Here’s the poem: John Keats (1795–1821)  To Autumn

Here’s a reasonable analysis of the poem. Here’s an unreasonable analysis of the poem. One stays with the text and cites written evidence. The other stays with the text, cites written evidence, and is pure conjecture. One is literary criticism, the other imposes social, economic, political guess-work on literature. One is the work of an honest critic, the other is the work of an ideologue.

Thanks to Rohan Maitzen’s Novel Readings for starting this discussion. And for pointing to this conversation about authorial intent. Rohan contends that Paulin’s interpretation uses a lot of supporting evidence, which results is a richer appreciation of Keats’s art. I contend that he proves nothing, provides some interesting context, and uses it to distort Keats’s art. Here’s someone who agrees with me.

In order of priority, I think literary criticism should :

1) Engage in a close reading of the primary text.

2) Assess the author’s life and the socio/political/economic cultural environment in which he lived and wrote from as many different perspectives or ‘schools’ of thought as possible, with the goal of better understanding author intent and ‘meaning’ behind the text.

3) Subject existing critical interpretations of the text to rigorous tests of logic and believability. Question the motivation behind all criticism.

"For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips" This is why I read. To find words put in ways that blossom and unfurl in my imagination, that make me sigh with admiration, that make me feel and think. That ‘startle me out of my sleep-of-death into a more capacious sense of life!’

The line comes from this stanza of The Unquiet Grave, an 18th Century Ballad by Anonymous:

Tis I, my love, sits on your grave,
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
And that is all I seek

The full Ballad is found in a chapter on Poems in Harold Bloom’s How to read and Why. A chapter inhabited with eagles clasping crags close to the sun and the ‘wrinkled’ sea beneath, roaming with a hungry heart, rusting unburnished not to shine in use, striving, seeking, finding and not yielding, with head chopped thistle stalks, water rats and shrieking babies, where grey flocks feed and the wild wind blows on the mountainside. 

Living within this forest lies the crux of how to read poems: ‘wherever possible, memorize them’, to ‘gain the critical insights that possession by memory can yield. ‘ Damn it. Never been able to do that. Perhaps its time to try again. Harder.

I bought a Signal Edition Broadside of this poem from Michael Harris at Montreal Books a year and a half ago or so. And here I thought a broadside was something you didn’t stand in front of. I love my broadside. Robin’s poem is one of a series of ten by acclaimed poets, including Carol Ann Duffy (see previous post) and Billy Collins. Michael, by the way, has a  collection of Ted Hughes’ work that makes me weep with envy.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect there’s some hanky panky going on here…like milking the cow without paying the farmer…but wait…payment is made…there’s a wedding. Slow, slide, sheathing…grained, gliding, graphite…slippery and hard that key is…sliding and gliding…pushing inside the ribs…and yes…sunk home…tight…shooting…a sprung bolt…all this passion cased in the lines of a poem…snibs eh? engaged and married…as good as over…

 Often it only takes three or four words for me to love a poem:

YOU, a poem by Carol Ann Duffy

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head. so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell.
Falling in love is glamorous hell: the crouched, parched heart like a tiger, ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin. into my life, larger than life, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine, in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze, staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud, from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me
as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like gift, like a touchable dream.

Best line/image/sensation: Hiding "in the long grass of routine." If you are into Duffy, here’s a site that analyses some of her poems.
 

John Freeman is president of The National Book Critics Circle. Founded in 1974, the NBCC is a non-profit organization consisting of nearly 700 active book reviewers who honor quality writing and communicate with one another about common concerns. We met recently to talk, among other things, about the NBCC’s awards program, their impressive new blog called Critical Mass, and the Campaign to Save Book Reviews, which is addressing the alarming shrinkage of newspaper book review sections across North America. 

Here is an article by author Michael Connolly on the folly of downsizing book reviews.  

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It works like this – I join BookMooch and list a handful of books
that I would be willing to send to someone. If one of the books that I
list is on another person’s mooch list, they are notified and can
request the book which I then promptly send. I earn a credit for this.
I also list books that I desire on my wishlist, and I can use my
accrued credits to mooch these when they become available.

