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How To Replace A $100,000+ Salary Within 6 MONTHS Through Buying A Small Business w/ Alex Kamenca & Carley Mitus 57:50

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Alex (@alex_kamenca) and Carley (@carleymitus) are both members of our Action Academy Community that purchased TWO small businesses last thursday! Want To Quit Your Job In The Next 6-18 Months Through Buying Commercial Real Estate & Small Businesses? 👔🏝️ Schedule A Free 15 Minute Coaching Call With Our Team Here To Get "Unstuck" Want to know which investment strategy is best for you? Take our Free Asset-Selection Quiz Check Out Our Bestselling Book : From Passive To Passionate : How To Quit Your Job - Grow Your Wealth - And Turn Your Passions Into Profits Want A Free $100k+ Side Hustle Guide ? Follow Me As I Travel & Build: IG @brianluebben ActionAcademy.com…

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Return to the Terminus by Kathy Pimlott

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A Mouthful of Air: Poetry with Mark McGuinness

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Return to the Terminus by Kathy Pimlott

A Mouthful of Air: Poetry with Mark McGuinness

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Desire Path by Jude Rosen 32:59

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Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/78_Desire_Path_by_Jude_Rosen.mp3 This poem is from: Reclamations from London ’ s Edgelands Available from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Desire Path by Jude Rosen Through this green swathe, how many feet have gone? Ah! the difference the trampling to mud makes when the trampled grass becomes a path. We follow a whim, taking the diagonal trail through Lammas Meadow – on the desire path extending freely to those who come after, who may be lured by the emerald field, become immersed in its pasture, one foot after the other, leaving a single line without a tar or gravel scar churning up the past or effacing it. Strange how walking has changed the course of grass and repossessed the Lammas lands – the right to graze surpassed by the right to roam, pass through, reflect, pass on. Interview transcript Mark: Jude, where did this poem come from? Jude: Well, I think it came from the coming together of a number of different experiences. First of all, I was walking the Lammas lands , which are ancient open green spaces. Lammas lands were originally where commoners, people without power or property, had customary rights to graze their animals after the harvest. And I was part of an artistic collective that was resisting the Olympic encroachment onto the marshlands, the green wild that we still have it in Hackney and Walthamstow and Stratford. Mark: Right. And this was the 2012 Olympics in London? Jude: This was the 2012 Olympics in East London. And it was really destroying the wild ecology of this place through concreting over and fencing off and evictions of people, particularly marginal people and students and asylum seekers and people on low income who lived on the edge. And it also destroyed the one of the last industrial villages. So in a way I was involved, and walking was both a sort of poetic and political practice. It was kind of contemplative and reflective. So observing and actually going through these spaces, experiencing them as part of everyday life. And so the whole sequence of the book, but in this poem, it’s all in blank verse , or it’s largely in blank verse, which is the sort of the rhythm of walking and breathing. And it’s, predominantly, it has this unrhymed five beat line. Mark: Great. So long time listeners will, of course, recognize blank verse as being unrhymed iambic pentameter, ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM, the five iambic beats. Because we did a whole mini-series on it from Marlowe through Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth . So it’s great to hear that you are continuing that grand tradition, Jude. And like Wordsworth, you’re doing it via walking. Jude: I think that’s really important because it’s really poetry coming out of the body, not just the mind, but actually walking and breathing and words being somehow all integrated. And some of that is the influence of psychogeography , which I was also somewhat immersed in at the time. Mark: Which is? Jude: Psychogeography really is the idea that the geography, the physical environment is also imbued with spiritual and emotional and cultural power. It’s not simply grass and trees and leaves and plants. The idea is that there’s actually a kind of cosmic energy and ley lines, they’re called. The point for me is not really a kind of New Age notion. For me, it’s really the embodiment of history and language and the historic presence of people who’ve gone before our predecessors in the landscape, and particularly in the marshes, because the marshes have been like a sponge absorbing waves of immigrants, and they’ve got different signs and different kinds of burial grounds, and they’re places where rubbish is, full of pits and waste and recycling. So it’s this whole remaking, which is like an ongoing historical process. And if you walk in it, you see it and you’re part of it. And in a way that’s. I think one of the impulses in ‘The Desire Path’ is that by walking it, you’re also remaking it. You’re leaving a light imprint. The path, the idea of the desire path, is often that it’s an alternative path to that imposed by authority, by the state. It’s not about ordinance, maps and official signage, so they’re often short cuts or the ways round, and they express something of the autonomy of walkers and of people using that path. And in a way that’s that’s one of the strongest impulses in the poem is about how we can read the design. By walking it, we participate in it and we walk in the path of our predecessors. Mark: Wonderful. So it’s like that brown stripe across a lawn or a field where people have forged their own path. And I hadn’t realised until I read your poem that that actually had a name, that that is the desire path. Jude: And the one I was walking was right across the Lammas meadow. And it is a diagonal right through the hay meadow. Of course, when there’s no hay, the hay is gone. And so that’s how it came. And a phrase came to me from a poem called ‘Grass’ by a Bulgarian poet, who is very, very famous in Bulgaria, Blaga Dimitrova : ‘I’m not afraid that they trample me. The trampled grass soon becomes a path.’ Mark: Wow. What a line. Jude: Yeah. And she wrote, I think in the context, both of male oppression, of being downtrodden or trampled by men, because she was quite a powerful politician in Bulgaria after the fall of the Soviet Union after 1989. And also I think it was more broadly, I suppose, against state oppression. So that idea of it goes from the individual body to something much bigger. ‘The trampled grass soon becomes a path.’ It only soon becomes a path by other people following in your footsteps. So it becomes an image really from individual resistance to collective resistance. So that also that that rang in my mind as I was walking. So I think that’s where the poem came from. Mark: It’s wonderful. And I love the way you linked the act of poetry and the rhythms of walking, the rhythm of the body with the rhythm of metre, which has always been one of my arguments for it, is that if you really want to feel a poem in your bones, then you need some rhythm. But also, you know, I love the title of your book, Reclamations from London’s Edgelands . So the poems themselves are reclaiming the land. Jude: Yeah. Mark: I know that the edgelands, the marshlands, have got a long history of being claimed and reclaimed from the sea and from various human groups. But it’s really interesting that you say even in a kind of a what is ostensibly a nature poem here or a poem about going for a walk, that there’s a political aspect to this for you. Jude: Yes, but a different kind of politics to what is usually assumed to be politics. It’s not polemical. It’s not messaging through a poem. It’s not using the poem as a vehicle. It’s actually through the practice of both walking and writing. So as a sort of forms of resistance to a certain kind of – well, specifically, it was against the sort of Olympic machine that got going and has redeveloped the whole area and privatized land and done many things and claimed many things which it wasn’t responsible for. But yeah, I think I think that was the main impulse behind the poem and behind that it wasn’t an idea to, you know, a concept to attack the state. It was through an alternative way of being and of practice – challenging and retrieving language. Because a lot of the book is there – there are a number of verbatim poems in it, which come from redundant workers, from residents who were displaced. So I wanted to, in a way, make the marshes have a kind of chorus of different voices and have that in the in the book as well. Mark: Yeah, those are really terrific monologues because I think the material came from interviews, some of which you had conducted. Jude: Yes. Mark: And we really do hear these voices from the past coming through, who worked in and on the river and then the factories and some of the scrapes they got into, the stories behind the area are fascinating. And also this – so I’m looking again now at this phrase right at the end where you talk about, ‘Strange how walking / has changed the course of grass and repossessed / the Lammas lands – the right to graze’ – that phrase is jumping out at me now – ‘the right to graze surpassed / by the right to roam, pass through, reflect, pass on.’. So that right to graze was the old common land, right? Jude: Yes. Mark: Everyone had the right to graze their sheep or their cow or their pig or whatever they had on the common land. Was it towards the end of the 18th century, it really gathered pace that there was enclosures by private landlords? And that became very controversial politically. And it’s interesting, you know, linking the right to graze with the right to roam. Jude: Yes. I mean, those lands, the Lammas lands were actually taken over by what was then the district boards, and then it became the London County Council, and then district council, that Hackney actually took over the Lammas lands and made them the marshes that were given ‘in perpetuity’ to the people of the borough, for their recreation and enjoyment. And it’s those rights which were passed down from customary grazing rights from medieval times, to becoming common lands which were under the local authority, they were supposed to be securing forever, really for recreational purposes, rather than development roads or housing. And it also has been very vital in being part of the protection of the green lungs of London, for the air quality and general health of the population. And it’s those rights and those lands that are continually being encroached on. And so that’s part of the – the Olympics was one very particular, but there have been many others, I know there will be future – attacks really on our common wild greens on which we all depend for life. Mark: So this is wonderful, Jude. I mean, I used to live in East London, and I know this part of the city, and I think you’ve caught the atmosphere of it really wonderfully throughout the whole book. It’s like going for a going for a walk with a really well-informed guide because you’re seeing the landscape and the cityscape through your eyes and you can see all the little, you know, the ‘tar or gravel scar churning up the past’. You really bring it alive in the poetry. And zooming in a bit more on this particular poem, how did you know it began with that walk? And you’ve got the rhythm of the blank verse. I mean, how did that evolve into the form you have now? Jude: Well, the form is an Italian sonnet but without the formal rhyme endings. You’ve probably talked about the sonnet before in other podcasts. Mark: We had Mimi Khalvati talking about the Italian sonnet. She read her sonnet on the fried egg. Jude: Yes. Well, the Italian sonnet came rather naturally because it’s sort of philosophical and meditative and this is really a meditation on time and desire. So I think it just came out like that, literally. But I think this very important, what makes the poem really more than anything is, is the two aspects. There is a sound pattern that comes from this ‘Ah’, which to me is the sound of desire that infuses the whole poem. Mark: Right. Jude: And I think the sound pattern is based on that long ‘Ah!’. So you have ‘Ah!’, ‘path’, ‘after’, ‘pasture’, ‘after’, ‘tar’, ‘scar’, ‘past’, ‘grass’, ‘surpassed’, ‘pass’. And I think that’s one aspect of the sound pattern. And then it’s got this consonant, this hiss of these hard ‘s’s, evoking a sort of squelch of feet on grass, I think. Mark: For me it also suggested the wind in the grass. Jude: Then you’ve got ‘grass’, ‘pasture’, ‘course’, also ‘surpassed’, ‘pass’ again – those ‘s’s. But then along with that. ‘Ah!’ and those ‘s’s you’ve got this ‘m’, the ‘m’s which are also of desire, you know, ‘mud makes’ but it’s really the ‘trampling – ‘trampled’, ‘whim’, ‘Lammas’, ‘emerald’, ‘immersed’, ‘roam’. And so I think the whole poem in sound you know, combines a sort of ‘ah-ing’and ‘umming’ [laughter]. And I think that sound, that ‘Ah!’, suggested them. So that in all the possible choices of words, I was I think, drawn to those long ‘ah’s. And then that ‘m’. I don’t that was conscious, but I think it was dictated in a way, by that long ‘ah’ and that ‘m’. Mark: In the second line. ‘Ah, the difference the trampling to mud makes.’ That’s like the tuning fork for the whole poem, isn’t it? Jude: Yeah. You know, trampling mud you don’t usually think of as a positive thing. And I think this was kind of saying that, that when we make a mark, we put down a mark like that. It’s a suggestion for everybody. I mean, one of the things that came to mind, if I can give another metaphor, is when you walk in a cathedral and you go on the steps of a cathedral and they are bowed in the middle where so many feet have passed and the hard thing has worn away as Brecht would say. I get a little tingle. When I think of all the people who have gone before me and those who will come after. And I think that’s the other thing that comes together in this poem, that the first and last lines end on the same rhyme. Mark: Yes! Jude: ‘how many feet have gone’, and ‘pass on’. And in a way, it bookends it. It frames it. And I think that is another movement in the poem, which is about the meditation on time, that we participate in something. And we in a way, in that sense actively relate to our environment by walking and observing and engaging with the space. But also we leave something behind and it’s also about passing something on. And so there’s a kind of awareness of history as the present, but also a moment on a path, you know, and going on into the future. Of course, it sort of touches on death but not in a negative sense, but this participating in something and always aware of history in the present so that we’re aware of our predecessors as we move forward or we move on. And I think that’s partly why – the lyric poem is always about time and love and death. Mark: Great subjects! Jude: And I suppose this poem is really focuses on our participation in something bigger than ourselves, but in which we all have a place. That’s the thing about common lands and the and the ecology of our lives. The desire path is a path we can make, we can remake and leave for others. So it’s a sort of metaphor for – also treading lightly. You know, it’s leaving a single line ‘without a tar or gravel scar’. It’s it’s a different kind of passing through than a road or the extension of the M11, which which was also fought over in that area. Mark: I absolutely love what you’ve done with that first and last line. I mean, it’s a really bold move to have the rhyming couplet enclosing the entire sonnet. That’s quite unusual. But what you’ve done, I think, is marvellous because you’ve got like you say, you’ve got ‘Through this green swathe, how many feet have gone?’ Those are the feet from the past. And then at the end, as you say, this is us now with ‘the right to roam, pass through, reflect, pass on’. So you’ve got past and future. You’re kind of neatly joining there. And it’s only, as you talked about it just then that I picked up on the triple meaning of ‘pass on’. Jude: Yes. Mark: You’ve got ‘pass on’ as ‘moving on’, but you’ve also got ‘pass on’ as ‘leaving something behind, passing it on for other people’, and also, heartbreakingly, ‘pass on’ as in ‘dying’. Jude: But I think. I think it makes it a lovely, I think it makes death something positive, rather than just negative or a tragedy, because if you pass on and are able to pass on something beautiful and healthful and – it’s like passing on breath, you know, to be able to breathe fresh air. I think that’s rather wonderful. Mark: And I think that’s exactly what you’ve done with this poem. You’ve passed on something beautiful for the rest of us to enjoy. Jude: I hope so. That’s very kind of you Mark: Well, let’s listen and savour that. And maybe listen out for those sound patterns that Jude was just talking about so eloquently. So thank you very much, Jude, for sharing this from a wonderful collection, Reclamations from London’s Edgelands . Jude: Thank you. Desire Path by Jude Rosen Through this green swathe, how many feet have gone? Ah! the difference the trampling to mud makes when the trampled grass becomes a path. We follow a whim, taking the diagonal trail through Lammas Meadow – on the desire path extending freely to those who come after, who may be lured by the emerald field, become immersed in its pasture, one foot after the other, leaving a single line without a tar or gravel scar churning up the past or effacing it. Strange how walking has changed the course of grass and repossessed the Lammas lands – the right to graze surpassed by the right to roam, pass through, reflect, pass on. Reclamations from London’s Edgelands ‘Desire Path’ is from Reclamations from London’s Edgelands by Jude Rosen, published by Paekakariki Press. Available from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Jude Rosen Jude Rosen is a second generation immigrant of the Jewish East End, former historian and urban researcher who now works with refugees. As a poet, she explores the relationship of language to place, drawing on archival and oral histories, local ecology and etymology discovered through walking. Her pamphlet A Small Gateway , was published by Hearing Eye in 2009. Reclamations from London’s Edgelands , (Paekakariki, 2024) grew out of artistic resistance to Olympic redevelopment. Poems from the collection are performed on poem and living history walks ( poemwalks.wordpress.com ). She is currently revising a long poem of refugee journeys and a sequence on Gaza. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The New... Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Episode 76 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll.Poet Lewis CarrollReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessJabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the... The post Desire Path by Jude Rosen appeared first on A Mouthful of Air .…

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Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha 44:08

