Reflections on a Book of Poetry
Jun. 7th, 2020 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Today's my birthday, as it happens, and one of the presents I got was especially welcome -- a copy of Prose Chants and Proems, the second voume of poetry published by Ross Nichols, the Druid on the left. (Yes, that last word is "proems" with an R, not "poems" -- literary types between the wars used that label for things that were halfway between poetry and prose.) At this point I have three of the four volumes of poetry he published during his life -- the first, Sassenach Stray, a poetic journal of his travels in northwestern Scotland, is a very rare book indeed and I don't expect ever to find a copy. I'm not generally much of a collector, but I've made an exception for Nichols' poetry. Partly that's because my introduction to Druidry came by way of the order he founded, the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids, so in a very real sense Nichols is one of my spiritual ancestors; his vision of Druidry has probably done more to shape mine than any other single influence. Partly it's because I genuinely like his poetry; my taste in verse was very heavily shaped by TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Robinson Jeffers, and others of their generation, and Nichols learned a great deal from the first two at least.
But there's also the fact that his poetry is one of the many aspects of 20th century literary culture that have been all but forgotten these days, and deserve a better fate. There's really quite a lot that falls into that category. The novel I finished reading last night, Thomas Mann's Royal Highness, is another example. These days if anybody remembers Mann at all, it's usually for The Magic Mountain or Death in Venice, or just possibly Buddenbrooks -- good solid stories all. Royal Highness is a much lighter piece. It's a fine satiric comedy about the royal house of a third-rate German principality around the beginning of the 20th century; it's got a romantic element, and a happy ending; and it's a hilarious read, though since it's Mann, it's also got no shortage of sad and poignant moments.
On a different plane, but still worth remembering, are three children's novels I prized in my early years: The Cloud Forest, The Light Maze, and The Whirling Shapes, all by the British children's writer Joan North. She belonged to that once-common class of children's authors -- L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, was another -- who put a good deal of authentic spirituality into her novels, and all three tales stand up surprisingly well to an adult's eyes. As far as I know they've been out of print for decades, though as far as I know they're still in copyright. Maybe someone can find the heirs and see if they'd be interested in a new edition.
Generally, as the 20th century fades into historical memory, it's high time for those who are interested to start combing through the vast amount of literature that came out during that hundred-year interval. Many of the most ballyhooed books of the era deserve the oblivion that's already closing around them -- Portnoy's Complaint comes to mind! -- but there are plenty of treasures worth saving and reviving.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 01:16 am (UTC)--Tangerine Tangential Eel
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 01:20 am (UTC)Happy Birthday
Date: 2020-06-08 01:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 01:35 am (UTC)Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat
Proems!
Date: 2020-06-08 02:18 am (UTC)I’ve always loved prose poems (WS Merwin has a great book), and have even written some over the years.
Proem is a much better term for the form.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 02:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 03:09 am (UTC)Have you read any of James Stoddard's fantasies? The High House, The False House, and Evenmere? I'm not sure how to describe them - a Neoplatonist Christian fable set in an infinite Victorian house that has its own nations nestled within the halls. I have to think that C.S. Lewis was a definite inspiration.
I highly recommend them.
-Cliff
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 03:23 am (UTC)This is a synchronicity, since I'm currently starting to dig through some literature from the 20th century and seeing what is worth saving; much of it isn't, but there are some gems in there!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 05:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 06:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 07:02 am (UTC)- The MM commenter with the question about visualizing archangels in LBRP
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 08:41 am (UTC)Happy Birthday to you!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 09:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 10:11 am (UTC)Happy Birthday!
Date: 2020-06-08 11:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 11:05 am (UTC)Sadly I think many people nowadays only read what is on their phone. I used to read a lot more books pre-internet. When I get the train it is a very rare person reading a book now. Most are glued to screens which to be fair, can contain useful information but nothing like the depth of a good book.
Proems
Date: 2020-06-08 11:23 am (UTC)Happy birthday!
