Admirers of A.E.Housman might be amused and/or enraged by Germaine Greer's characteristically polemical piece published in last Saturday's books supplement of the (London) Guardian newspaper. It can be sourced at www.guardian.co.uk if you run a search on Germaine Greer. (Don't trust myself to transcribe long Web addresses accurately). In the author's defence I should point out that the article is extracted from a longer (and possibly more nuanced)lecture. While agreeing with some of Greer's conclusions, I deplore her tone which IMO verges at times on the homophobic. Moreover, it seems hard to lay all the blame for Hallmark-style verse on A.E.H's shoulders. Margaret.

[Richard Wakefield]

Thanks for the information. I wonder how much in this case one poet is taking criticism for the critic's general distaste for formal verse. As a critic I've sometimes been guilty of venting my general discontent upon one poet who happens to have crossed my path at the wrong time.
RPW

[edeverett]

I have to say that having scanned for the gist of Germaine Greer's article, I find myself, as often, agreeing with her.
She appears to be attacking the idea that poetry should be 'felt' rather than understood. I think that this idea is counter to the true development of poetry. Earlier on the metrical threads I found myself attacking Betjeman for being inconsequential, in other words, lacking meaningfulness. I think that's a big problem for formal poetry, but it exists only because the doctrine of 'feeling' rather than 'meaning' has allowed a snobbish strand of poets to get away with it.
It seems to me that Germaine Greer is really just opposed to old boy networks and to those who diminish the formal tradition of intelligent poetry exemplified by her beloved Shakespeare.

[hector]

I don't see what Housman had to do with 'old boy networks'. Personally, he was a formidable solitary. One of the problems is that Greer (and Pound) does not observe that Housman uses his formidable intelligence in his poetry. There is far more humour and irony in Housman than many of his detractors (and admirers too) recognise.

[oliver murray]

Margaret,

Thanks for bringing this up.

I enjoyed this article last week and, while it makes a few valid points, it is way over the top and vindictive in many ways. Ms Greer all too frequently mentions the amount of crap verse she gets sent every week and she seems to blame Housman for much of this. Why on earth do tyro poets send poems to an unsympathetic person like her? She also criticises Housman for "vanity publishing" usually known, in the poetry world, as self-publishing, as done by Blake or Whitman, and, I think, Yeats, at one stage, among many others, and I understand it is not regarded as all that reprehensible with a non-commercial product like poetry.

Ms Greer also appears to criticise Housman for directing his homosexual feelings towards "lads" who were safely dead, which, in the context of the times, with homosexual behavior a criminal offence, was rather wise. I have no strong feelings about Housman's verse one way or the other, but I thought it, in the end, a rather unpleasant and ungenerous article, and, even if cut down from a longer,
more nuanced? lecture, Ms Greer presumably had control over the parts published.

Oliver.