il y a 9 weeks44:08

44:08

Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/77_Self-portrait_1981_Self-portrait_of_the_poet_as_Cassius_Clay_1982_by_Nick_Makoha.mp3 This poem is from: The New Carthaginians Available from: The New Carthaginians is available from: The publisher: Penguin Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: UK Self Portrait 1 of 2 by Nick Makoha If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all. – E. Faga 1 1981 That midsummer and the D’Angelo concert is sold out at Brixton. Fuck! I can’t tell you what he whispered to security but here’s a picture of Icarus and me backstage with two press cards pinned to our chests. And to think four hours ago I was clocking off work. They have only just let in the crowd. You can hear the hum through the tannoy. The thing about Icarus is he has a microchip for a mouth. You say it he will name it. You name it he will play it. Once after his dad had died I caught him beating his chest after a month of fasting and prayer. They were more like songs really – the way the words fell away from his bones. Anyway, he is calling Keyon Harrold, the trumpet player from The Vanguard, ‘Kenya’. Asking him things like How do you create an open field in the band and if he believes in the equation of the Freedom Principle even in light of the Palestine situation . D’Angelo has popped two cassettes into a deck. Icarus calls him Smoke. My bladder is about to cut loose. When I return, they are huddled around the tape deck like tribesmen eating jerk chicken, listening to a jamming session from the morning’s rehearsal in silence. Smoke must have taken the picture because he is the only one not in it. Icarus is in the centre with his wings fanning and closing. 2 the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 To forgive someone requires two incidents in your life. The most obvious is the incident that like fire must be redeemed by fire. Here’s the match. A young journalist is speaking to camera – but her eyes struggle to find the centre. She is talking about my country the way a wino pees Pepsi into a can. This is being broadcast round the world. Except for the countries she is in. Hmm! She’s using her diaphragm to say things outside the range of her common experience. We are what you talk about before you cut to the news desk for an update on the Olympics. The only part you will remember is that the Queen’s daughter has qualified for the British riding team. And not that the body on the ground belonged to another body. And that he fought to stay alive the way the journalist fights with her mic or fights to beat the falling darkness or fights away a pair of mosquitoes that hover between her breast and right eye – hover between her lip and right breast. The cameraman has the engine running and is using the back of the pickup as a tripod while he rolls himself a smoke. Watch his lens searching for the sweetness of death. If only the dead could awaken. The lighter belongs to the body on the ground, so do the smokes, and so does the country in which we watch him. The mosquitoes know this – that is why they are unhinged – and now so do you. The second point of forgiveness sits in the future like the woman I will one day love and the country in which I will one day live. Forgive me. My heart is a vicious wolf that moves like the cloud of God searching for the true shape of history searching for the weight of a love lost. My mother was a river, my father was a boat – both separated by a sack of light Interview transcript Mark: Nick, where did this poem come from? Nick: So this poem came from a series of poems that I was working on that – the term is called ekphrasis when you take a piece of art and you use poetic language not necessarily to describe the painting, but the connection between the painting and yourself and the artist. And the particular artist that I was looking at was Jean-Michel Basquiat and initially that wasn’t intentional. It’s just that I’d gone to see his work at the Boom for Real retrospective at the Barbican, and I was so moved by the work, I cried, I burst into tears. I’ve never done that before in public. Just seen a painting or a bunch of his paintings and burst into tears one after the other and literally weeping. At the time I didn’t know what to make of it. I wasn’t trying to write any poem. I was literally just coming, I’d done a workshop with a friend of mine and I was just coming well, given free tickets and I was just observing the painting. I’d never seen a Basquiat painting before in person in my life, but when I started actually working on this collection that at the time wasn’t even called The New Carthaginians , it was called The Welcome Table , I knew I needed three characters, of which I would be one of them as the poet. I didn’t know that the second character would be Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the third character would be Icarus. And what I wanted to do was what he does with paintings. He turns paintings into poetry, so I wanted to turn poetry into a painting. And so these there are actually two titles in the one title. So the first part of it is Self Portrait 1981 , which is one of his paintings, and the second one is Self-portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay , which is another painting. And what I wanted to do was the self-portrait of the Black body. So one of them is a Self portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay. One of them is this kind of self portrait, of course. But because they’re using Basquiat, they’re also, it’s also a portrait of him, if that makes sense. And that was what I was trying to achieve. And they’re basically two poems that sit side by side with each other and they work as what I call a new form called the footnote poem. And so you read part one of the poem and then the story elevates to another register, and you read part two. So I didn’t think of this at the time. So it sounds very ‘Oh, you know what you’re doing’. I didn’t, I was just writing from just kind of this raw emotion. And what I did before I wrote these poems is actually I’d been to the retrospective. But then I decided to go to another retrospective that was put on by his sisters in New York, and that was called King Pleasure . And so I had to go back to see the paintings again and other works. And I was again moved and then I had about 40 poems that I really liked. I mean, 40 paintings call them poems, but 40 paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat that I really liked. And then from those I would I would, I would just day by day write a poem. And then some of them connected as these two do. So I didn’t make them initially connect, but I saw parallels. I thought, okay, what if I was to find a way to connect them in the way that Basquiat that he did these diptychs and triptychs. So diptychs and triptychs are moments in time. So a triptych is three scenes, one that represents the past, one that represents the present and one that represents the future. And so when you put them all together, the past, present and future, you have the time all of time happening at once. And one of the things I wanted to do was play with time. So technically there are two poems here, but when you put them together, there’s a third poem. So that is the past, the present and the future. Once again, I’m not as clever as it sounds! At the time I didn’t know what I was doing. These were just creative instincts that I was playing with. And part of that, yeah, part of the problem was, and the reason I was playing with this is because I was, I was trying to tell a story. So this, The New Carthaginians is my life story. I’m looking at my life story. I’m from Uganda originally, and with my first book I was looking at the Amin regime and I was trying to look at like the eight years or nine years of that regime. I wrote a play called The Dark , which looked at one day, which is the day that my mom smuggled me out of Uganda. And then for some reason, the curiosity was still there. So I wanted to look at a specific seven days and there’s seven days of history in Uganda that’s called the Entebbe hijacking . And I wanted to parallel that with all the important moments of history in life, to look at the world through that, particularly the African lens but particularly the East African lens and more particularly the Ugandan. So that’s what I was trying to achieve with the whole collection. And those three characters myself, the poet myself from Michel Basquiat, the painter and the Black Icarus, all live in present time. And I’m using them to move through time and how they talk about different histories to kind of understand my exile life here in the UK and also to give a voice to the East African voice, if that makes sense. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So there’s a lot going on in this poem and also in the in the whole book. And, if you’re listening to this and feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now, that’s actually, I think, overwhelmed in a good way is part of the experience of this book. There’s so much richness with so many different perspectives and things going on. And so there’s a lot for us to unpack. But before we do that, Nick, in terms of your poem, I’d like to go back to that experience when you first encountered the Basquiat painting face to face. Looking back, what do you think it was about those painting things that was so powerful for you? Nick: I mean, there’s. I mean, there’s so many ways to answer why Basquiat’s paintings mean so much to me. I think I want to say this humbly. I think if I had known him, he would have been my friend. And I’m not saying that because he’s famous. It’s just the many things that I realized that he was into I was into when I went to the King Pleasure retrospective in New York, and I was looking through his collections, many of the books he read, I’d read, the music he was into, I was into. And he kind of reminds me that he’s a collage of several of my friends in many ways. So I was like, you’d be the sort of guy, I’ll probably go check out a concert and eat some food, talk. I might not see him for a while because he’s famous, but it would be like that. I’m not saying, I’d see him every day I’m not trying to elevate myself to some kind of status, but he just seemed like a friend on some level. That was one. I think the other thing I learned when I went travelling across America looking at Basquiat paintings across these different museums in New York and LA and Atlanta is I realized that the thing about Basquiat is that he centres the Black body in time in history. And that’s kind of what I was trying to achieve. So I realized the crying – he’d given me a codex or a key into how I could write these poems, because the struggle was, I mean, every poet has this. But I, particularly as a writer of colour, as a Black poet, as an African poet, you always question: How will they – will they even have interest in my story? How do I make it relevant to contemporary time? Because the story is not in the news. The stories that they have of my country are not the ones that I’m trying to tell. So that was I think when I saw that it’s almost like I’d seen a pathway that would allow me to navigate my narrative in a way that was both interesting to the reader, but also interesting to me, to move the reader and move myself. Because if it doesn’t move me, there’s no point in me writing it. And if it doesn’t move the reader there’s no point me saying it, you know? Mark: So one thing that struck me, Nick, looking at Basquiat’s – you picked up on the phrase ‘exploded collage’, I think, from one of his critics, to describe what he does, which is, when you look at those images, they are overwhelming. They mix images, they mix words, they have crossed out words. They have all kinds of interesting and playful stuff going on. And I think your book is very much in that spirit. I mean, even in this poem that you’ve read today, for instance, as you said, you’ve got the three different characters, you’ve got the poet Basquiat and Icarus, who seem, at some stages in the book to be the same person, at some stages different people. You’ve also got that coming out formally, in the fact that you use footnotes extensively, so that there’s at least a two-level text going on, which is what happens with footnotes. So again, if you’re listening to this and you want to see this, go and have a look at the website, you’ll see the poem and you’ll see which bits are footnotes and which bits are the ‘main text’, in inverted commas. On the one hand footnotes can seem a bit academic. But on the other hand, I think the way you’re using them is anything but. Could you say something about that formal decision? Nick: The footnote is a device used in academic settings, but that’s not what I was trying to do. What I was trying to do is enter a level of surrealism. I was trying to signify another body or human experience. There is what is happening in the world. And then there’s what we’re experiencing, particularly as a Black body. You live an Afro-Surreal life in the sense that there’s the world that you are in. And then there’s the truth that I mean, for example, if you think about George Floyd , I had an Afro-Surreal experience when I saw what happened to him in the sense that I saw a Black man being killed for literally having $5 in his pocket and people not believing that. And so I have as a Black body, I have to think, Oh, my God. Should I not carry £5? Should I tell the truth? So that surrealism means that there is a narrative that is happening in the world and then there’s a narrative I have to accept as a Black body. And so the footnote kind of allows two worlds to exist at once. And I wanted that parallel track, and I wanted it in a way that was more than just a series of poems, or these are connected poems. I wanted to play with time. I wanted to be able to move you into the future, but also feel that you’re in the present, but also feel like you’re in the past and feel, no disconnection with either one and feel no kind of disorientation. So that’s what the footnote poem did. But I also found that by accident, so that it was it was me trying to answer that that question was like, how do I bring all of this history together? The other thing about Basquiat, what you said about the exploded collage is that he was trying to – he actually said in a quote, “I’m trying to put the whole of history onto one page”. And I mean, I have a sequence in the book called ‘Codex’, for example, and I was trying to do the same thing even before I’d met Basquiat. I’d actually gone to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Arundel at the British Library. And I had this idea in my head before, I’d actually even seen a Basquiat painting. And the idea was, I wondered if I could put the whole of my emotions, my history, my life, my, my loves into one poem. So I started these poems just called ‘Codex’. And then I went, I guess, when I saw Basquiat, then I realized he was doing the same thing, that the tears were this kind of kinship. This way I say to you, he feels like a like a friend. Not because I’ve never met him, but there were so many things that we were trying to do the same. And I feel that he achieved them and he was kind of almost like a like a spirit guide in that kind of way. And that’s what I was trying to do. So when you feel you feel these poems, you’re moving through time, you’re moving through space, you’re moving through histories, you’re moving through bodies for understanding, for recognition, if that makes sense. Mark: Yeah. And that chimes very much with my experience of reading this book. Because it is, really, it’s one long poem. It’s made up of several sequences, but it’s – sometimes you read a poetry collection and you read a poem and you read another poem, and it’s like there’s a space between them, and you can dip in and dip out. But I sat down and read this all the way through It was more like the feeling of reading a novel. You know, where you’re just totally absorbed in that world for the duration of the book. It’s got that level of intensity, but also capaciousness. Like you say, it includes a lot of history and culture, different time zones, lots of elements of your own life, but also the history of Uganda. And if we can just zoom in on how that plays out in this particular poem, maybe we could just start to talk about the two parts of the poem and how they talk to each other. So on the one hand you’ve got this D’Angelo concert, Brixton – I assume this is the Brixton Academy? Nick: Yeah. Mark: Getting into the venue when it’s sold out. And that whole sequence with Icarus who on the one hand is a mythical creature, but somehow he’s right there in the photo with his wings. And then the second part is much more centred around the public reporting and portrayal of the Entebbe hijacking. So, I mean, how do you see the relationship between these two? Nick: I mean, there are many doors in, but I’ll try and give you a few! So basically, Basquiat, Icarus and myself are the new Carthaginians. And there are two paintings by Turner that are called, well, there there are actually ten paintings from Turner that deal with Carthage. And the reason I’ve chosen Carthage is, going back to that episode where I told you why I burst into tears at looking at the Basquiat retrospective. In The Aeneid , Aeneas does the same thing when he looks at the frescoes on the Temple of Juno. He bursts into tears when he sees the whole of his history on the wall. Mark: Oh yes. Nick: So he’s seeing his life in the present, but he’s seeing what’s happened in the past, and he’s also seeing the future in the forming of Carthage. And so in many ways, through those three characters, the new Carthaginians and in my vision, Icarus is alive. He’s Black, but he didn’t die the way it’s depicted in myth. He has a different myth. So I’m also creating a new myth. So that’s the context of these poems. One of them is dealing with, I’ve played with the timeline, but one of them is dealing with a concert I went to and trying to generate that. And that is kind of, I guess, relatively present time. But it’s also dealing with when I’m in these spaces and how the past of Uganda floods back in and how they sit parallel with each other. So it’s looking at how a lot of times the reportage or the way that my country’s reported on, the way it is seen through the Western gaze, and I’m holding it up to the light, trying to give it an African gaze. And the reason I did that is, when we when they talk about the Entebbe hijacking, which is a horrible thing to happen in any in any situation, but whenever they talk of that situation, they never actually talk of the people of Uganda. So, if we parallel that to sadly, what happened at 9/11 or 7/7, when you think 9/11 they talk of the people of New York, it is their story. And we have compassion for that. When it was 7/7, they talk of the people of London and it is it is their story and we have compassion for that. But they never talk of the people of Uganda in that way. And so I just wanted to turn the camera, if that makes sense, so that they can see the people. So I am one of those people. So even though I might be at the D’Angelo concert enjoying myself, and even though you might turn to the news and see something else, I’m one of those people. And I’m one of the people who I guess is here, but they are the people who will not be part of history because they’re not even looked at. That’s what the portrait is. It’s a way of centring that story rather than having it towards the periphery of the painting. And you said something that actually touches me. And it means in many ways – I mean, I hope the book goes on to do very well, but it’s one of my secret passions for the book was I wanted it to read, even more than a novel, like it’s one big mural. It’s one painting. And when Basquiat was creating his work, a lot of times he would work on several paintings at once. And that’s how I worked on these poems. I was working on them as if it was one. I would go from one to the next to the next. When one idea fades, I’ll jump into another poem, one other, and I would keep that energy going. So it really means a lot that you feel the arc of the book. Mark: Yeah. I mean, it’s an intense experience. I heartily recommend it, but you’ve really got to be able to sit down and give it the time and attention it deserves. So picking up on what you were just saying, it sounds like, in your use of the footnotes and multiple perspectives here, the background becomes the foreground. The people of Uganda, the lives, the cause. So the Entebbe hijacking, there’s a lot of movie versions aren’t there? And they usually centre on how it seems from the outside. So the original hijack was in Athens. Could you just walk us though that? Nick: Yeah. So I mean, it’s really important what you’re saying there. So when, when you talk about the Entebbe hijacking there, that there are several components. It was a plane that left Tel Aviv, then went to Athens. That was it. And then it was supposed, I think I think was supposed to go to I don’t know if it was Paris or New York, one or the other. But anyway, some hijackers got on and then it was diverted to Benghazi. And then at Benghazi, they refuelled, they were allowed to refuel, and then they asked many African countries if they could land on the tarmac. And the only country that was willing to accept that was Uganda, because Idi Amin was in charge at the time and the plane was there for seven days. Hence the seven-day focus that I’m looking at for many reasons. One is because of the way the world related to Idi Amin and Uganda changed after that and understandably so. But then what happened is, what is usually in the films, there was this great rescue by the Israeli Defence Force. Their leader, Yoni was killed and a few others were injured. Some of the hostages were killed. I think all the hostages were killed. Some civilians were killed. And they always tell the story. But whenever they tell the story, the only real Black gaze is on Idi Amin and his villainy. But there’s nothing about how it impacted the people of Uganda. So my concern isn’t what people already know – the Western gaze, the Western reportage, the Western heroism. It’s more about: what about the people of Uganda? Even though it happened on Ugandan soil, there is no Ugandan story, which is which I wanted to deal with, that erasure. But not just that. I also wanted to deal with the impact. Because of that situation I had to leave the country. You know, there’s a part of me thinks that I might not have even been a poet if I hadn’t had to leave my country because I needed a language in which my whole self could be expressed. Mark: Really? Nick: You know, in poetry, I’m fully the person I need to be. Whereas in the world, when I step into the West, I’m a Black. I have to identify as a Black body and I’m usually an ‘other’. I’m usually a minority. When I go back to my country, I’m seen as if I’ve left. So I’m never fully myself. But in poetry land, inside of the new Carthaginians, my whole self is realised. And so this is a contemporary inquiry into exile, into that that fracture and into the banality and into that metic. When I say metic , it means, you know you’re a citizen, but you don’t feel fully integrated, not for any choice of your own, but in the way that the world receives you and perceives you. Mark: So, the personal and the political, if you like, are nested one inside the other. There’s these two different perspectives or multiple perspectives, on the world stage but also in your life, you embody that. Nick: Yes, absolutely. You say it better! Come with me. And we can explain this a lot easier! Yeah. [Laughter] Mark: I don’t think I’m as articulate as you about this Nick! And so the hijacking was 1976. So how old would you have been then? Nick: In 1976, I would have only been 2 at the time. I left in 1979. So thats when my mom, she was actually doing a PhD here and she had to come back and she smuggled me out and I’ve retold that as a play that happened that taught in the UK in 2019. But I wanted to not just look at that. That is like a focal point, but it isn’t the whole story. What I really wanted to look at was this enquiry into exile from an East African body. So I’m looking at my life and parallel history. So Basquiat’s history, Greece’s history, Carthage, and other moments in time. So I’m looking at them and seeing what is the impact of this on me in exile and through the different gaze of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Icarus and myself. Mark: And so if the reader’s feeling disoriented on entering the world of the book, actually, that’s really mirroring your disorientation that you’re describing, that, you’ve been living through? Nick: If they’re feeling disorientated, it means that they understand. If it’s clear to them, then it probably means that they’ve probably gone through some of the experiences I’m talking about. Mark: Right. Nick: But if they’re disorientated, that’s part of it. I think that’s part of the achievement of the book. And I hope I’ve done it in a way that doesn’t seem like you think, ‘Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s doing’. You think, ‘Oh’ – I’m I hope that when they’re going through the disorientation, you’re going through an understanding, of not just yourself, but also of me and not just me, but other people or other types of existence, you know? Mark: I always felt I was in good hands in this book. I felt like you were taking me somewhere and you had an instinct for where that was, even if maybe, as you said, you hadn’t articulated it all consciously. There’s a real drive to the narrative to take us through. And clearly there’s a lot of hurt in this experience. You know there’s a lot of hurt in the depiction of your country. There’s a lot of hurt in your own experience of exile and prejudice and being an outsider and so on. But, the second part hinges on forgiveness, doesn’t it? And you say , ‘To forgive someone requires two incidents in your life. The most obvious is the incident that, like fire, must be redeemed by fire.’. And that wonderful phrase, ‘Here’s the match.’. That’s the cue for the journalist and that’s the hurt. But towards the end, you come in with the second point of forgiveness. So I’m really curious about how that hinge of forgiveness works. Nick: Yeah. I mean, it’s something I look at a lot, just on my own personal self-development, is this idea of forgiveness. I mean, if you think about the first part of the poem which is dealing with war, but also the second one, which is dealing with relationship, forgiveness is the hardest thing to do. And I’m talking from a personal perspective. I’m not looking outward, I’m looking inward. And so I really want to inquire that. And, this is just my rudimentary thinking. You realize that forgiveness is a gift of God. And to be able to forgive someone is, is not only, a blessing on one level, but it’s also a release or a cleansing. And I think in many ways that was my ambition for myself, is like I don’t want to just look at this and it be another book about exile. I wanted to kind of interrogate it with a sense of purpose to kind of, I guess, heal myself, bring myself closer to who I am. I have some deep understanding, but it would mean that I’d have to look at things that hurt me outwardly and inwardly, or ways in which I’ve hurt other people, outwardly and inwardly. And so I was trying to get as close to the fire of that as possible, no pun intended. But I was really trying to – I was like, in this idea of the codex, I was trying to put everything into one poem. I was like: could I confront myself and tell the truth for myself without trying to sugar-coat it? Could I confront my history without trying to be manipulative or sit, on one side? And the only way I could enter into that authenticity was through this passage of forgiveness. Mark: I think that’s a beautiful description. And it’s really hard to paraphrase this book or reduce it to a political position. You know, however much politics is in the air in it. And I think it comes across as a very human book, both in the experience you describe and the spirit that comes through it. Because after all the suffering, all the dislocation, whatever, it’s also a very beautiful book. And I would really encourage the reader to check out, to just sit down and read the whole book through and savour the beauty as well as the dislocation, the suffering and so on. Nick: Thank you. Okay, so before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you. I’ve really enjoyed, I mean, I can’t wait to hear it back, but I’ve really enjoyed this and regardless of the technical difficulties, that was a beautiful interview. Thank you. Mark: Well, thank you, Nick. And yes, behind the scenes you’re listening to the cleaned up edited version. But we did have some technical challenges and Nick was super patient with that. So let’s hear the poem again and appreciate the multifaceted world of Nick’s poetry. Self Portrait 1 of 2 by Nick Makoha If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all. – E. Faga 1 1981 That midsummer and the D’Angelo concert is sold out at Brixton. Fuck! I can’t tell you what he whispered to security but here’s a picture of Icarus and me backstage with two press cards pinned to our chests. And to think four hours ago I was clocking off work. They have only just let in the crowd. You can hear the hum through the tannoy. The thing about Icarus is he has a microchip for a mouth. You say it he will name it. You name it he will play it. Once after his dad had died I caught him beating his chest after a month of fasting and prayer. They were more like songs really – the way the words fell away from his bones. Anyway, he is calling Keyon Harrold, the trumpet player from The Vanguard, ‘Kenya’. Asking him things like How do you create an open field in the band and if he believes in the equation of the Freedom Principle even in light of the Palestine situation . D’Angelo has popped two cassettes into a deck. Icarus calls him Smoke. My bladder is about to cut loose. When I return, they are huddled around the tape deck like tribesmen eating jerk chicken, listening to a jamming session from the morning’s rehearsal in silence. Smoke must have taken the picture because he is the only one not in it. Icarus is in the centre with his wings fanning and closing. 2 the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 To forgive someone requires two incidents in your life. The most obvious is the incident that like fire must be redeemed by fire. Here’s the match. A young journalist is speaking to camera – but her eyes struggle to find the centre. She is talking about my country the way a wino pees Pepsi into a can. This is being broadcast round the world. Except for the countries she is in. Hmm! She’s using her diaphragm to say things outside the range of her common experience. We are what you talk about before you cut to the news desk for an update on the Olympics. The only part you will remember is that the Queen’s daughter has qualified for the British riding team. And not that the body on the ground belonged to another body. And that he fought to stay alive the way the journalist fights with her mic or fights to beat the falling darkness or fights away a pair of mosquitoes that hover between her breast and right eye – hover between her lip and right breast. The cameraman has the engine running and is using the back of the pickup as a tripod while he rolls himself a smoke. Watch his lens searching for the sweetness of death. If only the dead could awaken. The lighter belongs to the body on the ground, so do the smokes, and so does the country in which we watch him. The mosquitoes know this – that is why they are unhinged – and now so do you. The second point of forgiveness sits in the future like the woman I will one day love and the country in which I will one day live. Forgive me. My heart is a vicious wolf that moves like the cloud of God searching for the true shape of history searching for the weight of a love lost. My mother was a river, my father was a boat – both separated by a sack of light The New Carthaginians ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ is from The New Carthaginians by Nick Makoha, published by Penguin. Available from: The New Carthaginians is available from: The publisher: Penguin Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: UK Nick Makoha Dr Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet, winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity , was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. He was the ICA 2023 Writer-in-Residence. He was the 2019 Writer-in-Residence for The Wordsworth Trust and Wasafiri. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works alumnus. He won the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man . The New Carthaginians is his latest collection, published in 2025. NickMakoha.com Photo © Dirk Skiba A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The New... Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Episode 76 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll.Poet Lewis CarrollReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessJabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the... The post Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha appeared first on A Mouthful of Air .…

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Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll 31:16

