No good English poets

[busker]

While I disagree with the premise of the original post on an intuitive level, I can't quite refute it, simply because I'm not so well read. Of the artists post-Shakespeare typically cited to be his equals, I've not read enough of one (Milton), and don't really grok the two others (the proportion of bad to good in Wordsworth is worse than that of Shakespeare, while Blake is too unpolished for me).

That said, I similarly disagree with the replies that we should somehow separate the art from the artist. Part of the satisfaction we get from a piece of work, whether we acknowledge it or not, is *moral*---we like transgressive art because it transgresses boundaries we acknowledge to be stupid, we dislike art that says nothing because it is morally banal, and so on---but also failures in politics can represent some very particular failures in aesthetics. An artist with bad politics suffers from two things, either a failure of imagination or a lack of self consistency, both of which are deadly to poetry, however stunning an individual piece may seem. Eliot isn't great precisely because he's so antisemitic, misogynistic, and altogether ur-fascist in his maturity: when your poetry tackles alienation under modernity and provides as a solution the Christian faith, but you alternately support systems so fundamentally modern and anti-Christian, to the point of inserting a few telling canards in some of your more obscure works, then your poetry utterly fails as an argument.

Of course, I'm not sure this perspective entirely agrees with the original post, either. For one, what's so special about *English* poetry that it has failed post-Shakespeare? Is it because, after Shakespeare, colonialism and capitalism reared their ugly heads, forever tainting most artists that worked under their shadow? In which case, the argument shouldn't be restricted to English poetry. Is it because the English language gestated in the unique soup of systems that ultimately gave birth to capitalism? In which case, Shakespeare, who wrote six hundred years after the Norman conquest, should be considered an anomaly, not the norm.

For another, you can't decry Tennyson and Hitler as decent to good craftsmen but thoroughgoing racists then lump the Irish in with the English. Like Eliot, that's just damningly self-inconsistent.

And my favourite Euphoria character is Jules, though I hear the show stopped doing her justice after season one.

This is a marvellously well thought through reply. Thanks for taking the time to write it out.
50% of the value of this site lies in such reflections

[rowens]

Jules is an artist now, and a good one, considering it's art done by a fictional character on a tv show (?), and talks like post-2000 Winona Ryder/Joan Cusack. But, what other way can she go than living with a rich married man with a fetish?

But why not? Making poems can be as much about living with a rich married man with a fetish as being an alcoholic or having mood swings and being what is popularly called unstable.
I hear that emotions and facial expressions are cultural, art in life out and vice versa. You try to escape the cliche and you suffer cuz the track pulls you back, you get away from cliches, and don't suffer, and the track suffers. Why escape?

That's the theme of this thread, why escape? Why not write like pre-Shakespeare? Why no go back to the pagan gods an the pre-socratics.

I don't see people based on what they do.
I see people what they are,
and what they're doing.

Same with poems and tv shows and Jules and Maddie.
Sometimes poems are no good, and sometimes they are useful to me and are good. The same poems. 
Sometimes you read ah books of criticism of Wordsworth from the 1970s, and the critic has spun certain aspects of Wordsworth, and you look, and those things are there, the things the critic invented and "added", are/were already there.

---

The real solution I come to when it comes to British poets is that I don't read them. I have a fetish for dead writers, one, it's Romantic, two, it allows for my affective-coherent experience of ghosts and interactive reading-dreaming-adventuring-writing-and other aspects.

[matsunosuperfan]

I think English poetry essentially died after Shakespeare. After him, we have an endless parade of charlatans like Browning, posers like Larkin, and effete pseudo-madmen like Shem. Broken here and there with true voices of genius in Henry Vaughan, Hopkins, and Dylan Thomas. 

I used to like Eliot, but it's hard to buy the argument any more that a rational human being actually believed that the creator of the universe sent his son who is also him and another person, in a universe that's been around for at least 14 billion years, to be killed by a Roman provincial governor as a blood sacrifice for the first homo erectus eating an apple. Yes, yes, all that can be interpreted as literary allegory, but you can't base a faith around that. So all that strutting about in a suit and wearing a hat, taking a cab, smoking a pipe and sounding posh all amounts to nothing.
Larkin built his reputation on saying 'the world sucks' 11,345 times, when the main problem was that he lived on a damp island. All his poems have the same structure of saying something seemingly mundane yet profound about how the world is bad, and taking four stanzas in coming to the conclusion that things weren't going to get any better.
His is the template that a lot of modern poets seem to follow. Look at this one, for instance. The lines in green are marvelous, but try saying that in fifty other poems and you're basically just on a whinge fest.

Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass. 
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.

What is this nonsense! Absurd claims supported by little more than sophomoric attempts at sounding authoritative. This is an embarrassing mini-screed. I feel like this kind of discourse is the reason "it's not to late to delete this" was invented. 

