The Poet Laureate vs. Politics (with a hint of Augustine)

Carol Ann Duffy, the new Poet Laureate, has chosen for her first royal composition to attack politics. The 14 line poem positively spits with disgust at the corrosive effect the political machine apparently has on individual politicians, making “of your face a stone… of your heart a fist”. It is a chaotic rant capturing very well the prevailing sense of public anger at the political system in the wake of the expenses scandal. Towards the end she invokes the Blarite mantra “education, education, education” and Gordon Brown’s “moral compass” with utter disdain. “The poem’s technique is that of someone almost speechless with rage – a great tumbling catalogue. No time for structure”, says John Sutherland, a professor at University College, London. The poem, entitled just Politics and published in The Guardian, suggests Duffy won’t be afraid to tackle the high profile topics during her 10 year tenure as Poet Laureate. Here’s it is:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

For me, the poem articulates the lingering suspicion, I think widely held, that even the most idealistic and hopeful of young visionaries, once they enter the murky waters of party politics, will inevitably become tainted and corrupted. That’s not a very optimistic picture, but I think it encapsulates the cynicism held by many of my generation especially, when it comes to such matters. The apathetic attitude to, and disengagement from, the political by many in British society are just symptoms of this deeper cynicism, which recent events will only ingrain further. In fact, perhaps there is a little Augustinianism in Duffy’s poem, which echoes his deep scepticism in the politics of the earthly city as essentially destructive and divisive; always bound to fall short of expectations, because of wrongly ordered and wrongly directed loves. A dose of this kind of realism can never be a bad thing, though neither should it necessitate a complete withdrawal from the political; indeed, from a Christian perspective it makes even more necessary our participation in earthly politics, as faithful advocates of the Good who are nevertheless free from bondage to this city and this system, because citizens of a different (heavenly) city founded on a different love.

There is a discussion of the poem here, at the Guardian, and here, at the BBC.

Wilfred Owen

The Guardian’s ”Poem of the Week” is Wilfred Owen’s famous The Parable Of The Old Man & The Young, in which he recounts the biblical story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac, retelling it through the lens of the First World War. It’s a classic, so I thought I’d stick it up here. The original article is pretty interesting from a literary perspective as well. It would be interesting at some point to take a look at all the different (less orthodox) uses of the Abraham / Isaac story. The treatments given by Kierkegaard and Derrida both spring to mind, in addition to this one by Owen. Anyway, here it is:

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in the thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

On things which might be worth more than words

Since Feeling Is First - E.E. Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

On The Enjoyment Of _Things_

Last Monday, I took a ten minute walk from our flat to the Company Inn, a pub alongside the canal in Nottingham, to watch the Tottenham Hotspur vs. Aston Villa game on Setanta. ‘Twas a bad night for Spurs all round really, and they ended up losing 2-1. So, with Spurs 2-0 down with seventy minutes gone, and finding myself increasingly disinterested in the football, I pulled an old battered copy of William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ out of my coat pocket and, in rather unconventional surroundings, began reading. One poem in particular jumped out at me:

I went to the Garden of Love, 
And saw what I never had seen; 
A Chapel was built in the midst, 
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut 
And “Thou shalt not,” writ over the door; 
So I turned to the Garden of Love 
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves, 
And tombstones where flowers should be; 
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, 
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Now, anyone remotely familiar with Blake’s work will find no new or unexpected thought in this poem; Blake’s suspicion towards the church of his day, which he perceived to stand against those ‘joys’ and ‘desires’ which he saw to characterise proper human life (as well as God’s life [see 'The Little Vagabond']), is well known. Indeed, it was not that Blake had a problem with religion or the biblical Jesus or even Christianity per se - he was rather protesting that which represented these things during his lifetime. Nevertheless, I think it likely that his words, and his view of the church, still ring true for many in society today. This has regularly been the case in my experience.