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Episode 76 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/76_Jabberwocky_by_Lewis_Carrol.mp3 Poet Lewis Carroll Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Podcast transcript This is one of the most famous nonsense poems ever written. You’ve probably heard it already. And you probably already know that it’s famous for being full of invented words that dazzle and beguile its readers. Yet somehow, we are able to make sense of the nonsense. But is it really full of made-up words? And is it really so surprising that we can follow it? Imagine if the poem had begun with the second stanza: “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” What would you make of this opening? You’d probably wonder what a frumious Bandersnatch was. But the rest of it would be pretty obvious from the context. The Jabberwock is clearly some kind of monster, with jaws that bite and claws that catch. The Jubjub bird is a species of bird – you wouldn’t know what kind, but unless you’re an ornithologist, there are plenty of exotic birds in this world that you’ve never heard of, so you’d mentally file it with the rest of them. Out of the twenty-two words in the stanza, only four of them are invented. So the opening wouldn’t be hard to follow, even if you were curious to know more. The same goes for the next stanza: He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. Out of twenty six words, only three are invented. So the language wouldn’t be a showstopper: we might wander what a vorpal sword looks like, or exactly what makes a foe manxome, or how big a Tumtum tree is. But none of this would hinder us following the action. And the same goes for the next three stanzas – the invented words are eye-catching, but there aren’t that many of them. So the secret hiding in plain sight is that most of ‘Jabberwocky’ isn’t that difficult to understand. No more difficult than a passage from Tolkien that mentions elves and dwarves and names like Mordor and Minas Tirith. If it weren’t for that spectacular opening stanza, the poem probably wouldn’t have such a reputation for outrageous use of language. But I think you’ll agree it’s quite the opening: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Out of twenty three words, there are ten invented words, and one dictionary word, ‘gyre’, that was such an obscure word in 1851, when the first version of the poem was written, that it might as well have been made up. It was certainly rare enough for Carroll to feel he needed to write a note explaining that it should be pronounced with a hard ‘g’. Later on it was a favourite word of W. B. Yeats, and I can’t help wondering whether Yeats first noticed it in ‘Jabberwocky’. Anyway. That means there are 11 strange words out of 23 in this opening stanza, almost half the stanza, so no wonder it feels like it’s chock-full of strangeness. And in the other five stanzas, there are only 18 more invented words in total, so they are spread much thinner through the rest of the poem. It’s like buying one of those sandwiches that has been cut in two: on the shelf, it looks like it’s chock full of delicious filling, but when you unwrap it you discover that the edges are mostly bread and butter. And I want to stress, this isn’t a criticism. Well, it’s a criticism of the sandwich. But it’s praise for the poem. Because whatever else it is, ‘Jabberwocky’ is also an example of a master illusionist at work, using all the linguistic and imaginative resources he can muster to achieve maximum effect with minimal effort. Having so many strange words in the opening stanza makes a first impression that is so ostentatiously rich and strange that it stamps itself indelibly on our memory, and influences our perception of the rest of the poem. And repeating the stanza at the end of the poem means that our final impression of the poem is the same as the first one – of a dense and beguiling forest of words that we have somehow managed to wander through without getting lost. As a practising poet I am in awe of Lewis Carroll’s skill in creating this illusion. So let’s take a closer look at how he does it… So firstly, the poem is very short. Just six stanzas, and one of them is repeated. So he only really has to dazzle us with one really dense and clever stanza. The rest of the poem can have just enough strangeness to maintain the illusion. Secondly, the action is really simple: a hero goes into a forest, kills a monster and comes back in triumph. It’s an archetypal scenario that even children – especially children – are very familiar with, from fairy stories and legends. So there’s not much chance of us losing the thread of the plot. On top of this, Carroll uses rhythm and rhyme in a skilfully entrancing way. It’s written in a kind of ballad stanza , with three tetrameters , four-beat lines, followed by a final trimeter , a line with only three beats. And there’s lots of alliteration (repeated consonants), assonance (repeated vowels) and internal rhyme (rhyme within a line instead of at the end of the line). All of which has a spellbinding effect, lulling our conscious mind into a perhaps false sense of lucidity. Clive James once said that W. H. Auden’s poetic skill could make anything sound ‘truer than true’, and I think there’s a similar effect going on here. Another thing Carroll is very clever about is the types of invented words that he uses. In the first stanza there are two invented verbs, ‘gimble’ and ‘outgrabe’, and that unusual word, ‘gyre’: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. So because the verbs are so strange, it’s really hard to figure out exactly what’s going on in this stanza, and some scholars are still debating it. Which means the reader feels quite disoriented on reading this, but it doesn’t really matter, because nothing crucial is happening here. It’s what film directors call an establishing shot – a camera shot that sets the scene by showing us the environment in which the action will take place. It’s scenery. So it’s fine, in fact it’s desirable, that we feel a little disoriented and giddy, as if we’ve just stepped onto a fairground ride. But when the action starts, Carroll doesn’t take this kind of risk. In the rest of the poem there are only three more invented verbs: ‘whiffling’, ‘galumphing’, and ‘chortled’, plus the obscure verb ‘burbled’, which are all pretty easy to understand from the context. So at the crucial moments in the action, the verbs make it nice and clear what’s happening: the hero ‘took’ his sword, he ‘sought’ the foe, he ‘rested’ by the Tumtum tree, he ‘stood’ awhile in thought, and he ‘left’ the Jabberwock dead. Have a listen to the verbs in the central three stanzas: He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. It’s nice and clear what’s happening, isn’t it? Even ‘galumphing’ is close enough to ‘galloping’ to be understood at a first reading. There are still a decent number of strange words, but notice that these are mostly adjectives: the ‘vorpal’ sword, the ‘manxome’ foe, ‘uffish’ thought, the ‘tulgey’ wood. So even if we’re not sure what they mean, we never lose the thread because the nouns are all clear: a sword, a foe, the hero’s thought, and the wood. There is of course one very important noun at the heart of the poem: ‘the Jabberwock’ itself. But we’re given a lot of information about the Jabberwock in plain English: it has jaws that bite and claws that catch and eyes of flame. So it’s obviously a monster of some kind, and as all monster movie directors know, the monster you don’t quite see is the scariest monster of all, because you fill in the details with your imagination. There’s also a terrific piece of onomatopoeia , words designed to imitate sounds, at the climax of the action: The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! It’s like a cartoon, isn’t it? We really hear and see the sword despatch the Jabberwock with a swift one-two. And there are also some wonderful invented words used to express the speaker’s delight at the hero’s success: “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. So we’ve got another adjective here, ‘beamish’, and the connotations of ‘beaming’ are pretty obviously appropriate in this context. And then that delightful line: O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! So no problems here: these are wonderfully exuberant exclamations. And we’re all used to yelling strange words at moments of triumph, as anyone will attest who has ever shouted ‘yippee!’, ‘hooray!’, ‘yee-haw!’ or ‘hup hup huzzah!’. We never find out who this speaker is, who first warns the hero to ‘beware the Jabberwock, my son’, and then celebrates his return. Perhaps it’s a proud parent, or perhaps ‘my son’ is just a term of affection. But dramatically of course, an audience is required for any self-respecting hero. So Lewis Carroll is a very clever poet, not just in his ability to invent words, but also the way he artfully deploys these new words, front-loading the poem with lots of them, but measuring them out judiciously in the middle. And using invented verbs when he doesn’t mind confusing us, but mostly adjectives when he wants us to follow the action. Another way he gets away with so much nonsense is in the delightfully suggestive sound of the words. We’ve got the onomatopoeia of ‘snicker-snack’, as well as ‘whiffling’, ‘burbled’ and ‘chortled’. And also words that are suggestive of other words: ‘slithy’, as Humpty Dumpty tells Alice, means ‘lithe and slimy’; ‘fruminious’, according to Carroll himself, combines ‘fuming’ and ‘furious’; ‘gimble’ suggests ‘nimble’; ‘mimsy’ suggests ‘flimsy’, and so on. In his massive book about how poetry works, The Poem , Don Paterson talks about the role of phonesthemes in poetry. His definition of a phonestheme is ‘a point of sound-sense coincidence’. In other words, it’s where we find a cluster of words that sound similar, and which have similar or related meanings, even though there might be no etymological connection, in terms of the history of the words. For example, the sound ‘gl’ occurs in words describing sight or reflected light, such as glisten , glare , glow , glint , gleam , glass , glance , glitter and so on. Poets love this kind of thing, because it gives them plenty to work with. One definition of poetry could be the art of marrying the sound of words with their sense. So Lewis Carroll was a highly skilled poet. And no wonder that when Alice comes across this poem in the novel Through the Looking-Glass , she says: ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas — only I don’t exactly know what they are.’ Another aspect of language that I think Carroll exploits really well is the tendency of the human mind to fill in the gaps in perception to help us navigate the world, and gaps in language when we’re reading a challenging text. You may recall the internet meme years ago, that pointed out that we can often understand words whose letters have been scrambled , as long as the first and last words are in the correct position. And we’re all familiar with the experience of reading a book and finding an unfamiliar word – do you bother to look it up? Or can you guess the meaning from the context? Often, guessing feels easier than the effort of looking it up. This is part of the experience of learning to read, as I’m currently rediscovering in my quest to learn Japanese. I often find myself looking at a Japanese sentence with one or two words I don’t know. It reminds me of what it was like when I was a child and wanted to keep reading a story, rather than looking new words up in the dictionary, so I did my best to figure out new words for myself. All of which is to say, that there are qualities inherent in language that make it possible for us to derive a kind of sense from even the weirdest of words, and Carroll knew this, or intuited it, and managed to tread the finest of lines between sense and nonsense when he wrote ‘Jabberwocky’. Zooming out from individual words to the poem as a whole, we can see that the structure of the poem is also key to its effect. We’ve already noted the hypnotic effect of the regular metre and stanza form. And if we look at the content of the stanzas, we can see that they are neatly symmetrical: Firstly, we have that establishing shot of the opening stanza: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Then the mysterious speaker appears to warn our hero about the monster: “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” Next we get three stanzas of action, right in the middle of the poem: He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. After that, the final two stanzas are a mirror image of the first two. So in the second-to-last stanza, the speaker of the second stanza reappears: “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. And finally, as we know, Carroll repeats the first stanza, so that we end our journey where we began, as if the spell has been lifted, and we find ourselves in the same place where we began, but with the sense of having been somehow transported: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Given that Lewis Carroll was the pen name of the mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, we can assume this symmetry is no accident. In fact, this kind of structure is quite common in storytelling, it’s called a nested loop , because different elements or storyline nested inside another, so that you go deeper into the structure, then back out again. It’s used in works as diverse as the movies Pulp Fiction and Inception, and the British children’s TV show Bagpuss. I learned the technique when I was a hypnotherapist – because nesting different stories or levels of stories inside each other has a disorienting effect on conscious mind, so that with each new level, the subject goes deeper into a trance state. And there’s definitely something a little trancelike going on ‘Jabberwocky’. Especially when we remember that Carroll placed the poem inside a longer story, the novel Through the Looking-Glass. Alice finds a book written in a strange script, and it’s only when she remembers that she’s in a looking-glass world that she realises it’s printed in reverse, so she needs to look at the pages in a mirror to read them. So what we have is a poem reflected in a mirror inside a story about a world inside a looking-glass that turns out to be a dream. And the poem itself is written in a symmetrical form where the beginning mirrors the end. Which makes it one more level in the seemingly endless levels of the Alice books. So the cumulative effect of Carroll’s various techniques – inventing suggestive new words, placing them artfully where they will have the greatest effect, exploiting quirks of language and tricks of perception, structuring the poem and the novel like a hall of mirrors, and using rhyme and other sound patterns to heighten the effect – is of a master illusionist at work. He uses music and misdirection and to a dazzling effect that is somehow also flattering to us as readers. On the one hand the poem is bafflingly strange, but on the other, we can somehow make perfect sense of it! Curiouser and curioser, as Alice might say. Or if you ask me, cleverer and cleverer. And I really don’t intend to spoil the magic by point out the cleverness of the poem’s construction. Because for me at least, this is a magic trick that still works even when you know how it works. I’ve enumerated different techniques, but the real magic of the poem – and maybe of poetry itself – is the way they all work mysteriously together, and create something greater than the sum of its parts. Something that almost feels alive. So let’s hear the poem again and enjoy the sensation of being lost in a forest of strange words, but somehow able to see the wood for the trees. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Lewis Carroll Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English author, mathematician, logician, and photographer who was born in 1832 and died in 1898. A lecturer at Oxford University, he excelled in mathematics and logic, publishing scholarly works under his real name. He is best known for his literary classics Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Carroll was also a pioneer in early photography and there is an ongoing controversy about some of his subject matter. He was a skilled writer of nonsense verse, and many of his poems appear inside his novels. His prose and verse are distinguished by a unique blend of logic and fantasy that has enchanted readers for generations. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... 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A Modest Love by Sir Edward Dyer 29:08

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Episode 75 A Modest Love by Sir Edward Dyer Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘A Modest Love’ by Sir Edward Dyer. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/75_A_Modest_Love_by_Sir_Edward_Dyer.mp3 Poet Sir Edward Dyer Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness A Modest Love by Sir Edward Dyer The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat; The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; And love is love, in beggars as in kings. Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords; The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move; The firmest faith is in the fewest words; The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love: True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak; They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break. Podcast transcript This poem is sometimes printed with the title ‘A Modest Love’, and sometimes without, so it may well be that the title was added later. But whether or not it’s called ‘A Modest Love’, it’s definitely a modest love poem: it’s brief, it’s understated, it reveals hardly anything about the speaker and nothing at all about his beloved, and there’s just one little flash of emotion, right at the end. In short, it embodies the virtues it describes. You could say the poem is too modest for its own good – because you have very likely never heard of Sir Edward Dyer, and I’ve only read a few of his poems. But after considering Emilia Lanyer’s poetry a couple of episodes ago, I thought it would be nice to read a poem by another overlooked poet of the same period. Dyer was a courtier under Elizabeth I. His poetry was actually well-known and highly regarded among his contemporaries. Gabriel Harvey bracketed him with the great Sir Philip Sidney , who we read in Episode 58, as one of the ‘ornaments of the court’. And in his Arte of English Poesie , George Puttenham described him as, ‘Maister Edward Dyar, for Elegie most sweete, solemne, and of high conceit.’ And yet I’ve just been through several of my historical anthologies of English poetry, and couldn’t find him in most of them. It just goes to show how fickle and fleeting poetic fame can be. To add insult to obscurity, his most famous poem, ‘My mind to me a kingdom is’ , is now considered to be quite likely written by someone else. What remains of his corpus is mostly fairly conventional love poetry, featuring lots of nymphs and shepherds, and maidens and swains, and Petrarchan antitheses of the kind we saw in the episode on Sidney. And it’s not a criticism to say he was conventional. He lived and wrote in a time and place when poets generally felt no need or desire to shatter conventions. And yet… he’s left us a poem that challenges the idea that great passions have to be shouted from the rooftops to be adequately expressed. Here’s how he starts to make his case: The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat; The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; So he’s presenting us with a list of things that seem small and insignificant, but which have something that is significant relative to their size: even the shortest trees have a tops; little sparks have heat; ants have ‘gall’ secretion of the liver, which was believed at the time to provoke resentment and resistance; flies ‘spleen’ which was associated with high spirits or courage; ‘And bees have stings, although they be not great’. Plus there is that delightful detail of slender hairs casting tiny shadows. That line really comes into focus, doesn’t it? I did wonder if Dyer had looked at hairs in a magnifying glass, which is possible, but the microscope wasn’t invented until after his death, so he didn’t live to see the popular fascination with microscopes later in the 17th century. Another possibility of course is that if you’re close enough to see individual hairs and their shadows, then you’re either looking at your own hair, or you are very close to someone else and their hair. So maybe we can pick up a subtle erotic charge in this line. So the first four lines of the poem are a catalogue of small and apparently insignificant things that turn out, on a second glance, to have something remarkable about them. The poem is like one of the miniature portraits of Elizabethan courtiers painted by Nicholas Hilliard : its small details reward close inspection. Then in the next line, we get a shift of perspective: Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; The seas are the first appearance of something big and huge and deep, suggestive of depth of passion. But then they are immediately contrasted with ‘shallow springs’, as if the poet is skipping past this expansive vision to a more modest image, those ‘shallow springs’. Then the first stanza closes with a disarmingly direct statement: And love is love, in beggars as in kings. Isn’t that wonderful? ‘And love is love’ – surprisingly plain, after all the clever comparisons. Because up to this point, everything in the poem has been an implied comparison: the trees, the ant, the sparks, the hairs, the bees, and the shallow springs each illustrate some aspect of the ‘modest love’ of the title. So it does actually start to matter whether the title, ‘A Modest Love’, is authorial or not. If we read the first stanza without the title, the way it’s printed in a lot of anthologies, the ending becomes more surprising – it’s like a riddle that keeps us guessing about what he’s talking about, until the answer is revealed in the last line: The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat; The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; And love is love, in beggars as in kings. But even if we do have the title as a clue, it’s not really giving much away. After all, this is an Elizabethan courtier, writing in an established lyric mode that is overwhelmingly associated with love poetry, so you don’t have to be Gollum to guess the answer to the riddle. And either way, it’s a wonderfully candid last line. It’s not remotely revolutionary, but it does suggest that in love at least, everyone is equal, from the beggar to the king. And the speaker is clearly positioning himself as a beggar rather than a king: his love may be more like the shallow spring than the vast ocean of other lovers, more like the beggar than the king, but ‘love is love’, as he says. It’s an element that cannot be reduced, an experience that is the same for everyone. Part of what makes this stanza work so well, and feel so satisfying at the end, is the skill with which Dyer balances regularity and variation. It’s written in a six line stanza form, which we can break down into a quatrain rhyming alternate lines, ABAB. So the rhymes go: ‘gall’, ‘heat’, ‘small’, ‘great’; and then a rhyming couplet at the end, ‘springs’ and ‘kings’. To most modern English speakers, of course, at least in this country, ‘heat’ and ‘great’ sound like half-rhymes, but that’s just because our pronunciation has shifted since the 16th century; they would have been full rhymes when Dyer wrote them. And in the second stanza, the same goes for ‘fords’ and ‘words’, ‘move’ and ‘love’, and ‘speak’ and ‘break’. These days we know this form as the Venus and Adonis stanza , because it was used by Shakespeare in his poem of that name, which was a smash hit bestseller in Elizabethan England. But Dyer didn’t necessarily copy it from Shakespeare – Venus and Adonis wasn’t published until 1593, by which time Dyer may already have written his poem. And the stanza was already so well established that the young King James VI of Scotland, the future James I of England, wrote a treatise on poetry in 1583 in which he described this form as ‘Common verse’, and said it was the correct stanza form to use, ‘In materis of love’. So Dyer probably felt he was simply using the right tool for the job. So the stanza form and its rhyming pattern are perfectly regular. And the metre is very regular too. The poem is written in iambic pentameter , the familiar ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM we all know from school, and Dyer uses it in a thoroughly regular and conventional way, which you can hear if I read it in an exaggerated way: The low est trees have tops , the ant her gall , The fly her spleen , the litt le sparks their heat ; The slen der hairs have sha dows, though but small , It sounds awful like that, doesn’t it? But it helps you tune into that rhythm which is ticking away in the background throughout the poem. And this regularity was very typical of 16th century poetry in England, it wasn’t until later in the century when Shakespeare and his friends were using iambic pentameter for drama, that they introduced a lot of variation in the metre, to make it more natural and expressive of their characters’ emotions. But even courtly lyric poets like Dyer were starting to experiment with some variations in the metre, and we find one example in this stanza: Seas have their source , and so have sha llow springs ; Did you hear that? Right at the beginning, I put the stress on ‘seas’, instead of ‘have’, so the line kicks off with a stressed syllable, and disrupts the iambic flow. Now I could have read it with the stress on have: Seas have their source , and so have sha llow springs ; But that sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t make as much sense. If Dyer had referred to the sea in the previous line, then maybe he could have gone on to say ‘Seas have their source ’, expanding on a subject he’s already introduced. But he’s introducing ‘seas’ for the first time, and contrasting it with shallow springs, so makes sense to stress ‘seas’. Plus, of course, it’s the first BIG thing, he’s introduced, to contrast with all the small things. So it makes sense to stress it, as out of step with all the other examples he’s just given. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, and how the iambic pentameter went from being very regular and orderly to much more variable and expressive, then have a listen to episodes 26 and 28, about Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare . But the essential point here is that Dyer is using a regular metre with great skill, and varying it with just enough expressiveness to stop it becoming monotonous, and to signal the strength of the speakers feeling in an appropriately modest and subtle way. Another way Dyer introduces variation in this stanza is in the different classes of image he uses: trees from the plant world; the ant, the fly and the bee, from the animal kingdom; sparks from the element of fire; and seas and springs from the element of water. And all of these are from nature, before we finally enter the human world of beggars and kings. Yet another way Dyer balances regularity and variation to keep things interesting is in the verbs he uses. For most images, he uses the verb ‘have’ to indicate their properties: ‘the lowest trees have tops’; ‘bees have stings’; ‘Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs’. And in the first two lines, the ant, the fly and the little sparks are all governed by the same verb, ‘have’. But notice how Dyer avoids repetition by only using the word ‘have’ once: The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat; Imagine if he’d written: The lowest trees have tops, the ant has gall, The fly has spleen, the little sparks have heat; It sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? But Dyer skilfully avoids this by allowing the first use of ‘have’ to govern the following clauses, and using ‘her’ and ‘their’ to fill out the metre: The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat; And in the next line, he changes the verb from ‘have’ to ‘cast’: The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, He could have used ‘have’ in this line: The slender hairs have shadows, though but small, But it’s just a bit too predictable isn’t it? It feels sharper and nimbler when he shifts the verb to ‘cast’. And in the final line, of course, the verb changes from ‘have’ to ‘is’: And love is love, in beggars as in kings. To appreciate the full effect of all these little variations, just imagine if Dyer had unthinkingly used ‘have’ throughout the stanza: The lowest trees have tops, the ant has gall, The fly has spleen, the little sparks have heat; The slender hairs have shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; We all have love, the beggars and the kings. It’s like nails down a blackboard, isn’t it? Sometimes you have to break a poem to appreciate how delicately it has been made. OK hopefully we can agree Dyer has done a terrific job of the first stanza. On to the second and final stanza: Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords; The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move; The firmest faith is in the fewest words; The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love: True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak; They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break. I’m not going to spend as much time on this stanza as the first, because a lot of what I said about the first one applies to this one too. It’s as understated in its form as its subject. It’s written in the same regular stanza, with very slight variation in the metre. It uses a similar list of comparisons to expand upon the central point. The image of ‘rivers’ in the first line picks up on the watery imagery of ‘seas’ and ‘springs’ from the previous stanza. But there is one crucial difference, which we can detect once again in the verbs: the first stanza was very static, with things ‘having’ various attributes, and love ‘being’ love. Even ‘cast’ isn’t really an action; the hairs don’t really ‘cast’ shadows, the shadows are simply a result of light shining on the hairs and being block. In the second stanza, however, things are in motion: rivers ‘run’, turtles ‘love’ (I’m pretty sure he means ‘turtle dove’, which was conventionally associated with love in Elizabethan poetry, rather than the creature with flippers and a shell) and ‘The dial stirs’ – this shadow is moving, even though if so slowly that ‘none perceives it move’. All of which prepares us for the shift in the final couplet, from hearts that ‘have’ things to hearts that do things: True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak; They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break. Ah. That last line gets me every time. It’s literally heartbreaking, isn’t it? And this kind of thing is very hard to do – it could easily have been sentimental or unintentionally comic. And it’s a fine line, but for me it really works. And one reason it works is that it’s a release from the skill and control and sophistication of the rest of the poem. All of that artfulness earns him this moment of honesty, where he blurts out his true feeling: and then they break. It’s terribly English, terribly buttoned up. But if you’re aware of the social codes, and alert to the subtlety of Dyer’s language, it’s very moving. I can’t help thinking of Anthony Hopkins in the movie Remains of the Day , playing the repressed butler Stevens, who struggles to confess his love for the housekeeper, Miss Kenton. Sometimes, as Dyer says, The firmest faith is in the fewest words; This poem is small but beautifully made, and you have to examine the details carefully to appreciate its workmanship. It’s like a hand made watch that keeps time quietly but steadily, its little mechanisms spinning and whirring and occasionally chiming quietly. A watch that evidently meant a great deal to someone when it was made, many years ago. And maybe a great deal to someone else as well. Even though we never get a glimpse of that person. So let’s wind up Dyer’s watch and have another listen. A Modest Love by Sir Edward Dyer The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat; The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; And love is love, in beggars as in kings. Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords; The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move; The firmest faith is in the fewest words; The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love: True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak; They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break. Sir Edward Dyer Sir Edward Dyer was an English poet and courtier who was born in 1543 and died in 1607. He served as a diplomat and enjoyed the favour of Queen Elizabeth I, though his ambitions for higher office were never realised. Dyer’s poems are marked by their lyric skill and introspective tone. Some of them have a philosophical depth that embodies the spirit of Elizabethan humanism. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The New... Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Episode 76 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll.Poet Lewis CarrollReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessJabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the... The post A Modest Love by Sir Edward Dyer appeared first on A Mouthful of Air .…

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A Mouthful of Air: Poetry with Mark McGuinness