Simple. One book for one book – even better than a used bookstore!
And well used – just this month, BookMooch hit a high of 1600 mooches
per day. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

Hey…Look familiar? Full points to New York Magazine for brazen originality.  

NY Times photo posted with reviews here several weeks back. Books on both lists include: The Savage Detectives, The Rest is Noise, and Then We Came to the End.

 At least this one has foliage and fake snow and stuff.

 For one stop Top Ten Book shopping, try here

Image from here

Image from here

Speaking of Maugham, I’m now with his Great Novelists and their Novels. Here’s what he says about the greatest: "I think Balzac is the greatest novelist the world has ever known, but I think Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the greatest novel. In calling it a unique epic work of fiction Maugham cites Tolstoy’s friend Strakhov: "A complete picture of human life. A complete picture of Russia of the day. A complete picture of what may be called the history and struggle of peoples. A complete picture of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation. That is War and Peace."

Earlier this year we posted a list of what in Maugham’s opinion are the ten best novels in the world, commenting at the time on how similar his 50 year old list is to many of the 125 contributing writers’ in J. Peder Zane’s The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. Here’s Maugham’s list again:

With all this negative book reviewing talk, here’s a piece in the Literary Review of Canada that may amuse. Ten contributors micro trash ten of the ‘greatest’ novels ever written. Fun exercise to be sure; demolish canonical monuments in 250 words or less. I’ve only read three of the ten wasted tomes; only agree with one of the wasters: Please give it up for…….Reed Scowen. Who writes:

"What’s wrong with Nostromo, which some consider to be the best novel written by my favourite author, Joseph Conrad?" And then: " The story unfolds in a most unattractive and uninteresting location that is described in superfluous detail. The moral of the tale-that the prospect of wealth can inspire erratic behaviour-is too well known to need repeating. There are too many characters, and some of them get in the way of the plot, such as it is. There is also too much description; we love Conrad because he loves words but this is ridiculous. And it is all so serious; the most trivial sentiments, every innocent gesture, everything, is idealized.

All of this, you will say, is trademark Conrad. So it is. And when it works it is unforgettable. But he follows a precarious path with this formula and, in Nostromo, Conrad slips over the edge, taking the reader with him. We find ourselves in a bog inhabited by unhappy and uninteresting people doing nothing of significance. We search in vain for a reason to put ourselves through this experience. Nostromo is a mess."

What commendable use of space! Mr. Scowen’s hatchet cuts with precision and acuity. Bang on. And what lovely balance his ‘my favourite author’ provides. Why do I like this blurb so much? Because I agree with it: In short, Conrad is great.

So is James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Unless of course you are of Mr. Rex Murphy’s colossally mistaken mind. He avers that the book

" for all its fireworks, (now dated) experimentalism, scruple of dense research and manic verisimilitude and fully brilliant passages, lacks the principal merit of any sustained fiction: narrative draw." That "It lacks the compelling artistic energy of managed suspense, which-even in the most artful of modernist fiction-is still the one pre-condition of the unwilled pleasure that inheres in any truly joyful reading."

Incomprehensible that one with such Nabokovian love of language, with such skill, would so wantonly dismiss such self evidently superb work, simply because it’s not a page turner.

Speaking of which, all that Mr. Keith Oatley tells us in his 194 word besmirchment of The Brothers Karamazov, my second favourite novel of all time, is that it bores him. Okay he did add that "the book seemed rambling, and it was painful to read about these people." But this claudication isn’t about to convince anyone who truly loves literature. Okay…I’ll admit, I’ve experienced this pain and boredom, with, I’m embarrassed to say, Anna Karenina…only got to page 100. Twice. And War and Peace is my favourite novel. But I’m not getting the major coin Mr. Oatley is, to defend his sordid taste. He even cops out at the end by using the old translator smoothed-over the-idiosyncrasies-ruse…perhaps, he says, he’ll give the new Pevear and Volokhonsky version a try. This will not do. You came to the party with Constance, Mr. Oakley, you need to stick with her.