Date: 2020-06-08 12:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 02:21 pm (UTC)That book might need a big spell to get it! I'm sure you're aware of it but there seem to be copies available on a few American libraries: https://www.worldcat.org/title/sassenach-stray-a-set-of-eight-variations-and-tailpiece/oclc/4961638#borrow
Manuel
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 05:46 pm (UTC)A belated Happy Birthday to you
Date: 2020-06-08 06:13 pm (UTC)CRP
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 06:25 pm (UTC)--Sister Crow
Faery Lore in Children's Books
Date: 2020-06-08 06:36 pm (UTC)Rosalie K. Fry is another one of those children's writers from the twentieth century, worth saving. Her books were mostly written in the fifties. People today, if they know her at all, would be from the book "Children of the Western Isles" later titled "The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry", later made into a film by John Sayles called "The Secret of Roan Inish".
That was an excellent book, but I really loved her pretty much forgotten "Whistler in the Mist" which weaves in the lore of the Lady of the Lake as follow (from an old blog post I wrote on the subject)...
Part of the back story in Whistler In the Mist is that the young heroines ancient ancestor on her mom’s side was actually the Lady in the Lake. This story is based on a traditional tale associated with the Llyn y Fan Fach, one of two lakes folded into the Black Mountain of Wales. The son of a widow from the nearby town of Blaen Sawdde agreed to marry a beautiful girl who arose from the lake. As is typical of Faery stories a stipulation is laid upon him, that if he hits the lady three times she will return to the lake. This eventually happens, as he strikes her in admonishment for things such as laughing at a funeral and crying at a wedding. The faery’s think and feel differently than us and the Lady of the Lake was not accustomed to our learned social behaviors. By the time the widows son had hit her three times she had already born him children. So it is with sadness she returns to the lake. From time to time her kids go to the lake and she instructs them in herbal lore (among other things), and one son in particular, Rhiwallon. He, with his brothers, eventually went on to the court of Rhys Gryg where they became the famous Physicians of Myddfai beginning a tradition of handing down this knowledge from one generation to another. A number of their herbal recipes and medical formulas were preserved in The Red Book of Hergest. I knew about none of this before reading The Whistler in the Mist...
...so it was quite the find, and quite the education in a strain of faery lore.
So many books like this, forgotten mostly, but worth saving and remembering and passing on.
Re: Faery Lore in Children's Books
Date: 2020-06-09 09:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 06:47 pm (UTC)Averagejoe
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 07:54 pm (UTC)I need to find a decent printed book or booklet on poetic forms. I couldn't even find a class in poetics in the UNM English department. Nor would I probably have taken it if they had expected me to write any poetry.
poetic forms
Date: 2020-06-09 01:34 am (UTC)Poet Mark Strand is author of _The Making of a Poem: a Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms_. I wrote a pantoum with its aid. It has been out several years, so should be available used.
Rita
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 09:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 07:55 pm (UTC)Tangerine Hyperactive Toad, wishing I could steal a motorcar (and probably wreck it) and go adventuring.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 09:49 pm (UTC)The Second Coming
Date: 2020-06-08 09:30 pm (UTC)Belated birthday blessings Brother ~ •
May this be your best year yet.
~ Carnelian Exiguous Eel
- -
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
~ WB Yeats
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 12:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 09:38 pm (UTC)The games played with offering death, compelling death, and cheating death left my young mind challenged to make sense of desire, jealousy, ambition, and regret as final motivations — choices that will follow you into death, if not bring you there sooner. The idea that wishing long grieving lines on someone still young could be an act of good will and respect still awes me.
American culture is almost completely backwards if the quality of our living and dying matters more than the quantity. Is it easier during an unstable dark age to remember to practice living according to time-tested virtues, or is it always an elusive lesson? Has our temporary accomplishment in delaying death merely cursed us into devaluing life? We certainly have cultivated lazy self-indulgence to gargantuanly distorted proportions.
Thank you for this reminder; I think it is high time I reread Cards of Grief. May your new year bring you much joy and wonder, enough to share with all you encounter!
— Christophe
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-09 09:51 pm (UTC)