Heaney had recovered from a minor stroke a couple of years ago, and indeed he looked thinner and rather more fragile than the young man I first met back in, I think, the spring of 1978. The occasion was a reading he gave at Yale. He wasn’t well known in the States then. Perhaps only forty people made up the audience. At that time I was living with J.D. McClatchy at Silliman College, in one of the suites of rooms allotted to faculty who were willing to serve as Resident Fellows for the Yale’s colleges, a responsibility McClatchy had briskly signed on for. I believe Heaney read several of the “Glanmore” sonnets, one of his loveliest sequences. Anyway, considering no one had arranged a reception, it seemed natural to invite him and some of the audience to have a drink at Silliman after the reading. When he came in, I recall shaking the hand of a vigorous, hesitant man with prematurely gray hair nearly down to his shoulders, wearing bluejeans and a cotton shirt. I don’t think he was fully comfortable in those surroundings, and who could blame him? Harold Bloom, who sometimes attended Yale poetry readings, didn’t attend that one; it was only later that he got to know and admire Heaney’s poetry.
The next meeting came perhaps five or six years later, when we were living in New York. Seamus (the first name seems to suit this least arrogant of poets) had given a reading at the 92nd Street YMHA, at the invitation of Grace Schulman, who was the director of the Poetry Center. Grace had people to her place down in Greenwich Village after the event. By then Seamus was a famous poet, confident, relaxed, and surrounded by admirers. With him was his wife Mary, who I think was glad to have someone to talk to while fans swarmed around her husband. (That was often my role in those years, speaking to the wives of the artists, a practice it seems that Alice Toklas automatically fell into when famous visitors came to call on Gertrude Stein.) I found Mary unaffectedly down to earth, patriotic about her origins in the North of Ireland, with a sharp eye and wit, not to mention being very beautiful. Theirs would seem to be that very rare thing in the lives of poets, a thoroughly happy marriage. (Richard and Charlee Wilbur, and Robert and Ellen Pinsky are other examples that come to mind, along with Anne-Marie Fyfe and Cahal Dallat here in London.) I forget the stimulus for it, but at some point Seamus was moved to recite one of Wyatt’s best known poems, “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind.” It was roughly at that moment that the current revival of interest in Wyatt began—and may that revival endure. I knew by then that Seamus would one day be tapped for the Nobel, there was no mistaking the ability. And perhaps it was just such a certainty that added to my reluctance to attempt to stay in touch in the years after—not that sincere admiration always suffices as a base for a long-lasting association. If I’d had enough brass to pursue the connection, there would probably have been some kind of response. I see many writers acting out their notion that being sharp and condescending is a sure sign of greatness, but Seamus’s example is enough to give the lie to that notion.
Anyway, I could meet him on the page, and that was the main thing. He's one of the few contemporary poets I've read in entirety. It's a piece of luck that we have that work in a time that isn't especially favorable to poets and poetry.
It suddenly strikes me that I haven’t mentioned the availability, beginning ten days ago, of the new collection of critical essays (see the column to the right). What jogged my memory is that one of the essays deals with Heaney’s poetry. Besides Heaney, there are essays on Wordsworth, Virginia Woolf, Auden, Bishop, Derek Walcott, Thom Gunn, Anthony Hecht, Adrienne Rich, Larkin, Marilyn Hacker, Derek Mahon, and one on poems involving travel. Worth the detour, I think.
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