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‘Poetry, like music, is to be heard…Prose exists to convey meaning, and no meaning such as prose conveys can be expressed as well in poetry. That is not poetry’s business.’ – Basil Bunting* –

The ‘Today’ programme on Radio 4 has, every morning this week, been featuring readings (by the poets) of the poems which have been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9361000/9361532.stm

I’ve been enjoying these, but I find it infuriating to hear a poem then and not be able to read it. I need to see poetry written down to feel I’ve experienced it and can more fully understand it. I don’t deny the importance of the sounds, the rhythm and so on, and often do read poetry out loud to myself – but to only hear it seems too fleeting, like catching a glimpse of something you can’t then lay your hands on.

It seems true to me that the meaning which is expressed in a poem is different to the meaning of a piece of prose. If prose is a flower, then poetry is the essential oil which has been distilled from the petals: concentrated and potent. A good poem is an experience, it impresses itself on us – it is what it is and it can’t be reduced or summarised without detracting from its meaning and effect. Perhaps this is what Archibald MacLeish* means when he says:

‘A poem should not mean

But be.’

It is meaning and form combined which make the irreducible poem, but, in my opinion at least, it is still meaning, and meaning – or at the very least conveying - is very much a part of poetry even if the meaning is something that cannot be fully articulated, only felt.

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*quoted in the Introduction to Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times ed. Neil Astley

* source as above

I've been planning to write posts about why I love Sylvia Plath's poetry so much, and how Philip Larkin really seems too much of his time for me to strongly relate to ... but that's just going to have to wait. This is much more amusing.

You need to know Larkin's This Be the Verse. It's the one that starts 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad'. If you don't know it, you should. Look it up. Anyway, Adrian Mitchell wrote this poem, apparently after hearing that some pure spirit thought Larkin had written 'They tuck you up, your mum and dad'.

This Be the Worst

They tuck you up, your mum and dad,

They read you Peter Rabbit, too.

They give you all the treats they had

And add some extra, just for you.

They were tucked up when they were small,

(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),

By those whose kiss healed any fall,

Whose laughter doubled any joke.

Man hands on happiness to man,

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

So love your parents all you can

And have some cheerful kids yourself.

The introduction to Larkin's Collected Poems mentions how Larkin meticulously dated the drafts of his poems in his notepad. Sometimes several years would elapse between drafts, three and a half years between first draft and final version of 'Love Songs in Age', for example. Other times the gap may not be so broad but the number of reworkings give pause for thought: 21 pages of drafts for 'Church Going', a total of 31 for 'The Whitsun Weddings'.

And then I think of my own efforts. Two, maybe three drafts at the most, in quick succession, sometimes one straight after the other. Span of time between triggering thought/phrase/image and initial draft? The shortest an hour, the most three days. And then I wonder why my poems are crap!