I hadn't come across Davie on addressing the nation but, more genial to me,
I've just been reading his Trying to Explain, a second hand copy of which I
chanced on last week. It's a superb bit of argumentative critical prose and
a good companion to his 'With the Grain..' You don't have to share his
tastes or conclusions to enjoy it and learn from it. I think Carcanet are
planning a Davie compendium: should be a good moment to re-think his work -
which I have the impression has slipped out of currency.
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2015 5:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Poetry On Trial: 2. “Poetry and Tribalism” by Jon Stone
Yes, there's an allure. Imagine being as passionately admired by future
generations as , say, Yeats. Imagine every trivial circumstance of your life
attracting the same wide-eyed fascination of visitors who go to Dove Cottage
in search of the marmalade-covered paper-knife. Wouldn't that be to walk
the earth as a god, albeit a dead one. There are not many walks of life that
hold out such a prospect for long-term celebrity. (Although I believe it's a
thorough delusion, and anyway there's little reason to believe that modern
poets will ever gain the same aura as our romantic forebears.)
There's also cultural power. The profession of poetry, even today, is not
merely a joke.
The earnings, I suppose, take off once you become well-known enough to be a
columnist.
Needless to say, none of this has anything to do with writing a good poem.
Donald Davie indeed claimed that a poet ought to be aware of the dignity of
the profession, of the civic responsibility. He still saw the poet as
someone who had the right to address the nation in full seriousness, and who
ought to do so.
Not sure how many would agree with that, or whether most of us would think
it preferable to do exactly the opposite, but you can still see a bit of
that aspiration in Cambridge.
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