DHL 'Poet Without a Mask'

In the introduction to the Penguin edition of D.H.Lawrence's, The Complete Poems, a critic says that DHL is 'poet without a mask' and this is really what he is:  his poems (with the exception of his early rhyming poems) are beautiful effusions of feeling and imagination free from masks of poetic convention or bourgeois comportment. In a way they are slightly mad, but of the spiritual madness type rather than the mental type, or maybe a little of both. Perhaps they are influenced by his chronic TB. Anyhow you cannot fail to be swept along on these ranting flourishes even if you feel that he has gone beyond the envelope.  He could be compared with Walt Whitman; but Walt for all his randy unorthodoxy was still a Victorian in manner and unkempt mode.  Of the literary types, 'priests, prophets and purveyors' DHL is definitely among the prophets.  As a prophetic writer he speaks to the core of man and to the eternal. He speaks less to our particular  time because we are not moved by any man's mighty soul; now there are no great men. It takes a flame to catch onto another flame. 

FLOWERS AND MEN

Flowers achieve their own floweriness and it is a miracle. 
Men don't achieve their own manhood, alas, oh alas! alas!

All I want of you, men and women,
all I want of you
is that you shall achieve your own beauty
as the flowers do. 

Oh leave off saying I want you to be savages.
Tell me, is the gentian savage, at the top of the course stem?
Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?

[I want you to be a savage] as the gentian and the daffodil.
Tell me! tell me! is there in you a beauty to compare
to the honeysuckle at evening now
pouring out his breath. 

PRAYER

Give me the moon at my feet
Put my feet upon the crescent, like a Lord!
O let my ankles be bathed in moon light, that I 
    may go
sure and moon-shod, cool and bright-footed
towards my goal.

For the sun is hostile now 
his face is like the red lion. 

Counterculture

There is a common perception that the counter-culture movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's was primarily a period of exuberant youth seeking escape through 'dropping out', irresponsible idleness, promiscuity and illicit drugs. Without doubt there was plenty of this and being so visible and salacious it attracted the attention of the media and influenced the  lazy eye of history. It is overlooked that the perhaps risible revolt of youth was cynosure of a much broader and quieter reflection about the nature of man, community and work. This can be seen in the flourish of literature on these subjects. To cite a few:  E.F Schumacher, Herbert Marcuse, Charles A. Reich, Alan Watts, Theodore Roszak, Norman O Brown and Paul Goodman. The common theme of  these writers was to question the diminished quality of human life in the industrial state with its worship of efficiency, corporatism, consumerism and conformity. This led to a discussion in society of  alternative ways of organisation and enhancement of human consciousness, in the broadest sense, in living.  

From my comfortable position I participated in this discussion and it changed my outlook of life considerably. I also noticed how society was  picking up on some of these new ideas and incorporating them into mainstream living. One can think of a growth in interpersonal sensitivity, humanistic values, changes in the lives of women, sexual tolerance and a doing away of various stigmas arising from formal religions. The counter-culture movement, of course, failed in its raison d'etre of enhancing consciousness and freeing man from the fetters of the industrial state.  Society is still pretty much the same, and worse in some respects. The survival of the status quo was, however, inevitable and is shared to some extent by all idealistic and utopian schemes. What is disturbing, however, is that the notion of a counter culture no longer exists.  We seem to have capitulated and in doing so have lost our capacity to imagine something better. In this sense the 'System' has had a double victory. A society which does not dream is in danger of losing its heart. 

