--I think this is, in fact, quite an imperfect poem.
But it is a great one.

That's interesting, David. Tell us why you think the Housman falls down. A poem doesn't have to be wonderful to be perfect. Perfection means there's nothing in the poem you could ever change to make it better. I feel this is the case with several of Housman's poems. Short simple lyrics stand more chance of attaining perfection than long complex poems. 'The Waste Land' is a great poem but it can't be perfect. Byron's 'So we'll go no more a-roving' is perfect but is not as great as 'The Waste Land'. Or is it????

Dear Alf,

There's definite promise in this one. It's obviously an early draft and you fall into a few beginner's traps. You are wise to try the workshop experience and we will help you improve.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:

--Excellent opening image and the Chernobyl allusion is powerful. However, you should avoid archaisms like 'yon' and strive to avoid inversions to achieve a more conversational tone.

What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

--'Blue' hills? If you can see the spires and farms, how can you say it's a far country? 'Those' is obviously rhyme-driven.

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,

--For 'plain' consider 'plainly', which is grammatically correct.


The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

--Good close.

Thus, you might consider:

Into my heart an air that kills
blows from the not very distant country over there:
What are those (green? brown?) remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are they?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plainly,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Take or leave as you think appropriate.

Welcome to Erato, and good luck in revision.

Best regards,

David

Yes David, Alf would get slaughtered on the Deep End. But you forget the N is a Shropshire lad - a nineteenth century countryman who would certainly say 'yon', possibly use inversions in his speech and maybe not be as grammatically correct as you would like him to be. The 'voice' Housman uses in his poems is very far from the Victorian intellectual he was.

Surely David is being ironic and spoofing us, playing on the content of real crits. I seem to remember that there was a whole thread devoted to that idea here on Eratosphere once upon a time. And quite a clever one, as I recall. It was before my time, but I've read it.

Really interesting thread.

I think it was one of those Dead French Guys who said, perfect is the enemy of good. Being a neurotic and a perfectionist, I think that's a bunch of hoo haw, but it sounds good.

When I think of the word 'perfect' I think of diamonds, gemstones, the golden mean, mathematical formulas, roses, orchids, and all the sacred texts and creation myths seem to mention perfection. And all of them do seem to speak to symmetry, balance, etc., which has come up so often here when discussing the perfect poem. But what of classical music ? We also think of newborns as perfect, and I suppose that often means having ten fingers and toes. Seems perfection, whether it exists in the disciplines, or not, and no matter how we balk at the word, is all wrapped up in our hunger for balance and form. Where is Mark to say that is anti- nature ??? But not necessarily...

--

Let chaos storm !
Let cloud shapes swarm !
I wait for form.

(Frost)

Has anyone posted this one yet?


The Open Sea


We say the sea is lonely; better say
Ourselves are lonesome creatures whom the sea
Gives neither yes or no for company.

Oh, there are people, all right, settled in the sea-
It is as populous as Maine today-
But no one who will give you the time of day.

A man who asks there of his family
Or a friend or teacher gets a cold reply
Or finds him dead against that vast majority.

Nor does it signify that people who stay
Very long, bereaved or not, at the edge of the sea
Hear the drowned folk call: that is mere fancy,

They are speechless. And the famous noise of the sea,
Which a poet has beautifully told us in our day,
Is hardly a sound to speak comfort to the lonely.

Although not yet a man given to prayer, I pray
For each creature lost since the start of the sea,
And give thanks that it was not I, nor yet one close to me.

William Meredith

Oh, to write one, just one, piece like that, in my lifetime...

Thanks,

Bill

Wendy

It is spooky you mentioning diamonds because I was thinking today that that elusive quality of perfection in a poem is sometimes at least to do with a certain crystalline order to things. Moreso when this is non-obvious on a surface level but you kind of infer that the poet put a lot more internal logic into the poem than he/she explicitly tells you about.

And mathematical formulae are most definitely beautiful and pefect.

Nice to see you here.

Philip

Where is Mark to say that is anti- nature ???

Wendy, I agree that there may well be perfection in Nature and in art, but when perfectionism is applied to our selves and to our society, then I have some issues.

For the second time today I will quote from a letter by Keats:

"But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility - the nature of the world would not admit of it - the inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself - Let the fish philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in winter time and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the Poles and at the sands of Africa, Whirlpools and volcanoes - Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness - The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature and no further."

- Letter to the George Keatses, Feb-May, 1819

I can understand why people might go for Keats' Ode to Autumn. However, if I was the castaway on some sort of poetic equivalent of Desert Island Discs , and forced to choose just one poem - it would have to be (drumroll), Kubla Khan.

