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 The
subject this week is parody. I have mentioned this once or twice
before, not only in Poems of the Week, but also in the series variously
called The Search for the Right Word
and So You Want to be a Poet? Typically, the approach
is to write a poem in imitation of another famous poet with a distinctive
style; this can be to produce a funny poem, and is thus usually
good-hearted; but it can be satirical, imitating the weaknesses
or foibles of a poet who the author of the parody feels to be overvalued.
Earlier, I quoted a poem in which the well-known poem by Robert
Browning, The Last Ride Together, is parodied by writing
it From Her Point
of View; the author was James Kenneth Stephen (1859 - 1892).
James Kenneth Stephen, known as "Jem" to his friends, was educated
at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. He joined the secret,
apparently homosexual society known as the Apostles, and became
a Fellow of King's College in 1885, two years after being hired
as tutor to Prince Albert Victor Edward, heir to the throne, who
studied at Trinity College 1883-85. One of his first cousins was
Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) (Stephen was her original surname)
whose father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was the founder of The Dictionary
of National Biography.
The Stephen family had something of a history of mental illness,
and Jem exhibited increasingly erratic behavior, particularly following
a severe head injury in 1886. Eventually, Sir George Savage, the
specialist who was later to treat Virginia, arranged for his confinement
in a mental hospital in 1891. After refusing all nourishment, Stephen
died early February 1892, a few weeks after the prince he tutored.
The variety and brilliancy of the talent shown in his first book
of poems, Lapsus Calami ('Slip of the Pen'), and some later
poems published posthumously under the title Quo Musa Tendis,
J. K. S.'s short life were regarded as 'altogether exceptional'.
Nowadays, though, he appears to be known only by two or three parodies,
of which the one I refer to above; another his sonnet criticizing
Wordsworth, which begins:
Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
A
particularly interesting point about him is that it has been suggested
that he may have been Jack the Ripper. This suggestion apparently
appeared first in 1972.
My first Poem of the Week is by Stephen: it is aimed at Rudyard
Kipling ( 1865 - 1936) under the title To R. K.; but it opens
with a verse from Browning.
 Charles
Causley (1917 - ) was described in an article published in two parts
in The
Dark Horse by Dana Gioia (No. 5/Summer 1997 and No. 6/Spring
1998) as "The Most Unfashionable Poet Alive". This is because he
writes poetry which is, to say the least, not in line with current
modernism. The introduction to Gioia's article says it well:
"For
half a century Charles Causley has stood apart from the mainstream
of contemporary poetry. His work bears little relation to the
most celebrated achievements of the Modernist movement but refers
back to older, more specifically English roots. Taking his inspiration
from folk songs, hymns, and especially ballads, Causley belongs-with
A. E. Housman, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Walter de la Mare,
Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, John Betjeman, Kingsley Amis, and
Philip Larkin-to a conservative countertradition in English letters
that stresses the fundamentally national character of its poetry
and the essential role of popular forms in its inspiration."
This has led to his work having been dismissed as that of a minor
poet, particularly in the US: "It would take genius to re-create
the world, as something other than a recreation. Causley has much
talent and no genius" (Christopher Ricks). However, after the death
of John Betjeman (1906 - 1984), British poets voted Charles Causley
as their first choice to become the next Poet Laureate. The special
quality of this esteem is evident in the comments of the eventual
choice as Laureate, Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998):
"Among
the English poetry of the last half century, Charles Causley's
could well turn out to be the best loved and most needed . . .
Before I was made Poet Laureate, I was asked to name my choice
of the best poet for the job. Without hesitation I named Charles
Causley-this marvelously resourceful, original poet, yet among
all known poets the only one who could be called a man of the
people, in the old, best sense. A poet for whom the title might
have been invented afresh. I was pleased to hear that in an unpublished
letter Philip Larkin thought the same and chose him too."
In one of his last poems, Larkin wrote:
Ah, CHARLES, be reassured! For you
Make lasting friends with all you do,
And all you write; your truth and sense
We count on as a sure defense
Against the trendy and the mad
The feeble and the downright bad.
Causley
wrote a poem entitled Betjeman, 1984 which is a parody of the
general style (rather than of a specific poem) of John Betjeman, who
died that year: the poem is a parody in the affectionate sense; after
all, Betjeman was himself a poet of the more traditional bent, as
indeed was Larkin, albeit in Betjeman's case in an upper middle class
sort of way, rather than Causley's working class background. This
will be the second of my Poems of the Week.