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Empathy by A. E. Stallings 27:20

il y a 24 weeks27:20

27:20

Episode 74 Empathy by A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings reads ‘Empathy’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/74_Empathy_by_A_E_Stallings.mp3 This poem is from: This Afterlife: Selected Poems Available from: This Afterlife: Selected Poems is available from: The publisher: Carcanet Amazon: UK | US Empathy by A. E. Stallings My love, I’m grateful tonight Our listing bed isn’t a raft Precariously adrift As we dodge the coast guard light, And clasp hold of a girl and a boy. I’m glad we didn’t wake Our kids in the thin hours, to take Not a thing, not a favorite toy, And we didn’t hand over our cash To one of the smuggling rackets, That we didn’t buy cheap lifejackets No better than bright orange trash And less buoyant. I’m glad that the dark Above us is not deeply twinned Beneath us, and moiled with wind, And we don’t scan the sky for a mark, Any mark, that demarcates a shore As the dinghy starts taking on water. I’m glad that our six-year old daughter, Who can’t swim, is a foot off the floor In the bottom bunk, and our son With his broken arm’s high and dry, That the ceiling is not seeping sky, With our journey but hardly begun. Empathy isn’t generous, It’s selfish. It’s not being nice To say I would pay any price Not to be those who’d die to be us. Interview transcript Mark: Alicia, where did this poem come from? Alicia: I think I must have written it in 2016, given partly the ages of the children here. They’re older now. I live in Greece. So, this was during the first very intense wave of migration that was partly from the Syrian War, but also, there were people coming over from various places, Afghanistan, Iraq, and arriving mostly on the island of Lesbos. But in 2016, a lot of these arrivals were also coming into Athens, and I was involved in some volunteer work and so on. But I became very intensely aware of people with children, the ages of my children, coming over in very precarious situations on very precarious boats and dinghies and so on. And there were a lot of drownings. And this, I think, partly comes out of sort of dropping my children off at the school bus and going back to the house and opening up a Facebook volunteers page and realising that two shipwrecks with maybe a total of 37 people had drowned off of Lesbos, a lot of them children, and just realising there’s a school bus of children who have just drowned, and kind of wanting to write about this, but also being concerned that I not exploit someone else’s experience. How do I write about this from my own point of view? And also kind of questioning that point of view. So, I would also add that ‘empathy’ in Greek is not quite as positive a word as it is in English. Mark: Oh, what connotations does it have? Alicia: Well, the English word, I think, is a relatively recent coinage, I want to say Victorian. And before that, you would use sympathy to feel with someone. But empátheia, in Greek, has a sense of maybe feeling against someone, this idea of maybe even hostility. So, I was kind of interested in the word empathy itself, which I think has a bit of privilege in it. I think sympathy, the idea of feeling with someone is different from kind of trying to get into their consciousness. I think that can be problematic. Mark: And I’m curious as well about this. You could maybe call it, I don’t know, the poet’s conscience. How do you write about something that is other people suffering, that is big, that is a public issue maybe, and yet do it in an authentic way? Because there’s lots of ways we can respond to that as citizens, in the usual discourse, in prose, in conversation, and so on. But how do you come at this as a poet? Alicia: Well, I think in this case, I frame it very consciously as, you know, we are not these people. And the thing about negatives, I think Anne Carson has written about this, the great thing about negatives in poetry is that it incorporates the positive as well. So, you can say ‘we are not those people’ and then invoke those people. So, there’s a way you can have your cake and eat it, too, with that framing device of the negatives. I mean, I’ve written some other poems about this also, and they were in the form of epigrams because I think the epigram, which has been used for thousands of years for drownings in the Aegean, if you look at the Greek Anthology , this anthology of ancient Greek poems, it has that kind of maybe slight ironic distance. I think there has to be some kind of distance to it. So, in this case, there’s the framing device of the family who are not having to flee, but, also invoking the terrors, I think, of what that would be of fleeing. So, perhaps this poem is trying to have its cake and eat it, too. Mark: I mean, it’s something that we’re all confronted with on a daily basis. On the one hand, we have our own lives, however privileged or unprivileged that may be, and then there’s this parallel reality that is coming at us through our phones, through the various types of media night and day. And it’s almost like there’s a split-screen effect for life. And I think maybe that’s what you capture with the negative aspect here. Alicia: Perhaps. I think it also came out of having dreams and so forth. And this feeling, which is not an uncommon trope, I guess in poetry, of the bed being like a boat itself and thinking about people who are not in beds, but actually in boats. So, there was a bit of maybe metaphorical overlap there. Mark: And the association with children as well. I mean, you have that wonderful poem about ‘all the fairy stories are about going to bed’ and sleep, and that’s an association in your work. Alicia: Well, and I think as parents, your basic anxiety is keeping your children safe. And so, in that sense, it is easy to empathise on a certain level with people who are trying to do that for their children. But I remember just very… there’s a lot of just factual truth in the poem. You know, my daughter couldn’t swim, and my son had this broken arm. And I just thought, ‘My God, if I were at sea with them, how terrifying that would be.’ And there was this sense, too, because I do live in Greece, that when my children would go to the beach and be playing in the Aegean, that this water is touching other children in a different way. Mark: So, there’s that doubleness all the way through. And how did you get started with the poem? I mean, is the finished text that we’ve got here fairly close to how it ended up, or was there a process of evolution? Alicia: This poem, I think, came out very close to how it is now. I’m sure there was some tinkering with adjectives and word choices and maybe an occasional rhyme. But it came out quite quickly, and I basically left it alone. There are other poems, that I work at very hard and for a very long time and really struggle with. This one kind of came out more or less as it was. I think it sort of started in this kind of song meter, these kind of short lines with these envelope stanzas so that the quatrains are not rhyming ABAB, but ABBA, which is, I guess, another kind of mirroring in the poem, but also these short lines, which are very songlike. And I deliberately left some wonky rhymes in there. I like ‘raft’ and ‘adrift’, partly for their wonkiness. I don’t know if I have some other ones. Maybe not. You know, I liked that I had ‘rackets’ and ‘jackets’, which I think is a kind of fun rhyme. And the last line, I think, is a bit metrically wonky. I sometimes read it different ways. And I left that on, too, that felt true to the poem to have this kind of slight stumbling last line where it’s not entirely clear how the stresses might fall and it doesn’t matter. And it’s got that maybe off rhyme or slightly wrenched rhyme with ‘generous’ and ‘die to be us’. So, to a certain extent, it was quickly done. And then I felt that the rough edges were part of the poem. And so, part of the process was leaving it alone. Mark: Right, right, not tidying it up too much. So, I had that reaction to the last line. I love the fact that, you know, ‘Not to be those who’d die to be us’ – you’ve got to do a lot of sorting out of the negatives and the positives and the syntax. And when you describe it as a slightly wrenching, I mean, it’s almost like the mental contortions we have to go through to live in a world where we’re holding all these realities simultaneously in our mind. Alicia: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good argument for the last slide. I hadn’t thought about it that deeply, but I am aware that it’s not smooth and it’s not perfect. And there are times when I write poems, and I really try to get that perfect, smooth surface. And this, I really wanted to leave the rough edges on. So, I’m glad that it seems to work. Mark: And even so, I mean, your version of rough edges is a lot sharper and crisper than a lot of poets. I mean, you’ve got this wonderful facility with form, with rhyme. You know, we always know everything is very well considered. I mean, did you have any hesitation about using regular form with rhymes for a subject like this? I mean, the cliche about this kind of form is it’s too neat and tidy for the world. Alicia: I think some of what the sort of song meter going here, and by that, I just mean something shorter than a pentameter line, does have a kind of childlike and lullaby-like association with it. So, for me, it’s good for poems about children. And if you think about it, a lot of nursery rhymes and lullabies have a kind of sinister depth to them. I think that’s not uncommon. So, I quite like that combination of the simpler kind of sing songiness that goes here with a trimeter with three beats in a line. And the subject matter, to me, I think that that can be effective. Mark: As you’re saying that, I’m noticing things like, ‘a girl and a boy’. I mean, that could be Hansel and Gretel. It’s a kind of classic fairy tale trope. And I guess the journey, it can be romanticised certainly in poetry, in songs, and so on, and nursery rhymes. But it’s anything but romantic here. And you’ve got so many kind of really telling little details like the lifejackets, no better than bright orange trash, and less buoyant. Alicia: I think with the lifejackets, I should also add that my husband is a journalist and was at that time going over to Lesbos, and you would see these mountains of lifejackets because, people would take them off and deposit them on the beach. And the thing was that a lot of these lifejackets were not regulation lifejackets. And if you end up in the water in them, you will drown. So, some of that is factual details that come from having a journalist husband. Mark: And your own experience of actually volunteering and helping out, did you feel it’s a different poem because of that than if you’d, say, read about it? Alicia: I’m not sure. Trying to think. This must have been in about February or March of 2016. Yes, I was doing some volunteer work, maybe not as much as I ended up doing, that at that time involved going to the Port of Piraeus and helping solidarity groups pass out whatever it was we were passing out that day, you know, oranges or, baby carriers. That was a big thing. And things changed in late March of 2016 because before that, people who had arrived in Greece could simply walk up through Germany and the borders were open. But late, I want to say March 20th or so of 2016, those borders closed, and then you had a kind of backing up of people stuck in Greece. But I think one of the things that did strike me almost immediately, again I had young children at the time, was seeing children who looked very much like my children, they are half Greek, also could pass for Syrians, wearing the same clothes that the kids were into the same things. You know, they missed their Lego and their pet, they left at home, and are, wearing the Spider-Man shirt, or so forth. So, there was this kind of overwhelming sense of our positions could easily be reversed. Mark: And also, I mean, I live in the UK, and so people arrive here on boats in pretty well identical circumstances to this. I know you were writing it in Greece because I know the context, but it could have been written by a British poet, and you wouldn’t have to change very many details, I don’t think, if any. Alicia: Yes, unfortunately, it is still a very topical poem. One would wish that it were more dated. Mark: I think that was the feeling I had was that my admiration for the poem and the fact that you’d nailed the subject was tempered by… But also, I wish you didn’t have to write a poem like this. And also, just the idea that empathy is something that you need… maybe in the modern sense is in pretty short supply. Alicia: Yes, I think there has been a sea change in some of that. I remember when we had early arrivals in Greece, a lot of people were very welcoming to these new arrivals. Greeks on the island of Lesbos, I think about 60% of the native population there are descended from Asia Minor refugees from 1922. And so, we’re within just a couple of generations of being refugees themselves. And there was this sense of kind of recognising what this is like and what migration is like. And I think a lot of attitudes kind of can come from the top, from the government kind of setting the tone for how people deal with arrivals. And people can, I think, rise to the occasion, or there can be an emphasis on distrust and scarcity of resources. So, it has been interesting to watch kind of the changes in public sympathies, empathies, and otherwise. Mark: And the ending, I mean, it’s really hits you in the face. ‘Empathy isn’t generous, it’s selfish.’ Did that come to you? Was that in your mind all along? Was it as much of a surprise to you as it was for me as a reader? Alicia: I think it must have been something of a surprise. I might have been thinking in the back of my mind, balancing the Greek meaning with the English meaning, and maybe not sure how to end the poem. And then I think I just thought, ‘Let’s just say the thing, let’s just say it, and see what happens.’ Generally, I don’t know an ending to a poem until about maybe two-thirds or three-fourths through. At about that point, I might see an exit strategy, but I wouldn’t have started with this idea or stanza. And I think I’ve really tried in the poem to kind of carry through this thought experiment with the details of the thought experiment. But, I couldn’t end within the thought experiment. I had to go back to the frame, which is, ‘This is all I’m imagining from a point of safety.’ Mark: Right. So, the thought experiment ends with, imagining the children, ‘Our son with his broken arm’s high and dry, / That the ceiling is not seeping sky, / With our journey but hardly begun.’ That’s the end of the I’m-grateful-that-this-isn’t-happening-to-us. And then it’s a bold move, I guess, syntactically and in terms of the point of view, as well as what you’re saying. But my goodness me, is that an ending! Alicia: Well, I think partly, there’s a sort of limit to the empathy. You know, ultimately, you can imagine changing places, but you would not change places. And, just thinking about how much people had paid literally and metaphorically and how, we would all of us pay that price to get to safety if we had that choice. Mark: Yeah. I mean, to end up with that contemplation of price, in a way, is just as brutal as the statement, empathy isn’t generous. Alicia, thank you for coming and reading such a heartbreaking poem and for being generous in your appraisal of ‘Empathy,’ the poem, and empathy, the concept. Alicia: Thank you for this interesting conversation. I enjoyed it. Empathy by A. E. Stallings My love, I’m grateful tonight Our listing bed isn’t a raft Precariously adrift As we dodge the coast guard light, And clasp hold of a girl and a boy. I’m glad we didn’t wake Our kids in the thin hours, to take Not a thing, not a favorite toy, And we didn’t hand over our cash To one of the smuggling rackets, That we didn’t buy cheap lifejackets No better than bright orange trash And less buoyant. I’m glad that the dark Above us is not deeply twinned Beneath us, and moiled with wind, And we don’t scan the sky for a mark, Any mark, that demarcates a shore As the dinghy starts taking on water. I’m glad that our six-year old daughter, Who can’t swim, is a foot off the floor In the bottom bunk, and our son With his broken arm’s high and dry, That the ceiling is not seeping sky, With our journey but hardly begun. Empathy isn’t generous, It’s selfish. It’s not being nice To say I would pay any price Not to be those who’d die to be us. This Afterlife: Selected Poems ‘Empathy’ is from This Afterlife: Selected Poems by A. E. Stallings, published by Carcanet. Available from: This Afterlife: Selected Poems is available from: The publisher: Carcanet Amazon: UK | US A. E. Stallings A.E. Stallings is an American poet who studied Classics at the University of Georgia and Oxford. She has published four collections of poetry, Archaic Smile , Hapax , and Olives , and most recently, Like , a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has published three verse translations, Lucretius’s The Nature of Things (in rhyming fourteeners!), Hesiod’s Works and Days , and an illustrated The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice . A selected poems, This Afterlife , was published in 2022. She is currently serving a term as the Oxford Professor of Poetry. A. E. Stallings ’ Website Photo: Kostas Mantziaris A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The New... Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Episode 76 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll.Poet Lewis CarrollReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessJabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the... The post Empathy by A. E. Stallings appeared first on A Mouthful of Air .…

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A Mouthful of Air: Poetry with Mark McGuinness

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From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Emilia Lanyer 42:15