Alan

I think of Tim's best poems as diamond-like: compressed, tiny, hard, every word in its place, its only place, where only that word could go. And then there's this by A. R. Ammons:

Small Song

The reeds give
way to the

wind and give
the wind away


Its polar opposite might be this one by W. F. Roby, which I also like very much:

http://www.umbrellajournal.com/fall2.../W.F.Roby.html

but I don't think of it as "perfect" because it's so messy. But life is messy. Dostoyevsky was a messy writer. Agh, I don't know what's best. I want it all!


p.s. Can I invoke Mark too? Mark, do you remember something D. H. Lawrence said about there being two kinds of poems, the gemlike kind, and those that are like a scrap of life snatched as it passes by?

Mark, do you remember something D. H. Lawrence said about there being two kinds of poems, the gemlike kind, and those that are like a scrap of life snatched as it passes by?

Yes, I do, Rose.

And since it seems pertinent to this thread I will paste it in.



"The poetry of the beginning and the poetry of the end must have that exquisite finality, perfection which belongs to all that is far off. It is in the realm of all that is perfect. It is of the nature of all that is complete and consummate … the poetry of the past, rich, magnificent ... the realm of all that is perfect.

But there is another kind of poetry: the poetry of that which is at hand: the immediate present. In the immediate present there is no perfection, no consummation, nothing finished. The strands are all flying, quivering, intermingling into the web, the waters are shaking the moon. There is no round, consummate moon on the face of running water, nor on the face of the unfinished tide. There are no gems of the living plasm. The living plasm vibrates unspeakably, it inhales the future, it exhales the past, it is the quick of both, and yet it is neither. There is no plasmic finality, nothing crystal, permanent ... Life, the ever-present, knows no finality, no finished crystallisation. The perfect rose is only a running flame, emerging and flowing off, and never in any sense at rest, static, finished. Herein lies its transcendent loveliness ... Give me nothing fixed, set, static. Don't give me the infinite or the eternal: nothing of infinity, nothing of eternity. Give me the still, white seething, the incandescence and the coldness of the incarnate moment: the moment, the quick of all change and haste and opposition: the moment, the immediate present, the Now. The immediate moment is not a drop of water running downstream. It is the source and issue, the bubbling up of the stream. here, in this very instant moment, up bubbles the stream of time, out of the wells of futurity, flowing on to the oceans of the past. The source, the issue, the creative quick ... There is poetry of this immediate present, instant poetry, as well as poetry of the infinite past and the infinite future. The seething poetry of the incarnate Now is supreme, beyond even the everlasting gems of the before and after. In its quivering momentaneity it surpasses the crystalline, pearl-hard jewels, the poems of the eternities. Do not ask for the qualities of the unfading timeless gems. As for the whiteness which is the seethe of mud, ask for that incipient putrescence which is the skies falling, ask for the never-pausing, never-ceasing life itself. There must be mutation, swifter than iridescence, haste, not rest, come-and-go, not fixity, inconclusiveness, immediacy, the quality of life itself, without dénouement or close. There must be the rapid momentaneous association of things which meet and pass on the forever incalculable journey of creation: everything left in its own rapid, fluid relationship with the rest of things.

This is the unrestful, ungraspable poetry of the sheer present, poetry whose very permanency lies in its wind-like transit. Whitman's is the best poetry of this kind ... Without beginning and without end, without any base and pediment, it sweeps past for ever, like a wind that is forever in passage, and unchainable. Whitman truly looked before and after. But he did not sigh for what is not. The clue to all his utterance lies in the sheer appreciation of the instant moment, life surging itself into utterance at its very well-head. Eternity is only an abstraction from the actual present. Infinity is only a great reservoir of recollection, or a reservoir of aspiration: man-made. The quivering nimble hour of the present, this is the quick of Time. This is the immanence. The quick of the universe is the pulsating, carnal self, mysterious and palpable. So it is always."

– D. H. Lawrence. Introduction to the American edition of New Poems

Mark

Thanks for that.

What a "f**k-off" quote (as they'd say in Liverpool. Ironically it means "excellent"!)

I, for one, would never suggest that "perfection" is always the thing to aim for. Incompleteness has a charm of its own - it's why I like that old AS number "The Ruin", and certain things of Sappho's.

