On poetry

217 Pages·2012·0.606 MB·English

by  University of South Alabama;Englisch;Maxwell, Glyn

ON POETRY
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Glyn Maxwell
On Poetry
OBERON BOOKS
LONDON
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First published in 2012 by Oberon Books Ltd
521Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH
Tel: [phone] / Fax: [phone]
e-mail: [email protected]
www.oberonbooks.com
Copyright © Glyn Maxwell, 2012
Glyn Maxwell is hereby identified as author of this work
in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral
rights.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not
by way of trade or otherwise be circulated without the
publisher’s consent in any form of binding or cover,
stored in a retrieval system or circulated electronically
other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed
on any subsequent purchaser.
Full acknowledgement for extracts reproduced in this
book can be found on pages 172-173.
‘The Byelaws’ by Glyn Maxwell was first published in
The Times Literary Supplement in 2012
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
PB ISBN: 978-1-84943-085-2
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84943-531-4
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon,
CR0 4YY.
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for Mara Jebsen, Charlotte Walker,
Jesse Ball and Arthur Moffa
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Contents
White
Black
Form
Pulse
Chime
Space
Time
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‘Oh, then I must be going, child!’ said
Meet-on-the-Road.
‘So fare you well, so fare you well,’ said
Child-as-it-Stood.
Anon
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White
THIS IS A book for anyone.
There are as many outlooks on poetry, on poets, on
poems, on poetics, as there are people who read, but my
book is for anyone. So forgive me if I leap as far back in
time as possible to find a place where we all agree.
*
This far: alert, curious, more or less naked, without
language, looking out over the green savannah. Now that
was a leap, that’s an outlook. You see an open space
with trees whose branches spread out near the ground
and bear fruit. You see a river or path that winds away
out of sight, beyond the horizon. You see a few animals,
you see changing clouds. You like what you see. Two
hundred thousand years later you’ll call this outlook
‘beautiful’ but the word’s no use to you now.
Time after time, in the field of evolutionary psychology,
the children of today, from anywhere on earth, in test
conditions, point to this picture, choose it over all others
– forests, jungles, mountains, beaches, deserts – as the
view most pleasing to them. What are they looking at?
What are they really looking at?
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Well, evolutionary psychologists think they’re looking at
this: an open space (we can hunt) with trees (we can
hide) whose branches spread out near the ground (we
can escape) and bear fruit (we can eat). We see a river
(we can drink, wash, eat) or path (we can travel) that
winds away out of sight (we can learn),
beyond the horizon (we can imagine). We see a few
animals (we can eat more), we see changing clouds
(rains will come again, we can tell one day from another)
and, all in all, we like what we see. What evolutionary
psychologists – and I – believe is that aesthetic
preferences, those things we find beautiful, originate not
in what renders life delightful or even endurable, but in
what makes life possible.
*
Art, drawing, writing, poetry – are marks made in time
by that gazing creature. Poetry has been unnecessary for
almost all of creation. Strictly speaking it still is. But it
happens to be my savannah, this strictly speaking, and it
may well be yours, so let’s advance together, alert,
curious, naked – or at least two of those – into our first
landscape, admiring once again what we can’t be
without.
*
And, since this is a writer’s book about writing, let’s stop
to take with us a leaf from one of the earliest such books
to have reached us, Aristotle’s Politics, where the
philosopher observes that ‘practically everything has
been discovered on many occasions…in the course of
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