il y a 29 weeks42:15

42:15

Episode 73 From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum , by Emilia Lanyer Mark McGuinness reads and discusses a passage from Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Emilia Lanyer. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/73_From_Salve_Deus_Rex_Judaeorum_by_Emilia_Lanyer.mp3 Poet Emilia Lanyer Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Lines 745-768) By Emilia Lanyer Now Pontius Pilate is to judge the Cause Of faultlesse Jesus , who before him stands; Who neither hath offended Prince, nor Lawes, Although he now be brought in woefull bands: O noble Governour, make thou yet a pause, Doe not in innocent blood imbrue thy hands; But heare the words of thy most worthy wife, Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviours life. Let barb’rous crueltie farre depart from thee, And in true Justice take afflictions part; Open thine eies, that thou the truth mai’st see, Doe not the thing that goes against thy heart; Condemne not him that must thy Saviour be; But view his holy Life, his good desert: Let not us Women glory in Mens fall, Who had power given to over-rule us all. Till now your indiscretion sets us free, And makes our former fault much lesse appeare; Our Mother Eve , who tasted of the Tree, Giving to Adam what she held most deare, Was simply good, and had no powre to see, The after-comming harme did not appeare: The subtile Serpent that our Sex betraide, Before our fall so sure a plot had laide. That undiscerning Ignorance perceav’d No guile, or craft that was by him intended; For, had she knowne of what we were bereav’d, To his request she had not condiscended. But she (poore soule) by cunning was deceav’d, No hurt therein her harmlesse Heart intended: For she alleadg’d Gods word, which he denies That they should die, but even as Gods, be wise. But surely Adam cannot be excus’d, Her fault, though great, yet hee was most too blame; What Weaknesse offred, Strength might have refusde, Being Lord of all the greater was his shame: Although the Serpents craft had her abusde, Gods holy word ought all his actions frame: For he was Lord and King of all the earth, Before poore Eve had either life or breath. Who being fram’d by Gods eternall hand, The perfect’st man that ever breath’d on earth, And from Gods mouth receiv’d that strait command, The breach whereof he knew was present death: Yea having powre to rule both Sea and Land, Yet with one Apple wonne to loose that breath, Which God hath breathed in his beauteous face, Bringing us all in danger and disgrace. And then to lay the fault on Patience backe, That we (poore women) must endure it all; We know right well he did discretion lacke, Beeing not perswaded thereunto at all; If Eve did erre, it was for knowledge sake, The fruit beeing faire perswaded him to fall: No subtill Serpents falshood did betray him, If he would eate it, who had powre to stay him? Not Eve , whose fault was onely too much love, Which made her give this present to her Deare, That which shee tasted, he likewise might prove, Whereby his knowledge might become more cleare; He never sought her weakenesse to reprove, With those sharpe words wich he of God did heare: Yet Men will boast of Knowledge, which he tooke From Eves faire hand, as from a learned Booke. If any Evill did in her remaine, Beeing made of him, he was the ground of all; If one of many Worlds could lay a staine Upon our Sexe, and worke so great a fall To wretched Man, by Satans subtill traine; What will so fowle a fault amongst you all? Her weakenesse did the Serpents words obay, But you in malice Gods deare Sonne betray. Whom, if unjustly you condemne to die, Her sinne was small, to what you doe commit; All mortall sinnes that doe for vengeance crie, Are not to be compared unto it: If many worlds would altogether trie, By all their sinnes the wrath of God to get; This sinne of yours, surmounts them all as farre As doth the Sunne, another little starre. Then let us have our Libertie againe, And challendge to your selves no Sov’raigntie; You came not in the world without our paine, Make that a barre against your crueltie; Your fault beeing greater, why should you disdaine Our beeing your equals, free from tyranny? If one weake woman simply did offend, This sinne of yours hath no excuse, nor end. Podcast transcript In 1999 Carol Ann Duffy published The World’s Wife – a book of poems in the voices of the wives, lovers and significant others of some of the ‘great men’ of history, literature and mythology. It included poems spoken by Mrs Midas, Mrs Aesop, Mrs Darwin, Queen Herod, Frau Freud and Pilate’s Wife, as well as Salome, Medusa, Delilah, Queen Kong and Elvis’s Twin Sister. It’s a dazzling collection, full of clever and witty and timely take-downs of patriarchal pretensions, and I thoroughly recommend it. And what I have just read you is a poem that is not a million miles away, in its basic approach, from Duffy’s subversive feminist project, except that this one was published 400 years ago. It is another monologue in the voice of the wife of Pontius Pilate . She makes only a fleeting appearance in the Bible, in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 27 Verse 19, at the point where Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, is sitting in judgment on Jesus: When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. We don’t learn anything else about Pilate’s wife, but this kind of thing is irresistible to poets, and Carol Ann Duffy and Emilia Lanyer have both seized on this little kernel of story and expanded it into poems that pass a kind of judgment on the men who judged and executed Jesus. If you follow contemporary British poetry, you’ve almost certainly heard of Carol Ann Duffy, but even if you’re a fan of Renaissance poetry, it’s possible that Emilia Lanyer is a new name to you. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum was the first book of original poetry published by a woman in England, but it failed to make a splash, and wasn’t reprinted for almost four centuries, and she was left out of anthologies of the period until quite recently. So who was Emilia Lanyer? She was born in London in 1569 to an English mother, Margret Johnson, and a Venetian immigrant father, Baptiste Bassano, who was a musician at the court of Elizabeth I. Growing up in a family of musicians, she may well have become an accomplished player herself, but what is more surprising is the fact that she received an excellent education, which was very unusual for a girl at the time, especially from the servant class to which musicians belonged. In her terrific book Eve Bites Back , Anna Beer says we don’t know for sure where Lanyer got her education, it may well have been at the household of the Countess of Kent , but in that case we don’t know why the Countess would have bothered to do this for such a lowly person. What we do know for sure is that the adult Emilia Lanyer, an intelligent and educated woman and accomplished musician, became the mistress of one of the most powerful men in England – Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon , cousin of Queen Elizabeth and her Lord Chamberlain. He also happened to be patron of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company of players who included William Shakespeare. She evidently enjoyed the high life at court, until she became pregnant with Carey’s child and was swiftly paid off and married to Alfonso Lanyer, another court musician. In recent years some scholars have identified Emilia Lanyer with the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and her book was first reprinted in 1978 under the title of The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady . But we don’t care about that, do we? It’s just boring gossip, isn’t it? And it reduces her to a minor character in Shakespeare’s story, rather than a very accomplished and interesting poet in her own right. Her contemporaries saw her as a mistress, a wife, and a mother, but she evidently saw herself as a poet. In another passage from Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum , addressed to the Countess of Cumberland, she claimed that this vocation was hers from birth: And knowe, when first into this world I came, This charge was giv’n me by th’Eternall powres, Th’everlasting Trophie of thy Fame To build and decke it with the sweetest flowres That virtue yeelds; Is this just hyperbole to flatter her patron? Maybe. But I also think it bespeaks a real sense of vocation and commitment, and the sense of confidence and responsibility that comes from being given a ‘charge’, a duty, by ‘th’Eternall powres’ – especially in an age where many of the readers of poetry would have scoffed at the idea of a woman poet. So Lanyer makes some bold claims for herself as a poet, but she can really back them up, as we can see from the passage I’ve read for you today. It’s from the longest poem in Lanyer’s book, what we would today call the ‘title poem’ of the collection: ‘Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum’, which is Latin for ‘Hail God, King of the Jews’. It’s a devotional poem that begins with the Passion of Christ, and segues into a disquisition on Adam and Eve and the role of men and women in original sin. So just to refresh our memories, in Christian theology the death and resurrection of Christ was necessary in order to redeem humanity from sin and grant them salvation in heaven. Where did sin come from? The Garden of Eden, where the serpent tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she then gave the fruit to Adam, who ate it too. And of course this was the one tree whose fruit God had explicitly told Adam he wasn’t allowed to eat. And because of this, generations of Christian theologians blamed the origin of sin on Eve, and claimed that her weakness and sinfulness had been inherited by women. Which is one reason Lanyer found herself living in a society where it was taken for granted and written into law that women should be ruled by men, who were much stronger and wiser than them. So that’s the backdrop to this poem, in which we hear the voice of Pilate’s wife pleading with Pilate not to condemn Jesus to death. And in the poem, Lanyer very wisely says nothing that contradicts scripture, which would have got her into trouble. But she does give us a very unusual slant on the material. Because Pilate’s wife points out that everything being done to Jesus is being done by men, not women: Let not us Women glory in Mens fall, Who had power given to over-rule us all. She describes the killing of Jesus as ‘man’s fall’, as opposed to the ‘fall from grace’ associated with Eve, and makes the radical claim that this sets women free from the consequences of their ‘former fault’, since it appears ‘much less’ by comparison: Till now your indiscretion sets us free, And makes our former fault much lesse appeare; Then Pilate’s wife begins an extraordinary defence of Eve: Our Mother Eve , who tasted of the Tree, Giving to Adam what she held most deare, Was simply good, and had no powre to see, The after-comming harme did not appeare: The subtile Serpent that our Sex betraide, Before our fall so sure a plot had laide. Far from being the source of evil, Eve was ‘simply good’, and ‘had no powre to see’ the consequences of her actions; her mistake was down to the ‘subtile Serpent’, who easily outwitted her ‘undiscerning ignorance’. Not content with defending Eve, Pilate’s wife lays the blame firmly on Adam: But surely Adam cannot be excus’d, Her fault, though great, yet hee was most too blame; What Weaknesse offred, Strength might have refusde, Being Lord of all the greater was his shame: This is a brilliantly executed judo move on the argument for patriarchal power. If, as we are told in the Bible, men derive their power and authority over women from Adam, who was Lord of all, including Eve, then surely it follows that men must be responsible for their own sin? If Eve was so much weaker than Adam, then surely Adam’s strength could have refused what she offered? He was the one in charge, so surely he should take the blame? It’s hard to argue with the logic. And it must have been galling for Jacobean male readers to read such a cogently argument coming from a supposedly inferior woman. So it’s not hard to guess why her book disappeared after a single printing. And Lanyer, channelling Pilate’s wife, really hammers the point home: Adam had been granted power power over land and sea, so how come he was won over by a single apple? If Eve was at fault, she was persuaded by a clever adversary in the serpent, but Adam had no such excuse – Eve simply offered him the apple and he took it and ate it without offering the least resistance. Lanyer is careful not to say that Eve was blameless, but says that her sin was less than that of Adam, for several good reasons that we find in the Bible: she was weak and therefore persuaded by the clever serpent; her weakness meant she could not have persuaded Adam with argument, and she didn’t even try to do this; and she had no idea of the consequences of her actions. And even the evil that was in her must have ultimately come from Adam, since the Bible clearly states that she was made out of Adam’s rib: If any Evill did in her remaine, Beeing made of him, he was the ground of all; It’s probably no coincidence that these lines occur just after Lanyer has reminded us that men owe their knowledge, which they take such pride in, to Eve: Yet Men will boast of Knowledge, which he tooke From Eves faire hand, as from a learned Booke. So in this reading, Adam gave Eve evil, and she gave him knowledge in return. It doesn’t sound like a very fair exchange, does it? Then Pilate’s wife returns to the judgment of Jesus, and tells her husband that killing Jesus will be even worse than Eve’s crime, because of the motive: Her weakenesse did the Serpents words obay, But you in malice Gods deare Sonne betray. Eve sinned through weakness, but malice is worse than weakness. Pilate’s wife then expands on the theme with a terrific stanza making the contrast unmistakable: Whom, if unjustly you condemne to die, Her sinne was small, to what you doe commit; All mortall sinnes that doe for vengeance crie, Are not to be compared unto it: If many worlds would altogether trie, By all their sinnes the wrath of God to get; This sinne of yours, surmounts them all as farre As doth the Sunne, another little starre. Isn’t that final couplet marvellous? This sin of yours is so much greater than all the other sins put together as the sun is bigger than a tiny star: This sinne of yours, surmounts them all as farre As doth the Sunne, another little starre. But she hasn’t finished yet. The final stanza I’ve read today contains an astonishing appeal for liberty: Then let us have our Libertie againe, And challendge to your selves no Sov’raigntie; You came not in the world without our paine, Make that a barre against your crueltie; Your fault beeing greater, why should you disdaine Our beeing your equals, free from tyranny? If one weake woman simply did offend, This sinne of yours hath no excuse, nor end. Give us our freedom, don’t take all the sovereignty, the power, to yourselves; you only came into the world through our pain, the pain of childbirth, so surely that should prevent you from being cruel to us? Your fault is greater, so why shouldn’t we be your equals? One weak woman ‘simply’, i.e. ignorantly, did offend, but your sin ‘hath no excuse, nor end’. This is startling stuff, in a deeply patriarchal society. And the poem isn’t just challenging established gender relations. Class and rank and equality are recurrent themes throughout Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum , and it’s startling that this passage, with its revolutionary language about ‘liberty’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘tyranny’, was published in 1611, thirty years before the English Civil War began. It’s amazing that the book was published at all. Not only because it would have been harder for a woman to persuade a publisher to take her on, but also Jacobean books were liable to censorship, to prevent subversive or seditious ideas finding their way into print. But somehow Lanyer managed to get her book published. For her, it may well have felt like a failure – there’s no evidence that it made any impression on contemporary readers. It wasn’t reprinted in her lifetime. And in spite of featuring dedications and appeals to numerous prominent women, it did not secure any lucrative patronage for its author. On the other hand, maybe – and I really hope this was the case – maybe she felt vindicated, in spite of her lack of worldly success as an author. I hope she did feel that she had discharged some of that ‘charge’ she felt had been given to her at birth by ‘th’Eternal powres’. And… her poetry has survived because she made the effort to publish it, against the odds. And what poetry it is. It challenges the patriarchal religious establishment, not only in its argument but in the fact that she – a commoner and a woman – is making the argument in skilful and sophisticated verse. And her verse is not just clever, it’s witty and entertaining, even 400 years later. From the point of view of poetic craft, Lanyer’s book is a virtuoso performance, she uses a series of different stanza forms in different poems, with consummate skill. The title poem, which I’ve read from today, is in ottava rima , an eight-line stanza form that originated in Italy, which rhymes ABABABCC – i.e. you’ve got three ‘A’ rhymes, in the first, third and fifth lines, interwoven with three ‘B’ rhymes, in the second, fourth and sixth lines. And the last two lines of the stanza are a rhyming couplet. You may recall back in Episode 54, about Shelley , I talked about the difficulty of writing terza rima in English, because it’s made up of interlocking triple rhymes, i.e. three lines sharing the same rhyme. A lot of these poetic forms originated in Italian, which has a lot more rhyming words than English does, so it’s harder to do them in English. And ottava rima is another verse form with triple rhymes, it has two triple rhymes in every stanza. I’ve written some ottava rima myself, a translation from the Portuguese poet Camões , and I can assure you it’s really hard work. One of the most famous examples of ottava rima in English is Lord Byron’s long poem Don Juan , where he makes a virtue of necessity, by using a lot of polysyllabic rhymes for comic effect. Here he is taking a swipe at poor Coleridge: And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumber’d with his hood, Explaining Metaphysics to the nation — I wish he would explain his Explanation. I think we can detect something of this effect here and there in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum , where Lanyer also rhymes on multiple syllables, such as: For, had she knowne of what we were bereav’d, To his request she had not condiscended. So she not only rhymes the two syllables of ‘perceav’d’, ‘bereav’d’ and later on, ‘deceav’d’, but also rhymes ‘intended’ with the last two syllables of the long word ‘condiscended’. (The word ‘condescended’ here means ‘agreed’, so it’s just saying that she agreed to go along with the serpent’s request.) And I do think it’s intentionally funny, rhyming on the final two syllables of that long word. It helps to lightens the tone, which feels more like a witty retort to patriarchy, rather than a laboured rebuttal. And then a few stanzas later, we find this very Byronesque final couplet, rhymed on the final two syllables: If Eve did erre, it was for knowledge sake, The fruit beeing faire perswaded him to fall: No subtill Serpents falshood did betray him, If he would eate it, who had powre to stay him? Again, this lightens the tone and gives me the impression that she’s not just criticising Adam, she’s mocking him – the one thing that many powerful men, even to this day, cannot stand. So we’ll hear the poem again in a moment, so that we can savour the daring, the cleverness and the wit of Lanyer’s poem once more. But before we do that I’d just like to give a shout out and thank you to Podcast Review , one of the most useful and respected guides to good podcasts, because for the third year running, A Mouthful of Air has been included in their list of the best poetry podcasts . The list has expanded to 11 shows this year, and one of the new additions is Close Readings from the London Review of Books , so it’s great to be on the list alongside such an esteemed literary publication, as well as shows from The New Yorker and the Poetry Foundation in the US. So a big thank you to Podcast Review and to Alice Florence Orr for her kind review. It’s so kind in fact that I would blush to quote it, but if you’d like to read it and remind yourself of what a discerning listener you are, for listening to A Mouthful of Air, then I’ll put a link in the show notes, or you can just Google ‘best poetry podcasts’ and you should find it. OK, time to listen to Pilate’s wife berating her husband once again. From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Lines 745-768) By Emilia Lanyer Now Pontius Pilate is to judge the Cause Of faultlesse Jesus , who before him stands; Who neither hath offended Prince, nor Lawes, Although he now be brought in woefull bands: O noble Governour, make thou yet a pause, Doe not in innocent blood imbrue thy hands; But heare the words of thy most worthy wife, Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviours life. Let barb’rous crueltie farre depart from thee, And in true Justice take afflictions part; Open thine eies, that thou the truth mai’st see, Doe not the thing that goes against thy heart; Condemne not him that must thy Saviour be; But view his holy Life, his good desert: Let not us Women glory in Mens fall, Who had power given to over-rule us all. Till now your indiscretion sets us free, And makes our former fault much lesse appeare; Our Mother Eve , who tasted of the Tree, Giving to Adam what she held most deare, Was simply good, and had no powre to see, The after-comming harme did not appeare: The subtile Serpent that our Sex betraide, Before our fall so sure a plot had laide. That undiscerning Ignorance perceav’d No guile, or craft that was by him intended; For, had she knowne of what we were bereav’d, To his request she had not condiscended. But she (poore soule) by cunning was deceav’d, No hurt therein her harmlesse Heart intended: For she alleadg’d Gods word, which he denies That they should die, but even as Gods, be wise. But surely Adam cannot be excus’d, Her fault, though great, yet hee was most too blame; What Weaknesse offred, Strength might have refusde, Being Lord of all the greater was his shame: Although the Serpents craft had her abusde, Gods holy word ought all his actions frame: For he was Lord and King of all the earth, Before poore Eve had either life or breath. Who being fram’d by Gods eternall hand, The perfect’st man that ever breath’d on earth, And from Gods mouth receiv’d that strait command, The breach whereof he knew was present death: Yea having powre to rule both Sea and Land, Yet with one Apple wonne to loose that breath, Which God hath breathed in his beauteous face, Bringing us all in danger and disgrace. And then to lay the fault on Patience backe, That we (poore women) must endure it all; We know right well he did discretion lacke, Beeing not perswaded thereunto at all; If Eve did erre, it was for knowledge sake, The fruit beeing faire perswaded him to fall: No subtill Serpents falshood did betray him, If he would eate it, who had powre to stay him? Not Eve , whose fault was onely too much love, Which made her give this present to her Deare, That which shee tasted, he likewise might prove, Whereby his knowledge might become more cleare; He never sought her weakenesse to reprove, With those sharpe words wich he of God did heare: Yet Men will boast of Knowledge, which he tooke From Eves faire hand, as from a learned Booke. If any Evill did in her remaine, Beeing made of him, he was the ground of all; If one of many Worlds could lay a staine Upon our Sexe, and worke so great a fall To wretched Man, by Satans subtill traine; What will so fowle a fault amongst you all? Her weakenesse did the Serpents words obay, But you in malice Gods deare Sonne betray. Whom, if unjustly you condemne to die, Her sinne was small, to what you doe commit; All mortall sinnes that doe for vengeance crie, Are not to be compared unto it: If many worlds would altogether trie, By all their sinnes the wrath of God to get; This sinne of yours, surmounts them all as farre As doth the Sunne, another little starre. Then let us have our Libertie againe, And challendge to your selves no Sov’raigntie; You came not in the world without our paine, Make that a barre against your crueltie; Your fault beeing greater, why should you disdaine Our beeing your equals, free from tyranny? If one weake woman simply did offend, This sinne of yours hath no excuse, nor end. Emilia Lanyer Portrait of an unknown woman, possibly Emilia Lanyer, by Nicholas Hilliard Emelia Lanyer was an English poet who was born Emilia Bassano in 1569 and died in 1645. The daughter of a court musician, Emilia made connections with the inner circle of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. She somehow received an education that enabled her to write the learned and witty poetry in her collection Salve Deus Rex Judæorum , which was the first book of original poetry published by a woman in England, in 1611. It contains a passionate defence of women’s virtue and piety, featuring one of the earliest feminist critiques of traditional biblical gender roles. Her work sank into obscurity until the 20th century, but is gaining increasing recognition for its formal mastery, its groundbreaking stance on women’s rights and its religious and political commentary. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... 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Reddest Red by Z. R. Ghani 37:46

