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