Doubtless everyone knows this:

The Ruin

Well-wrought this wall: Wierds broke it.
The stronghold burst...
Snapped rooftrees, towers fallen,
the work of the Giants, the stonesmiths,
mouldereth.
Rime scoureth gatetowers
rime on mortar.
Shattered the showershields, roofs ruined,
age under-ate them.
And the wielders & wrights?
Earthgrip holds them - gone, long gone
fast in gravesgrasp while fifty fathers
and sons have passed.
Wall stood,
grey lichen, red stone, kings fell often,
stood under storms, high arch crashed -
stands yet the wallstone, hacked by weapons,
by files grim-ground...
...shone the old skilled work
...sank to loam-crust
Mood quickened mind, and man of wit,
cunning in rings, bound bravely the wallbase
with iron, a wonder.
Bright were the buildings, halls where springs ran,
high, horngabled, much throng-noise;
these many meadhalls men filled
with loud cheerfulness: Weird changed that.
Came days of pestilence, on all sides men fell dead,
death fetched off the flower of the people;
where they stood to fight, waste places
and on the acropolis, ruins.
Hosts who would build again
shrank to the earth. Therefore are these courts dreary
and that red arch twisteth tiles,
wryeth from roof-ridge, reacheth groundwards...
Broken blocks...
There once many a man
mood-glad, gold-bright, of gleams garnished,
flushed with wine-pride, flashing war-gear,
gazed on wrought gemstones, on gold, on silver,
on wealth held and hoarded, on light-filled amber,
on this bright burg of broad dominion.
Stood stone houses; wide streams welled
hot from source, and a wall all caught
in its bright bosom, and the baths were
hot at hall's hearth; that was fitting...
............ Thence hot streams, loosed, ran over hoar stone
unto the ring-tank...
...It is a kingly thing
...city...

it exhibits another kind of perfection altogether. Not crystalline, but with big, hairy b**ls!

Philip

(Ignorance on display!) I have never seen that poem before, Philip. It's incredible!

Earthgrip - wow, what a word. I never knew such a word. It holds me, too!

Is it Anglo-saxon - old??

Thank you for this. Wow.

(Mark - you know how I feel about that DHL! So glad you posted it!)

Cally

Cally

The Ruin is a well-known penning of Anon from the AS canon - supposedly about the Roman City of Bath (Aquae Sulis if I remember right?).

cf discussion on another thread "earthgrip" or "gravesgrasp" are true kennings for the state of death.

check out the audio of this on Michael Drout's excellent site:

http://michaeldrout.com/

Philip

What a curious subject. A provocative subject, really, and I'll plow through the many comments here tomorrow when I have time, and perhaps a brain, for hard thinking.

It just seems to me, if I can speak without being informed--something I'm wont to do--a poet's own work is never finished. If it's left untouched, it can only be because he or she has given up on it.

Kevin

Welcome aboard the good ship 'Sphere. if anyone here should say to you (in response to anything you post) "Round Objects" you are to say "Who is Round, and to what does he object?" That's why they call it The 'Sphere.:D

Anyway - you raise the old one about the poem never being finished, only abandoned. I think the exceptions to that rule absolutely define what I mean by "The Perfect Poem", and I do beleive they exist - poems which any alteration would diminish.

Anyway

Hope you enjoy the place.

Philip

Actually

Since this thread has been reactivated by a third party I feel justified in posting another of my favourite, perfect poems. Ignore Dylan Thomas at your peril! To almost quote Joni Mitchell - I could drink a case of this, and still be on my feet. What this has is ebullience held barely in check, a great force just reined in. Most of all it has passion, which, given certain events on this board recently, is a commodity in short supply and not held in much esteem, as Dylan Thomas isn't these days. Time to remind ourselves what it looked and sounded like. This posting is dedicated to Mark and Paul.

AUTHOR's PROLOGUE

This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work art and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.

I'm a big fan of Dylan In about a dozen poems, nearly, but not quite all written before he was twenty, he really did the biz. I like Under Milk Wood too. And I am sure I am not alone. Not liking Dylan is unacceptable. Nice poem, Philip.

OK What about this then?

This world of dew
is but a world of dew...
and yet.. and yet.

This is a translation by D.J.. Enright, of a haiku by Kobayashi, a contemporary of Keats. There are many translations of these lines, but Enright's is the best.

Unless a Spherean knows a better.

John

Yes

Haiku, Tanka, Renga, Haiga often achieve the status of perfection. Examples too numerous to mention. As for Thomas, for me A Winter's Tale, I See the Boys of Summer, Over Sir John's Hill and this one are also great favourites:

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.


And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.


All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the night-jars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.


And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day,
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.


And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.


Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Well, if anyone wrote a perfect poem it would be Dylan Thomas. (Or Gerard Manley Hopkins!)

Nice poem indeed, Philip, and a thoughtful dedication. I stood and shouted the whole thing aloud in a welter of tears and snot that's been building up all day. Frightened the poor bloody dog shitless. Did the trick, though. Thanks.

I am weary of sophisticates who denounce Dylan. He will outlast them.
Under Milk Wood is as fresh as the day it was written.

Ann

That's what you have to do with DT's poems - bellow them out loud. Apparently his father used to declaim Shakespeare to him and it shows.

Philip