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Episode 72 Reddest Red by Z. R. Ghani Z. R. Ghani reads ‘Reddest Red’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/72_Reddest_Red_by_Z_R_Ghani.mp3 This poem is from: In the Name of Red Available from: In the Name of Red is available from: The publisher: The Emma Press Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: UK Reddest Red by Z. R. Ghani Be a darling and imagine. The reddest of all reds— changeable in velvet, the usurper in broadcloth; smooching the ground, cheek to cheek, in Louboutins. I’m here, I’m always here, itching to breathe, vital under your skin, trumpeted by pulse. I need to exist, as the poison arrow’s target; dirty on the warrior’s face; a flag rippling like a dragon overhead. You wish you could know my names, all secret, sacred, and true, but call me whatever you want, I don’t care, or summon me as rose, claret, vermilion, ladies-blush, lust; evoke me from ruddy, madder, brazilwood, orchil, cochineal, urucum—I need to exist. For no other colour in two lengths of cloth makes a gentleman and keeps him that way, and there’s nothing I can’t improve with a scandal, though I’m happiest reclining on a girl’s pretty lips, pitying potential left to rot, lesser reds that shall but one day bloom into me if they dare. Know me as a fiesta in everything I star in: I tickle a tree and it’s autumn, I tap someone and they blush, I storm into a battlefield and it’s a field of poppies, all the time living my best life, as I always will, me, Shakti, dancing like a graceful madwoman in the flames of a star, roaring myself redder (yes, it’s possible), and charging back down to Earth in the pope’s fresh socks, diving into a dazzling Diwali of fireflies as they, for a flare-and-sigh, jaunt through my impermanent soul. But I need to exist. Shed me, if you must, on your wedding night: sari cloth, petticoat, silk blouse swaying with the bed, or pin me as a bindi on your third eye like a sun, so when they look at you they’ll see me first, exalted. How fortunate I am to be a colour, let alone Red. Interview transcript Mark: Zaina, where did this poem come from? Zaina: This poem was inspired by a book I read. It’s called My Name is Red by a Turkish writer called Orhan Pamuk. it’s such a beautiful novel. It talks about red and art and miniaturism in such kind of flair and floral language, but not done in a saccharine way. It’s so beautiful. And it is a murder mystery, but the way it’s written is it’s written from different perspectives, different narratives. And you’ll have a tree talking, for example, or the colour red, or blood in this novel, which I found really creative. And I thought, ‘I want to…’ – because it’s so poetic. I wanted to write a poem kind of very similar to that, or just inspired by it, but obviously not copying it. So I began writing about it, inspired by that. And also, at the same time I was writing, I had these other poems, about Persephone and Hades in this pamphlet and nature and all these things. And I really wanted to unify all these poems and write an introductory poem. And this is what this is in this pamphlet. It’s the first poem. And to be honest, how it came together is it’s just automatic writing, which is when you just put pen to paper and you just write what is in your head and you don’t think too much. I just wanted it to flow, because that’s how I imagine red would be if it was a person. It would just be so confident. It doesn’t need to overthink anything. It believes in itself so much. It’s self-serving. Mark: No self-esteem issues with red! Zaina: No self-esteem issues. Yeah. And I just wanted to include all these references, which I found when I was researching, the history of red. And, there’s kind of references to fashion, to natural dyes. When I was researching it, I was very surprised to find that it’s not just a… it’s a masculine colour. Red is also a masculine colour, not just a feminine colour. I always thought it was a feminine colour. So I kind of talk about, ‘no other colour in two lengths of cloth makes a gentleman’, which is… Mark: Is that the redcoat, the soldier? Zaina: Yes, it is. Yeah. So the British Army used to wear red, in the Napoleonic Wars, which is funny to me to wear red on the battlefield. But yeah, it just kind of expresses confidence, doesn’t it? To your enemy. Mark: Right, right. So it’s had quite a fluid history in terms of the associations. Zaina: Yes. Mark: And, I’m really curious about this thing about the novel because I would never have guessed that this came from a novel. And maybe we don’t need to know that because it’s not dependent on it. It’s almost like the spirit has flown out of the novel. Sometimes you read a poem and it’s really obviously linked into another work of art, whether that’s a novel or a painting or whatever. And you kind of…it feels like it’s in dialogue. I mean, to what extent do you feel like this is in dialogue with the Pamuk novel, or do you feel that it’s kind of flown free and come its own thing? Zaina: I agree with you. I think it’s flown freely from that. It was just the starting point. It was the inspiration. But when I was writing this, because it was done in the technique of automatic writing, it just kind of became its own creature, its own thing. And that’s good in a way because I didn’t want it to be linked with this novel. I just wanted to write a poem that was in this voice, in this red, that red is speaking to you. That was inspired by the novel, but this voice is its own voice, and it just came out of that automatic writing. Mark: And it’s interesting that red in the poem says, ‘Call me whatever you want, / I don’t care,’ or, ‘Summon me.’ It’s like this is the spirit of red that you’re channelling through the automatic writing. Zaina: Yes. So it is witchy in a way, it looks like a spell. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Zaina: And when I think of red, I do associate it with the kind of darker symbolism of red, which is witchcraft and blood, thinking about the Incas and the Aztecs who would probably use it, a pigment of red in ritual, and they wore it in their headdresses, their clothing, they put it on their face. That’s what I mean by ‘dirty on the warrior’s face’ as well. Mark: What was it like for you as a poet channelling that voice? Is it exciting? Is it scary? Zaina: It was exciting because, I am not a very, very confident person, I wouldn’t say, and I’m quite reserved. And one of the reasons why I did write this poem is because I wanted to channel that confidence and that pride and be completely uninhibited, you know. Mark: Yeah. Zaina: Yeah, sometimes you just want to step outside of yourself, you know. And I think, for example, actors can do that. They just can go mad and become someone else. Mark: Yeah. That’s quite true. Zaina: And I think poets can do that in a way as well, you know. It is a dramatic monologue, and there are lots of dramatic monologues in this pamphlet too, because one of the motivations behind writing this was just to step out of myself and just feel liberated from being held back so much. And that’s what red means to me, it’s just freedom. Mark: Well, you’ve done a tremendous job there, because there’s not a moment of hesitation right from the beginning. ‘Be a darling and imagine.’ I mean, that’s so kind of… it’s seductive and confident and taking us into its confidence, but it’s confidence, I guess, in both senses. But we’re doing what it’s going to tell us because we are going to imagine… Zaina: Yes, so the first line, yes, ‘Be a darling and imagine,’ that’s sort of talking about this poem but this pamphlet is about readership, it’s about how readers interpret what they read and they make it their own. So as readers, we take in what we read, and we use our experiences to process what we read. And, interpretation is so important. We all see the world differently, we see colours differently, I’m sure. So the imagination in this pamphlet is so, so important. It’s such a core part of this. You know, it’s a major theme here. And that’s why I really wanted to get that word at the forefront. Yeah. Mark: And for anyone who hasn’t read the pamphlet In the Name of Red , this is the first poem in the pamphlet. So this is really, on the one hand, it’s the voice of red, but it also seems like it’s the voice of the poet. ‘Be a darling and imagine.’ It’s like Shakespeare at the start of Henry V , telling the audience to ‘work, work your thoughts, and in imagination, see a siege’, orsomething like that. And he’s saying, ‘Look, you have to join in if this play is going to work, because we’re just some guys on a stage with some threadbare props.’ But you invite the reader to join in and to imagine and participate in the book right from the beginning. Zaina: Yes. Well, another inspiration for this pamphlet was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. And she talks to the reader a lot in the novel, she addresses the reader, I’m feeling like this, this is happening to me. And as a reader, when you’re addressed, you’re more attentive and you want to do what the writer says. And I really wanted to include that element of talking to the reader directly. Because as a writer, that gives you so much power. And I think red would want all the power. You know, as a person, you just want to control everything. So yeah, that’s another kind of element to that, speaking to the reader, because there is a relationship between the writer and the readers, kind of a symbiotic relationship. The writer provides the work but the reader brings the spirit and the life to the work, they bring it to life, I think. A piece of writing is nothing without the reader. That’s why, I think. Mark: Right. And very often, it’s an assumed relationship, isn’t it? But maybe in poetry, particularly, some poets like to play with that relationship and be quite artful like you’re doing here. And, it’s always been a theme on the podcast to how much does the ‘I’ of the poem, how closely does that align with the ‘I’ of the poet? Now, clearly, on one level, this doesn’t align because as you say, it’s a dramatic monologue. But then the game has got another level, because, behind that, as we’ve seen, maybe there is the poet’s voice as well. Zaina: Yeah, definitely where there’s a repetition of ‘I need to exist.’ That sort of reflects my urge sort of to prove myself as a writer because this is one of the first things I’ve ever written, this book. I’m not a very experienced poet. And yeah, I need to exist. So it’s kind of from the heart. I want to be part of this poetry world. I want to be here. I need to exist. Yeah, I would say that’s me speaking there from the heart. Mark: ‘I’m here, I’m always here, itching to breathe, vital / under your skin, trumpeted by pulse.’ Isn’t that wonderful, ‘trumpeted by pulse’? Yeah, it’s a joyous poem of announcement, isn’t it? Zaina: Yeah, it’s saying, ‘I’m here, and I’m not going to go away. I want to inhabit all these things. I am versatile. I can morph into different things,’ as a poet can, a poet can inhabit so many different characters and write about so many things. And poetry is so free. It’s not like prose where you do have to think about structure but you can just be so free about it. It is a form of art, I would say, poetry more than it’s about writing. Mark: And obviously, there’s so much verbal richness in this, I mean, all the words for red you’ve got: rose, claret, vermilion, ladies-blush, lust, ruddy, madder, Brazilwood, orchil, cochineal, urucam. I mean, I had to look some of these up. Did you have all of these at your fingertips? Did you have to look some up? Were there others that didn’t make the cut? I mean, how do you deal with such a kind of richness of description? Zaina: Yeah, I did do my research, to begin with. I wanted a variety of different things, claret being, wine, vermilion is a pigment, but it’s also used in Hinduism. You know, the wives would wear red on their hairline to show that they’re married. And there’s these kind of juxtapositions. You know, there’s that kind of, following the rules, religion, and then there’s lust and being free and not being afraid to be sexual almost. And that’s what colour is, it inhabits all these different ideas. And it’s just free to do that. And that’s what I wanted to show. There’s just so many things you could write about colour. And that’s why it is such a long poem because there’s just so much to include. But yeah, I wanted to include as much as possible and be as varied as possible. Mark: Well, also, another thing I noticed is obviously there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to adjectives to describe a colour, but I love the way you use verbs as well. So you say, ‘I tickle a tree / and it’s autumn’. That’s just delightful. ‘I tap someone and they blush. / I storm into a battlefield and it’s a field of poppies.’ I mean, you get a shiver down the spine when you realise the implications of that. Zaina: Yeah. Again, it’s just showing how varied this colour is. It’s elegant, it’s delicate, but also it can storm into a battlefield. It’s powerful. It’s almost like I’m writing about a trickster god, like Loki . He could be in the myths, he could be very serious, but most of the time he’s just joking around. So I’ve always been fascinated by these trickster gods because yeah, they do very, very big things. They can destroy the universe if they could, but at the same time, they don’t take themselves seriously. They’re just joking around most of the time. Mark: So Loki is from Norse mythology, but you’ve also got Shakti from India… Zaina: Yeah. So I include a lot of Hindu references because when I think of red, of all the cultures, I think Hinduism really adopts red. Shakti is a very important goddess in Hinduism. She is the wife of Shiva, one of the creator gods, but she’s sometimes seen as more powerful than Shiva and she has many different guises. Sometimes she’s a demon slayer. Sometimes she’s the goddess of death, karma, and sometimes she’s a little bit more benevolent and kinder. But this is introducing this theme of femininity and women not just being, one-dimensional. We have a good side, but also there are times when we do lash out. It’s introducing… You know, I talk about my Mum a lot in this pamphlet, Persephone, mythical character, and myself. You know, there’s this very chaotic poem in this pamphlet about Alice in Wonderland and it’s just so mad, called ‘The Red Queen’ and she’s all mad in the book. So it’s kind of looking at mental health in a way as well. Mark: And it’s also really nice as an opening poem. This one colours the other poems, it’s like we’ve got spatters of red from this in things like ‘The Red Queen’ and some of the other poems later. I think that’s one of the real pleasures of a collection of poems, is the way the poems start to refract and reflect each other and speak to each other. Zaina: Yes. This was definitely supposed to be an introduction to all the other themes in the book, kind of getting yourself ready for the chaos that follows. It’s not all chaotic. There are moments of reflection and contemplation and pauses, but this is a very chaotic, mad pamphlet. Mark: So picking up on the writing process. I’m going to pick up that thread from the automatic writing. How close was your first automatic draft to what we see on the page today? Zaina: I’d say it’s very close. I had to revisit the list of reds, rose, claret, vermilion. I think I took some things out and added… I think urucum was the last thing I added. Mark: And what’s that? That’s one of the ones I had to look up. What is urucum? Zaina: It’s a plant. It gives off pigments of red and it’s used in South America by Indigenous people. Yeah. And they rub it on photographs to protect themselves, to protect their spirit. It’s kind of used as protection. Mark: So was the form basically there? You’ve got this wonderful almost like a helter-skelter of it’s all one verse paragraph and there’s a lot of enjambment, a lot of lines spilling over the sense from one line to another and so on. Was that pretty well established in the original draft? Zaina: I had to revisit where everything ends, the line endings, the enjambment, making sure that it had a sort of rhythm to it, it wasn’t just blocky and prosaic. I wanted it to flow like a poem. And the ‘Be a darling and imagine’, that’s where it all started, ‘Be a darling and imagine’, ‘Okay, I’ve got that now. Now this is…’ Everything else flowed from that, you know. So yes, it was automatic writing but I had to start from ‘Be a darling and imagine’. Once I got that, I just wrote it down from there and it was pretty much like this with some tweaking here and there, but yeah. Mark: Yeah, so fine-tuning, but this is… And it does have that kind of freshness, that energy of the… I really feel that automatic voice coming through, all the way to the end where you have quite a bold ending certainly formally, where you’ve got two lines. So we’ve got one long verse paragraph and then we get these two lines on their own, including one of the boldest enjambments I think I have ever seen. So you’ve got, ‘How fortunate I am to be a colour, let alone’ – line break – ‘Red.’ And it’s red with a capital R and a full stop afterwards. I mean, how did you get to that? Did that just spill out? Did you think about that? Zaina: No, so that came afterwards. I didn’t know how to finish this kind of flowing of words, yeah. I didn’t know how to finish this. You know, I could go on forever and then I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve kind of come to an ending here with the sun and the bindi and when they look at you, they’ll see me first.’ I thought, ‘Okay, it doesn’t sound like an ending, it’s kind of coming to an ending but it’s not ending.’ And yeah, I spent ages trying to find how to end this and then maybe it should just kind of go back into itself, this red, what am I? Essentially, ‘I am a colour, I’m fortunate to be a colour’. And yeah, it just came. One day it just came to me. And this is the beauty about poetry is that you can just put it to one side but it’s still in your mind. Okay, you’re carrying it around with you while you’re shopping and you’re going out or whatever and it’s still in your mind, and one day something just drops, and this line is one that just sort of dropped while I was doing something that was not even related to poetry. And yeah, it was all on one line and then I thought, ‘No, we need red on its own at the end because it loves itself so much, it needs to be on its own, kind of standing on this platform and loving itself. Mark: It’s brilliant, I love it. And I also love that story about you patiently waiting for the ending because, there’s a lot of stories of poets getting the inspiration for the beginning of a poem, you know, Coleridge and ‘Kubla Khan’ and so on, but we don’t often hear the story of the poet wandering about and ransacking their brains and going for walks until they get the ending, but very often that’s the case, isn’t it? Zaina: Yes. Mark: You’ve got most of it but haven’t found the ending yet and it’s kind of irritating and it can’t let you go. But if you’re patient, as you were, and receptive, then sometimes it will drop into your lap. Zaina: Yes, I find it more difficult to finish a poem. I’d never know when to finish it really and you can kind of keep on writing forever, especially for a poem like this, where the subject is vast. But yeah, some poems I find it very, very difficult to find that impactful ending. And the best thing to do, and that’s my advice, is just to wait, and instead of chasing it, let it come to you. I think a lot of writers do that. You just wait for it to come to you because it does. You just need to have some faith. Mark: It’s a little bit when you’re trying to remember the thought you just had. The harder you try the more elusive it is, but then if you maybe stop to think of something else it will pop into your mind. It’s a bit like that. Zaina: Yeah, I think with anything creative, when you put too much effort into it, when you try to restrict it too much with thought, it does the opposite of what you want. You need to let it flow. You need to let go a bit and then kind of everything sort of falls into place. It needs to be effortless. It needs to feel effortless. You shouldn’t try too hard. Mark: Yeah. Well, thank you, Zaina, you know, just as the poem could have gone on forever. I think, we could talk all morning about all the different aspects of this poem, but I really think this is maybe a good chance for us to have a listen to it again and appreciate that in the light of the conversation we’ve just had. So Zaina, thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing such a delightful poem. Zaina: Thank you so much for having me. Reddest Red by Z. R. Ghani Be a darling and imagine. The reddest of all reds— changeable in velvet, the usurper in broadcloth; smooching the ground, cheek to cheek, in Louboutins. I’m here, I’m always here, itching to breathe, vital under your skin, trumpeted by pulse. I need to exist, as the poison arrow’s target; dirty on the warrior’s face; a flag rippling like a dragon overhead. You wish you could know my names, all secret, sacred, and true, but call me whatever you want, I don’t care, or summon me as rose, claret, vermilion, ladies-blush, lust; evoke me from ruddy, madder, brazilwood, orchil, cochineal, urucum—I need to exist. For no other colour in two lengths of cloth makes a gentleman and keeps him that way, and there’s nothing I can’t improve with a scandal, though I’m happiest reclining on a girl’s pretty lips, pitying potential left to rot, lesser reds that shall but one day bloom into me if they dare. Know me as a fiesta in everything I star in: I tickle a tree and it’s autumn, I tap someone and they blush, I storm into a battlefield and it’s a field of poppies, all the time living my best life, as I always will, me, Shakti, dancing like a graceful madwoman in the flames of a star, roaring myself redder (yes, it’s possible), and charging back down to Earth in the pope’s fresh socks, diving into a dazzling Diwali of fireflies as they, for a flare-and-sigh, jaunt through my impermanent soul. But I need to exist. Shed me, if you must, on your wedding night: sari cloth, petticoat, silk blouse swaying with the bed, or pin me as a bindi on your third eye like a sun, so when they look at you they’ll see me first, exalted. How fortunate I am to be a colour, let alone Red. In the Name of Red ‘Reddest Red’ is from In the Name of Red by Z. R. Ghani, published by The Emma Press Available from: In the Name of Red is available from: The publisher: The Emma Press Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: UK Z. R. Ghani Z. R. Ghani lives in London. She graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in 2012. Her poems, which explore themes of identity, femininity, religion, and nature, have been published in literary journals such as Magma , Black Bough Poetry and The Willowherb Review . In 2021 her first collection of poems was shortlisted in the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. In the Name of Red is her first poetry pamphlet. Twitter: @zr_ghani A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... 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Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats 39:18

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Episode 71 Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/71_Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn_by_John_Keats.mp3 Poet John Keats Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness Ode on a Grecian Urn By John Keats I Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? II Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! III Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. IV Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. V O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ Podcast transcript Last month Matthew Buckley Smith read us his poem ‘Drinking Ode’ , inspired by Ode 2.14 by the Roman poet Horace. And just as we did with Terrance Hayes and the sestina, I thought it would be good to stay with the same poetic form and look at a classic example from the past. And when it comes to the ode, John Keats is probably the preeminent name in English poetry. Other poets have written one or two famous odes, but Keats’ substantial reputation rests in very large part on a series of six great odes he wrote in the same year, 1819. So this feels like a good time to feature Keats on the podcast. So what exactly is an ode ? Well as Matthew said last month, the word has meant a lot of different things at a lot of different times. It’s a bit of a slippery form. For one thing, it’s not associated with a specific metrical form, the way the sonnet is, or the ballad, the sestina, the villanelle and so on. And for another thing, its character has changed quite a lot in the two and a half thousand years or so since it first appeared. The word ‘ode’ comes from the ancient Greek word for ‘song’, and the original Greek odes were set to music and performed by a choir in a theatre, who went through a set pattern of movements as they sang: from east to west, then west to east, and then stopping in the middle. And the metre would change with the dance steps, and it must have been pretty dazzling, a bit like a modern gospel choir. Pindar was the ancient Greek poet credited with writing the greatest of these odes for public performance. The Romans continued the tradition, most notably in the work of Horace , but the Horation ode was typically more private in theme and tone, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t lead a choir booming his works out in the public square. The ode was a popular form for English poets in the 17th and 18th centuries, doing their best to emulate the classical poets they revered, with some leaning towards Pindar and some towards Horace. And at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Romantics really took on the ode in a big way, echoing Pindar in their sublime visions, and Horace in their focus on their own personal and subjective states. Wordsworth wrote an ode on ‘Immortality’ , Coleridge did one on https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43973/dejection-an-ode, and Shelley did the west wind . And Keats of course did a whole series of odes. So the ode in English is no longer a song and dance routine, but it does retain something of the grandeur of its roots. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics describes it as ‘the most formal, ceremonious and complexly organized form of lyric poetry’, lending itself to public or state occasions. Even when it’s on a personal subject, an ode is very much poetry with a capital P. Supposing we compare the forms of lyric poetry to the violin family of musical instruments, and say the sonnet is about the shape and size of a violin, and the sestina is a cello, then the ode would be the double bass, producing the deepest and most sonorous notes, and usually only wheeled out when the occasion calls for a full orchestra. So the ode is a form of lyric poetry, but of the weightiest and loftiest kind. Poets don’t typically write an ode about their trip to the supermarket or their dirty weekend in Paris. They write odes on immortality, beauty, death, or classical gods. Or in Keats’ case, all of them at once. This lofty seriousness is one reason why odes aren’t particularly popular these days. They’re seen as a bit pretentious. But Keats was writing at the height of the Romantic era, so he wasn’t remotely scared of being pretentious, and thank goodness for that. And Keats is a great example of a poet coming into his own when he found the form that fitted his talent. He started off wanting to be an epic poet in the tradition of Homer and Virgil and Spenser and Milton, and he wrote reams and reams of epic poetry that had a lot of great things in it, but didn’t really go anywhere. He also wrote some great sonnets, and these are definitely worth reading, I may do one of them on the show at some point. But it’s the odes where he really stands out, where he stakes out his own unique territory, and does things no one has done in English before or since. His most famous ode is the one ‘to a Nightingale’ , and I was very tempted to do that one today, but it’s a little bit long for the podcast, this one is a bit more manageable and just as interesting in its way. OK. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. It’s ostensibly a description of a Grecian urn, a fancy kind of vase (or ‘vayse’, depending where you’re from). And the speaker is looking at the urn and talking to it as if it were a person: Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: So all of these epithets, the ‘unravished bride’, the ‘foster-child’, and the ‘Sylvan historian’ are the speaker’s pet names for the urn, capturing different aspects of what it means to him: a messenger or a historian, who is able to speak from the depths of silence and slow time, to bridge the gap between the ancient world and the present, and communicate something important from the past. And he then goes on to introduce the images on the urn in quite an elegant way, by asking a series of questions: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? And we know that Keats did spend time contemplating ancient Greek urns and other artworks, as part of the Elgin Marbles collection, and also by studying illustrations. We even have a drawing by Keats of one Grecian urn, the Sosibios Vase , which he traced from a book. But no one has identified a single urn that depicts the exact set of scenes described by Keats in the poem. So it looks like his Grecian urn is a composite, an imagined object that exemplifies the themes he wanted to write about. And given that the speaker of the poem is talking to the urn as if it were another person, and by the end of the poem, the urn starts talking back , we should probably be careful about taking the poem at face value. So the poem’s structure is fairly straightforward – he starts by addressing the urn and then describes the scenes sculpted on the panels of the urn, with a different stanza for each scene, and then concludes with some final thoughts that are among the most quoted and debated lines in English poetry. The stanza form is original to Keats, it’s basically a sawn-off Petrarchan sonnet , starting with only four lines, making a single quatrain, instead of the usual eight lines; and then followed by a typical sestet, the final six lines. And we know from Keats’ letters that this experimental form was born of a dissatisfaction with the way the sonnet worked in English, and he tries variations of it in several of his odes. And for me, the effect is to undermine the usual four-square, solid appearance of the sonnet, and to foreground the fluid, intricate, open qualities of the sestet. Way back in Episode 3 of this podcast, you may recall Mimi Khalvati describing the Petrarchan sonnet. She said the octave, the first eight lines, is like ‘ a tall stand of still trees, somewhat gloomy, possibly and all standing close together’. And the sestet, the final six lines, is ‘like some little babbling brook at the feet of these trees’. So Keats has basically cut Mimi’s grove of trees down to size, so that we’re focused much more on the sound and movement of the babbling brook, which accounts for the beautifully flowing or dappled or mottled effect that to me is very characteristic of Keats’ odes. Just have a listen to the second stanza: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Isn’t that beautiful? There are so many interlocking sound patterns we could spend the whole podcast on this one stanza. We could look at the way the hypnotically regular metre combines with the rhyme scheme, and the use of assonance and alliteration, repeated vowel and consonant sounds; not to mention the use of enjambment, the syntax running over the line endings, and caesuras, breaks in the middle of lines, so that the lines seem to dissolve and form themselves again. A bit like reflections in a moving stream. If we turn to what the speaker is saying, he’s basically arguing that the imagination, as expressed in the art on the urn, is better than reality: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: So sweet as it is to listen to music, it’s even sweeter to imagine the ‘unheard’ melodies played by the pipes depicted on the urn. Because these are heard not by ‘the sensual ear’, but by the ’spirit’. And then we get this extraordinary passage, where he shifts from talking to the urn to addressing a ‘fair youth’ and a ‘bold lover’ who are depicted on it: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal So he’s talking about the fact that the scene on the urn is frozen in time, which means the ‘fair youth’ can never stop singing the same song, the leaves can never fall from the trees, and the bold lover who is reaching out to the woman in front of him will never be able to actually kiss her, even though they are almost touching. All of which sounds like a decidedly mixed blessing. But he offers some consolation to the tantalised lover: yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! So although he will never be able to touch her, he will love her forever, and her beauty will never fade. And it’s tempting to agree with this, isn’t it? I mean, Keats is hardly the first poet to confront the problem of the passing of time, and the fading of love and beauty and all the other fleeting joys of life. And he’s offering art as a consolation, a way of preserving love and beauty, not just for a few thousand years, but ‘for ever’. This reminds me of when I was small, looking at the pictures on my bedroom wall. I remember thinking that I wanted to go into the pictures, into the landscapes of the artists’ imagination. There was something weirdly magnetic about the worlds I could see but not enter. So I know how Keats feels about art as a portal to another dimension. Or as he put it in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn’. And in the third stanza of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, he paints a very rosy picture of the picture on the urn: Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. So this is all very ‘happy happy joy joy’, as Ren and Stimpy would put it. In this eternal spring the leaves never fall, the music never stops, and the lovers are ‘For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, / For ever panting, and for ever young;’. Unlike ‘breathing human passion’, that leads to broken hearts and burning foreheads and parching tongues. But – and you knew there was a but coming, didn’t you? – there’s obviously a problem with this line of argument. Because it’s all very well to say the solution to the suffering created by the passing of time is to freeze time, by enshrining youth and beauty in an artwork. But of course, as soon as we start to think about the implications, it starts to feel a bit weird and unnerving. Would you really want to be frozen for all eternity, about to kiss your beloved but never actually touching their lips? Isn’t that a version of the punishment of Tantalus , in the ancient Greek underworld? So what Keats has done is to confront us with an existential paradox: on the one hand, when we think of everything and everyone we love, including ourselves, vanishing with the passage of time, it feels unbearable. But if we imagine taking even the most perfect moment in time, full of music and love and laughter, and freezing that in time to preserve it forever, that too feels unbearable. As a sermon on suffering, the Buddha would have been proud of this one! And Keats himself seems to have second thoughts about all this in the final stanza, where he turns from talking to the figures carved on the urn, to addressing the urn itself once more: O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! So ‘brede’ is a variation of ‘braid’, meaning the scenes of ‘marble men and maidens’ are wrapped around the urn. And it’s telling that he says the urn is ‘overwrought’ with the carvings. I think, on a literal level Keats is saying these scenes were carved over the surface of the urn; but that word also has more negative connotations, suggesting firstly that the artwork is a bit ornate, a bit overdone, and also maybe suggesting the feeling of being ‘overwrought’, overcome with anguish. And then he says: Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! A cold pastoral doesn’t sound very idyllic, does it? And it’s at odds with his description of it as a warm springtime. But he’s explicit here that the chill comes from the association with eternity – the urn is teasing us out of thought, waking us from our reverie, to contemplate eternity. And what comfort is there in doing that? Human beings are creatures of time, and we are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of eternity, even when we try to imagine it as an endless paradise. As somebody once said, most of us would rather go to a lecture on heaven than heaven itself. But in spite of this chill, Keats persists, presenting the urn not just as a symbol but as an oracle: When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ So this is the point where the urn starts talking back, when the speaker imagines it speaking to future generations, and saying ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’. It’s a pretty bold claim isn’t it? And there has been a lot of argument over the past two centuries about what exactly Keats meant by this, and whether there is any validity to the claim. It’s fair to say most critics agree that the words are beautiful, but not so many are convinced they are true. These days of course, even the beauty part is suspect. To Keats and his contemporaries, it would have been self-evident that beauty was an important element of art and poetry. And in the late 19th century, this attitude reached its apex in the aesthetic movement, which espoused ‘art for art’s sake’. But nowadays, beauty is regarded with suspicion in the poetry world. It’s seen as old-fashioned, self-indulgent, a luxury, and a distraction from the harsh realities of life. The pendulum as swung so far that in 2010, while I was on the board of Magma Poetry magazine, I remember Laurie Smith editing issue 48 on the theme of beauty in poetry, because as he wrote, ‘we wondered if it was still possible to write poems about experiences, people, objects or places that the writer finds beautiful’. And the truth side of the equation is even more controversial. Because Keats’ urn is not just saying that beauty is important or desirable or a consolation for suffering. It’s proposing truth as epistemology, a foundation of knowledge – if something is beautiful, it’s likely to be true, and vice versa. And of course we can imagine all the trained philosophers throwing up their arms in horror at this. Plus in the political sphere, the obvious danger with this kind of attitude is that it risks airbrushing uncomfortable realities out of the picture. Especially in a poem that was partly inspired by the Elgin Marbles! If the ode were in a museum, it would be a candidate for a plaque explaining the colonial provenance of its subject. It’s practically begging for a satirical poet to write a scathing takedown. But you don’t have to be particularly woke to object to the proposition that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’. No one would accuse Philip Larkin of political correctness, but he took issue with the ‘Ode’, saying that a poem could be either beautiful or true, but not both. And he categorised his own poems as either one or the other. He wrote a poem called ‘Essential Beauty’, which sounds pretty Romantic, and the title is actually from one of Keats’s letters, but it’s actually about the fake beauty of advertising billboards. One of the most beautiful and famous lines in Larkin’s verse is ‘what will survive of us is love’, at the end of ‘An Arundel Tomb’ , another poem about a sculpture of a pair of lovers. Which again, sounds marvellously Romantic, but if you look closely at the syntax, then strictly speaking, Larkin’s poem is saying that this beautiful idea is ‘almost true’, but maybe not quite. We’ve said several times on this podcast that we should be wary of taking poems at face value, as statements of the poet’s opinions. But in the case of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, we do have strong evidence that the urn is speaking on Keats’ behalf: in a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey, 18 months before the composition of the ‘Ode’, he wrote: ‘I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination. What imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth.’ But in the poem, even Keats doesn’t quite put his cards on the table. He puts the words ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ in quotation marks and attributes them to the imaginary voice of the urn. So they take on the character of dramatic speech, rather than the author’s unfiltered opinion. So maybe Keats and Larkin aren’t quite as far apart as they seem. Anyway. If you have a negative reaction to the ending of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, I can probably understand why. As we’ve just seen, there are all kinds of reasons for dismissing it or criticising it. And yet… it is a beautiful line, and a beautiful poem. And call me a Romantic, but I think once we decide that there’s no place for beauty in art, we’ve kind of given up. I can’t help responding to the beauty of the poetry and feeling its beauty is a key to some kind of truth, even if I would struggle to articulate it in rational terms. Fortunately for us, Keats has articulated it in poetic terms, so let’s have another listen and see what we make of it this time… Ode on a Grecian Urn By John Keats I Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? II Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! III Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. IV Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. V O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ John Keats John Keats was an English Romantic poet who was born in 1795 and died in 1821. He trained as a surgeon, but abandoned medicine to devote himself to poetry. Despite a brief literary career cut short by tuberculosis, Keats produced a remarkable body of work, including epic verse, sonnets, and a series of great odes, including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, and ‘To Autumn’. His poetry explores themes of beauty, love, and mortality with profound emotional depth, and his letters are also widely read and quoted for his observations on life and art. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The New... 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Drinking Ode by Matthew Buckley Smith 37:17

