Silliman's Blog

That's a pretty undifferentiated reading of Auden, even if you did take three core samples. (The collection you might try someday is Faber's English Auden. If Ginsberg didn't get half his compressed diction from early Auden, then we all have to lie down and praise Leslie Fiedler.)

Auden's probably not for you -- but wouldn't you laugh if someone referred to your work as a muddle?

We always dislike in others what reminds us of what we least like about ourselves.

Sincerely,
an absolutist/binarist from way back
 

Ron:

I thought your narrative could have an alternative ending, such as: Then I went back to my car, got the weapon out of the trunk, climbed up the fire escape to the roof, and started shooting. Sort of the ultimate suspension--the banality of evil, or something.

Poor Auden. Thought of as a Leftist revolutionary in the 1930's, despised Queer, penniless most of his life, an alcoholic, prematurely ugly, eccentric in a dully English manner, then later in life, despised again for being a lightweight, saddled with a temperamental minor poet partner (Chester Kallman) for 30 years.

Between 1935 and 1960, it's hard to imagine what "British" poetry would have been without him--a huge hole, certainly.

If we must have Quietists in our midst, better they be like Auden, than Pinsky. Double agents make better artists than bourgeois shopkeepers.

I wish we had legal seafood here--their lobsters were to die for! With a Samuel Smith.

Despite having spent time in Paris, I've never been inside the Beaubourg. When we were there, it was closed for renovation. I think it will acquire the patina of industrial chic, like the Eiffel Tower, though that will probably be after our time. Maybe Christo could throw a pink tent over it and call it macaroni.
 

While I agree that Auden is a bit "muddled," I also think Mr. Faville is right about prefering Auden over someone like Pinsky. At least Auden's poetry rings of a true sadness and despair instead of a fabricated, forced dilemma. And sometimes the melodic rhythm is delightful. . .like this tasty titbit from his Yeats Elegy:

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

Auden, for me, is essential, if only to dabble in from time to time.
 

Hey Ron, I have the Dorothy Sayers translation of Paradisio. You want it?

I like Longfellow's translation as well. But Sayers has great footnotes, beyond helpful.

-paul
 

I don’t think anyone who matters really objected to your aside on Auden. I did, of course. The poem and not the poet so … “The Shield of Achilles” the mid-century word on bland evil. Just that and so he is immortal. One great poem is really all that is required. If the rest is a “bland muddle” what care we? Poet rescue no longer my business. But then Auden has other very fine poems and the “sense of meter to doze for” not that evident. A great sense of fun and oh the man knew where to place an “alas.”

At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's
We drank our liquor straight,
Some went upstairs with Margery,
And some, alas, with Kate;
And two by two like cat and mouse
The homeless played at keeping house.

There Wealthy Meg, the Sailor's Friend,
And Marion, cow-eyed,
Opened their arms to me but I
Refused to step inside;
I was not looking for a cage
In which to mope my old age.

The nightingales are sobbing in
The orchards of our mothers,
And hearts that we broke long ago
Have long been breaking others;
Tears are round, the sea is deep:
Roll them overboard and sleep.



Just that – in the immortal Mermaid Tavern – worth more than many a long poem.

And then, those nightingales


Yes, I had a recording of Dylan Thomas reading this poem and this, played again and again, as I lolled about my squalid quarters above the Artificial Limb and Brace Company may have unduly influenced me…but, by God, the wit, the aural satisfactions (oh I am struggling to get the vile phrase “mouth music” out of my head…and phrase blithely used by certain SOQ layabouts showing that it is not possible that they could ever have anything meaningful to say about the same…I think Donald Hall is responsible for this).

In any case my affection for Auden is, I admit, suspect since I am taken with my late Uncle Joe’s claim that Auden’s amorous encounter with him in a tavern was responsible for Auden writing “In Memory of W.B. Yeats.” Yes, the ordinary reader will suppose that the death of Yeats was the occasion for this poem. However, my Uncle has persuaded me otherwise.

