----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 4:19 PM
Subject: memory snap: my john dover wilson
>
> My John Dover Wilson, 1963
>
>
> The pleasure of my company being
> requested, I stand at attention, shake hands,
>
> feeling (fresh out of Auckland)
> ill at ease in Edinburgh,
>
> and stoop to fumbling talk with scholarship's
> venerable Shakespearean, John
>
> Dover Wilson. 'Your research?' he asks.
> 'Auden', I say. 'But he's alive! and is
>
> he any good? You know, for me, poetry
> still hasn't recovered from the death
>
> of young Rupert Brooke.' My moment passes,
> I am dumb; telling others afterwards,
>
> I tend to stumble, saying Keats instead
> of Brooke. To be English and inwardly
>
> assured of all that continuity!
> From some unlettered countryman's lips
>
> (he liked to say) some phrase of Hamlet's might
> still be heard, pithy, wise, and English.
>
> So poets draw on the folk's rich word-hoard.
> 'You rough-hew them, Oi'll shape the ends.'
>
> That's what Wilson on a country walk had heard.
> Auden and I, what did we have but reading?
>
>
> Max Richards
>
>
Max, this is delightful -- absolutely pins down the man and his attitudes,
but without demeaning him. Only "stoop to" bothers me. To stoop to
something is to condescend to it, and that's not what your *speaker is
doing. Why not, "And fumble talk with scholarship's ..." etc.? ----- Glad
you like my two recent. - Fred
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