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Episode 70 Drinking Ode by Matthew Buckley Smith Matthew Buckley Smith reads ‘Drinking Ode’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/70_Drinking_Ode_by_Matthew_Buckley_Smith.mp3 This poem is from: Midlife Available from: Midlife is available from: The publisher: Measure Press Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: US Drinking Ode by Matthew Buckley Smith for R Drink with me, old man — there’s no time And no use trying to be good. Our flesh was supple, our thoughts sublime, And now death eats us alive, and should. The gods aren’t missing any sleep Over the altar lights we burn To honor afterlives we keep Pretending we might someday earn. The king, the peasant farmer, even You and I and everyone, Can pick the suit we’d like to leave in But not the day the tailor’s done. So cowards survive the battlefield And bullies fill the lifeboats first And rich kids get their records sealed, But some verdicts can’t be reversed. Men say a river worms around The grove where dead souls speak again, But that black swamp has long since drowned Both ferryboat and ferryman. Your land, your house, your tender wife, The plum trees planted by your hand — You’ll leave them when you leave this life For a ditch beneath a cypress stand, And the man who takes your place will spill Your choicest vintage wine onto The white jacquard chaise longue you still Believe somehow belongs to you. Interview transcript Mark: Matthew, where did this poem come from? Matthew: So this poem is a, I know a lot of translators, I always hesitate to say translation. It’s not a translation from Horace. It is an imitation or admiration of a very famous poem by the Roman poet, Horace , who was always writing to his friends saying, trying to offer some kind of consolation. I fell in love with Horace in my mid-20s in the pit of a really, probably one of the worst depressions of my life. And it was a book of poems that my friend, Ryan Wilson , also a poet, gave to me, the Odes of Horace , in this case translated by David Ferry, that I went to in that time. And I read and reread and he had marked pages with all of his favorites. And this was certainly one of them. And what initially drew me to Horace, I mean, there’s a lot there to love. And my classicist friends tend to prefer other translations, but what I really found congenial about him was his willingness to address really bleak questions always with good cheer and a very level head. I think some people think of Horace as a kind of a poet of conventional wisdom, and he does have a lot of conventional wisdom. In fact, all of his wisdom is pretty much conventional, but I don’t see these as poems with lessons or morals, so much as poems that are sort of human reminders, or even in their way, like letters to friends. When you reassure a friend, when you write to a friend or you speak to a friend about who’s having trouble, it’s not like you’re coming up with these pearls of wisdom for him. It’s not like you’re the one who coined there are plenty of fish in the sea, but it’s your role in part to be the one who is steady and who is reliable when their own life is tumultuous. And Horace is, among many other things, as I said, among his many virtues, he has played that role in my life, even though he’s been dead for 2,000 years. So that’s broadly where this poem came from, and it is dedicated to Ryan, and it is addressing him, who has long been both a poetry friend and a drinking friend. Mark: You’ve got quite a lot of classical references in your book Midlife .’ Are you able to read the original or is this purely via translation? Matthew: Oh, I’m a total dilettante. I mean, I like having the en face , the facing translation where you can see both the original Roman or Greek in some cases and the English. I can pick up here and there snatches of Latin, but I certainly don’t know it at all. I have a lot of good friends who are very good classicists. And I like to read translations. I like to read translations of the same poems by lots of different people as well, which does help give you a slightly better sense of the original. But no, I am in no way a Latinist or a classicist really at all. Mark: And his odes are numbered, aren’t they? Could you give us the number so if anybody’s listening… Matthew: So this is 214 , which is sometimes given the subtitle ‘To Posthumous’, which was a guy’s name in addition to being a word for us, posthumous meaning after the death of, after the burial of. And presumably posthumous then was the name of a guy who was born after his father died. I assume that’s what that name would have meant. But who knows? Mark: So can you give us a quick sketch then of this Horace poem and what it meant to you before we then look at what you did with it? Matthew: Yeah, I am very unoriginal as a poet in being obsessed with death. When my daughter was in fifth grade… Mark: One of those things that never goes away. Matthew: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, when my daughter was, not in fifth grade, five, she had a show and tell at school and she had to tell the teacher. There’s something she had asked for specifically, but she said, ‘Well, it’s blue and it looks like an object. It looks like part of the human body.’ And the teacher said, ‘What does it do?’ She said, ‘Oh, it reminds you that you’re going to die.’ The teacher said, ‘Is it a memento mori ? Is that what you brought to class?’ Which it was. So yeah, this poem is a memento mori . I mean, a lot of Horace’s, Horace is probably most famous in the culture at large for the two words ‘carpe diem’, ‘seize the day’, or in the original, ‘pluck the day’. And the advice of many of his poems, this one included, is whether implicitly or explicitly, we’re not going to be around forever. Enjoy what you have right now. And so it is a drinking poem. It is an invitation to drink and the closing image of it, which I have preserved with a little bit of embellishment for Ryan’s sake, because he has a white jacquard chaise longue he’s very proud of. And so I had to envision it getting wine spilled on it. But the closing image is basically that, whoever inherits your property when you die, will inherit your vast wine cellar with all of this Caecuban wine, this precious wine. And he’s not just going to drink it. He’s going to be throwing a party and spilling it on the floor. Which is to say, why don’t you open a bottle for us right now? Because somebody’s going to eventually. So I mean, I think that the broad outlines of the poem in which he enumerates, he gives more examples from mythology in his version, but he enumerates that all of our efforts to preserve our lives, all of our efforts to distract ourselves, all of our efforts to predict when we will die are all basically in vain. And lots of other people have attempted them before. And all of us end up in Kassetus, and one of the many deep black rivers down in the underworld. Hell for the Romans and Greeks was not hell for the way we imagine it, Christian, the people in Christianity and after Christianity imagined it. It was a little more universal and a little more gloomy, but not necessarily full of torment. Though they did have a spot for that, for the real bad guys. Mark: Okay. And so he didn’t try and cheer his friend up. I mean, he’s not trying to take his mind off it. He’s confirming it and saying, ‘Yeah, this too shall pass.’ And that’s exactly why we should savour the moment. Matthew: And I think that was part of what really appealed to me because I couldn’t… I mean, it was a time in my life when I came to him that I really just couldn’t stop in every second. For me, it’s like, I think about death every hour or so, but then it was, I think about death every minute. And so it was good to read something that did not look away, that didn’t come up with any pretences and that just said, all right, so let’s stare it right in the face and still open a bottle of wine. Mark: Right. Matthew: I named it ‘Drinking Ode,’ his original poems don’t have titles properly, they just have numbers. And it ends with wine and I believe it, I can’t remember, I may have put the wine in the beginning as well. I don’t know if that’s in the original, but the other real comfort this poem is of course about is friendship. That’s the chief consolation. The wine is here now, but the wine’s going to be here later if you leave it. We’re here now. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Matthew: And so, yeah, this is my clumsy, stiff, American, heteronormative way to write a love letter to my friend, Ryan. Mark: And it’s a lovely thing to do, I think. I mean, just picking up on your point just now about, I mean, I’ve suffered from depression myself. I used to be a psychotherapist, so I spent a lot of time talking to people dealing with depression. And I know from first and second-hand experience, looking in the face and saying, ‘Yeah, we’re not going to sugarcoat it.’ That can actually be very consoling in and of itself, because you’re not invalidating somebody’s feelings or their state of mind. And once you do that, then other possibilities come to light. Like, I think it’s a lovely point that you make that it’s not just about the wine. Wine is really, way back in our civilisation, is really kind of a lubricant for friendship, a social experience. Because it would be a completely different experience if it was, ‘I’m going to sit here and drink this on my own’. Matthew: Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and there’s a fine line between drinking so you can talk with a friend and having a friend over so you can drink. [Laughter] I mean, it’s a lubricant, it makes us less inhibited. I should also mention, I don’t drink anymore. But yeah, the real occasion is the friend’s presence and the friend’s life. You know, in some ways, it’s a harsh poem because he’s basically saying there’s no escape. Everything you cherish will pass, or will pass from your hands into somebody else’s hands. And we’re all going to end up in the same place. But it is in a backhanded way. And the Romans were, in some ways, not unlike Americans in that they had a little bit of a constipated, stiff upper lip masculinity to them. But it is a way of saying, of celebrating that his friend is here. But all of the lines that say, ‘You will die,’ are also lines saying, ‘You’re alive.’ And I’m, and he’s, you know, and he’s, like, as much as he teases him, he’s writing to his friend, and this is his second book. I mean, he’d written his first book, made an impression. He knew this was not to throw away. He knew this was a significant thing, and he was dedicating it to his friend. Mark: So that’s what Horace did, and that’s what Horace has meant to you. Now tell me a bit about how you approach this poem. Matthew: Yeah. So you mentioned before we started recording that writing in form, that is writing, usually, when people casually say writing in form or writing formal poetry, I guess we mean with metre and rhyme, because there are plenty of other varieties in form, including in this book, in this poem, actually. I do spend a lot of time revising. I spend a lot of time tinkering and fiddling with lines. But even more than that, I spend a lot of time writing out drafts and then throwing almost all of them away. So I love reading old poems. I love sort of thinking big, complicated thoughts about poems and how they fit together and making plans and coming up with sketches. But in the moment of writing, I am very seat of pants. And so this poem really just began with the first line, which is how most of my poems begin, and which is the line that is not really a rendering of any line in the poem, exactly. ‘Drink with me, old man — there is no time,’ which isn’t even right. Is that a sentence? What is that? It’s like two sentences, two independent clauses. I just put a dash in the middle because I didn’t know. But it felt like a thing that I would say to a friend. It felt true enough as an utterance. It doesn’t really scan, meaning that you can’t really make any good metre out of it when you try to break it down. But it’s eight syllables, and I thought, all right, well, the shorter the line of verse, the less it matters so much where the stresses go. [Laughter] You know? Like you have like, especially with the tetrameter and trimeter, they kind of, they get a little mushy at times. And so eight syllables is roughly four beats. And so what if I just wrote this poem with four-beat lines and then this first line would fit? So that was really where it started. And as with most poems, I just gave it a try with the assumption that I would throw it away. And this is when I ended up hanging onto and tinkering with a good bit more. In addition to Horace, one of my other great nerdy poetry loves is the also very uncool English poet, A. E. Housman , who wrote a lot of poems in short four-beat lines in quatrains , which is this poem is printed in a big column, but it’s written in quatrains, meaning little four-line units, it rhymed every other line rhyming. And which is, he wrote many, many, many poems in that form. He wrote about the most perfect little tetrameter quatrains that have been written in English. His poems are as effortless and spotless as pretty much it gets. And something he did that I only noticed around the time I was working on this poem, which was also a time when I had this particular ode in my head, was he borrowed something from really, really old English poetry. Before we had proper rhyming and before we had even proper metre in Anglo-Saxon poetry, we were just sort of hammering out these thudding four-beat lines without metre in any regular sense. Sorry, it is regular. It’s not regular with the smooth regularity of post-Norman invasion poetry. Mark: Well you’re not counting all the syllables in Anglo-Saxon verse. Matthew: Exactly, yeah, you’re only counting the stresses. Mark: And the syllables can go here, there and… Matthew: Yeah, in a way, it’s a little closer to sprung rhythm or it’s a little closer to, it’s actually what it’s very close to in some ways is the prosody of, I mean, the metre, the syllable stress counting of rap, which is conventionally a four-beat line. And part of what is fun about rap is that you can fit as many syllables as you can say smoothly. It’s up to you to deliver it in a credible way, but you get four beats. And so however many syllables you can fit into those four beats and make it sound good, that’s what a line is. So it’s a little closer to that. And the thing that the Anglo-Saxons did, they didn’t use rhyme in a regular way. So rhyme links two lines or more together to each other. They used alliteration to link a line to itself. So every line had two halves, as you know, and they would sort of staple those two halves together by having a stressed sound in either of them or more sometimes begin with the same letter sound. So they would have, there’s a line, oh, I don’t want to quote it because it’s copyrighted. But this is how they would link their lines together. And it’s something Housman does all the time, even though he also writes in these sort of pristine rhyming perfect, accentual-syllabic quatrains. He would often, the front end of a line and the back end of a line would have a stressed syllable that began with the same sound. And so he would sort of, his lines would be themselves stitched together with these little additional alliterative links, as well as having this sort of chiming, beautiful, series of quatrain rhymes. Mark: And Horace does this too, doesn’t he? He’s got these, as I understand it, very tight, metrical units in his odes. That was fairly typical. Matthew: The thing, yeah, so I, as a dilettante and a heathen, I like Horace in part for his tone and his management of argument. And by argument in poetry, it’s not at all like argument in a debate club. Logic is very secondary. It’s an emotional argument. My classicist friends, if I had to boil their love of Horace down to one word, it would probably be syntax. You know, Latin has very different grammar rules in English, of course. And what they often love most about Horace is the way that he arranges the order of the words. And he’s famous for these long sentences that you have to get all the way to the end of before you get the verb that makes it all make sense. And they cherish the way that he drops information out in this very deliberate way across the length of that long winding sentence. That is beyond my canon. That is something I don’t know. Not knowing Latin, I’m a, I come to it in my barbarian way, liking the gist and the, yeah, he wrote very, an ode in the Horatian sense is a poem written in a series of regular stanzas. So he wrote these different units of lines and every unit would have the same metre, the same length number of lines. And it would sort of be the same unit on the page. And he would write the poem stacking a bunch of those in a row and they were all symmetrical. And that sort of formally was what he did as an ode. But ode has meant a lot of different things at a lot of different times. Mark: And so you’ve clearly, you’re channeling that in your drinking ode. Does he also have this rather dark humour that you’ve got where you’ve got lines like, ‘Now death eats us alive?’ And ‘You and I and everyone, / Can pick the suit we’d like to leave in, / But not the day the tailor’s done’. And obviously the unforgettable chaise longue at the end. Has he got thatmordant humour or is that your kind of…? Matthew: I think he does, I mean, he does at least as I read him having it. I mean, it is often making fun. I mean, he is a great, he’s like in the long tradition of poets and standup comedians and bards, he is great at simultaneously boasting and mocking himself. And he has poems in which he makes fun of what a bad soldier he was when he was a soldier. He famously, he had a tumultuous life early on. His father was born a slave and then sort of came to freedom. Slavery was very different in ancient Rome than it was in other parts of the world at other times. But he then joined the wrong side of the Roman civil war. He joined the Brutus side, lost. Supposedly ran away from that, was not a good soldier. But in losing, he then had all of his property and his father’s property confiscated. And then later, because he was friends with Virgil and Virgil was friends with Maecenas , he became a favoured poet under Augustus . And so he sort of had his fortune taken away and then given back to him. And he famously was given a Sabine farm where he lived and loafed and wrote his poems. But he was always aware that things could turn. He has a poem in which he, it’s a poem about how a tree almost fell on him. And he’s just cursing the tree with fury. He’s so mad at this tree. And he’s so mad at the person who planted this tree that almost fell and killed him. And then he imagines dying. And if he had died, he imagines he would have gone down to the underworld and he would have been listening to Sappho and Alcaeus, these ancient Greek poets he revered. And so the end of the poem is strangely wistful. I think he is very, yeah, very much a, he’s very attuned to life’s ironies and turns. And this was, I should say also, in being a poem in part about my friend, Ryan, around the time… I was raised very conservatively and very Catholic and really lost my faith later in life than some people do. And around that same time, my friend Ryan converted to Catholicism. I mean, he was born Catholic, but he sort of, he had an adult awakening and he became a very devout Catholic. So we sort of traded places. And I think that has been part of how we’ve related to each other and talked to each other since then. So he gave me this book and I was sort of giving it back to him in my pagan atheist hopeless way to his freshly believing and faithful and hopeful self. So yeah, that’s all, yeah, that tension and that awareness of change is certainly part of Horace and part of my own outlook. I’ll mention, the tailor line is in part a quiet teasing of Ryan who’s always been very particular about how he dresses and is a big believer in men should wear suits. When I’m around him, I tend to dress up more because I feel self-conscious. I want to look correct, but yeah, I had to give him a little grief over that. Mark: But that’s, again, it strikes me that’s another nice thing that you’ve channelled from Horace is the spirit of friendship, the give and take, the exchange, the reaching out, the teasing, but at the same time the consoling. I mean, it strikes me as almost quite a British tone you’ve got here that it’s very dark and very humorous, but at the same time, there is consolation in there if you look at it. Matthew: Oh, yeah, I believe so. I think that’s certainly, I think it may be more native to male friendship, though I think it not exclusively. Part of the friendship is playful abuse. Mark: Well, it’s certainly very characteristic of male British friendship, I can say. So yeah, I found that very congenial. And there’s an interesting kind of just thinking about this in the context of the book as a whole. You’ve got this kind of, like I say, there’s a lot of classical references or classical games. Like there’s a hilarious one about the version of Achilles who didn’t go to the Trojan War. Matthew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark: And we were talking about Auden before we got started. I think the tone and the way you handle it is very Auden-esque. You have a lot of anachronisms as well. You know that famous line in Auden, ‘Caesar’s double-bed is warm.’ I mean, of course he doesn’t have a double-bed, but in the Auden version he did and it kind of makes sense. Matthew: Yeah, and the clerk is writing on the pink form, ‘I do not like my work,’ in that same, maybe in the same stanza. Mark: That’s right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you’ve got that kind of feel. And I really mean this as a very high compliment that it makes me think of that Auden-esque, urbane, classical, humorous, ironic, but also formally very accomplished. Was Auden, was he a presiding spirit for you or is this? Matthew: Oh, I mean, I love Auden. He’s, yeah, I mean, I still think he’s responsible for, what I get grief for this, but I would argue is the most beautiful love poem of the 20th century, which is ‘Lullaby.’ The opening two lines are, ‘Lay your sleeping head, my love, / human on my faithless arm,’ which is just about as perfect as it gets. But yeah, I mean, I love, and I think ‘The Fall of Rome’ and ‘Shield of Achilles’ are two that stand out as being particularly present. But I think for, you’re right about the anachronisms and the way I read the anachronisms or the kind of the inclusion in a way in both directions of new things, things that didn’t exist back in poems about old times or vice versa, that it is in part a way to make a joke, but it’s also in part, I think, a, it’s almost literary realism in the sense that if you write poetry, then you’re living with these guys. You’re living in the same, you’re sharing, that they know, at least some of them know, Horace certainly, says in one of his poems, ‘I’m building a monument more permanent than bronze.’ And, Dante was not shy about including himself in the among the circle of the immortal poet, there was only like four or five best poets in history. And he was like, oh yeah. When he walked into the room, they were like, ‘Oh, finally you’re here.’ So like, I mean, plenty of poets have called their shots. Shakespeare says, ‘So long as men can breathe, their eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee.’ So a lot of these guys knew that not only are they responding to poets who lived before them, but they’re speaking to poets who live after them. And even Eliot says that, you borrow from the tradition, but you also reorder the tradition every time you contribute to it. So, I think of a, there’s a Spanish grad student I knew in, when I was in grad school, who, he walked into a bar, went to, of course we were always studying in bars. And I made some crack about, I said, ‘Oh, all of Ryan’s friends are dead.’ Meaning all of his friends are, you know, wore togas or fluffy collars, and Manuel’s response is, ‘They are not dead.’ Which I think is right. And it’s how I feel with all of these old guys, whether it’s Auden or Horace, who are, lived in radically different times, but they are both dead and they’re both very much alive. Mark: And isn’t that a lovely thought to carry into, maybe we can hear the poem again and just think about that, because it’s a poem about the inevitability of death. And yet what you’ve just said is in a sense, they’re not dead at all. Matthew: Yeah, that’s the, that is the, that is the simultaneously generous and egomaniacal promise of poetry. We want to preserve the things we love and we want to live forever. And we go to poetry, sometimes to… I think of Ben Johnson writing about his daughter’s death and, it’s not, it is once that, oh, sorry, not, well, his daughter, he has a beautiful poem about his daughter, but I was thinking of the poem about his son’s death, which is ‘a child of my right hand’, speaking of his son, Benjamin, which is the meaning of the word Benjamin. ‘Here lies Ben Johnson, his best piece of poetry’ that, you know, poetry is, yeah, I think writers, poets are, to some extent, always vampiric, always self-serving, but also, at our best, maybe have a service to offer out of love to the world that we encounter, however briefly and tipsily while we’re here. Mark: I can’t top that, Matthew. That’s the perfect place to end. Thank you very much. Let’s hear the poem again. Matthew: Great. Drinking Ode by Matthew Buckley Smith for R Drink with me, old man — there’s no time And no use trying to be good. Our flesh was supple, our thoughts sublime, And now death eats us alive, and should. The gods aren’t missing any sleep Over the altar lights we burn To honor afterlives we keep Pretending we might someday earn. The king, the peasant farmer, even You and I and everyone, Can pick the suit we’d like to leave in But not the day the tailor’s done. So cowards survive the battlefield And bullies fill the lifeboats first And rich kids get their records sealed, But some verdicts can’t be reversed. Men say a river worms around The grove where dead souls speak again, But that black swamp has long since drowned Both ferryboat and ferryman. Your land, your house, your tender wife, The plum trees planted by your hand — You’ll leave them when you leave this life For a ditch beneath a cypress stand, And the man who takes your place will spill Your choicest vintage wine onto The white jacquard chaise longue you still Believe somehow belongs to you. Midlife ‘Drinking Ode’ is from Midlife by Matthew Buckley Smith, published by Measure Press. Available from: Midlife is available from: The publisher: Measure Press Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: US Matthew Buckley Smith Matthew Buckley Smith is the author of the poetry collections Midlife and Dirge for an Imaginary World . He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughters, and he hosts the poetry podcast SLEERICKETS . And if you haven’t heard Matthew’s podcast Sleerickets , I heartily recommend it. It’s a very insightful as well as funny treatment of what he calls ‘poetry and other problems’. He interviewed me on his podcast a couple of years ago, and we had a great conversation about poetic form. MatthewBuckleySmith.com A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... 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The Great Fire of London, from Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden 43:15

