Tuesday, 26 September 2017

Have You Noticed

Driving through Flanders we noticed a haze. It seems to be something to do with autumn, which made us think of Keats's "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". Then, looking at that poem ("Ode to Autumn") I thought I noticed an echo of it in another more recent poem. What do you think:


Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;  30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

That's from the Keats.

Then there is this from Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth


Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – 
The shrill, demented6 choirs of wailing shells;  
And bugles7 calling for them from sad shires.8
What candles9 may be held to speed them all?  
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes  
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.  
The pallor10 of girls' brows shall be their pall;  
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,  
And each slow dusk11 a drawing-down of blinds.12


Aren't there resonances between the two? Or am I imagining it? I'm only suggesting that Owen had Keats's lines buried in his mind and something of their music sang through- but I find it interesting to think of the possible fine threads of connection linking one writer to another back through time and the way that reading can be a kind of dialogue, even when the author of what you are reading his no longer around.
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9 comments:

  1. Anonymous1 October 2017 at 00:45

    The idea is a good one, but you've got the wrong poet & the wrong war. World War I, Wilfred Owen.
    Susan

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    1. zmkc1 October 2017 at 06:21

      Thanks Susan - what a complete idiot I am; my brain said Wilfred Owrn, (at least I hope it did, can't actually remember now), and my fingers typed Larkin - not once but twice, shamefully. Have corrected it now, thanks to you. The dangers of typing in the car on a telephone, (no, I wasn't driving, I should point out, just being a passenger)

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  2. Anonymous3 October 2017 at 03:14

    I want to add that I think your idea is a very good one. To an American, there is something magical about the very likely idea that something of To Autumn was in Owen's mind when he wrote Anthem.
    I'm an old woman, & my parents are long dead. For me there's also something magical about the fact that To Autumn was a poem my mother said aloud to me in the woods on an autumn afternoon when I must have been about five years old. Then later, when I was a young teenager, my father having me read Anthem & putting into my head forever: "At each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds". What a lifelong gift of poetry they gave me.
    Susan

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    1. zmkc3 October 2017 at 08:23

      There is something magical too in the link you describe your parents creating between you and them and poetry. You conjure up scenes of a childhood that are enviable to me - my parents were not attentive in that way.

      I'm assuming you already know this poetry blog - http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.be/?m=1
      If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It is beautiful, verbally and visually

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  3. Anonymous5 October 2017 at 02:57

    Oh yes -- I hadn't commented on your blog before, but have been enjoying it for a couple of years. First Known When Lost was one of the first blogs I discovered -- I love it & comment occasionally.
    Susan

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    1. zmkc5 October 2017 at 13:50

      I find First Known When Lost comforting when I begin to think that everyone in the entire world is obsessed with rubbish, (a recurrent impression). A visit there reminds me that there is still poetry and people who are interested in beauty etc, if that doesn't all sound emetic, which I think perhaps it does. I'm glad to meet you, so to speak, although saying that right after sounding emetic may not be good manners. Oh dear, I shall shut up at this point I think.

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  4. Anonymous7 October 2017 at 00:53

    I'm glad to meet you too, after "lurking" for ages. I think of the authors of the blogs I follow & comment on or occasionally email to as my "Internet Acquaintances". And I don't have any friends who read blogs at all.
    I've met two of these bloggers -- a photographer in New York City, where I live, & an art blogger & his wife from Oregon. I met them at the Met Museum, which was fun, especially as I could show them some obscure things I like.
    Susan
    Susan

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    1. zmkc10 October 2017 at 16:25

      How strange I just lost a reply I wrote. In it I said that I don't think anyone I know reads blogs either, or writes them. And I don't tell anyone I know that I write one. I've met people in real life from Twitter but not as yet from blogs. It is an odd thing about Twitter but, despite the 140 character limit, somehow you can get a really good feel for what a person is like by following them there.
      The Met is one of the greatest places on earth. One day I might come to New York and make you show me some obscure things there.

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  5. Anonymous15 October 2017 at 03:20

    I'd love that. Susan

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