Wow! I never expected all of this... But I don’t mind the points being made!
I guess this might end up being a long, long, reply. (So, put the kettle on,
get out the biscuits...)
I’ll try and answer the questions and points raised.
Arthur writes. Is it true? Sorry, no it isn’t. It’s fiction – and like all
good poets I wanna be a liar that tells the truth! I guess I’m trying to
draw on things I connect with W.H. Auden. There’s quite a few of them. That
I remember seeing a picture of him dressed as Santa Claus (It’s taken from a
film called A Calendar Of A Year - made by the guy who also filmed Night
Mail). Franco is also an Audenesque reference - because I was trying to
allude to another poem, Spain 1937. (I guess I could have chosen Chiang Kai
Sheck) but I found myself remembering the famous poem Auden wrote about the
Spanish Civil War. The speech is a thuggish contradiction of Auden’s famous
statement “poetry doesn’t change anything.”
But I don’t mind if all these things are hidden from someone not familiar
(at the time of reading) with any of these points about Auden. I’m more
interested in if it works as it’s read, and how it works as it’s initially
read. I could, for instance, tell lots of stories of Auden and Alston (where
many people think In Praise Of Limestone finds its sense of place) and the
mention of the Tyneside Roman may be a hint at Roman Wall Blues (and I may
also be remembering his mood when some Tyneside people took him round some
of the sites on Hadrian’s Wall one wet Sunday – and him, as usual, still in
his carpet slippers! He wasn’t good company that day – that’s an
understatement!). And I know I remember hearing that he was mugged just
before he left England for the last time (and then vowed he’d never return!
He never did.). But all these allusions, I sense, aren’t necessary -
although interesting (?) - and I’m hoping the knowledge isn’t as essential
to the significance of the poem as the handing over of the “gift.”
And what is Auden’s gift that’s thrust upon the hesitant narrator who leaves
the scene (on the bus that’s going to Auden’s destination?). That’s what
intrigues me!
The idea of poem as Presentation is also intriguing (I sense I’m moving onto
what you wrote now, Barbara). I guess I do see poetry as a gift, a
present... Something that’s valued badly, if at all – but something that’s
also valued in unexpected places (among prisoners who may be serving time
for beating someone up!). Poetry - it’s what we’ve been given and what we
give. And I’ve had friends who’re poets who’re now dead (and part of the
reason why they’re dead is to do with their art). But I treasure their poems
as much as my memories of them. I (also) know their poetry belongs as much
in Auden’s “great, good place” on the moors beyond Alston as in a Bus
Station late at night.
But that’s not what you’re asking... It seems you want to know why I think
of this as a poem... What poetic structure it embodies. Well, in a rough
kind of way, it’s playing with being a sonnet: it’s got three bits (the
beating up, what was in the sack (the gift), & what happens when the bus
arrives), it’s got 14 lines. Then it’s (hopefully) readable as a poem
because it’s an attempt to use sound patterns (where most lines have two or
three phrases with almost-cesura’s  dividing one phrase from another – the
rhythm, however, of the line “but the large one wouldn’t fit under anyone’s
coat.” is a problem! This line seems more complex, to me it still feels
rather cumbersome.). Auden was a gifted sonnet writer – but I’m not trying
to emulate that! Auden was also, I feel, a guy who wanted to link poetry and
speech (he once defined poetry as “memorable speech”) and I guess my
vernacular approach to words in this poem owes something to how I see the
words appear in the poems of his I enjoy – but it’s not a homage in any way
(it’s probably the opposite!). Structure and rhythm are both constituents of
what makes for a poem. The structure’s subtle (or crude, or both – take yr
pick) and the rhythm’s in the words and the pauses... (& I’ve been thinking
about the rhythmical glitches since I read yr comments, Sue, Christina,
where the words ain’t hitting right, I’m working on them...)
And, Arthur, the words I’m using are an attempt at narrative style: the poet
as witness, but not an invisible, unaffected witness. Using a “Then” to show
that things have happened before this. Using the word “Then” as people would
use it when telling what happened is deliberate (tho, I know, not good
written style). I may try to reintroduce sentences beginning with “And.” (Or
I could reintroduce a “So” or a “While” or an “As” and leave just one
“Then.”) I’ll sweat over this one Arthur! It’s a problem I haven’t yet been
able to solve. But, because I’m not using iambic pentameter (which Auden
often did), I guess I’ll have to keep trying with the speech patterns I’m
using. And, Sue, I guess I’m making a political choice to use the words I
use. I’ll go with Wordsworth’s comments about poetic diction, Wallace
Stevens advocation of antipoetic language, and how many others who advise
using language that’s appropriate to where the poem, and the poet, feels it
belongs. So (as Christina responds) I too hope the poem’s got its own mouth
music. But it ain’t Monteverdi (a possible pal of Petrarch) or Motzart, and
neither is it Noel Coward or Cole Porter (who, I think, both knew Auden!).
Visually the poem’s more Glam Rock, but it feels more like the anger of
Punk.
And a last comment? Well, I guess, I disagree with his notion that poetry
doesn’t change anything... He survives the beating up, and I’ve got the
parcel. He’s handed something on. In a cruel way his gifts end up in other
people’s hands and pockets (that’s where poems end up, I guess). He’s been
changed by what’s happened (Oh, how many times do we bruise a poet when we
get hold of their poems?) and in an uneasy way I’ve been changed too.
But I also frequently find myself thinking that if an explanation's too
complex the poem's not disclosing its mysteries well enough, it's not yet
working too well (and this is a long explanation!).
Bob

Oh, PS. Sally, “The Last Train To Alston.” Yeh. Sounds like a fine title to
an elegy, a poem about the things Auden thought were deep underground. (From
being a child to going to the USA, he always went there by train)



>From: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Before The Last Bus For Alston
>Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 20:04:45 +0000
>
>For some C & C...
>(& the words between asterics,*the words...*, are to be read as if in
>italics)
>
>
>Before The Last Bus For Alston
>
>After watching the shoving we heard the first punch.
>Then his hood came down, the beard came off,
>and his red coat ripped when one, a Tyneside Roman,
>grabbed him, head-butted him twice.  Then he slumped,
>just lay there as the kicking began.  It was Auden.
>*Nowt changes for ye, does it?  Now be telled.*
>Then his sack was up-ended and they crouched down,
>shook then pocketed some parcels, swapped others,
>but the large one wouldn’t fit under anyone’s coat.
>Laughter, until the smallest, dressed as Franco, looked up
>and, grinning, came over to me.  *Take it,* he hissed.
>It was thick gold paper with a red ribbon, and heavy.
>He waits.  I smell his beer.  The bus doors swish open.
>I don’t refuse.  How can I.  It’s Christmas.
>
>Bob Cooper
>
>_________________________________________________________________
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