The last of my parodists this week is Charles Stuart Calverley (born
Blayds) (1831 - 1884), regarded by many as perhaps the best of his
time. I quote here from The Cambridge History of English and
American Literature (with one or two small amendments from a
later text):
"We
may close this survey of lighter nineteenth-century verse with
notice of three or, perhaps, four most remarkable "university
wits." Of the first three, one belonged wholly to Oxford, one
wholly to Cambridge and a third-the eldest, as a matter of fact,
and the most widely known-to both. This was Charles Stuart Calverley
(born Blayds; he adopted Calverley in 1852), a man who, in consequence
of a disastrous skating accident, suffered severely for years
and died in middle age. Although he had been admitted to the bar,
he did not do much work after his accident; but he made the initials
C. S. C., by which he was usually known, early familiar and, to
the present day, famous for the expression in verse of a scholarly
wit unsurpassed in its own kind. Verses and Translations
appeared in 1862, and Fly Leaves in 1872; while Calverley's
translations from Greek and Latin yield to none in fidelity or
in finish. He has, perhaps, attracted most popular attention as
a parodist; and not very wise exception has been taken to the
"bitterness" of his exercise in this kind on Browning. Better
balanced judgment will see in it, as in all Calverley's work in
parody, nothing but fair play if not, also, positive good nature.
Scarcely the most extravagant line but could be paralleled from
Browning's actual work somewhere or other."
 One
of Calverley's parodies of Browning relates to The Ring and The
Book, which begins:
Do you see this Ring?
'Tis Rome-work, made to match
(By Castellani's imitative craft)
Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn,
After a dropping April; found alive
Spark-like 'mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots
That roof old tombs at Chiusi: soft, you see,
Yet crisp as jewel-cutting.
Calverley
entitles his poem The Cock and The Bull, which begins:
You see this pebble-stone? It's a thing I bought
Of a bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid of the day -
I like to duck the smaller parts-o'-speech,
As we curtail the already cur-tail'd cur
(You catch the paronomasia, play po' words?)
Did, rather, i' the pre-Landseerian days.
Well, to my muttons. I purchased the concern
And clapt it i' my poke, having given for same
By way o' chop, swop, barter or exchange -
'Chop' was my snickering dandiprat's own term -
One-shilling and four pence, current coin o' the realm.
O-n-e one and f-o-u-r four
Pence, one and fourpence - you are with me, sir? -
What hour it skills not: ten or eleven o' the clock,
One day (and what a roaring day it was
Go shop or sight-see - bar a spit o' rain!)
In February, eighteen-sixty-nine,
Alexandrina Victoria, Fidei
Hm - hm - how runs the jargon? Being on the throne.
Apparently,
T. S. Eliot's Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat is a parody of
Rudyard Kipling's L'Envoi. Here is the opening of Skimbleshanks:
There's a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail's ready to depart,
Saying "Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can't start."
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster's daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying "Skimble where is Skimble for unless he's very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can't go."
At 11.42 then the signal's nearly due
And the passengers are frantic to a man--
Then Skimble will appear and he'll saunter to the rear:
He's been busy in the luggage van!
He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes
And the signal goes "All Clear!"
And we're off at last for the northern part
Of the Northern Hemisphere!
And
here is L'Envoi:
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing: -- "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
And your English summer's done."
You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song -- how long! how long?
Pull out on the trail again!
Ha' done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass,
We've seen the seasons through,
And it's time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail -- the trail that is always new.
And
last, for this week, two of my personal favorite poems: and I have
to admit I'd never seen the connection. In 1890, William Butler Yeats
(1865 - 1939) wrote The Lake Isle of Inisfree, which was published
in the collection The Rose. Here it is:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Ezra
Pound (1885 - 1972) wrote a poem which is a parody (in the sense of
a poem based on) this, called The Lake Isle; and this is my
third Poem of this Week.
And last: generally, a poet parodies another from admiration and
love; not from a desire to destroy the target. And here is a little
verse from J. K. Stephen that makes this clear!
If I've dared laugh at you, Robert Browning,
'Tis with eyes that with you have often wept:
You have oftener left me smiling or frowning,
Than any beside, one bard except.
But once you spoke to me, storm-tongued poet,
A trivial word in an idle hour;
But thrice I looked on your face and the glow it
Bore from the flame of the inward power.
But you'd many a friend you never knew of,
Your words lie hid in a hundred hearts,
And thousands of hands that you've grasped but few of
Would be raised to shield you from slander's darts.
For you lived in the sight of the land that owned you,
You faced the trial, and stood the test:
They have piled you a cairn that would fain have stoned you:
You have spoken your message and earned your rest.
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