Robert Persig in Lilia has this to say:

'Of these periods (WWII to 1970; then present), the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoilt children, and the period following their departure as a 'return' to values, whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of values.' (my parentheses) 

William Cowper

I am drawn to 18th Century English poet, William Cowper for his personality and poetry. He lived after a mental breakdown in his youth  in the care of friends in the English country side.  His semi-invalid life was punctuated with periods of  intense depressive suffering and, to use the extant term, madness. This fall from respectability of vocation and livelihood followed an attempt to take his highly sensitive soul and precarious mental state into the world of a law clerk. His poetry is the work of a sheltered being seeking through his endeavours to find meaning in the beauty of nature and the rhythms of a retired life. This is complemented with the enlightened and refined spirit of the marvellous century of his life.  So taking his simple materials to hand, his poetry turned to rural scenes, shrubs, trees, snails, rabbits, cats and  homely objects. One might surmise that his plain style was an attempt not to put too much pressure on his fragile nerves; not to force himself into something ambitious and grand. His subjects and his style created a lovely and timeless poetry. Cowper became one of the most beloved poets of his time and emerges from a bevy of 18th Century poets to be read in modern times. His letters are also delightful exercises in gentle manners and tactful sensibility.  I am lucky to have an 1835 fine bound collected edition of his works (Saunders and Otley) and it sits in pride of place in my lounge room bookcase.  Seeking repose on a winter's night before a fire there is nothing so refreshing a to dip into the handsome bindings of my Cowper's Works.

Engraving from Cowper's Works of his house at Weston 

J. Krishnamurti: wiseman, no guru

It was around the age of 14 that I discovered the Indian thinker
J. Krishnamurti.   He is the Doubters 'guru' and was a refreshing contrast to the Jesuit indoctrination I was receiving at school. What attracted me to Krishnmurti was that he seemed to hone in on the central human problem before that problem seeks escapist solutions in religion and metaphysics. As with the core philosophy of the Buddha, Krishnamurti was concerned with the malaise of the human psych which leads to  confusion, delusion and suffering. While Krishnamurti would have disavowed it, I suggest that by some process of osmosis he spoke a variant of the language of  the Buddha.  In other words how the psych in encountering reality never really sees clearly in the present moment but is interpreting through the accumulations or the conditioning of  experience which is formed by fear and attraction, our persistent craving and desire for permanence. But K was not one for meditation or rituals or elaborate canons of scripture all of which just create more conditioning. He eschewed followers or devotees. Having said this neither Krishnmurti nor the myriad of charismatic sages make much of another stumbling block to the cure of the ills of the individual and that is that a large proportion inherit neurotic complexes; these sit in the psych and emerge at inappropriate moments to cause havoc.  For these folk it is one thing to know the source of the problem another to effect the change necessary. But it is always better to know where you stand in the neurotic scale than be ignorant.  We all know those people who pass through life causing a trail of destruction thinking that all this is normal and they are merely being true to themselves. 

Academic Poets

At the Lifeline Bookfair I picked up a copy of The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets (published 1985).  It cost all of $3, a knock down price but some of the pages are falling out. As the title suggests, the poets are young and fresh in the promising stage of their poetic careers.  There is a section for each poet and  photographic portrait.   I have got into the way of looking up the poets by doing an on-line search. It is interesting to see that so many took the literary studies path, moved into academia and are now hallowed figures in American college settings. Of course they no longer look like their photographs and it is sad to see how quickly the bloom of youth fades into the nondescript blur of middle age.  Now they are seasoned college staff  with slight to significant reputations and books of poetry to their credit. Some have branched out to short stories and novels. You can see they have become part of a literary establishment.  One supposes the rage has gone out of them.  Life must be sweet with a captive audience of  students, speaking events, visiting positions and levers upon the grail of publishing. I tend to think that what is good for poetry is the precarious and simple life close to the common run of men and women. It is better to be a low-ranked colonial public servant like C. P. Cavafy or public revenue collector like the William Wordsworth, or, perhaps, just starving in a proverbial garret (but not mad was Chatterton).  The artificiality of academe, the aura of respectability, the dreary round of campus  life must be deadening to the muse.   

