book excerptise:   a book unexamined is not worth having

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, 3d ed.

Michael Roberts and Donald Hall (ed.)

Roberts, Michael; Donald Hall (ed.);

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, 3d ed.

Faber and Faber 1965, 416 pages

ISBN 0571063489

topics: |  poetry | anthology


One of my favourite poetry anthologies - perhaps the reason I like it so
much is because before this, most anthologies I had encountered were
variants of palgrave or untermeyer.  
To me, Thomas Gunn and Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin were like a breath of
fresh air.  And they remain so.  At the same time, this was my first
exposure to complete meaninglessness in postmodern art (as in cubism). 
See for example, the undisguised incomprehensibility of one x by e
e cummings.  

The introduction by Roberts talks of the relevance of "symbolism", which is
seen both in the visual arts, and here, in poetry.  Reading it, I felt that
all art is a search for novelty, and the tradeoff with acceptability is
determined by the mass of voices going this way or that.  So in art, as
well as in politics, it is important to have a group that you are working
with.  

So the postmodernist generation, carrying forward the impressionist
revolution against the verisimilitude in art, went so far as to become
completely meaningless, as in kasimir malevich's famous black square
painting

But in the long run, much of Roberts' arguments may not be valid.  But it
clearly speaks of a passion, a passion that is perhaps quite past now, but
a passion that dominated western art for many decades.

The original selection, by Michael Roberts, was British centered and
pre-war; the supplement has more recent voices, and includes more american
voices such as william carlos williams.  

This much-sellotaped edition has its pages yellowed and crumbling, but it's
worth a flip-through every now and then. 
The contents were not available online; more detailed list of poems may
come later.  For now, this.

Excerpts


As kingfishers catch fire : Gerard Manley Hopkins p. 50


As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speak and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -
Christ - for Christ play in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

	I like the sound of this poem; like much of the poetry in the book, i
	am not sure what it speaks to me.   If you want to be killed by
	scholarly analysis, you can see this at gerardmanleyhopkins.org

[some unintelligible alphabets simplified, e.g. 
	dráw fláme; Whát; Í say móre;  etc .]
purists may cringe, but they have cringed many times in history]



e. e. cummings : one x p.187


	death is more than 
	certain a hundred these 
	sounds crowds odours it 
	is in a hurry 
	beyond that any this 
	taxi smile or angle we do 
	
	not sell and buy 
	things so necessary as 
	is death and unlike shirts 
	neckties trousers 
	we cannot wear it out 
	
	no sir which is why 
	granted who discovered 
	America ether the movies 
	may claim general importance 
	
	to me to you nothing is 
	what particaulaly 
	matters hence in a 
	
	little sunlight and less 
	moonlight ourselves against the worms 
	hate laugh shimmy

 		[while trying to read this poem, one doesn't know how to
		pause, where to break the line, how to read it.  it is like
		the disembodies heads and breasts and triangles in paintings
		- a juxtaposition of images, adding up to nothing. 

		the bengali poet jibananda das, whose modernist voice
		was influenced by eliot, cited this poem as an example of
		abAntar chAturi (meaningless cleverness) permeating many
		western poets of the time.  it is indeed hard to see anything
		that touches you in most postmodern art.  - jibanAnda dAs,
		essay: uttar raibik bAnglA kAbya]



Thom Gunn ( Thomson William Gunn, 1929-2004)

The Nature of an Action : Thomas Gunn p. 392


		  I

Here is a room with heavy-footed chairs,
A glass bell loaded with wax grapes and pears,

A polished table, holding down the look
Of bracket, mantelpiece, and marbled book.

Staying within the cluttered square of fact,
I cannot slip the clumsy fond contact:

So step into the corridor and start,
Directed by the compass of my heart.


		  II

Although the narrow corridor appears
So short, the journey took me twenty years.

Each gesture that my habit taught me fell
Down to the boards and made me an obstacle.

I paused to watch the fly marks on a shelf,
And found the great obstruction of myself.

I reached the end but, pacing back and forth,
I could not see what reaching it was worth.

In corridors the rooms are undefined:
I groped to feel a handle in the mind.

Testing my faculties I found a stealth
Of passive illness lurking in my health.

And though I saw the corridor stretch bare,
Dusty, and hard, I doubted it was there;

Doubted myself, what final evidence
Lay in perceptions or in common sense?


		  III

My cause lay in the will, that opens straight
Upon an act for the most desperate.

That simple handle found, I entered in
The other room, where I had never been.

I found within it heavy-footed chairs,
A glass bell loaded with wax grapes and pears.

A polished table, holding down the look
Of bracket, mantelpiece, and marbled book.

Much like the first, this room in which I went,
Only my being there is different."

Considering the snail : Thom Gunn p.395


The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth's dark.  He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts.  I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail's fury?  All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

My sad captains : Thom Gunn p.396


One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to shine!
but before they fade they stand
perfectly embodied, all

the past lapping them like a
cloak of chaos. They were men
who, I thought, lived only to
renew the wasteful force they
spent with each hot convulsion.
They remind me, distant now.

True, they are not at rest yet,
but now they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.

Contents

Introduction (First Ed): Michael Roberts 	1
Introduction (Third Ed): Donald Hall 	 	30

Poetry

  Gerard Manley Hopkins       35
  W. B. Yeats                 55
  T. E. Hulme                 70
  Ezra Pound                  72
  T. S. Eliot                 90
  Harold Monro                116
  Conrad Aiken                118
  H. D.                       123
  Marianne Moore              126
  Wallace Stevens             133
  D. H. Lawrence              141
  Isaac Rosenberg             149
  Wilfred Owen                155
  Herbert Read                162
  John Crowe Ransom           168
  Allen Tate                  173
  Hart Crane                  181
  E. E. Cummings              187
  Laura Riding                191
  Robert Graves               198
  Edith Sitwell               207
  Richard Eberhart            211
  William Empson              213
  C. Day Lewis                218
  W. H. Auden                 227
  Louis MacNeice              243
  Stephen Spender             253
  Charles Madge               261
  George Barker               266
  Dylan Thomas                273
  David Gascoyne              279

Supplement

  William Carlos Williams     283
  Edwin Muir                  290
  Hugh MacDiarmid             297
  David Jones                 301
  Charles Olson               206
  Theodore Roethke            310
  F. T. Prince                318
  R. S. Thomas                320
  Michael Roberts             322
  Kathleen Raine              324
  Anne Ridler                 326
  Norman MacCaig              328
  Vernon Watkins              330
  John Berryman               333
  Robert Lowell               337
  W. S. Graham                345
  Howard Nemerov              347
  John Heath-Stubbs           349
  Richard Wilbur              351
  Keith Douglas               357
  Donald Davie                361
  Philip Larkin               363
  Charles Tomlinson           369
  James Dickey                372
  Louis Simpson               376
  Denise Levertov             379
  W. D. Snodgrass             381
  Christopher Middleton       384
  Robert Bly                  386
  W. S. Merwin                388
  James Wright                390
  Thom Gunn                   392
  Ted Hughes                  397
  Sylvia Plath                403
  Geoffrey Hill               405


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail.com) 2011 Jul 04