Appealing to the lazywebs

[larryhammer]

I'm looking for a poem I read some years ago -- a 1930's parody of Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" in which a dockyard worker tempts the nymph with the delights of Depression-era working class life. Same first line, but I can't remember any phrases from it. I want to say it was written by one of Auden's friends, either Day-Lewis or Spender (I'm pretty sure not MacNeice), but my memory also insists that it's in an anthology of parody/light verse I own, and yet I can't find it -- not even in The Brand-X Anthology of Poetry.

Anyone know this poem and where I can find it? Or at least can confirm it's real?

ETA: Five minutes after finally posting, I manage to craft the right search and determine it's Day-Lewis -- and found the text on Wikipedia. In compensation, I give you Day-Lewis's grave. You can find anything on the interwebs, with the correct search terms.

---L.

Comments

[debg.livejournal.com]

HA! I was reaching for my boat-anchor heavy Day-Lewis collected works when I saw your ETA. I KNEW that sucker sounded familiar.

[larryhammer]

I should probably get a boat-anchor Day-Lewis, to go with my boat-anchor Auden and MacNeice. (I sold off my boat-anchor Spender in favor of a slender selected.)

---L.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I adore mine. I have a thing for Cecil Day-Lewis, not only as a poet but as a period piece mystery writer, under the name Nicholas Blake.

For someone with such major woman issues, his fictional lead women in the Nigel Strangeways series - Georgia and Clare - are strong, tough and superb.

[larryhammer]

I read a half-dozen or so Nicholas Blake books, when I found out about him. The post-war ones, I didn't take to, but the early ones were good. Though the first was danged weird -- seeing Auden so blatently tuckerized as Strangeways.

---L.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Yep. It takes some getting used to. But I really loved his women characters; not sure whether I preferred Georgia or Clare. I think perhaps Clare.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

On behalf of the League of Unhyphenated Double Last Names, allow me to point out that, while you and that website both consistently refer to him as "Day-Lewis", his sodding gravestone says Day Lewis (http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/images/daylewiscecil_JPG.jpg).

I recognize that modern brains literally cannot encompass the idea of a hard space in the middle of a surname, which is of course why The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is edited by Gordon Van-Gelder. However, I would think that THE WAY IT'S SPELLED ON HIS GRAVE might be a SUBTLE HINT to future generations about how his name ought to be rendered.

[larryhammer]

In my defense, I can never remember whether he dehyphenated his name (and his son Daniel rehyphenated it) or he hyphenated it (and Daniel dehyphenated it again).* Which means I typically get them both wrong. It is in fact the former -- he wrote as C. Day Lewis because he thought it looked more interesting. Wikipedia, I note, gives both spellings and then uses the hyphen throughout, which helps Not At All.

I actually like names-with-spaces myself. Another is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's maiden name, which was Moulton Barrett. (Her middle name was Barrett as well. She didn't like the Moulton side of the family, though, and didn't use it, going by the initials EBB before as well as after her marriage.)

* Much like I can't tell the Bronte sisters apart.

---L.

[larryhammer]

I confess I can't remember much about the books, aside from the audenness of the first and the WWII one.

---L.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

I loved Nicholas Blake mysteries and was surprised when I found out he was C DL.

I was going to copy and paste your ref to C DL to DebG, but she got here on her own (g)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

The Library of Congress decrees that Cecil Day Lewis and Daniel Day-Lewis shall be the forms used in cataloging.

Go figure.

Nine

[randimason.livejournal.com]

And there is probably an authority record for each that has the permutations on the name, with one to be agreed on across the land -- probably lands, with so much shared cataloging going on.

Everything is not on the Interweb, despite Google's book project and the rest. The fact so much is is partially due to the devotion of people of varying interests and the fact that tools find an awful lot of it -- but primarily it's because people ignore the heck out of copyright.

[larryhammer]

That follows their own preferences.

---L.