[Alan Sullivan]

Lovely, supple meter in the Mahon. Interesting how he has a hexameter line at the start of each stanza. I wonder if this was one of those formal accidents, where he wrote some lines and one insisted on its length, would not be denied. I remember talking with Parnassus (our nickname for RPW) once about nonce forms, and he said that they usually came to him spontaneously, in just this way. A stanza formed itself, and then he would make others to match. Almost a colloquy with the Muse.

Alan Sullivan

[mandolin]

Tha last stanza of Mahon's wonderful elegy surely begins with a reference to MacNeice's "Snow":

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands–
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

----
I can discern no meter and yet the poem lies wonderfully on the tongue -- is it the incredibly rich internal rhyme and other intra-line sonic devices? How does rhyming "it" with itself and "portion" with "various" make the rhyme of "supposes" and "roses" seem so startling and right?

[robert mezey]

MacNiece's "Snow" is metrically pretty rough, but it's
all five-beat lines, or almost all. Alan, I didn't
know that early poem of Mahon's; it's quite lovely.
(And you're right, three of the stanzas do start with
hexameters, but not the third. My favorite line
"Which suits you down to the ground, like this
churchyard" is pentameter, no?)

[Alan Sullivan]

Yes, that churchyard line is the odd man out. I was trying to persuade myself that Mahon might be stressing "like" and calling it a six-stress line, but that's a stretch. Eleven syllables, and only four really strong stresses. In another context it could even be accentual tetrameter. Split the difference, I suppose.

Alan

[Robert J. Clawson]

with dactyls doing
no harm whatsoever.

Hey, you cut dactyls, you cut Oregon. We need all our states.

Bob

[Peter Coghill]

I was going to post something but found this old thread. One advantage of ignorance is to discover relatively well known poets. On the strength of a quick browse I bought a selected poems and have come to love many of them. He writes strong memorable lines, in this case cunningly tied together with sound and the repetion of the last word of each stanza with the last word of the first line of the next in a daisy chain effect. The trimeter lines stick together well without rhyme to define them. I don't mind being told (instead of shown)what he thinks when it is so interesting and well put together.

Leaving Barra

The dazzle on the sea, my darling,
Leads from the western channel
A carpet of brilliance taking
My leave for ever of the island.

I never shall visit that island
Again with its easy tempo--
The seal sunbathing, the circuit
Of gulls on the wing for garbage.

I go to a different garbage
And scuffle for scraps of notice,
Pretend to ignore the stigma
That stains my life and my leisure.

For fretful even in leisure
I fidget for different values,
Restless as a gull and haunted
By a hankering after Atlantis.

I do not know that Atlantis
Unseen and uncomprehended,
Dimly divined but keenly
Felt with a phantom hunger.

If only I could crush the hunger
If only I could lay the phantom
Then I should no doubt be happy
Like a fool or a dog or a buddha.

O the self-abnegation of Buddha
The belief that is disbelieving
The denial of chiaroscuro
Not giving a damn for existence!

But I would cherish existence
Loving the beast and the bubble
Loving the rain and the rainbow,
Considering philosophy alien.

For all the religions are alien
That allege that life is a fiction,
And when we agree in denial
The cock crows in the morning

If only I could wake in the morning
And find I had learned the solution,
Wake with the knack of knowledge
Who as yet have only an inkling

Though some facts foster the inkling -
The beauty of the moon and music,
The routine courage of the worker,
The gay endurance of women,

And you who to me among women
Stand for so much that I wish for,
I thank you, my dear, for the example
Of living like a fugue and and moving.

For few are able to keep moving,
They drag and flag in the traffic;
While you are alive beyond question
Like the dazzle on the sea, my darling.

[Quincy Lehr]

I'm surprised in all of this that no one has mentioned "Autumn Journal," which is one of those pieces that I make a point of re-reading at least once a year. Sure, it's a long poem, but damn it, we need those, too. Its mixture of the political, historical, cultural, and personal, delivered in a series of killer lines, which all works organically together, makes it one of the great poems of the twentieth century.

Quincy

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Quincy, I'm with you. "Autumn Journal" is not that long - compared with a novel, and I know people who reread all of Austen once a year - and it is a brilliant, brilliant thing which never ceases to yield up more brilliance.

As he says, it's halfway between a lyric and a didactic poem, and is after all called a "journal" - and it is a very vivid portrait of one man moving through one autumn in a particular place.

I'll type some in if I get time later.

KEB

[Gregory Dowling]

I fully agree with Quincy and Katy on the importance of "Autumn Journal": one of the great works of the twentieth century.

A few years ago a poet who I think is very under-rated, Andrew Waterman, used the same form to write a good poem entitled "Letter from Taormina". I'm writing away from home so don't have my books, but one day I'd like to open a thread on him.

Macneice's "Autumn Sequel" is also well worth reading: one of the only long poems I know in strict terza rima in English that really works. Walcott and Glyn Maxwell have both written good long works in terza rima, but they both use half-rhymes and para-rhymes for the most part.

Many thanks to Peter for reviving this old thread. The archives of the Sphere clearly contain a good many treasures.

[Margaret Moore]

Thanks for posting this, Mac. Hope to return in a few days. MacNeice is a poet who attracts me greatly - partly because of shared Northern Irish origins and involvement with public issues and partly because I admire his judicious mixture of colloquial and formal registers. My copy of his Collected Poems is very well thumbed. I have before now pointed out his metrical inventiveness on this board - for example, each three-line stanza of the occasional poem he wrote to celebrate the reopening of the National Gallery after WW2 opens out like a window.
I think childhood exposure to the highly popular works of Robert Louis Stevenson may have influenced his technique.

Margaret.