POETRY GROUP BLOG June 8th 2020

I am not sure if Sue is the only one involved in home education- but for anyone who is the Poetry Society has some excellent free resources.

https://resources.poetrysociety.org.uk/poetry-train/

SONNETS

PLEASE do NOT feel patronised by me suggesting people look at their teaching resource for young poets on Sonnets. Anybody who does, feel free to attempt to teach me long division or fractions…your revenge will be sweet.

https://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/features/exploring-shakespeares-sonnets/

I have deliberately chosen Shakespeare’s sonnets because I was alert to any patronising or simplistic explanation and my Shakespeare antennae remained steady.

RAGWORT 

I do think John Clare’s Ragwort is a sonnet. Despite his limited education he attended school until he was twelve and he was inspired to write poetry by buying a copy of The Seasons by the Scottish poet James Thompson – a book he was devoted to and carried with him. (see Extra Poem). He would certainly know what a sonnet was. As well as being a poet and a critical reader of poetry, John Clare was one of the earliest collectors of folk songs- both lyrics and tunes- in England, as well as writing  descriptions of the folk customs and beliefs of his native Helpston in Northamptonshire.

WILLIAM BLAKE

I have read and loved Blake almost all my life. I learnt to read when I was three and I remember reading The Tyger when I was at Infant School. He was the perfect poet for a small child as Songs of Innocence and Experience combines extreme simplicity of form with complex and mysterious meanings. Although Blake was childless his poems show great sympathy and compassion for children, as well as robins in cages and dogs starved at their master’s gates.

From an early age, he saw the world in symbolic form and it seems clear that the religion his parents practised (dissenting sects proliferated at the time of his birth and no one knows where the Blake family worshipped) was full of joy and visionary possibilities. He wrote in a poem:

"The Angel that presided over my birth, Said “Little creature formed of Joy and Mirth, Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth”

Which seems a most excellent blessing for any child.

He did not attend school, although he was the child of parents who belonged to a dissenter sect and dissenters placed a high value on education and there were a number of dissenter schools in London. However, he read voraciously and the streets of London he walked became a vast book which taught him to see as an artist, poet and passionate radical. At eight he walked to Peckham Rye and saw a “tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars”. He saw visions of angels throughout his life, and died singing.

He was a gentle, kindly, generous man- but never a conventional or placid person. A friend in his later life Frederick Tatham, an English artist who was a member of the Shoreham Ancients, a colony of artists who followed Blake – most notably Samuel Palmer- described how his stocky body was never still “his hair seemed to flame above his head (Blake was a red head) his eyes blazed out, startlingly wide and large and his hands always held a pen or brush which he constantly rolled between his fingers”.

(I digress to say that although Tatham wrote various biographical details about Blake and after Blake’s death supported his widow who nominally worked as his housekeeper, he claimed after her death that she had left him all her husband’s works. This claim brought him into conflict with another Ancient member, John Linnell, who insisted that Blake's sister should have inherited them. Tatham also tried to extract paintings that Linnell himself owned, though Linnell had bought them from the artist. Shortly afterwards, Tatham joined a millenarian sect, becoming a follower of Edward Irving who founded the Catholic Apostolic Church and unfortunately his new religious dogmatism led him to destroy a significant number of Blake's works in the belief that they had been inspired by the devil.)

He would walk forty miles in a day and would shut himself up for a week to focus on a work in progress. His wife Catherine once said “I have very little of Mr Blake’s company; he is always in Paradise.”

He lived in turbulent times and took part in them too, joining the Gordon Rioters in 1780 to watch them burn down Newgate Prison, and wearing a provocative French Revolutionary “liberty cap” in 1789. He knew Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. Living in Lambeth, he frequently got involved in street brawls intervening if he saw cruelty to women, children or animals. In 1803, he was charged with sedition and assault at Chichester because he threw a soldier out of his garden. I think he lived in Innocent and Experienced times- times of innocent and passionate idealism and hope and times of great sorrow and disillusionment.

 Songs of Innocence and Experience

Some interesting “concrete” things

·       The verses are very easy to memorise and it is believed that he set several to his own tunes, although no scores survive. They resonate with popular lyrics- ballads, folk songs, songs, street seller’s cries.

·       Blake worked on the poems for nearly ten years, between 1784 and 1793.

·     

  He designed, lettered, engraved, printed and water coloured each plate individually so each book was an individual work of art.

·       Less than 30 copies were sold in his life time.

As to their meaning and complexity- who can presume to say? The poems have been interpreted by Freudian, Jungian, Marxist, Neoplatonic, Buddhist and Christian Gnostic critics in the last fifty years.

Me- I go with “the cistern contains, the fountain overflows”.

EXTRA POEM

I’ve chosen an extract from The Seasons where James Thomson is writing about Spring and the birds’ courtship

But no sooner grows

The soft Infusion prevalent, and wide,

Than, all alive, at once their Joy o’erflows

In Musick unconfin’d. Up-springs the Lark,

Shrill-voic’d, and loud, the Messenger of Morn;

Ere yet the Shadows fly, he mounted sings

Amid the dawning Clouds, and from their Haunts

Calls up the tuneful Nations. Every Copse

Deep-tangled, Tree irregular, and Bush

Bending with dewy Moisture, o’er the Heads

Of the coy Quiristers that lodge within,

Are prodigal of harmony. The Thrush

And Wood-lark, o’er the kind contending Throng

Superior heard, run thro’ the sweetest Length

Of Notes; when listening Philomela deigns

To let them joy, and purposes, in Thought

Elate, to make her Night excel their Day.

The Black-bird whistles from the thorny Brake;

The mellow Bullfinch answers from the Grove:

Nor are the Linnets, o’er the flow’ring Furze

Pour’d out profusely, silent. Join’d to these

Innumerous Songsters, in the freshening Shade

Of new-sprung Leaves, their Modulations mix

Mellifluous. The Jay, the Rook, the Daw,

And each harsh Pipe discordant heard alone,

Aid the full Concert: while the Stock-dove breathes

A melancholy Murmur thro’ the whole.

’Tis Love creates their Melody, and all

This Waste of Music is the Voice of Love;

That even to Birds, and Beasts, the tender Arts

Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind

Try every winning way inventive Love

Can dictate, and in Courtship to their Mates

Pour forth their little Souls. First, wide around,

With distant Awe, in airy Rings they rove,

Endeavouring by a thousand Tricks to catch

The cunning, conscious, half-averted Glance

Of their regardless Charmer. Should she seem

Softening the least Approvance to bestow,

Their Colours burnish, and by Hope inspir’d,

They brisk advance; then, on a sudden struck,

Retire disorder’d; then again approach;

In fond rotation spread the spotted Wing,

And shiver every Feather with Desire.

James Thomson

1700- 1748

He’s probably best known for writing the lyrics of Rule Britannia but I highly recommend The Seasons and he shares Clare’s pastoral knowledge and  celebration of nature.

 I spent a happy time in Clissold Park last week  watching a hopeful male pigeon with the most beautify iridescent neck - as though he had put on a rainbow as a scarf in an attempt to woo a female. She spurned him alas.

FINALLY

Barbara has chosen June 8^th’s poem and I understand she gave you a link to find out more about Anne Ridler.

Best Wishes, Elizabeth