But, yes, all in all if one is forced to chat about the poetry in general then Auden is the plummiest of poets. Redeemed by much else I think and you, undoubtedly, are, at some level, reacting in fastidious horror as “we must love one another or die” is given new life after this and that horror. Larry King perhaps uttering these words.

But and nevertheless and all in all there is a struggle and then what at the end?

W.H. Auden
Perhaps the plummest
Said “Of all major poets
Tennyson’s dumbest.”

It was so cold outside
But cozy within.
A nice place to abide
With bitters and gin.

It was the season of hope
Hence reassuring them
That it was a dope
Who wrote “In Memorium.”

But Auden wasn’t a dummy.
And it was Christmas eve.
Right then he felt plummy.
Very soon he would leave.

and

W.H. Auden
Very bad
Made a list:
“Boys had:

Botley
Smythe
Thomson
Herbert...”

But at sixty
He only had one
After sherbert.

Then some cigarettes
Several vodka martinis.

It was Christmas eve
For a bit he felt greenly.
Wrote several cruel verses.
Meant none of them meanly.

Then listened to funeral music from “Tristan.”

If there was any meaning,
It appears to have missed him.

Fans of concrete poetry will note with awe that this last poem is shaped like half a Christmas tree.

A final aside. Coincidence or Telepathy? Just yesterday after stopping at the great Midwestern University library to try to find a copy of Upton Sinclair’s “Mental Radio,” his work on telepathy, I was in Barnes and Noble reading this and that in the Poetry section! I was thinking of Auden but ALSO thumbed through Dante translations. I heard Robert Pinsky read from his Inferno a few years back at a one of the first meetings of the “Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.” A nice talk afterwards and damn fine I thought but what I thought of then was just how much I would enjoy “Silliman’s Inferno.” More likely this than “The School of Quietude” for Dummies.” I’d prefer your own version, of course. Satisfy so much – just what Circle for Auden? Is that Yvor Winters groaning beneath the ice? Or, you could at least write a prose version “The System of Silliman’s Inferno.” But I’d prefer a poetic version. And don’t hesitate (Dante didn’t) to include the living. Is that Kirby Olsen I see skipping barefoot o’er the burning sands?
 

“Poor Auden. Thought of as a Leftist revolutionary in the 1930's, despised Queer, penniless most of his life, an alcoholic, prematurely ugly, eccentric in a dully English manner, then later in life, despised again for being a lightweight, saddled with a temperamental minor poet partner (Chester Kallman) for 30 years.”

And then, of course, a poet whose poems live on – and for good reasons. And the “Poor Auden” just presumes that his cultured despisers had an effect on him. He didn’t really give a damn that he was despised by the almost weightless for being a lightweight. “Proofs in the pudding” as he might have remarked in his eccentric and dull English fashion and the fact is, and this is a great comfort to most poets any damn good, unless you are considered a “lightweight” by a peer why should you give a damn? And then really so what? The truth is there is endless talk and gossip and etcetera but this is all easy and trivial under the aspect of semi-Eternity.

Now – the life. Auden enjoyed being seen as a leftist revolutionary and, unlike so very many, actually did something as far as being where the bullets fly. Somewhat. Changed his mind a bit while there. But from Spain went then to China.

Penniless? Well, that never bothered him.

Alcoholic? Oh what worlds of love and meaning were denied him because of his craving for a cocktail! Still – great wit, some fun and, in any case, the disapproval only has force if, on the whole, it wasn’t better that way.

Queer? Yes, but he had fun and really didn’t suffer from the disapproval of the many. He didn’t care. And he knew early, was happy with it very early.

Prematurely ugly? Oh, why would anyone care? Well, no leading man roles for him.
Didn’t seem to affect him much.

And I think he loved Chester. Any love sustained over thirty years in spite of it all is willed and wanted.

And, really, what is bourgeois or shopkeeperish about Robert Pinsky – the poet/poems or the man? I listened to him talk for a half hour about Dante and his translation of the Inferno – problems with translation, attempts to understand the sensibility, losses, damnation and so on. Really, the assumptions made from his Washington Post articles on poetry quite over the top. Does anyone think really that he is naïve/unknowing about the distinction Ron made between plot and narrative, so unaware as to assume what you assume he assumes without nuance and so on? Those assumptions might be a good starting point for listening to what he would reply and then dealing with that.

