Swearing

 As someone who swears rather a lot (never in print, of course), I was pleased to come across this excellent research-based report on 'Why swearing makes you stronger'. Not only is swearing, as we all know, big, and clever, and enjoyable; it can also boost your performance, at least when it comes to holding your hand in ice water or doing chair push-ups (whatever they are). I'm sure I also heard recently of research showing that swearing can relieve acute pain, and that one word in particular – that old favourite, the f-word – was by far the most effective, offering the optimal combination of fricative, short vowel and plosive. 
 At school we were told that using swear words was the sign of a limited vocabulary, despite the evident fact that profane language greatly extended our vocabulary, creating a kind of auxiliary lexicon, capable of conveying quite subtle shades of meaning (well, sometimes). The richness of profane language, and its capacity for creating neologisms, is attested by the number of dictionaries devoted to it, from Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue to Eric Partridge's Shakespeare's Bawdy, Green's Dictionary of Slang, and (on a somewhat less scholarly level) Roger's Profanisaurus. The Australian branch of the English language has been especially productive of picturesque profanities, and the late Barry Humphries – particularly in his Les Paterson persona – was a virtuoso of vulgarity, creating a fine array of new terms the world never thought it had need of (see his extremely filthy book The Traveller's Tool and its invaluable glossary, also the adventures of Barry Mackenzie). But enough of this filth. 

Baptised On This Day

On this day in 1770, the newborn Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised. I imagine he bawled lustily.  Beethoven was the musical hero of my boyhood and adolescence. Right up until pop and rock claimed me – it was the golden age, after all, mid-sixties to mid-seventies – Beethoven was the god of my worship, with all other composers taking their places on the steps of his celestial throne. I immersed myself totally in his symphonies and piano sonatas, even playing what I could of the latter (which wasn't very much). When, some years later, I returned to the classical music fold, I began to have doubts about the great Ludwig Van B, especially the symphonies, while my explorations led me, rightly and inevitably, to another supreme musical deity, J.S. Bach, and to the endless beauties of Schubert. However, I returned to Beethoven, discovering the great string quartets, hearing the symphonies performed with a lighter touch and brisker tempi than in my youth, and of course going back to the piano sonatas. Now, if the whole of western music, bar the works of one composer, were to disappear overnight, I would save Bach, but the god of my worship is now a triune deity – Bach, Schubert, Beethoven (with Mozart knocking on the door). Happily my trinitarian tastes were gratified by the recent release of Vikingur Olafsson's Opus 109, a musical journey towards Beethoven's sonata of that number by way of Bach and Schubert. But I'll sign off with one of the Beethoven masterpieces that won me back to him – the breathtakingly beautiful Cavatina from his Opus 130 string quartet. Beethoven himself declared that 'never had his own music made such an impression on him', and that he had composed it 'truly in the tears of melancholy'. Here it is played by the Kodaly Quartet...

'It will be February there...'

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, 
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will. 

This disarming opener begins Ted Kooser's collection Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems, which I have just acquired. Kooser, whom I hadn't heard of until recently, is a successful poet (as poets go) who has been much praised – by, among others, Dana Gioia – and also looked down upon by some as being altogether too much the plain-speaking down-home midwesterner (and too popular and accessible?). Having sampled his work, most of it in the form of very short poems, I can see what the harsher critics mean – some are a little flat, a little thin, a little too easy. However, many quite escape that characterisation. Take this haunting vision of The Afterlife – 

It will be February there, 
a foreign-language newspaper
rolling along the dock
in an icy wind, a few
old winos wiping their eyes
over a barrel of fire;
down the streets, mad women
shaking rats from their mops
on each stoop, and odd,
twisted children,
playing with matches and knives.
Then, behind us, trombones: 
the horns of the tugs
turning our great grey ship
back into the mist.

    – And what is going on here?  

The Skeleton in the Closet

These bones once held together
on the strength of rumour.
The jaws which bit down hard
on the truth were stuffed at last
with a velvet glove. Now
all the foolishness is dust
and mothballs and the eyes
of children darkening
the keyhole. There's nothing
to see in here but two boots
full of golden teeth
and a fancy riding cape
with shoulder pads.

    There's certainly nothing hokey about this one –

They Had Torn Off My Face at the Office

They had torn off my face at the office.
The night that I finally noticed
that it was not growing back, I decided
to slit my wrists. Nothing ran out;
I was empty. Both of my hands fell off
shortly thereafter. Now at my job
they allow me to type with the stumps.
It pleases them to have helped me,
and I gain in speed and confidence.

  And how's this for a birthday poem? Not exactly celebratory...

Birthday

Somebody deep in my bones
is lacing his shoes with a hook.
It's an hour before dawn
in that nursing home.
There is nothing to do but get dressed
and sit in the darkness.
Up the hall, in the brightly lit skull,
the young pastor is writing his poem. 

