Poetry Domestic Reading and listening to new poetry has recalled me to my own. I have written little this decade and shown none. I’ve now opened a folder for it, and posted two poems to it. Chip Delany wrote years ago that, for all the talk of the Golden Age of science fiction, there was little he could reread with pleasure. He was pleased to include his own, and I’m similarly pleased to find many of my own pieces endure — at least in my own ear.
Here’s a selection of my favourites. I’ve destroyed most of what I wrote in the 70s as adolescent mopery, a long indulgence in yearning and carrying torches. Letter from Prison and Odysseus’ Eyes show uncharacteristic flashes of insight into this. The Houses of the Rich was my first experience of ‘dictated’ poetry, the lines forming in my inner ear faster than I could write. A relentless reviser of verse, I scarcely touched this or the similarly dictated Tongues of Men and Angels, also from 1973, which would have got me into what was then the Anglo-Welsh Poetry Review had I been able to muster anything else that Gillian Clarke liked so well. The Snow, Now Fallen is a later dictated poem, which arrived whole and largely complete. Apart from the famous Villon quote, which I recall having on my mind at the time, I have little idea what inspired it. But my clear favourite from the whole decade is Chocolate and Stories, marking my flight abroad from a long self-immolation.
The 80s brought me the most extravagant compliment I have ever received for my poetry. My sister Joanne, who reads poetry not at all, wrote to me about Goodnight Girl — “It made me cry. How did you know?
” A Golden Age started as another piece of dictation, which I had to finish myself. Much influenced by Marilyn Hacker, I considered writing sonnets an indispensable mark of competence. None of them now pleases me much, though Alba: Dreaming, and The Hermitage, written while moping for the lovely and vivacious Ilse Kelvin, nearly do it for me. Dylan Thomas is a dangerous influence, but I like best Sir John on the Cross, where some insight into my Romance-blinded condition starts to emerge.
I wrote nothing in the early 90s I wished to keep. Then three poems emerged from two characters in a dream, Bear and Scarecrow. Some more sonneteering at the end of the decade, from a hopeless but instructive romance, from which The Abandoned Children stills floats my boat. But misery loves poetry, and The Tender Wells is the better poem by a long shot.
An Introduction To My Father had been gestating from scraps ever since his suicide in 1972. Twelfth Night, Hampstead Heath is my most recent piece.
Full of character The London Review of Books sells these essential mouse mats, charting most of the characters you can’t easily reach from your keyboard — like these em-dashes — unless you’re using Robert Bringhurst’s custom keyboard mapping from The Elements of Typographic Style .
Pass again through childhood In his new essay, The Solid Form Of Language, Robert Bringhurst writes “Mentally and socially, to learn another language, you must pass again through childhood.
” Linguist, poet and typographer, he must have passed through many childhoods. If I ever grow up I want to be just like him: tall, athletic, taciturn, gruff-voiced — a courteous and formidable presence in gold-rimmed spectacles. He effortlessly dominated the Purcell Room last night with the openings of two poems he had transcribed and translated from their native American oral forms, which each run to several hours.
In 2001 Bringhurst was the inaugural winner of the Canadian Griffin Prize. This year’s winner, American August Kleinzahler, was reading with him last night. He announced that he was pleased to find himself among so many talented Canadians, and feared that after the impending election, he would be seeing much more of talented Canadians.
Composition and performance are clearly distinguished in music. Few classical pieces are performed in public by their composers, nor the popular songs of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and others. Recent decades have restored to song writing the bardic tradition that folk singing never dropped. But are all poets ipso facto performers?
Kleinzahler and Bringhurst were not alone last night in delivering powerful performances. But not every poet can hold a room, even among the experienced ranks of the Griffin Prize finalists. I rarely attend poetry readings, because most poets I’ve heard read ineffectively. Is that strange? I read somewhere (the quote monkey missed it) that poetry is distinguished from prose by a closer relationship to the spoken language. It’s a trick to manifest that in writing, and another trick to perform it. Poor performance obscures the work; I can get it better off the page, dressing it in my own cadences and inflections. (Do I read poetry to hear what my own voice might say?)
Let’s get some help here. Let’s have actors perform poems, coached by the poets.
More punishment Andrew Gaines sends me another ticking-off from Australia. “Not good enough.
”
Acceptable Levels Of Mild Child Abuse With the comment facility still not enabled here, Donald Maclean and Andrew Gaines have each written from the Blue Mountains of NSW. Until I’ve turned on comments, I’ll keep taking ’em by email.