Here is a quotation from my commonplace book:

'In the end one comes back to the most obstinate question of all. Isn't there a certain basic antagonism between the very nature of a university and the very spirit of literature?  The academic mind is cautious, tightly organised, fault-finding, competitive -- and above all, aware of other academic minds. Think of the atmosphere of suspicion implied by the habit of fitting out the most trivial quotation with a reference, as though it were applying for a job. Think of the whole idea of regarding literature as a discipline. Literature can be strenuous or difficult or deeply disturbing; it can be a hundred things -- but a discipline is not one of them. Discipline means compulsion, and an interest in literature thrives on spontaneity, eager curiosity, the anticipation of pleasure; it is unlikely that a reader who comes to a book under duress, or weighed down with a sense of duty, will ever really read it at all, however much he may learn about it. Even the most intensely serious literature needs to be approached with a certain lightness of heart, if it is to yield it full intensity.'

John Cross
The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters

Currawongs in the persimmon

I am very fortunate to have persimmon tree outside my window.  It is in a courtyard surrounded by camellias and azaleas.  It was planted in 1972 and has never grown too big so it keeps it ornamental quality. The persimmon tracks the seasons and now it is bearing small orangey yellow fruit. The long dry spell over summer has not been kind to the tree or its fruit despite our  additional irrigation from rainwater tank. In early autumn appear the currawong  which swoop into the dark green foliage and eat the sticky pulp.  The fruit at this time is hard and the birds consume  it all before it has a chance to become ripe and edible. The fruit which falls from beak to the ground is put on the wall; if the currawong does not salvage it the possums do. Having tasted a persimmon and not liking it I do not miss the opportunity to eat the fruit. It is an acquired taste. The pictures below are glossy from the gentle rain. 

PERSIMMON TREE

Up and down on the bare stems

the currawongs sway

tugging at their find,

light flashing off

oil and black feather,

their yellow and black eyes

super-cautious, malevolent.

Every year they come,

harvesting the unwanted crop

never looking older as we do,

generations to the same tree,

while we, half-hidden, watch,

wondering what the taste is like to them;

is it the sticky, floury sweetness,

the acquired flavour

not to our taste?

The season turns into short days,

the foliage is all but gone,

far out on a thin branch,

like a Chinese lantern on a pole,

hangs one remaining persimmon.

A currawong steps out cautiously,

the head jerking in an arc,

sticks clasping a stick, watching,

ever the black seeing eye.

Bird pecks from as far as dares

and the branch bounces wildly,

the talons tighten, the wings arch,

the air flapped for balance.

The persimmon and the bird

spring in unison, a pas de deux

in black and orange; an

unintended comedy.

A reach down to the fruit

leaving V shapes in the soft skin,

then a gobbling of the pinkish pap inside.

But it is hard work and precarious.

A few more pecks and an air borne woosh.

Later we take off this hacked piece

and place it on the courtyard wall.

The currawong returns and finishes it off.

It is a shame to waste good fuel

for a frosty night. 

George Herbert

Simone Weil was deeply affected by the poem Love III by George Herbert.  I could never see what Weil saw in this poem which seems saccharine,  pious and self-pitying. 'Love' in this case is a trope for God alias Jesus.  Herbert feeling 'Guilty of dust and sin' is beckoned by Love to 'taste my meat'.  Given that Weil, a non-observant Jew, did not really believe in the personal God but, as far as I can gather, a divine mystical force to be reached by 'waiting' and 'decreation' it is strange she is moved by what is plainly a coy poetical love feast between Herbert and his personal God.  I could understand Weil's ineffable approach to the divine but am confronted by the literalness of Herbert. I have just finished reading, Music At Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury.  I am perhaps at some accord with Weil that in being acquainted with Herbert and reading his verse one can see something of the pure soul and this in itself is refreshing set alongside our confused time of shallowness, distraction and self-absorption.   Herbert so wove his humble life around the Christian project that his hallowed spirit is infused into his poems and his life. To read Herbert is to walk with him and feel welcome and trusted. Herbert is also a foil to the worldliness of contemporary Christianity with its powerful establishments, money-mindedness and pecuniary incursions into secular spheres. As for Weil - I see more Buddhism in her cosmic view than religion.  Those who 'sit' in quiet meditation are about the practice of 'decreation'. John Drury (a chaplain and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford) is  sympathetic but objective, scholarly but not abstruse.