Natural Theology

 When Tennyson sat his Cambridge entrance examination, it consisted of four subjects – Latin, Greek, Algebra and Natural Theology. Of those, the first two are in steep decline, especially Greek, though 'classical studies' in various forms are still on the curriculum. Certainly the days are long gone when an easy familiarity with Latin and Greek, with ancient history and classical mythology, were part of every educated man's (and many women's) mental world. Algebra, I presume, survives as a branch of mathematics (one I could never master), and was perhaps regarded as a useful training in abstract reasoning. As for natural theology, surely nobody now would regard it as a 'core subject', but rather as something that might turn up in theology or philosophy courses, or perhaps in the study of the history of science. However, for much of the 19th century, and into the 20th, natural theology was very much alive. It's a form of theology that seeks to demonstrate that theological ideas – especially of the existence of God – can be reached by way of reason alone; that there is no need for revelation. The most famous exemplar of this approach was William Paley, whose Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature was a hugely popular and influential book. But there was always strong criticism from the likes of Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard and, more recently, Karl Barth. Not to mention God Himself, who in Psalm 50 rebukes the wicked for thinking that He is just like one of them: 'Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself'. This quotation stands at the head of a knotty, punishingly long poem by Browning – 'Caliban Upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island'. In this, Shakespeare's Caliban attempts to understand the god he worships, Setebos, through observing how the natural world works, and inevitably finds himself looking in a mirror, discovering a cruel god of arbitrary and jealous power, lording it over nature just as he does himself in his smaller realm. Here's a link to the poem, if you're feeling strong...  
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43748/caliban-upon-setebos

Some trace of natural theology perhaps survives in the idea that there are inherent 'Laws of Nature' or 'natural rights'...

Young Tennyson

One of my birthday presents, and a very welcome one, was Richard Holmes's The Boundless Deep, the first of a projected two-volume biography of Tennyson. I've just started reading it, and am enjoying it hugely. I've long been fascinated by the early life of Tennyson, partly because of his connection to a county I (mostly) love, having spent many boyhood holidays there – Lincolnshire – and in particular to the beautiful and little-visited Lincolnshire Wolds. I've written before about this 'Tennyson Country', on the blog and in this book, and Holmes evokes the young poet's life there, amid his troubled but brilliant family in the Somersby rectory, beautifully. 
  The first poem quoted in the book is 'The Kraken', a strange and unsettling work, written when Tennyson was still a student, and not published until much later –

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

This was one of the first poems of Tennyson's that brought me up short in my precocious exploration of Tennyson's verse, or those portions of it comprehensible to a boy of ten or less. Sometimes, at that stage, it was little more than those sonorous opening lines – '"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon"..., 'The woods decay, The woods decay and fall...', 'The splendour falls On castle walls...', 'On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye...', 'Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me...', 'With blackest moss the flower-pots Were thickly crusted, one and all...', and of course 'Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward...' – but I went deeper into several of the poems. Especially I was quite entranced by 'In Memoriam', reading it all through, and even learning parts of it by heart (I had a memory then). If this sounds like precocity, it is nothing to the boy Tennyson, who at the age of seven, Holmes informs us, could recite Horace's Odes by heart. Not much later, he had Pope's translation of the Iliad by heart. All of the eleven Tennyson siblings were bookish and wrote poetry: his sister Mary collected '132 sonnets and fugitive pieces', brothers Frederick and Charles were considered serious poets, and altogether eight of them (including Alfred) had their work published in adult life – this despite the 'fatal inheritance' that hung over them all, especially the boys: 'lethargic drifting, disabling depression, alcoholism, mental instability, or simply black spiritual despair'. With all of which Tennyson struggled throughout his early years – and, thanks to poetry, prevailed. 

'To live is so startling...'

 It's Emily Dickinson's birthday today (born 1830, in Amherst). She wrote that 'To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else' – but it left her time to write, in her short life, large numbers of the most extraordinary poems of the nineteenth (or any) century.
Let's celebrate the birthday with one of her cheerier numbers – 

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged — a Summer Afternoon —
Repairing Everywhere —

Without Design — that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers — understood —

Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay —
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud —

Where Parties — Phantom as Herself —
To Nowhere — seemed to go
In purposeless Circumference —
As 'twere a Tropic Show —

And notwithstanding Bee — that worked —
And Flower — that zealous blew —
This Audience of Idleness
Disdained them, from the Sky —

Till Sundown crept — a steady Tide —
And Men that made the Hay —
And Afternoon — and Butterfly —
Extinguished — in the Sea —

Speaking of butterflies – if I may lower the tone for a moment, don't forget this little book, perfectly proportioned to be a Christmas stocking-filler...

'An echo of what the light said...'

 R.S. Thomas wrote the justly famous Advent poem 'The Coming' (which has appeared here before) – 

'And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.'

Thomas also wrote another fine poem simply titled 'Coming', which seems to be more about the Second Coming, but considers the coming of Christ to Earth as something recurrent, part of a mysterious creative process of unfolding, 'invisible as a mutation'...

'To be crucified
again? To be made friends
with for his jeans and beard?
Gods are not put to death

any more. Their lot now
is with the ignored.
I think he still comes
stealthily as of old,

invisible as a mutation,
an echo of what the light
said, when nobody
attended; an impression

of eyes, quicker than
to be caught looking, but taken
on trust like flowers in the
dark country toward which we go.'