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Episode 69 The Great Fire of London, from Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden Mark McGuinness reads and discusses a passage about the Great Fire of London from Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/69_The_Great_Fire_of_London_from_Annus_Mirabilis_by_John_Dryden.mp3 Poet John Dryden Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness The Great Fire of London, from Annus Mirabilis By John Dryden Such was the rise of this prodigious fire, Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred, From thence did soon to open streets aspire, And straight to palaces and temples spread. The diligence of trades and noiseful gain, And luxury more late, asleep were laid: All was the night’s; and in her silent reign No sound the rest of nature did invade. In this deep quiet, from what source unknown, Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose; And first few scattering sparks about were blown, Big with the flames that to our ruin rose. Then in some close-pent room it crept along, And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed; Till the infant monster, with devouring strong, Walk’d boldly upright with exalted head. Now like some rich or mighty murderer, Too great for prison, which he breaks with gold; Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear, And dares the world to tax him with the old: So ’scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail, And makes small outlets into open air: There the fierce winds his tender force assail, And beat him downward to his first repair. The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld His flames from burning, but to blow them more: And every fresh attempt he is repell’d With faint denials weaker than before. And now no longer letted of his prey, He leaps up at it with enraged desire: O’erlooks the neighbours with a wide survey, And nods at every house his threatening fire. The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend, With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice: About the fire into a dance they bend, And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice. Our guardian angel saw them where they sate Above the palace of our slumbering king: He sigh’d, abandoning his charge to fate, And, drooping, oft look’d back upon the wing. At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze Call’d up some waking lover to the sight; And long it was ere he the rest could raise, Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night. The next to danger, hot pursued by fate, Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire: And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late, For helpless infants left amidst the fire. Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near; Now murmuring noises rise in every street: The more remote run stumbling with their fear, And in the dark men jostle as they meet. So weary bees in little cells repose; But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive, An humming through their waxen city grows, And out upon each other’s wings they drive. Now streets grow throng’d and busy as by day: Some run for buckets to the hallow’d quire: Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play; And some more bold mount ladders to the fire. In vain: for from the east a Belgian wind His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent; The flames impell’d soon left their foes behind, And forward with a wanton fury went. A quay of fire ran all along the shore, And lighten’d all the river with a blaze: The waken’d tides began again to roar, And wondering fish in shining waters gaze. Podcast transcript This is an extract from a long poem by John Dryden called Annus Mirabilis , which covers the period 1665-66 and describes a series of naval battles between the English and Dutch fleets, followed by the Great Fire of London. The poem was published in 1667, just a year after the Great Fire. Why did Dryden publish so soon after the event? And why was it called Annus Mirabilis , which means ‘a year of miracles’? Surely a year that included the destruction by fire of the capital city was more of an Annus Horribilis ? Especially as it was also the year of the Great Plague of London – which for some reason, Dryden fails to mention in his poem. Samuel Johnson claimed that Dryden called it a year of miracles, ‘because it was a wonder that things were not worse’. Which sounds like a pretty extreme case of seeing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. But in fairness to Johnson, it’s a pretty accurate description of Dryden’s attitude. Later in the poem, when considering the aftermath of the fire, Dryden presents it as less of a problem than an opportunity: Methinks already from this chymic flame I see a city of more precious mould, Rich as the town which gives the Indies name, With silver paved and all divine with gold. So on one level this is a thoroughly pragmatic framing of the situation, as a chance to ‘build back better’, with modern architecture and new commercial opportunities, that will pave the streets with silver and gold. And this was indeed what happened – the fire was a disaster in the short term, but it did clear out a lot of the old ramshackle medieval wooden houses which were then replaced them with modern buildings of brick and stone. But this stanza uses the language of alchemy as well as the language of commerce – the ‘chymic flame’ was the chemical fire that alchemists believed would purify the contents of the ‘precious mould’, and produce not only gold but also spiritual transformation. But why did Dryden take this stance, when so many of his contemporaries were grieving the loss of their property to the fire and their family and friends to the plague? Because at this stage of Dryden’s career he was a confirmed Royalist, a supporter of King Charles II who had been restored to the throne in 1660, after the Civil War and the Interregnum, when England was effectively a republic. So he was determined to exonerate the King from any blame for the disaster, and certainly to counter Puritan suggestions that this was God’s judgment on the King and the established Church. The scholar Edward Hooker pointed out that in the early 1660s a series of rebellious pamphlets was published, using the title Mirabilis Annus , describing ‘strange apparitions and prodigious events’ and prophesying the judgment of God upon the King and his Church, in order to stoke the fires of discontent among his majesty’s subjects. Hooker argued that it was no coincidence that Dryden took the title of these pamphlets, Mirabilis Annus , turned it back to front and used it for his poem, Annus Mirabilis . He describes Dryden’s poem as ‘a piece of inspired journalism’, which was speedily published in the same format as the seditious pamphlets, and was therefore a part of the ‘pamphlet wars’ of the time. So whether or not the poem helped to stave off a revolution, it is probably also no coincidence that in 1668, the year after he published Annus Mirabilis , John Dryden was appointed Poet Laureate to Charles II. So the poem was political in origin, but I’m not reading it to you today because of that. I’m sharing it as a magnificent and memorable poetic description of a major historical event. And I wish there was time to read you more of it, but it’s nearly 400 lines long, which is far too long for the podcast. But here is a link to the full version , so you can read the rest of it if you want to. OK turning to the poem itself, it’s written in quatrains , four-line stanzas, in very regular iambic pentameters , tiTUM tiTUM tiTUM tiTUM tiTUM, and rhymed ABAB; in other words the first line rhymes with the third line and the second line with the fourth line. At the time it was more fashionable to write in rhyming couplets , which we looked at a couple of months ago, in Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ , which was written around the same time. In fact couplets were so popular that Dryden felt obliged to explain his choice of quatrains in the Preface to Annus Mirabilis : But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse most easy, though not so proper for this occasion: for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it further on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. In other words, he felt that quatrains gave him more room to expand on each thought. And he was very much working on the assumption that each quatrain should contain a single thought or scene, that was brought to a conclusion by a full stop, at the end of the stanza. For instance, here’s the first stanza of the passage I’ve just read: Such was the rise of this prodigious fire, Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred, From thence did soon to open streets aspire, And straight to palaces and temples spread. So we can hear how the stanza contains a single thought, in this case also a single sentence, which is clearly and elegantly expressed, and then concludes with the full stop after ‘straight to palaces and temples spread.’ And notice how Dryden describes the progress of the fire in very balanced terms, starting in the ‘mean buildings’ of the poor and lowly, before spreading to the ‘palaces and temples’ of the high and mighty. This tendency to balance and order was very characteristic of Dryden and the other poets of his age. Then the next stanza presents us with a new thought, and a new scene, which builds on the previous one, like small panels in a larger painting, or even a comic strip: The diligence of trades and noiseful gain, And luxury more late, asleep were laid: All was the night’s; and in her silent reign No sound the rest of nature did invade. Once again, we find opposites brought into play and balanced out in the measured syntax; in this case, Dryden contrasts gainful employment, ‘The diligence of trades and noiseful gain’, with ‘luxury’, which in the 17th century meant ‘debauchery’, indulgence in illicit pleasures. Which is a rather convoluted way of saying that everyone was asleep, including those who had been working hard all day and those who had been drinking and carousing into the night. And I don’t know about you, but when I hear these lines: All was the night’s; and in her silent reign No sound the rest of nature did invade. I can’t help remembering: ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; There’s that same sense of anticipation, isn’t there? Because we know what’s coming next: In this deep quiet, from what source unknown, Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose; And first few scattering sparks about were blown, Big with the flames that to our ruin rose. Then in some close-pent room it crept along, And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed; Till the infant monster, with devouring strong, Walk’d boldly upright with exalted head. So instead of the divine birth of Christmas, we have the ‘fatal birth’ of the ‘infant monster’. And of course the personification is very artificial and contrived, but I think it’s also very effective, we really do see the monster stand up and walk ‘boldly upright with exalted head’. Then Dryden’s infant monster suddenly grows up into an adult criminal: Now like some rich or mighty murderer, Too great for prison, which he breaks with gold; Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear, And dares the world to tax him with the old: So ’scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail, And makes small outlets into open air: There the fierce winds his tender force assail, And beat him downward to his first repair. It’s an odd phrase isn’t it, ‘rich or mighty murderer’? Why should a murderer be ‘rich or mighty’? But it’s wittily resolved in the next line: Too great for prison, which he breaks with gold; The suggestion is that if you’re rich and mighty, you can buy your freedom, ‘break’ out of prison ‘with gold’. And of course the joke here is that it’s the gold flames that are breaking this particular murderer out of prison. There was also something of a cult of the heroic criminal among Londoners, as described by Peter Ackroyd in his book, London: The Biography . The most famous of the London jailbreakers was the thief and highwayman Jack Sheppard , who became a local celebrity fifty years after the publication of Annus Mirabilis , by escaping from Newgate Prison no less than six times. These lines might have been written for Jack Sheppard: Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear, And dares the world to tax him with the old: Then the poem’s antihero encounters some resistance, in the shape of the winds that impede his progress: The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld His flames from burning, but to blow them more: And every fresh attempt he is repell’d With faint denials weaker than before. The ‘crafty courtesans’ were high-class prostitutes, associated with the ‘luxury’ of Charles II’s court. And this is a witty take on the old idea that the flames of desire can be fanned by refusal, such as the ‘faint denials’ of the courtesans. There’s also quite a rude pun in this stanza – if you didn’t spot it, then you may congratulate yourself on your virtuous character; if you did, then no sniggering at the back please. OK moving swiftly on, as indeed the fire is doing by this point, we get this delightfully ghastly scene, on London Bridge, which is where the severed heads of traitors were displayed: The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend, With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice: About the fire into a dance they bend, And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice. I have to say that compared to this, London Bridge is a bit boring these days. I’m guessing that ‘sabbath’ here refers to a witches’ sabbath, rather than the Judeo-Christian version. That seems to be the implication of the following stanza, where ‘our guardian angel’ looks at the scene in horror and flees, ‘abandoning [the city] to its fate’. OK, so far Dryden has given us a high level view of the fire, ornamented with images of monsters and ghosts and angels, but now he zooms in on the people of London who are waking up to their fate: At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze Call’d up some waking lover to the sight; And long it was ere he the rest could raise, Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night. The next to danger, hot pursued by fate, Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire: And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late, For helpless infants left amidst the fire. So fortunately for the people in the houses around him, a lover was awake, presumably about lovers’ business, and he shouted to wake ‘the rest’, ‘Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night.’. And then we get this charming glimpse of the waking citizens ‘Half-clothed, half-naked’ – logically, of course, this is tautology, saying the same thing twice, because if you are half clothed, then by definition you must be half naked. But poetically, it works so much better, doesn’t it? It somehow conjures up the confusion of a throng of bodies, or bits of bodies, in various states of undress, as they flee the fire. And is it heartless of Dryden to casually wrap up the stanza with this image of babies left behind like forgotten possessions? And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late, For helpless infants left amidst the fire. Or maybe it’s just a brutally abrupt description of the brutality of the fire? Then Dryden continues the action, with this wonderfully precise description of the townsfolk awakening, with the commotion spreading from street to street: Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near; Now murmuring noises rise in every street: The more remote run stumbling with their fear, And in the dark men jostle as they meet. Notice that there are no visual images in this stanza: Dryden evokes the scene using first sound, the ‘cries’ and ‘murmuring noises’, and then movement and touch, with people running, stumbling and jostling in the dark streets. It’s a subtle and skilful way of evoking the terror and confusion they must have felt, being woken by yelling voices and then running around in the crowded streets in the dark. Then we get an artful simile, as Dryden compares the Londoners to ‘weary bees’ in a hive, who are roused to action when a ‘night-robber’ tries to steal their honey: So weary bees in little cells repose; But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive, An humming through their waxen city grows, And out upon each other’s wings they drive. This whole sequence gives us a remarkable high-level vista of the poor humans scurrying about their city. The point of view is like that of Gulliver towering over the tiny Lilliputians – in a poem published 60 years before Jonathan Swift’s famous Travels . But not all of the Londoners are just running about in a panic. Some of them are leaping into action to fight the fire: Now streets grow throng’d and busy as by day: Some run for buckets to the hallow’d quire: Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play; And some more bold mount ladders to the fire. And yes, that’s right, this is a description of an early fire engine. Peter Ackroyd quotes a contemporary description of ‘an Engine or Instrument’, which ‘with the help of tenne men to labor’, could pump more ‘than five hundred men with the helpe of Bucketts and laydels’. And I love the way this stanza concludes with the line: And some more bold mount ladders to the fire. So that the line ends, and the whole stanza ends, with the image of the silhouetted figure at the top of the ladder leaning out over the abyss of fire. But alas, the fire-fighters’ efforts are ‘in vain’, according to the next stanza: In vain: for from the east a Belgian wind His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent; The flames impell’d soon left their foes behind, And forward with a wanton fury went. It had to be a foreign wind, didn’t it? 17th century England was a very xenophobic and jingoistic place, so in the aftermath of his descriptions of sea-battles against the Dutch, it’s not surprising that Dryden can’t resist calling the east wind ‘a Belgian wind’. And then we get the final magnificent stanza of today’s passage: A quay of fire ran all along the shore, And lighten’d all the river with a blaze: The waken’d tides began again to roar, And wondering fish in shining waters gaze. The imagery here manages to be simultaneously daring, precise, horrifying and beautiful. He’s saying that as the fire spread rapidly along the shore of the River Thames, it became ‘a quay of fire’, ‘And lighten’d all the river with a blaze:’, which is a quite extraordinary metaphor. And the effect is heightened by the contrast between the attributes we would normally associate with a stone quay – solidity, darkness, cold, steadiness – with the attributes of fire – light, heat, ephemerality, destructiveness. A normal quay is a haven for ships and a platform for commerce; this is a place of terror. And if this image weren’t amazing enough, Dryden tops it with this startling change of perspective, where he give us a fishes’ eye view of the fire: The waken’d tides began again to roar, And wondering fish in shining waters gaze. You know, Dryden has often been criticised for being too prosaic; Matthew Arnold famously dismissed Dryden and Pope as ‘prose classics’, but to me this is really remarkable poetry. There are lots of fascinating accounts of the Great Fire of London, but it takes a poet to wonder how it must have looked to the fish in the River Thames. And I could go on, because Dryden does, at some length – he describes the progress of the fire, the King awakening and doing his best to save his subjects; the miraculous moment when God uses rain-clouds as a fire extinguisher; the scorched aftermath; and the vision of a modern city rising like a phoenix from the flames. So I do encourage you to have a read of the rest. And before we hear Dryden’s account again, I’d like to read you some of Samuel Pepys ’ famous description of the Great Fire of London, so we can see how the two writers took a very different approach to the same subject: Sunday 2 September 1666 (Lord’s day). Some of our mayds sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose and slipped on my nightgowne, and went to her window, and thought it to be on the backside of Marke-lane at the farthest; but, being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off; and so went to bed again and to sleep. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was and further off. So to my closett to set things to rights after yesterday’s cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high places, Sir J. Robinson’s little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge; which, among other people, did trouble me for poor little Michell and our Sarah on the bridge. So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King’s baker’s house in Pudding-lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus’s Church and most part of Fish-street already. So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. This is terrific too isn’t it? And it’s completely different to Dryden’s approach. Instead of the big picture, Pepys give us the first-person perspective, of being woken up in the middle of the night and looking out the window, then getting up and going out into the streets and climbing up to a higher place to get a better view. And we get all the little details, of Pepys’ nightgown, and the names of streets, and glimpses of ‘poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another’. And those pigeons hovering ‘about the windows and balconys’ until their wings were singed by the fire. By contrast, Dryden presents himself as an omniscient narrator, giving us a panoramic view of the city and the fire, zooming in on particular details and then zooming out again. Pepys gives us glimpses of real people, but the figures in Dryden’s account are more like a catalogue of types, carefully chosen, as we’ve seen, to balance out low and high status characters and give arepresentative sample of society – workers and merchants, revellers, murderers, courtesans, traitors, lovers, mothers, infants, and fire fighters. Whereas Pepys gives us the breathless first-hand account, with all its vividness, Dryden is more artful, both politically, as we have scene, and also poetically. It’s an unashamedly artificial style of writing, where we sense that every element has been carefully considered and composed. Pepys is reporting the fire, but Dryden is using it, even wielding it – it’s as if the poem is narrated by a giant holding up a burning torch to reveal the ancient wooden medieval city of London, illuminating it for a few shining moments before it vanishes forever. The Great Fire of London, from Annus Mirabilis By John Dryden Such was the rise of this prodigious fire, Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred, From thence did soon to open streets aspire, And straight to palaces and temples spread. The diligence of trades and noiseful gain, And luxury more late, asleep were laid: All was the night’s; and in her silent reign No sound the rest of nature did invade. In this deep quiet, from what source unknown, Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose; And first few scattering sparks about were blown, Big with the flames that to our ruin rose. Then in some close-pent room it crept along, And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed; Till the infant monster, with devouring strong, Walk’d boldly upright with exalted head. Now like some rich or mighty murderer, Too great for prison, which he breaks with gold; Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear, And dares the world to tax him with the old: So ’scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail, And makes small outlets into open air: There the fierce winds his tender force assail, And beat him downward to his first repair. The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld His flames from burning, but to blow them more: And every fresh attempt he is repell’d With faint denials weaker than before. And now no longer letted of his prey, He leaps up at it with enraged desire: O’erlooks the neighbours with a wide survey, And nods at every house his threatening fire. The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend, With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice: About the fire into a dance they bend, And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice. Our guardian angel saw them where they sate Above the palace of our slumbering king: He sigh’d, abandoning his charge to fate, And, drooping, oft look’d back upon the wing. At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze Call’d up some waking lover to the sight; And long it was ere he the rest could raise, Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night. The next to danger, hot pursued by fate, Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire: And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late, For helpless infants left amidst the fire. Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near; Now murmuring noises rise in every street: The more remote run stumbling with their fear, And in the dark men jostle as they meet. So weary bees in little cells repose; But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive, An humming through their waxen city grows, And out upon each other’s wings they drive. Now streets grow throng’d and busy as by day: Some run for buckets to the hallow’d quire: Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play; And some more bold mount ladders to the fire. In vain: for from the east a Belgian wind His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent; The flames impell’d soon left their foes behind, And forward with a wanton fury went. A quay of fire ran all along the shore, And lighten’d all the river with a blaze: The waken’d tides began again to roar, And wondering fish in shining waters gaze. John Dryden John Dryden was an English poet, playwright, and critic who was born in 1631 and died in 1700. He was one of the most influential figures in Restoration literature. His major works include Absalom and Achitophel , a political satire, and All for Love , a play inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra . As England’s first Poet Laureate, Dryden played a key role in shaping the transition from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in English literature, advocating for clarity, precision, and structure in written expression. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple , Spotify , Google Podcasts or your favourite app . You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email . The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman . A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Desire Path by Jude Rosen Episode 78 Desire Path by Jude Rosen Jude Rosen reads ‘Desire Path’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Reclamations from London’s EdgelandsAvailable from: Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from: The publisher:... Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Episode 77 Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The New... Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Episode 76 Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll.Poet Lewis CarrollReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessJabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the... The post The Great Fire of London, from Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden appeared first on A Mouthful of Air .…

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Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama by Carrie Etter 36:53

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To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell 38:44

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Homunculus by the Shore by Luke Palmer 32:03

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Sextain by William Drummond of Hawthornden 36:40

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DIY Sestina: What Would You Ask the Artist? by Terrance Hayes 50:43

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A Crocodile by Thomas Lovell Beddoes 27:32

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‘you are not in search of’ by Martyn Crucefix 41:45

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The Maldive Shark by Herman Melville 30:50

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The Future of A Mouthful of Air 23:25

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The Larder by Judy Brown 31:32

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Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 1 by Sir Philip Sidney 42:10

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Bede’s Sparrow by Isobel Dixon 41:05

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‘As I push the door’ by Harry Man and Endre Ruset 44:23

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Futility by Wilfred Owen 32:00

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From The Triumph of Life by Percy Bysshe Shelley 36:55

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Song about putting a bird in a pie by Luke Samuel Yates 37:37

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The Tyger by William Blake 41:04

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In the stillness of his moment, deciding by Tom Sastry 36:36

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‘For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry’ by Christopher Smart 44:18

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The Sanctioned State by Edward Doegar 36:33

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