The remarks anent Auden above much more riddled with bourgeois assumptions than anything Pinsky would write. Saved somewhat by the thought that between 1935 and 1960, it's hard to imagine what "British" poetry would have been without him.”

The truth is – and I say this having uttered many a cry of horror at the loose baggy monsters of literary theory from Winters to Derrida and ever on and on the discussions here are fairly innocent of theory. A good philosopher duelist of the old sort such as Michael Zeleny would find the theory here as easy to eliminate as the Martians found New Jersey. He would suffer the same fate as the Martians ultimately, however. Ron discusses a movie and finds this or that the “key.” Fine by me but there are intelligences out there – vast, alien, indifferent You wouldn’t know what hit you.
 

". . . the other, equally in love with beauty and the romance of the difficult"

thanks for this
now I get what it is
I always got
about Jack
 

I've never been able to get into Dante, but did order the Sayers translation. Good tip. I like her other work. There are about fifty used copies at Amazon starting at 1.25.
 

Agatha Christie has a great translation too.
 

Dear Lon Silliman--whoever you are. Your obvious intelligence is no badge of permission. My version of Auden is at least as informed and valiant as yours--and I'm a little bit miffed that you should assume your version is the more admirable. Up yr chuff, chum!

I'll bet I know My Auden better than you know yours, or whatever animates your ego.

Don't use your short-hand summaries to lay waste to the landscape. You may be boss in your own pond, but as far as anyone here knows, you go by WHAT you say.

The proof's in the pudding. And--where's the bloody horse???
 

This was to my regular attention, an unusual post on the
Silliman beat, and I enjoyed the no-irish, pardon, noir-ish not unChandleresque details - 7 years to mall decay, a garden state summer car running on Berkeley climes -
a poet dares hope to encounter non-generality at the Mall!
How could a restaurant proclaim its Legality?

But I liked this genre narrative approach
 

Re Auden you said it Lon, which meant I didn't have to. Yipee! Poet-rescue isn't really my bag either. And I love the "...intelligences out there – vast, alien, indifferent..." Something I've long suspected. But, yes, who ARE you? Or does it matter?

Keep em coming Lon
(or are you really Ron's
alter-ego's song?) –
no matter, I'll tag along.
 

Funny coincidence... I just *happened* to buy The Laura Riding Jackson Reader on thissame day, at Barnes & Noble, because the day was too hot and I sought air-conditioned distraction.

What a marvelous book.
 

"Dear Lon Silliman--whoever you are. Your obvious intelligence is no badge of permission."

Joe Green -- not the Poet of the Northwest Joe Green but the Joe Green you get when you google "plaintive innocence" "Joe Green" and "Henry Darger."

Was I intellgent? I knew that unusual feeling meant something.

Really, time after time the identity of Lon Silliman (visit the blog) has been revealed by me.
Yet -- mystery remains. Why?

joegreen66@yahoo.com

How much more virtually real can one be?

This doesn't bode well for my new CD "The Dark Bark: Poems and Song of Rin Tin Tin." Available just be asking me and a source of endless delight.

At a reading -- wondered why I was told to "Sit."

How is it that multiple levels of language can be enjoyed yet a simple pseudonym with backstory can be a source of such confusion?

I lived -- until 1966 -- right up the road from Ron -- 19 Remington Avenue, South Coatesville, Pa. 19320. Dudley 4 9237. Check me out with Mr. Pulinka up the street. He still kind of remembers me. And a big shout out to Bishop Shanahan High School Class of 66. I hope that this is explicit enough and the level of distress caused by a pseudonym is somewhat lowered.