Well, SJT, your measured comments are what one might expect from a once beaten boy. Doubtless you were more orderly in classrooms thereafter. Barbarity is a fact however, and institutionalised abuse, though the subject of much anguish these days has not gone away. As the most beaten boy at both prep and public schools during my time there, I have a strong aversion to arguments rationalising the beating of children. I was a troubled soul on entering school, and certainly a handful, but years of beatings did nothing to help me understand life. And what, we might wonder, did it do to those who took such relish in wielding the canes and tawses?
The subject still gets me warm
12 October 2004
Well-written, I would say, but not up to your usual thoughtful standard. Does corporal punishment really help people mature? What is your evidence? Given that many kids are obstreperous or even violent in schools, a more thoughtful inquiry would wonder about the roots of this, and a more creative response would be to look for a range of alternatives to deal with this. This would take a bit of work — not that you should necessarily do it — but it appears to me that your response was off-the-cuff.
As for barbarism, while the label may be a moral judgment, there are some neurophysiological facts that relate. A prime one is that fear releases cortisol which inhibits brain development.
One translation of what you’re saying is that you are advocating acceptable levels of mild child abuse. Attached are several articles that go into different aspects of the effects of child abuse.
I do not deny that there is a real problem with emotionally immature people coming out of high school. It is a whole system problem; I suspect that returning to corporal punishment would be counterproductive for solving it.
» Body Pleasure And The Origins Of Violence (.doc 109Kb)
» Child Abuse Has Never Been An Acceptable Practice In The Heart Of Any Humane Person (.doc 38Kb)
» Quelling Children’s Violence Without Spanking (.doc 39Kb)
» School Violence With Kids (.doc 35Kb)
» Why Love Matters — How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain (.doc 32Kb)
28 October 2004
I find nothing to disagree with in the material you’ve sent me. You both challenge me with a ‘slippery slope’ argument. Is there any useful distinction between ‘discipline’ and licensed child abuse?
It seems to me there is, though Andrew would make me work hard to show it. “Discipline” is all too often a cover for violent expression of the problems of parents and teachers. But that does not mean that discipline neither exists nor has value.
Andrew questions the effectiveness of punishment. I recall from reading psychology that punishment is ineffective at promoting any kind of behaviour, but effective at extinguishing it. We are not talking about the loftier realms of the psyche here. But, animals that we also are, we are also evolved to learn effectively from pain.
Most of my life I’ve believed discipline has no value that could justify the risk of abuse. Now I see the costs of indiscipline, I question that. The cost is heavy. I can’t see how to weigh it against a physical pain. But that doesn’t mean the weighing can’t or shouldn’t be done.
My dear friend — the issue is not necessarily appropriately framed as being whether corporal discipline works or not. It often works by extinguishing the spirit, and with it any possible interest in learning, at least to some degree, and in my observation often to a great extent. The observation that in medicine there are no side effects, but only effects, applies here. But, as philosophers and innovative people we can question how the issue is framed. At the moment the discussion is focused on one ‘solution’. Not good enough.
29 October 2004
Music downloads I’ve recently been adding to the Goodies page recommendations for nice things I’ve found that you might not know. They include some of my favourite not-well-known albums, and there are now also some sample tracks you can download.
Sarah Moule launches her new album Something’s Gotta Give (Linn Records) at Pizza Express Jazz Club at 9pm on 2nd November, with more Fran Landesman lyrics set by Simon Wallace.
» Box office 020 7439 8722
No Fear BBC2 is currently airing Adam Curtis’ documentary series The Power of Nightmares challenging the seriousness of the threat of ‘international terrorism’. (Without a television, I’m surely the last person to notice this.) The series suggests that without big political causes to rally us, the US and UK governments are frightening us into supporting them. (Just one of the excellent reasons for not watching television.) David Goodhart has written in Prospect about the lamented ‘end of politics’, suggesting it is no bad thing if political issues have been reduced to questions about how to manage public services. Oooh, nooo — perhaps we should manufacture some political cause to occupy our masters lest they invent mischief like invading, say, Iraq. Yes, Minister?
» Guardian article
» BBC2 home page
In The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker reports studies showing that constant across human cultures is a liking for a savannah-like landscape combined with the figure of a warrior king. A statue of Tony Blair on Hampstead Heath? Fear and laziness are human constants too (I say) and we have to watch how far they incline us to fall in behind leaders.
Did you hear about Magda Lupescu
Who came to Romania’s rescue?
It’s a wonderful thing
To be under a king:
Is democracy better, I esk you?
