For some reason, some recent research led me to Ruskin – who led a remarkable life – which in turn led me to his correspondence – he was a prolific correspondent – with the Brownings. 

Ruskin, was friendly with Mrs Browning but apparently  had some ‘issues’ – a word whose meaning seems to have subtly but steadily altered over the last 50 years as its usage has increased  – with her husband’s poetry.

In his letter set out in full below – you can find it in context, here, on page xxxiv of the introduction –  Browning gives a ‘spirited’ defence of his work.

Of course, the world has moved on just a little since 1855 and poetry and Art with it.

It seems to me that poetry is currently enjoying a mini-renaissance and I notice in a recent edition of the Times that the headline, above a column by ex RGS pupil James Marriott, – whom we really should try to entice to the Library at some point – is ” A poetry show so good it even made me want to read Robert Browning”

Browning – whose work I barely know – was clearly poetically ‘significant’. Donald Hall is another poet whose work I have never read. But over recent years I have derived enormous pleasure from a short anthology of American Poetry  that he edited in 1969.

In his excellent introduction he does not mince his words – “American poets are strange…When an American writes a poem he commits an unAmerican activity…Longfellow is third rate. [And of Ezra Pound] …His earliest published poetry is largely appalling.”

Of Pound, he adds “Pound’s taste for pastiche led him to Browning, whose conversational tone was relatively modern; and his good taste led him to Yeats.”

The Library has a small but interesting collection which I have recently begun to explore. I was hoping to share some highlights with you but I am so useless at browsing our online catalogue that I can’t just yet. They will follow.

One volume that I have managed to locate is this one… And I have rarely heard a bad word said about JD’s poetry.

John Donne’s Poetry : 

An annotated collection of Donne’s most significant work, including five elegies, four satires, six verse letters, four divine poems and the text of all poems from the first 17th-century edition of his verse, originally published in 1633.
For those of you who find it easier to explore online, I find the Poetry Foundation to be a wonderful resource.

To celebrate National Poetry day we have a guest speaker on Thursday October 1st  with readings by local poets Gillian Fielder, Noel Hodgson and John Smith. On Friday 2nd the Newcastle Poetry Festival  begins.

I’m not sure myself that a single national day of Poetry is enough and I shall be campaigning over the months to come – inter alia – for a Global National Poetry Year  –  with Jesmond Library at its epicentre 🙂

(Although it seems that epicentre can sometimes have negative connotations.  Merriam Webster seems to differ from other dictionaries on the point – so should we say its heart instead?)

In the meantime, I will leave you with this – (surprisingly topical?) – poem from Donald Hall’s Anthology by Robinson Jeffers, of whom Hall writes:

“After a broad education Jeffers progressively withdrew himself from modern America and from humanity itself. He built himself a stone house and tower in Carmel California and lived out his life facing the Pacific.”

An approach to life to which, increasingly, I find I can relate 🙂

Best wishes,

Peter

Chair of Jesmond Library

 

Shine, Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught-they say-God, when he walked on earth.

 

“PARIS, Dec. 10th, ’55.

“MY DEAR RUSKIN,—for so you let me begin, with the honest friendliness that befits,—

“You never were more in the wrong than when you professed to say ‘your unpleasant things’ to me. This is pleasant and proper at all points, over-liberal of praise here and there, kindly and sympathetic everywhere, and with enough of yourself in even—what I fancy—the misjudging, to make the whole letter precious indeed.

I wanted to thank you thus much at once,—that is, when the letter reached me; but the strife of lodging-hunting was too sore, and only now that I can sit down for a minute without self-reproach do I allow my thoughts to let go south-aspects, warm bedrooms, and the like, and begin as you see.

For the deepnesses you think you discern,—may they be more than mere blacknesses! For the hopes you entertain of what may come of subsequent readings,—all success to them! For your bewilderment more especially noted—how shall I help that? We don’t read poetry the same way, by the same law; it is too clear. I cannot begin writing
poetry till my imaginary reader has conceded licences to me which you demur at altogether. I know that I don’t make out my conception by my language, all poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite. You would have me paint it all plain out, which can’t be; but by various artifices I try to make shift with touches and bits of outlines which succeed if they bear the conception from me to you. You ought, I think, to keep pace with the thought tripping from ledge to ledge of my ‘glaciers,’ as you call them; not stand poking your alpenstock into the holes, and demonstrating that no foot could have stood there;—suppose it sprang over there? In prose you may criticise so—because that is the absolute representation of portions of truth, what chronicling is to history—but in asking for more ultimates you must accept less mediates, nor expect that a Druid stone-circle will be traced for you with as few breaks to the eye as the North Crescent and South Crescent that go together so cleverly in many a suburb.