Lon Silliman = Joe Green. Not the Northwestern Poet. Proprietor of Owl Oak Press. My picture at my blog. My service record available. (US Army). Transcripts from Universtity of Minnesota available. For anecdotes about my relationship with the writings of James Joyce contact Chester Anderson Professor Emeritus University of Minnesota by going to the University web site and finding his e-mail. Wondering about me and Shakespeare and my little role in establishing that he did NOT write the Funeral Ode?
Contact Thomas Clayton, Regents Professor, University of Minnesota. Curious about my appearance in Time magazine? Google Phillip Elmer Dewit "Bards of the Internet" "Joe Green." Want to hear more about the legendary poetry reading to assembled FBI agents and read once again that John Perry Barlow was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead contact me at the above e-mail since I have repressed most of it but will do what I can to be of assistance.

Thanks,

Joseph Michael Green, son of Jean Green (nee O'Brien) and James Lenard green (I don't know why the hell he spelled it that way) who owned the Green's News Agency in Coatesville, Pa and then worked selling "Bedroom "soots" and color TV's at Chertok's Furniture for years and years then "retired" but continued to be part of the American Business Community by selling Harley Davison Gee Gaws from a booth in the Downington Farmer's Market. That Jim Green.

I take the 134 bus from the corner of Jefferson and St Clair (St Paul, Minnesota) to work at 6:15 each morning.
 

I think the obvious assertion of an identity (Joe Green left out where he works!) shows us how much a mere name is useless without a reference in reality. More than anything else he has proved that reality is what we're after when we're reading. Even Silliman is after that. A single letter tells us nothing about reality. It offers neither a description of reality nor a judgment of it. Without these two qualities a poem is merely annoying, as is a poster without a background that we can in turn judge.

Silliman tells us that he drives a Mazda without air conditioning, and he places this in the context of not needing it in Berkeley, but needing it to drive on the NJ turnpike, and that he explores the reality of a given mall. Which he in turn JUDGES for its lack of reality in its B&N, which also contains books such as that by Auden which is thrown back on the shelf for its lack of reality in favor of LR who does offer a real.

We're moving out of gnosticism here folks back into space and time and life. Silliman says that Whitman is the grand dad of this writing tha the prefers -- and he's dead right -- note that all of Whitman is not only descriptive of reality but also places a judgment on it. We must expect at least this much from a poet, or else it's merely annoying.

Vizpo from this angle is not terribly promising. No more promising that contemporary sculpture in its ability to convey a meaning about contemporary life and both describe and judge.
 

Reality? Judgement? Oh intelligences out there – vast, alien, indifferent ... where are you when we need you?
 

Ciardi's transaltion is pretty good, too. It also has great notes.


"Nones" by Auden is interesting, a later piece based on the cannonical hours. Beautiful opening, about waking up. lyric, incantatory language you might not associate with him. his early stuff is kind of interesting for its odd evocation of a certain harsh landscape. which is not its focus, but it comes through anyway.
 

I enjoyed reading this post, Ron. Thanks. I'm the same with Auden--'muddle' seems just right, there's just a lack of affinitive appeal, to my mind.

Chris Murray
 

"...there's just a lack of affinitive appeal, to my mind."

Oh please! What a convoluted and euphemistic way of saying "I can't get into him" (or something equally honest).
 

I would like to read through Homer again. Could you discuss the various translations in a forthcoming blog? Or could anybody else point me to some of the better ones, better editions, etc. I read it through when I was 19 or so. Coming back to poetry lately I have thought I should reread it, but don't know the editions very well. There appear to be a lot of them.
 

Southside,

How is it you hide behind a pseudonym--oh sorry, that's probably a big word: how about 'you hide behind a fake name'?--when criticizing others?

It does not matter to me what you think of how I say things.

Chris Murray
 

You have a point Chris. I have used my name on other forums and I am tempted to do the same here (though my real name would probably mean even less to you than yours does to me). Not that it's any excuse, but this particular pseudonym is tied to my blog, which I've just started and would like to keep anonymous for the time being, at least till I decide whether it's worth continuing, and perhaps beyond that too.

But still, one SHOULD be prepared to put one's name to a critical remark; moreover, if one does make a critical remark, one should be prepared to be specific.

Your own remark about "affinitive appeal" was remarkably unspecific, meaningless really. I hope that if I ever make (or have made) a similarly meaningless remark someone will be good enough to point it out to me, and that I will have the good grace to say thank you.