Thanks to Bruce Schultz who included this in a letter to me in the Cyclades in 1973. Where are you now, Bruce — still a Dominican priest? My memory gave me “Lepescu” instead of “Lupescu”, “rode to” instead of “came to”, and “ruled by” instead of “under”. I’d always supposed Lepescu was a mediæval Romanian king. Having reviewed a Free Encyclopædia article, I’ve made the corrections above. Interestingly, a collection of limerics [sic] has the name misspelt the same way.
Surfing fools Miki’s latest article, on surfing in the south-west of England, has appeared at Air BE-PAL.
» Bodysurfing links
» MIKIY Photography
Dancing fools Hats off to Sebastian & Aysegül of Kazum and Doublemoon Records. Their Istanbul Nights at Darbucka in Clerkenwell are the dance venue I’ve been looking for these past several centuries. Friendly atmosphere, wild Balkan and Turkish music and dancing fools. There was a party mood almost touchable quite early. Nurtan’s belly dancing brought it to the surface, and then the dancing never stopped. A tip of the trilby too for lovely couple Hayati & Çigden, recently engaged, who danced together like two people in love, like you always wanted to see lovers dancing — almost sweet enough to give Romance its good name back. See you all next time.
Remembering Ken Iverson Ken Iverson died on Tuesday night at the age of 83. Dr Iverson invented the APL and J programming languages. I remember him as a dedicated teacher, and a masterly exponent of Socratic method. Teaching math at Harvard he found conventional mathematical notation unsatisfactory. A true maverick, he devised his own notation (A Programming Language, Wiley, 1962) and set about teaching the rest of the world to use it. IBM used ‘Iverson notation’ to write the first formal description of a computer; a machine implementation of Iverson notation became APL, and the rest is history.
Ken Iverson passed away Tuesday evening, October 19th at the age of 83. Ken was at his computer Saturday afternoon working on a new J lab when he had a stroke. Three days later he died quietly with his wife Jean by his side, along with other family members. Ken had a wonderful and memorable life. He enjoyed it fully and he freely shared his joy with so many others.
Many people have contributed to the start, growth, and evolution of J. But Ken's role was central and inspirational. J exists because of Ken and we will always remember that.
The J Forum was a particular joy for Ken. He was an avid reader and was amazed and pleased with the civility.
In his last days Ken expressed confidence that the J seeds he had planted had taken root and was satisfied that the steady and healthy growth would continue. Ken has passed a torch and it is now up to us.
Ken's immediate family is having a private memorial service. In lieu of flowers, please make a memorial donation to the charity of your choosing or to the Academy of Life Long Learning (www.allto.ca). Ken's life was based on the importance of education and teaching and in recent years, with Jean's serious involvement, the Academy was an important part of Ken's wider life outside of J.
Eric Iverson
Taste of Autumn This morning’s hangover courtesy of the Autumn Tasting at Anne Tupker’s Bouquet Wines. Anne teaches at the Institute of Masters of Wine, rara aves all, and MWs Nick Sowicz and Beverley Blanning were also sighted.
Beauty of the classics One of the pleasures of ageing is having the confidence to chat up attractive strangers. Seating myself yesterday on a packed southbound train to London, I found myself opposite a classically beautiful blonde in her twenties. Our other travelling companions were more of my age, and my peripheral vision was reporting pained wincing when I opened a conversation with the beauty. How embarrassing, he's Hitting On The Blonde. To my malicious pleasure, Fay turned out to a postgraduate classics student and we had an animated discussion of pre-Socratic psychology, Julian Jaynes, and Christopher Logue’s recreation of the Troy Story.
Fay, if you’re reading this and get in touch, I have a copy of Logue’s The Husbands for you, that I bought in an over-excited moment in Foyle’s, not noticing I already had it as part of War Music.
Also: August Kleinzahler and Christopher Logue will be reading at the LRB Bookshop on 1 November at 7pm. I’ve been immersed in Kleinzahler’s new collection, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: here’s the title poem:
The markets never rest
Always they are somewhere in agitation
Pork bellies, titanium, winter wheat
Electromagnetic ether peppered with photons
Treasure spewing from Unisys A-15J mainframes
Across the firmament
Soundlessly among the thunderheads and passenger jets
As they make their nightlong journeys
Across the oceans and steppes
Nebulae, incandescent frog spawn of information
Trembling in the claw of Scorpio
Not an instant, then shooting away
Like an enormous cloud of starlings
Garbage scows move slowly down the estuary
The lights of the airport pulse in morning darkness
Food trucks, propane, tortured hearts
The reticent epistemologist parks
Gets out, checks the curb, reparks
Thunder of jets
Peristalsis of great capitals
How pretty in her tartan scarf
Her ruminative frown
Ambiguity and Reason
Locked in a slow, ferocious tango
Of if not, why not
by August Kleinzahler, from The Strange Hours Travelers Keep
Poetry International Poets Robert Bringhurst and August Kleinzahler read at the Purcell Room on Thursday 28 October. You’ll remember Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style went camping in Dorset with me; also my enthusiasm for Kleinzahler’s memoir of his big bad brother Cutty, One Rock, soon to appear in book form, as I see in the LRB.