Why, you look at my little song as if it were Hobbs’ or Nobbs’ lease of his house, or testament of his devisings, wherein, I grant you, not a ‘then and there,’ ‘to him and his heirs,’ ‘to have and to hold,’ and so on, would be superfluous; and so you begin:—’Stand still,—why?’ For the reason indicated in the verse, to be sure,—to let me draw him—and because he is at present going his way, and fancying nobody notices him,—and moreover, ‘going on’ (as we say) against the injustice of that,—and lastly, inasmuch as one night he’ll fail us, as a star is apt to drop out of heaven, in authentic astronomic records, and I want to make the most of my time. So much may be in ‘stand still.’ And how much more was (for instance) in that ‘stay!’ of Samuel’s (I. xv. 16). So could I twit you through the whole series of your objurgations, but the declaring my own notion of the law on the subject will do. And why,—I prithee, friend and fellow-student,—why, having told the Poet what you read,—may I not turn to the bystanders, and tell them a bit of my mind about their own stupid thanklessness and mistaking? Is the jump too much there? The whole is all but a simultaneous feeling with me.

“The other hard measure you deal me I won’t bear—about my requiring you to pronounce words short and long, exactly as I like. Nay, but exactly as the language likes, in this case. Foldskirts not a
trochee? A spondee possible in English? Two of the ‘longest monosyllables’ continuing to be each of the whole length when in junction? Sentence: let the delinquent be forced to supply the stone-cutter with a thousand companions to ‘Affliction sore—long time he bore,’ after the fashion of ‘He lost his life—by a penknife’—’He turned to clay—last Good Friday,’ ‘Departed hence—nor owed six-pence,’ and so on—so would pronounce a jury accustomed from the nipple to say lord and landlord, bridge and Cambridge, Gog and Magog, man and woman, house and workhouse, coal and charcoal, cloth and broad-cloth, skirts and fold-skirts, more and once more,—in short! Once more I prayed!—is the confession of a self-searching professor! ‘I stand here for law!’

”The last charge I cannot answer, for you may be right in preferring it, however unwitting I am of the fact. I may put Robert Browning into Pippa and other men and maids. If so, peccavi: but I don’t see myself in them, at all events.

“Do you think poetry was ever generally understood—or can be? Is the business of it to tell people what they know already, as they know it, and so precisely that they shall be able to cry out—’Here you should supply this—that, you evidently pass over, and I’ll help you from my own stock’? It is all teaching, on the contrary, and the people hate to be taught. They say otherwise,—make foolish fables about Orpheus enchanting stocks and stones, poets standing up and being worshipped,—all nonsense and impossible dreaming. A poet’s affair is with God,—to whom he is accountable, and of whom is his reward; look elsewhere, and you find misery enough. Do you believe people understand Hamlet? The last time I saw it acted, the heartiest applause of the night went to a little by-play of the actor’s own—who, to simulate madness in a hurry, plucked forth his handkerchief and flourished it hither and thither: certainly a third of the play, with no end of noble things, had been (as from time immemorial) suppressed, with the auditory’s amplest acquiescence and benediction. Are these wasted, therefore? No—they act upon a very few, who react upon the rest: as Goldsmith says, ‘some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, are pleased to be kind.’

“Don’t let me lose my lord by any seeming self-sufficiency or petulance: I look on my own shortcomings too sorrowfully, try to remedy them too earnestly: but I shall never change my point of sight, or feel other than disconcerted and apprehensive when the public, critics and all, begin to understand and approve me. But what right have you to disconcert me in the other way? Why won’t you ask the next perfumer for a packet of orris-root? Don’t everybody know ‘tis a corruption of iris-root—the Florentine lily, the giaggolo, of world-wide fame as a good savour? And because ‘iris’ means so many objects already, and I use the old word, you blame me! But I write in the blind-dark, and bitter cold, and past post-time as I fear. Take my truest thanks, and understand at least this rough writing, and, at all events, the real affection with which I venture to regard you. And ‘I’ means my wife as well as
“Yours ever faithfully,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”

History – Forward Arts Foundation