I'm currently reading a collected works of John Betjeman. Anybody a fan?
I did wonder if some of his poems are too exclusively 'English' for some people as well. Is this off putting for those outside of the UK at all?
A few poems below, starting with the excellent Slough poem, as read by Ted Hughes, at least I'm pretty certain it sounds like Hughes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-935c...D7E9AF379F9F86
My interest in poetry hardly stretches beyond Ozymandias but it would be difficult for any reasonably educated person in England not to know something of Betjeman. Being the epitome of Englishness, his poems probably don't travel well, they seem to my mind to have a certain tweeness about them, although they do capture a middle-class preoccupation with change and a sense of paradise lost.Originally Posted by Neely
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Hi Neely I am not read of John Betjeman but do you have a favourite in mind we could read or perhaps discuss?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
"Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough".
Larkin loved Betjeman I think because the middle class voice lamenting a disappearing kind of England was one he sympathised with. I'm not a great fan, but he is very accessible and can be very funny.
These were nice.
I liked the line "Love's so pure it had to end" in Indoor Games near Newbury.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Yes the comments about him being very accessible is certainly true, he was a bit of a people's favourite and quite popular in his time. Also the points about him writing about, romanticising even, the disappearing England - the quiet country villages, the little cricket grounds etc, is also correct, for this it seems he was both praised and criticised in equal measures.
What about the Slough poem?
Slough
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/intuition/Slough.html
It's also read at the start of the link I posed earlier. This is one of his more famous poems, very well known. The TV comedy series written by Ricky Gervais was based in slough, presumably because of the poem of course.
Cont later...
Great, I'm glad you liked the poems Yes/No.
That John Betjeman, he sure had rhythm!
ay up
Indeed!
The Slough poem I think is absolutely brilliant (for some reason it reminds me of To Autumn -and nearly as good.) OK, maybe this is also personal because I totally detest labour, especially the artificial type, but still I think this is a great piece, and worthy of some respect. It's so modern too it is scary. It's not consistently good, but immediately it scores points on the Neely front:
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death
Fantastic. You've obviously got Betjeman's love of the past/nature Vs the industrialized office nonsense thrown in with the humbleness of the poor cow, where there isn't a patch of grass left in such god awful place. That, and then the simplicity of the list line, "swarm over death" is pretty powerful stuff.
Just some other quick points. I also love:
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years
Jesus, what a waste. Working in such dumps, plastic "tinned" places, miles away from nature and real life.
And then you get the description of the office twat:
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:
And the anger of those working below him:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
Absolutely, destroy him!
But our humble narrator doesn't punish them all, he realises the brainwashing that goes on in the game:
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
You are so right they have tasted hell. The sad thing is though that they don't even know it. Some of them are even conned into thinking it is a good thing.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
So removed from nature...
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
Brilliant. Daren't look up and see the stars! Wowza. False bravado again too.
The falseness extends further:
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
All show and no substance...
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
Arrhh. The cabbages are coming, nature and sanity returneth, hopefully, simplicity. The earth exhales.
Also, don't forget his was written in the 30s. Applicable today? Totally.
Last edited by LitNetIsGreat; 06-15-2012 at 06:42 PM.
Nice commentary on the Slough poem, Neely. I can see you liked the poem.
I know little about the place except what was in Wikipedia. Has it gotten worse since Betjeman wrote the poem or better? Is there some particular reason he chose Slough over some other place?
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Oh ta, I only rushed it as I was cooking at the time. I do like the poem though yes, though I'd almost forgotten about it, even though it is one of those modern classics that have seeped into the general consciouness, in England at least. I'm wondering though is this just popular in the UK? Have you heard of it before? I wondered if Betjeman travelled well.
I think it is better today, Slough, but I've never been there, (don't want to!) However, you can just replace Slough with almost anywhere similar/industrialized - concrete, it's not even that important. Slough could represent many such places and attitudes that come with it being detached from nature/reality. I believe at the time of writing Slough was particularly horrendous though.
