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larryhammerRecently finished, after some delay: Poetry of the Forties ed. Robin Skelton, being a 1968 Penguin anthology of British verse from the 1940s, focusing on works by poets who started getting noticed that decade. And an odd barrel of ducks they are, too. The collection is framed by a summary of the state of 1940 using a single poem each by Auden, MacNiece, Spender, and Day Lewis, showing what the new generation reacted against, and of 1950 by Kirkup, Barker, and Comfort, showing where things would head next.
This does a good job of countering the impression one gets from how Modern poetry is taught in the States that once Pound and Eliot arrived everyone (except a few outliers dismissable in parentheses) wrote only in free verse until the New Formalists tossed their regressively retro grenades. The truth is that until the 60s, free and formal verse were accepted alternatives (as they should be), and even so, the dominance of free verse has been much stronger in the States than Britain.
And in this case, by my count, about three-quarters of the collection is formal verse. The numbers by the numbers:* 107 rhymed-and-metered, 18 metered without rhyme, and 43 free verse, plus 1 that mixes modes by section. Several poets have poems in multiple modes.
Even more startling, though: almost all the interesting and resonant works are from the first half of the decade -- it's as if the War created fruitful tensions even in poems not ostensibly about it. Which is not to say that all the wartime poems were good, but rather most of the better poems are all from during the War. The most memorable exceptions to this generalization are by Dylan Thomas, who I think could find tension and dynamism in a grain of sand.
There's a lot of good to be said about this selection, but there's one particularly irksome aspect: there's 77 men and 4 women (plus 2 indeterminate initials whose poetic persona provides no gender coding). Yes, things were still pretty dire on this front in 1968, but seriously, the editor could find only 4 women he felt worth bothering with? -- with one of them, Kathleen Raine, being non-optional, having made a real name for herself. Grr. Also, as you might expect given the era, several of the travel poems** Orientalize, some accidentally but some deliberately. A couple also attempt to engage with Orientalism, with varying results.
Most amusing title: "Ideas of Disorder at Torquay". It almost lives up to the poem it parodies, too.
A couple samples from the collection -- the first a discovery:
I assume this is part of a series of decadal 20th century anthologies -- if so, I want the others.
* Some of these may be miscategorized, as some rhymes were very slant, and so may have been ghosts of my perception, and contrariwise some blank poems may have been slanted so far I couldn't hear the echoes. Many meters were deliberately loose, and if I couldn't identify a definite pattern I marked it as free. Broadly, though, I expect the true proportions about this.
** The collection is organized in thematic sections. Given the War, this probably makes sense.
---L.
This does a good job of countering the impression one gets from how Modern poetry is taught in the States that once Pound and Eliot arrived everyone (except a few outliers dismissable in parentheses) wrote only in free verse until the New Formalists tossed their regressively retro grenades. The truth is that until the 60s, free and formal verse were accepted alternatives (as they should be), and even so, the dominance of free verse has been much stronger in the States than Britain.
And in this case, by my count, about three-quarters of the collection is formal verse. The numbers by the numbers:* 107 rhymed-and-metered, 18 metered without rhyme, and 43 free verse, plus 1 that mixes modes by section. Several poets have poems in multiple modes.
Even more startling, though: almost all the interesting and resonant works are from the first half of the decade -- it's as if the War created fruitful tensions even in poems not ostensibly about it. Which is not to say that all the wartime poems were good, but rather most of the better poems are all from during the War. The most memorable exceptions to this generalization are by Dylan Thomas, who I think could find tension and dynamism in a grain of sand.
There's a lot of good to be said about this selection, but there's one particularly irksome aspect: there's 77 men and 4 women (plus 2 indeterminate initials whose poetic persona provides no gender coding). Yes, things were still pretty dire on this front in 1968, but seriously, the editor could find only 4 women he felt worth bothering with? -- with one of them, Kathleen Raine, being non-optional, having made a real name for herself. Grr. Also, as you might expect given the era, several of the travel poems** Orientalize, some accidentally but some deliberately. A couple also attempt to engage with Orientalism, with varying results.
Most amusing title: "Ideas of Disorder at Torquay". It almost lives up to the poem it parodies, too.
A couple samples from the collection -- the first a discovery:
The Middle of a WarThis one, otoh, is a "oh this one again yay I now know who wrote that" poem:
My photograph already looks historic.
The promising youthful face, the matelot's collar,
Say 'This one is remembered for a lyric.
His place and period -- nothing could be duller.'
Its position is already indicated --
The son or brother in the album; pained
The expression and the garments dated,
His fate so obviously preordained.
The original turns away: as horrible thoughts,
Loud fluttering aircraft slope above his head
At dusk. The ridiculous empires break like biscuits.
Ah, life has been abandoned by the boats --
Only the trodden island and the dead
Remain, and the once inestimable caskets.—Roy Fuller
Goodbye
So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.
I put a final shilling in the gas,
And watch you slip your dress below your knees
And lie so still I hear your rustling comb
Modulate the autumn in the trees.
And all the countless things I shall remember
Lay mummy-cloths of silence round my head;
I fill the carafe with a drink of water;
You say 'We paid a guinea for this bed,'
And then, 'We'll leave some gas, a little warmth
For the next resident, and these dry flowers,'
And turn your face away, afraid to speak
The big word, that Eternity is ours.
Your kisses close my eyes and yet you stare
As though god struck a child with nameless fears;
Perhaps the water glitters and discloses
Time's chalice and its limpid useless tears.
Everything we renounce except our selves;
Selfishness is the last of all to go;
Our sighs are exhalations of the earth,
Our footprints leave a track across the snow.
We made the universe to be our home,
Our nostrils took the wind to be our breath,
Our hearts are massive towers of delight,
We stride across the seven seas of death.
Yet when all's done you'll keep the emerald
I placed upon your finger in the street;
And I will keep the patches that you sewed
On my old battledress tonight, my sweet.—Alun Lewis
I assume this is part of a series of decadal 20th century anthologies -- if so, I want the others.
* Some of these may be miscategorized, as some rhymes were very slant, and so may have been ghosts of my perception, and contrariwise some blank poems may have been slanted so far I couldn't hear the echoes. Many meters were deliberately loose, and if I couldn't identify a definite pattern I marked it as free. Broadly, though, I expect the true proportions about this.
** The collection is organized in thematic sections. Given the War, this probably makes sense.
---L.