And thank you Chris, for throwing down that gauntlet, and reminding me of the virtues of signing my name. I may yet pick it up.
 

I found her remark to make complete sense as it goes back to Goethe's remark about elective affinity, and Duchamp's oration at Breton's funeral. It was a remark that had several echoes in it, and I was impressed by it.

I suspect that Auden was a poet who was in the right place at the right time -- having gone to one of the best British schools with Spender and Isherwood and others and having formed a sort of mafia he was able to get his work into good places, but he didn't have much resonance and now that his mafia is gone we can look at his work and realize that it's taking up precious shelf space in the canon that belongs to somebody else.
 

Oh dear. I really am bored with defending Auden, someone who isn't in need of defending, least of all by some blogsider who should have better things to do.

But why can't you people be honest for a change? Why not admit that Auden is simply not YOUR mug of Java, instead of trying to back up your dismissive remarks with frankly absurd attempts at belittling the man and his work. Sneering at Aden’s education "in one of the best British schools" or suggesting that his poems were published merely because he formed part of a "mafia" who enabled him to "get his work into good places" is below even you Kirby. It smacks of a pathetic, VERY old-fashioned class envy I'd thought most people with more than half a brain-cell had moved on from, ages ago, and says reams more about your own bandaged ego than it ever could about Auden.

This dismal attempt at a smear is followed by one of those blankety blank remarks, that his work "didn't have much resonance". This is even blander than Ron's ridiculous assertion that the work is "bland", "too prolix, too full of generalities, a sense of meter to doze for." I suspect that your "resonance" comment is really a wind-up Kirby. It's too bland to be anything else.

As to your defence of Chris's remark, if all you can manage is name-dropping "several echoes" (Goethe, Duchamp, Breton..) well that's worse than no defence. "Elective affinity" (the title of Goethe's 1809 novel about science and human relationships) is NOT the same thing as "affinitive appeal".

Aw shit, who cares anyway and why bother? Here's a bit of name-dropping Kirby. Have you seen Klee's 'The Twittering Machine'? When I thought of your 'criticism' it just popped into mind. Now, I've just wasted another hour. How pathetic is THAT?!
 

Kirby,

Thanks for the semiotic handshake.
I'm glad you saw a connection.

Chris Murray
 

Southside,

I don't know what you mean by "mug of java."
Why not just say "cup of coffee"?

Good Luck with your new blog.
I mean that sincerely.

Chris Murray
 

"I don't know what you mean by "mug of java."
Why not just say "cup of coffee"?"

Because I was attempting, perhaps rather ineptly, to be playful; I don't drink 'cups' of coffee; I drink mugs (more like tankards) of Java or Lavazza regular. Perhaps that may explain my tetchiness. But do you really think "mug of Java" = "affinitive appeal" on the pretentiousness scales? Maybe it does. If so, I am guilty as charged.
 

Oh, and thanks, by the way. The blog probably won't last; I doubt I'd ever find enough to say.
 

The one poet I really like from Auden's circle is Empson. I like his criticism, too. I haven't read enough of either. Too often schools come lumped together and the lightweights paradoxically end up on top and you have to dig to get to the better poets.
 

A similar example might be Edwin Denby who I've always thought was the smartest of the NY School of poets. His criticism is far and away the sharpest too. O'Hara Ashbery and Koch couldn't write a critical essay worth reading. Denby was almost always on the other hand spot on, as were his poems. And yet nobody much seems to have read them.

Maybe it's just elective affinity as Chris Murray says so well (words with wonderful long etymologies that haven't been overused are part of what poets are supposed to be using, and I see no need to dumb down the vocabulary for people who won't even use their own name in a post).

Congratulations again to Chris Murray, and to Ron for being brave enough to sound the hollow-ness of Auden and his Trojan horse of Freudian classicism. Who needs it?

I'd rather read Empson or Denby or Fagin or Chris Murray any day.
 