OK, now that I'm done being absolutely shook by the audacity and hubris of this post, what to say about its claims, which are hardly worth dignifying with a response? Reducing Larkin, one of the best poets of the 20th century, to "saying the world sucks" is the kind of move that would impress some teenagers. Unfortunately for you, I am old now, and know bullshit when I see it. I mean the first three sentences of "Mower" are about as good as you can do it for introducing a scene like this. There's tremendous economy, inviting rhythm, already a sense of impending dread, as befits the subject, and typically for Larkin, sheer revelry in the stubby consonances of plain English speech. You're welcome not to like it - there's plenty of room in the world for bad taste - but if you want to condemn its artistry, have the humility to offer an actual substantive critique. You sound like you think yourself Larkin's equal, or his better; I doubt you are either. 

Someone let me know if I'm not allowed to be this bluntly abrasive here; I tend to get in trouble when people are loudly and aggressively wrong because it offends me on like, a spiritual level.

---

I used to like Eliot, but it's hard to buy the argument any more that a rational human being actually believed that the creator of the universe sent his son who is also him and another person, in a universe that's been around for at least 14 billion years, to be killed by a Roman provincial governor as a blood sacrifice for the first homo erectus eating an apple. Yes, yes, all that can be interpreted as literary allegory, but you can't base a faith around that. So all that strutting about in a suit and wearing a hat, taking a cab, smoking a pipe and sounding posh all amounts to nothing.

also what is this edgelord atheist rubbish? I don't believe in a corporeal God or the Christian faith but it's pretty lame and passe to dismiss anyone who does as an idiot. Faith is a weird and foundational element of human life and culture, whether you like it or not, and it's an odd and baffling move to just kind of wave your hand at the idea that "Christianity is stupid" and thus dismiss the entire oeuvre of, again, one of the foremost verse innovators of the 20th century. 

I feel like this is rage bait.

[CRNDLSM]

Buskers asking for it, your doing great


Someone let me know if I'm not allowed to be this bluntly abrasive here; I tend to get in trouble when people are loudly and aggressively wrong because it offends me on like, a spiritual level.

[busker]

Crndl, we have been friends ever since you declared yourself to be an expert on dogs.
Because dogs are the best.

Regarding matsun, I admire his passion.

But I think, matsun, your inability to call a spade a spade is a problem.
Would you take seriously a man who writes elegantly about the aesthetics of a sunset and the meaning of suburban life, but also sincerely believes that the world resides inside a giant walnut on the shelf of the BongoBongo diety of eastern Djongbo (no offence to the Djongonans)?
Becusee TS Eliot is that man. 

He lived through the great intellectual revolutions of our time, in physics, math, and engineering. And yet he believed in the virgin birth of his diety. And he never explained it, never prefaced it with a “and this is symbolic and this is real, and Jesus was not really the son of god.”

Whatever the excuse they may have had in the 1500s ceased to exist in the 1900s, by when they had flushing toilets. So men like Eliot were essentially vapid TikTok stars of the day, except they declaimed about life’s miseries instead of how to achieve financial success.

And Larkin was born too late to have his craft trump his racism. If you include poets from all over the world in the 20th century, not just those in the Anglosphere, Larkin isn’t even fit to polish some shoes.

[milo]

Crndl, we have been friends ever since you declared yourself to be an expert on dogs.
Because dogs are the best.

Regarding matsun, I admire his passion.

But I think, matsun, your inability to call a spade a spade is a problem.
Would you take seriously a man who writes elegantly about the aesthetics of a sunset and the meaning of suburban life, but also sincerely believes that the world resides inside a giant walnut on the shelf of the BongoBongo diety of eastern Djongbo (no offence to the Djongonans)?
Becusee TS Eliot is that man. 

He lived through the great intellectual revolutions of our time, in physics, math, and engineering. And yet he believed in the virgin birth of his diety. And he never explained it, never prefaced it with a “and this is symbolic and this is real, and Jesus was not really the son of god.”

Whatever the excuse they may have had in the 1500s ceased to exist in the 1900s, by when they had flushing toilets. So men like Eliot were essentially vapid TikTok stars of the day, except they declaimed about life’s miseries instead of how to achieve financial success.

And Larkin was born too late to have his craft trump his racism. If you include poets from all over the world in the 20th century, not just those in the Anglosphere, Larkin isn’t even fit to polish some shoes.

I feel like you keep getting distracted from your original purpose of dragging Larkin

[matsunosuperfan]

Crndl, we have been friends ever since you declared yourself to be an expert on dogs.
Because dogs are the best.

Regarding matsun, I admire his passion.

But I think, matsun, your inability to call a spade a spade is a problem.
Would you take seriously a man who writes elegantly about the aesthetics of a sunset and the meaning of suburban life, but also sincerely believes that the world resides inside a giant walnut on the shelf of the BongoBongo diety of eastern Djongbo (no offence to the Djongonans)?
Becusee TS Eliot is that man. 

He lived through the great intellectual revolutions of our time, in physics, math, and engineering. And yet he believed in the virgin birth of his diety. And he never explained it, never prefaced it with a “and this is symbolic and this is real, and Jesus was not really the son of god.”

Whatever the excuse they may have had in the 1500s ceased to exist in the 1900s, by when they had flushing toilets. So men like Eliot were essentially vapid TikTok stars of the day, except they declaimed about life’s miseries instead of how to achieve financial success.

