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Addressing the nation is a somewhat bold-typed move, nessy pah? My own equally romanticised notion of poetry was that it interrogated existence, or being if you wish. Or sometimes the odd nymph or shepherd or barmaid. Hence my somewhat downfaced awareness that it usually interrogates grants, residencies, networks and teaching posts. Cheers me dears On 7 August 2015 at 20:21, Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > This warmingly honest message immediately invokes, of course, Ezra Pound, > who wanted nothing more than to address the nation(s), and destroyed his > own poetry in the process. Davie was a Poundian of sorts, and stands > behind both positive and negative forces emanating (still?) from the > direction of Cambridge. > PR > > > > On 7 Aug 2015, at 17:56, [log in to unmask] wrote: > > 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. > -- David Joseph Bircumshaw Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw Tumblr: http://zantikus.tumblr.com/ twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/ Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.com