Dear Mairead,
I think he was -- he shows real technical daring for my money, and for the
best of reasons: the work still startles.
The pruse, now: "Signposts" is full of the most wonderful observations --
and remarks about women you have to be very generous about the times and the
attitudes in order to tolerate.
I think the first aphorism goes to it very well in relation to the late
stuff -- and works for me:
"There is only one Muse, the Comic Muse. In Tragedy there is always
something of a lie. Great poetry is always comic in the profound sense.
Comedy is abundance of life."
Best,
Bill H
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: pain <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 12 March 2000 15:38
Subject: Re: Kavanagh [Was: No doubt about it enfin]
>I think I would tend to agree with David's Irish supervisor re Kavanagh,
>although it might depend whether I liked him (the supervisor) or not.
>I do find Kavanagh very funny, and I do think satire was his major mode
>during the fifties. I keep going back to the difference between the
>poetry and the prose -- he was a very relaxed, accomplished, prose writer.
>No-one seems to object to his prose as they do to his poetry (I think I
>was a bit extreme when I said the literati spat on his work, dribbled
>might be closer to the mark though I can guess how wounding such a
>reception would be). Kavanagh was criticised for the laxness (trying to
>play a true note on a slack string) of his poetry; it reminds me of
>Robert Lowell's later work and the true dilemma, at some point, of trying
>to tell the difference between poetry and prose. I was very interested to
>read your post about W.H. Davies below. I think many people do murmur
>Kavanagh with love. I also think that he was an extremely sophisticated
>poet, though I know I have very little company in that opinion.
>Mairead
>
>On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, pain wrote:
>
>> Kavanagh shares something in common with W.H. Davies, both from lowly
>> backgrounds, both self-educated, both capable of churning out simple,
>> lyrical verse that had an appeal to the ear but was not really
>> intellectually stimulating --both knew that they wrote some dreadful
verse,
>> but both had to make a living from this kind of hack work, though Davies
was
>> later on in life granted a Civil List pension --he continued to write far
>> too much according to critics. I remember being in a bookshop in Hereford
>> and encountering a retired Welsh miner who was reading some poetry.
During a
>> brief conversation he recited some of Davies' poetry. Of course
"Leisure":
>>
>> What is this life, full of care,
>> We have no time to stand and stare?--
>>
>> and some others. That episode made me want to read more about Davies and
his
>> verse. I managed to get a first edition of his autobiographical fiction
of
>> his time in Wales --and again an incident that is remarkable --was the
scene
>> in which children threw stones at Davies while he was on the "tramp". I
>> doubt if their lives can redeem their verse, but when I read Kavanagh and
>> Davies I think of the difference between the British reception of such
>> writers, and the equivalent in Spanish or Italian, where such writers are
>> held in high esteem and their poetry still regularly recited or sung.
>>
>>
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