And Larkin was born too late to have his craft trump his racism. If you include poets from all over the world in the 20th century, not just those in the Anglosphere, Larkin isn’t even fit to polish some shoes.

still waiting for you to offer even a scrap of actual, substantive critique on either Larkin or Eliot's poetry, other than to say "Larkin was a grumpy poo poo head" and "Eliot believed silly things in his personal faith so his generation-defining poetry is actually crap"

I mean I can still tell you so many details about where I was and what it felt like when I first read "shanti shanti shanti" and I know I'm not alone in that experience; I don't really care if he thinks the world is an ovoid sac dangling between the legs of a cosmic bull, I just wanna read great poetry and it seems he wrote quite a bit of it.

[busker]

Crndl, we have been friends ever since you declared yourself to be an expert on dogs.
Because dogs are the best.

Regarding matsun, I admire his passion.

But I think, matsun, your inability to call a spade a spade is a problem.
Would you take seriously a man who writes elegantly about the aesthetics of a sunset and the meaning of suburban life, but also sincerely believes that the world resides inside a giant walnut on the shelf of the BongoBongo diety of eastern Djongbo (no offence to the Djongonans)?
Becusee TS Eliot is that man. 

He lived through the great intellectual revolutions of our time, in physics, math, and engineering. And yet he believed in the virgin birth of his diety. And he never explained it, never prefaced it with a “and this is symbolic and this is real, and Jesus was not really the son of god.”

Whatever the excuse they may have had in the 1500s ceased to exist in the 1900s, by when they had flushing toilets. So men like Eliot were essentially vapid TikTok stars of the day, except they declaimed about life’s miseries instead of how to achieve financial success.

And Larkin was born too late to have his craft trump his racism. If you include poets from all over the world in the 20th century, not just those in the Anglosphere, Larkin isn’t even fit to polish some shoes.

still waiting for you to offer even a scrap of actual, substantive critique on either Larkin or Eliot's poetry, other than to say "Larkin was a grumpy poo poo head" and "Eliot believed silly things in his personal faith so his generation-defining poetry is actually crap"

I mean I can still tell you so many details about where I was and what it felt like when I first read "shanti shanti shanti" and I know I'm not alone in that experience; I don't really care if he thinks the world is an ovoid sac dangling between the legs of a cosmic bull, I just wanna read great poetry and it seems he wrote quite a bit of it.

matsun - I would if I had the time, but specifically for Eliot: I actually love his verse.
It is hypnotic.
The last couple of strophes from East Coker get your hair on end. I recite them oft from memory when I’m walking the dog and need something other than my business biography audiobook (apparently Jensen Huang has no time for literature but is a voracious reader of business books, this despite being one of the finest chip designers of his time and the founder of NVIDIA).

“Multifoliate rose” and “tumid river” coming as they do when they do in the Hollow Men are genius.
But Mahomet, the celebrated and deeply venerated prophet of the Saracens, warned against poetry for this very reason. It can lead readers away from the true path.

In this instance, Eliot seduces you into believing that there’s a world view underneath all those layers of hypnotic verse that is not about eating and drinking the supposed saviour and waiting for him to make a re entry upon large accumulations of water vapour. But there isn’t, and so you’re left with the unpleasant prospect of realising that the town supply of hot water that kept you warm through winter was actually  coming from heat exchangers at the furnaces in Auschwitz.

This is not the problem when we read Spenser, because we assume that in all matters related to actually understanding how the world works, he is an idiot as is everyone else of his generation. His art is Neanderthal art, but charmingly so. There’s a lost innocence in the savagery of the past.

Larkin is a pure wanker. That’s for another time.

[matsunosuperfan]

[quote="busker" pid='281014' dateline='1779918444

matsun - I would if I had the time, but specifically for Eliot: I actually love his verse.
It is hypnotic.
The last couple of strophes from East Coker get your hair on end. I recite them oft from memory when I’m walking the dog and need something other than my business biography audiobook (apparently Jensen Huang has no time for literature but is a voracious reader of business books, this despite being one of the finest chip designers of his time and the founder of NVIDIA).

“Multifoliate rose” and “tumid river” coming as they do when they do in the Hollow Men are genius.
But Mahomet, the celebrated and deeply venerated prophet of the Saracens, warned against poetry for this very reason. It can lead readers away from the true path.

In this instance, Eliot seduces you into believing that there’s a world view underneath all those layers of hypnotic verse that is not about eating and drinking the supposed saviour and waiting for him to make a re entry upon large accumulations of water vapour. But there isn’t, and so you’re left with the unpleasant prospect of realising that the town supply of hot water that kept you warm through winter was actually  coming from heat exchangers at the furnaces in Auschwitz.

This is not the problem when we read Spenser, because we assume that in all matters related to actually understanding how the world works, he is an idiot as is everyone else of his generation. His art is Neanderthal art, but charmingly so. There’s a lost innocence in the savagery of the past.

Larkin is a pure wanker. That’s for another time.
[/quote]

Interesting. I guess we have very different perspectives on what makes poetry valuable or worthy. for me Eliot and Larkin both vividly reinvigorate the symbolic powers of the English word, which is good enough for me.