The Truth Behind the Cow with the White Belt For our Japanese-speaking readers, Miki’s article on the Galloway Belties on Dartmoor has been published at air BE-PAL
Notes and Comments and apologies those of you who’ve been trying to post comments. A complaint from Donald Maclean in NSW woke me up to something missing from my recent upgrade to Movable Type 3.1: you need to sign in with a TypeKey registration to post comments now. But my incomplete upgrade leaves you no way to sign in. Sorry sorry sorry. I’ll get to it as soon as I’ve digested this tutorial from Learning Movable Type.
Religious studies The classical Buddhist term for the illusory nature of the world is maya. But 'illusory' is a shade abstract for contemporary English. The word we want for it is bollocks.
All too rarely a certain mood settles on me as I scan a library or bookstore shelf. Then lightning strikes. It seems to involve a surrender on my part, a willingness to be surprised. And Providence provides. In such a mood years ago I picked up Tim Powers’ Last Call in a bookstore in Manly, Australia. Once picked, the cover enticed: a Grail story, a fight for a magical Fisher Kingship, set in Las Vegas in Holy Week, 1990. A page sampled at random confirmed Powers can write. And how — he has John Le Carré’s gift with thought and dialogue.
Last week I picked up The Calligrapher, a first novel by Edward Docx. And fell asleep over it the next night, finishing it in a second gulp the following day. How could I resist this tale of a London calligrapher, unreconstructed æsthete and womaniser, woven around the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne, which I’ve now caught as a secondary infection. I wonder, by my troth, what ’twas I read of Donne’s ere I found Docx.
» Chapter 1 of Last Call, by Tim Powers
» Review of The Calligrapher
Corporal punishment A BBC News article on discipline in education invites comment, but the script breaks down. Here are some thoughts anyway.
Two of the objects of punishment are to stop and to deter misbehaviour. Corporal punishment was abolished for being barbarous and unnecessary: we might substitute other forms of punishment, more suited to civilised society.
Schooling children without corporal punishment was largely unprecedented, given that it wasn't the intention to remodel all schools on experiments like Summerhill. It was not established fact that corporal punishment was unnecessary, it was a theory. A credible theory at the time, when social norms pressed more strongly upon individuals and families, and one with persuasive support, but still a theory.
Abolishing corporal punishment has successfully tested the theory. The test has been a success not because we are pleased with the present indiscipline, but because we have a clear verdict. Corporal punishment is not unnecessary. Substitute punishments have not stopped and deterred misbehaviour sufficiently to preserve the order required in classrooms.
There remains the charge of barbarity. Barbarity is not a fact either; it is a moral judgement. I was beaten once at school as a punishment. I remember it as painful and humiliating, and I have no enthusiasm for hurting or humiliating children. But I weigh this against an education that leaves too many overgrown truculent children insensible of the price they will pay for failing to grow up. We have a responsibility to educate the next generation. Neglecting it is barbarous.
Breakfast of champignons with Norman Fyans and Stephen & Susanne Brady introduced us to the heart-stopping Omelette Arnold Bennett, possibly the best thing that's melted in my mouth for several years.
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Troy Boy Brad Pitt reminds me of Brando in the heavy, dangerous presence he creates for the brooding Achilles in Troy. Director Wolfgang Petersen has opened a window into the pre-humanist world, though he ducks the treatment of women as property and the consequent homosexuality of romance. (Patroclus is shown only as Achilles' cousin, not lover; and a romance is conjured between Achilles and Patreis.) Worse, Brian Cox's Agamemnon keeps reminding me of Brian Blessed's King Richard IV from The Black Adder. As befits the 21st century, the much-invoked gods stay out of the action, which plausibly reduces the 10-year siege into a matter of weeks.
An engaging retelling of the oldest tale. But for the real wide-screen version, nothing contemporary beats the cinematic technique of Christopher Logue's War Music.
like sucking in cold air on a chipped tooth — painful, but you know you are alive. And the battle scenes belittle anything from Hollywood. reviewer at Amazon
They still do.