[Jim Moonan]

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Does a poem this good classify as a masterpiece? The poem was referenced on another thread recently and when I found it it astounded me.


Their Lonely Betters

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.
A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

W.H. Auden


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[Cally Conan-Davies]

Very Frostian, Jim!

In diction and technique.

And overlaps with Lawrence, too.

This poem demonstrates for me that Frost and Lawrence were two of Auden's biggest influences.

Always a treat to read this one.

Cally

[Carl Copeland]

Based on my superficial browsing, I class Auden with Eliot as poets who wrote for their intellectual peers—well above my head. There are only so many poems that I can spend hours or days researching, no matter how rewarding it is. There are some, though, like this little masterpiece, that make it worth sifting through the rest. Thank you, Jim and Glenn.

[Mark McDonnell]

I didn't know this one, Jim. Thanks for posting it. He's sitting in his garden chair, so he has me already, haha.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying

reminded me of Whitman's animals

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things

which Lawrence would surely have loved too.

And the bird in my little garden poem probably springs from the same source.

Whatever we think or say, someone has thought and said it better before us!

And I'm sure someone has said that before (and better)

This was a treat to read.

[John Riley]

My issue with Auden’s is his intelligence too often cowers over the poems. I don’t sense that in this one. Maybe I’ll try again. I have his selected.

It’s my impression that the thing that separates good from great formal poets is their instinct, talent for rhymes. The way he makes rhyming couplets here almost unnoticeable is what I mean. There’s a softness that doesn’t bang bang. I don’t know if that’s teachable.

[Yves S L]

I reckon extended rhymless iambic pentameter is harder than rhyming, as having to rhyme actually restricts the possibilities of things you can say, and, also, without the end-rhymes you have to work harder to make music. Once you have the shade/made rhyme, then if you have "birds" then there is only so many rhymes available, so if you choose birds/words then your theme is kinda set and you can just go on riffing. It is not like the themes and ideas and motifs are original to Auden. Take for example what Frost makes of the old chestnut that is the birds/words rhyme:

The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

The poets bend their ideas around the rhymes.

If someone has the syntactic flexibility and sufficient control of rhythm to make extended rhymeless iambic pentameter interesting, then the person needs a few additional ingredients to be able to rhyme convincingly, ingredients that musicians who take interest in rhyme and meter tend to already possess in abudance. Can a person acquire the ingredients? Sure. Can someone else tell them a step by step recipe of how to acquire the ingredients? Well, it is an illusion that anything can really be taught, because at some point in the process a person has to think without anyone else's help.

Also, sometimes rhyme and meter is not supposed to be unobtrusive.

The challenge, though, is not rhyme and meter, but having something to say.

[John Riley]

This is all true, Yves. But doing it well is something else.