The thing about Betjeman is that his poetry is accessible - an oer used word, but you know what I mean - It rhymes, it scans and the message is there, clearly written down on the page. There seems to be very English Irony in there too, but it is more than that, it is the calculated pretence o irony, a kind o double bluff. What seems to begin as a joke, turns out to be deadly serious.
Hae you read Inexpensive Progress? A urther deelopment o his on this theme with an equally memorable opening line.
Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons.
ay up
I agree completely. That which makes Betjeman so good is the fact that he combines a genuine poetic gift with a capacity for openness and humour. He may be a bit twee, and unapologetically middle-England, but I'd take his poetry over, for example, Larkin any day of the week. Even a poem as serious as Slough still raises a wry and entirely heartfelt smile. And, I suggest, it is impossible not to be infected by the enthusiasm and positively bouncing lyricism of something like A Subaltern's Love Song:
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.
By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surry twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
Did Betjeman really write that? It reads almost like self-parody, and that is the problem with him; although, like a great many people, I do enjoy the obvious sincerity behind his verse, he is so easy to send up and it's not hard to imagine that there have been many a would be poet writing this sort of thing after reading him:
Son of the Soil
Beside the new laid crazy paving
Beneath a Union flag awaving
From flagpole standing on the lawn
His ownership proclaiming
Seated on his garden mower
Beneath the chestnut's leafy bower
He glides across the emerald sward
His progress nothing can retard
And nought will halt the mowers traction
Until he stops with satisfaction
A smile upon his plump red face
For in the sun he's found his place
And though it is of Tudor mock
An hour from the office block
Wherein he spends his working week
In managerial doublespeak
When polished shoes are cast aside
And wellies green the lawn bestride
Then in his element he stands
A new hedge cutter in his hands
Become through powered tool and toil
Suburbia's 'son of the soil'.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Yes I love A Subaltern's Lovesong as well. It's also another one of his very famous pieces, perhaps even his most famous poem.
Not yet but it certainly grabs my attention!Have you read Inexpensive Progress? A further development of his on this theme with an equally memorable opening line.
Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
I like the 'Son of Soil' poem Emil. It reminds me of my previous employment where I would escape to a grassy churchyard with a book during my dinner hour, in order to try to reclaim a little sanity.
This I thought was interesting, from the introduction of the collected poems by Andrew Motion:
Perhaps Bejetman's keenly felt sense of time and fear of death, also shows in his obvious distaste for it being wasted amongst the office and concrete life as well?...The poems about his father show deep feelings with the protective veil ripped away. They are studies of remorse and self-accusation, howls about death in general and the prospect of his own death in particular, and frettings about time. They prove his remarkable range as a poet, but they also show that the two opposite poles are connected.
Given this, it is not surprising to find Betjeman searching time and again for a mood or a place he can consider safe. The word 'safe', or 'safety' appears like a nervous tic in his poems - 'safe in bed', 'safety with old friends', 'safe in G. F. Bodley's greens and browns,/Safe in the surge of undogmatic hymns': there are at least ten uses of the word in one hundred-odd pages of Summoned by Bells, and it connects with every one of his interests and allegiances: his passion for the seaside (especially Cornwall, which distils childhood memories of feeling coddled and secure; his enthusiasm for parish churches and their-honoured reassurances; his addiction to Victoriana, with its elaborate manifestations of solidity...
Bejetman's verse autobiography, 'Summoned by Bells' is available read by him on Youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsDb-dgXnU4
It is BBC production from 1976. I have not watched it myself yet, I might watch it later. Notice the use of the word 'safe' as even the first word!
Edit: Looking in my collection, which includes 'Summoned by Bells', 'safe' is not the first word. It looks like the BBC version is edited slightly, it looks interesting though, I've started watching the first part.
Last edited by LitNetIsGreat; 06-16-2012 at 01:24 PM.
Interesting to read about Betjeman's penchant for Cornwall. Some time ago, I was listening to his daughter on a radio programme saying that when they travelled there, he kept stopping to go and look at churches he noticed along the route and they usually reached Cornwall much later than expected.
Whatever one thinks of his poetry, I couldn't imagine anyone disliking him; he belongs to a time when gentlemanly behaviour was unexceptional.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
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