When I was digging around in the stacks for 1930 books, I started wondering whether I’d ever read any poetry for our Club Weeks – and I don’t think I have (I could check, but my computer is very slow so I’m relying on my rubbish memory). This set me checking to see what verse had been published during that year, and I discovered an important volume had come out in 1930 – “Ash Wednesday” by T.S. Eliot. I own several collections of his verse so I went searching and discovered that of course I do own this volume. However, an online search revealed another intriguing fact; Basil Bunting, who I’ve discovered recently and written about on the blog here, published his first collection in 1930, an obscure privately printed book entitled “Redimiculum Matellarum” which is pretty much impossible to get hold of. However, some research revealed that all the poems included were available in his “Complete Poems”. I had been contemplating getting a copy of this for a while, and I’m afraid this discovery tipped me over the edge. Damn you Bloodaxe Books and your wonderful poetry editions!!

So I’ve been spending some time with Eliot and Bunting and am left facing the actually very difficult task of writing about these works. Many and much greater writers than I have pondered these poets, and frankly I don’t know that I’m qualified to offer much. So I’ll just share a few thoughts here – forgive me if I talk rubbish!

First up, Eliot. “Ash Wednesday” was written in 1927, after the poet had converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism, and as you might gather from the title is a work concerning religion. Wikipedia describes it as “richly but ambiguously allusive and (it) deals with the move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation”; I suspect it’s the religious references which cause me to struggle with it. Yes, I’ve read “Ash Wednesday” but I’d be lying if I said I understood it. It’s a dense, evocative text, laden with imagery; and though I don’t always get the sense of it, I often love the sound of the words. More about the latter later in this post…

In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying

On to Basil. Bunting was associated with the Modernist poets of the early 20th century, and was highly regarded by the likes of Ezra Pound. The poems in “Redimiculum Matellarum” (which apparently translates literally as ‘A necklace of chamberpots’ ) are scattered around the Collected volume and I made a list and read them in order. The first verse is “Villon”, included in a section entitled ‘Sonatas’, and the man of the title was a 15th century poet-villain. The poem reads as a prison ballad, with the modern poet merging at times with the historical one and aligning himself and his experiences with the life of the earlier man. The other verses vary in length and range over love and sex, the poetic muse and the beauty of the world. Bunting’s verse is intriguing, often contrasting beauty with harsh realities; and I ended up keen to read more of his work.

… drift on merciless reiteration of years;
descry no death; but spring
is everlasting
resurrection.

So – poetry. I like reading poetry very much; but with the more complex stuff I sometimes feel I’m struggling to understand it and I end up feeling cross with myself that I don’t get it. However, one part of Virginia Woolf’s essay, which I reviewed earlier this week, struck home and made me feel better about it. She talks about reading poetry when one is ill, stating:

In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality. We grasp what is beyond the surface meaning, gather instinctively this, that, and the other – a sound, a colour, here a stress, there a pause – which the poet, knowing words to be meagre in comparison with ideas, has strewn about his page to evoke, when collected, a state of mind which neither words can express nor the reason explain.

Although I can’t always put into words what I get from poetry, I think it’s exactly what Woolf is hinting at above. The music of the words speaks to me in a way I can’t define and puts me in a particular state of mind. So I shall stop worrying about it, and if I take nothing more from poetry than a love of the sound of the words and a deep emotional feeling, I’ll be happy. 1930 certainly produced some interesting poetry, Modernist or not – and I’ll definitely be dipping into Bunting again as the years go on! 😀