I ought to add that I think Davie's poems after Mickiewicz and Pasternak are
rather attractive. But his contemporary as a poet-critic Charles Tomlinson
I've alwayd thought far more interesting.
2009/7/15 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> As a critic/teacher Davie hada very interesting career: from being a
> supporter of Larkin he became a mentor of Tom Raworth, if I remember
> correctly. He did write a short poem in his The Shires sequence which
> mentions the Leicester Poetry Society at mention ing which people's interest
> will perk, unfortunately I have to wince inwardly when mentioning it to
> advertise the group as the poem's also little more than doggerel.
>
> The problem with 20th century evaluations of Milton and Shelley in
> particular is disentangling critiques of elements of their diction with the
> fact that both were political poets and of their time precursors of the
> modern left while their arch-detractors like Pound and Eliot (explicitly)
> and Leavis (implicitly) were very much of the right wing. I'd hasten to add
> that I don't know what Leavis's actual political affiliations were, but his
> nostalgic harking back to the organic village is as conservative as,say,the
> avowedly anti-democrat Catholic Tolkein.
>
> 2009/7/14 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
>
> I think Davie was hard at work in academic English widening the canon that
>> had
>> been narrowed by Leavis's Revaluation (1936), which was so hard on Shelley
>> and
>> Milton and ...
>>
>> Whatever Davie's achievement as poet, his criticism wherever I have
>> sampled it
>> has an energy and often relish about it that engages me ...
>>
>> Max
>>
>> Quoting David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>> > I never did read it when young and it has been a pleasure to do so now,
>> I've
>> > also looked back at a lot of Shelley that I did find exciting when 14
>> and am
>> > rather thrilled that I can still feel those pinions beating in, say, the
>> > Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. It's as valid of its age as Beethoven
>> sonatas
>> > or the slightly later Chopin. I can almost feel wooden ships at anchor,
>> hear
>> > their timbers creaking.
>> >
>> > Yes, Julian and Maddalo does have a calmer voice in the narrator, its
>> rather
>> > like a foretaste of Clough there, with the more Gothic and wilder
>> Shelley in
>> > the voice of the madman. it's very kind of as puny a poet as Donald
>> Davie to
>> > condescend to pat him on the head.
>> >
>> > 2009/7/9 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
>> >
>> > > Thanks for both, Robin.
>> > >
>> > > My wife is rapt; she has printed out the whole poem, and says it
>> speaks to
>> > > her
>> > > even more than her favourite Wordsworth passages.
>> > > She says she twisted her ankle part way through the Romantic poets
>> course
>> > > twenty
>> > > years ago, and missed Shelley altogether!
>> > > I recall Donald Davie long ago ('Purity of Diction...') made a case
>> for a
>> > > levelheaded rather than rhapsodic Shelley on the strength of 'Julian
>> and
>> > > Maddalo'. But I guess it remains on the unread or under-read side of
>> > > Shelley.
>> > >
>> > > Max
>> > >
>> > > Quoting Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>:
>> > >
>> > > > Specifically:
>> > > >
>> > > > Most wretched men
>> > > > Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
>> > > > They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
>> > > >
>> > > > Shelley, "Julian and Maddalo", Line 544.
>> > > >
>> > > > Robin
>> > > >
>> > > > > "... in the preface to the collection [Elizabeth Barrett
>> (Browning)]
>> > > > > insisted on the sorrow and suffering necessary to the poet, and
>> she
>> > > quoted
>> > > > > from Shelley's 'Julian and Maddalo' to clinch her argument that
>> 'we
>> > > learn
>> > > > > in suffering what we teach in song.' ... "
>> > > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > > This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > David Bircumshaw
>> > "A window./Big enough to hold screams/
>> > You say are poems" - DMeltzer
>> > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>> > http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>> > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>> > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> "A window./Big enough to hold screams/
> You say are poems" - DMeltzer
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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