You have a strange conception of bravery Kirby. The old man is long dead, and there are plenty of craven tiddlers like yourself to tell Ron he's making the right noises. To paraphrase what someone else has already said here, nobody who matters is going to CARE what you or I or Chris or Ron says on the ol blogroll. And even if someone who "mattered" did care, Ron isn't going to be shot for it. It's just cyber-chatter, opinions, piffle. Or don't you GET that yet?

And you're getting muddled. Chris didn't say "elective affinity". That was your contribution.
 

Oh, and thanks for letting me know what "poets are supposed to be doing". As always Kirby, I guess it depends on WHICH poets. Most of my favourite poets use simple, unpretentious, everyday words, which nevertheless also have "wonderful long etymologies". English is like that, or didn't anyone tell you?
 

Chris clearly referred to the term elective affinities! She was counting on the reader to supply the links, but it was a clear reference! Had to have been.

Any sign of standing up and for anything is a sign of bravery. and I stand up for the right to use odd words of any kind as long as they are in the dictionary!

The blogosphere is having a huge impact. Ron has had 400,000 readers. I think people do care what he says!

Now I may be a piffler or tiddler (did you make up this word? -- it's not in the new collegiate) but he's not whatever it is that word means!
 

"Any sign of standing up and for anything is a sign of bravery..."

Roll on the flag-wavers then; bravery is far more ubiquitious than I'd suspected.

"...and I stand up for the right to use odd words of any kind as long as they are in the dictionary!"

"As long as they are in the dictionary"? Very brave. So you haven't yet moved on from old Jimmy's Wake. Too many Thunder Words maybe.

Forgive me, but what a load of old floccinaucinilipilification!
 

Kirby, this Auden debate seems to me to have gotten off track.

I find it very difficult to "blame" poets for choosing one formality over another. Much more to the point is what they DO with those forms. So many people use traditional forms in dull, predictable, uninspiring/uninspired ways. Auden was not one of these. He had a superior facility, was extremely broad-minded, and managed to combine satirical and a lyrical qualities together in a way no one had quite done before. Had he lived in Pope's/Dryden's time, I think it obvious he would have been a great dramatic "coupler". Had he lived in Byron's time, he'd have been a bombastic romantic epic-master. But he lived in the screwed-up 20th Century, and was Gay, and Left, and rebellious by nature. He was NOT an inventor, NOT an innovator (except of thematic concepts), he couldn't reach into the fire and pull out live coals.

But, heavens!, what terrific poems! My personal favorites are nearly all in the English Auden volume, but there are some little "classical" masterpieces late, as well. Filled with heroic wisdom, bad jokes, brilliant wit, and echoes from everywhere.

Denby is indeed wonderful. But severely limited, as a poet. His criticism is in the field of modern dance; I doubt he thought very much about literature.

I no longer read Auden, except the occasional essay, but I can't imagine dealing his work a deathblow by pretending it never existed. That would be like denying history. Let's NOT remember him in house-slippers making limericks on the Johnny Carson show. Let's remember him travelling to Iceland and composing Byronic stanzas on a donkey.
 

The criticism of the dance is really good, though, right? I really enjoyed reading it. I actually enjoy reading Edwin Denby. I find him quite fascinating inside of his chosen forms -- curiously he is often writing about the way people move in NYC, so I see his dance criticism as connected to his poetry. He describes a green light and the various people who go by and how they move, for instance. It becomes a little aleatory ballet. Very precise and no doubt minor, but very fun and interesting.

Many of the NY School wrote on art but without any insight much and the writing itself is sluggish and miserable. I have Koch's book of literary criticism and it's also so hard to read, and very slight.

I am sorry to say that even the Iceland book of Auden's left me cold.

I wish it were different. But thanks for your erudite voice. Basically I was just trying to keep Chris Murray and others from feeling bounced out by these anonymous bounders. I don't see perfectly excellent words like "affinities" have to go. I wish you would write more often Curtis. You set a tone. Without you around, I'm often tempted to leave.
 

And I'll bound in with my thanks also, Curtis. Well said.
 

i remember reading austers essay about laura jackson ages ago, and being frustrated that i could not find any of her work anywhere, except in a few minor femminist anthologies,

its good news that she is in barnes & noble.

i want a smoothie now.