The meanings that only lie
when questioning hyperbole

are more than a mood,
an urge to try simplicity.

And it comes along
to hold a moment,

a hope of finding the words
and then again.

Simplicities are not disgraced
when wanting to know

habitual things
whose harmonies are misplaced,

of those deeper
small details.

Take your pick: what is the nuance between a twit and a twat…

(for Steve)

It is gnawing at me
she had tales to tell

for she had,
and I’d like to see where,

an alternative dark
as deep as a well.

I realise that I can never
know – well, I know

because she had
to tell in a dream.

If the tabloids can use sensational headlines, then so can I.

And of course this posting is self-indulgent, but have you not noticed the title of the blog: mikeandenglish?

I visited a friend and former teaching colleague today who has also now retired from the job. He had retrieved personal teaching memorabilia from the school where we taught together and was showing me some of this, including the following correspondence I intended to have with the then Secretary of State for Education John Patten – one of the bigger knob-heads of the Tory years – and which I had circulated to the English team for their ‘entertainment’ back in 1993, and which I do so again here now.

I hadn’t forgotten this gem from my many missives to people in positions of educationally destructive and dumb authority, but I don’t believe I had retained this full set. I did throughout my teaching career confront any government lunacy thrust down my teaching throat and have recently complained on this blog that not enough of us in the profession did this in the past, and certainly do not do so now. I make no apology for that: even given the current demands of the job, it doesn’t take much to write a letter of conviction, and as a Head of English not that long ago working through target mania and specific, quite nasty, scrutiny of results and so on of my Department, I understand the pressures yet the need to fight on. That said, it is clear from this example of banter that I achieved little in my past assaults apart from the catharsis it provided, as necessary as this was.

Here’s the exchange:

Metaphor failed to enlighten
those domestic vistas

when, apparently, I should have been
me, me, me

which as universal truths
explain how the world works.

All these years of love and suffering
were nonetheless some coherent order

when writing about myself and the
hurt and joy and killing and poetry.

There’s death
and then the task of articulation.

Originally posted in March, 2012

I have just finished this, beginning it many months ago, and don’t know why it has taken so long – having been quite gripped by its portentous narrative – apart from the rather feeble reality that I like reading outside in the sun and it has just returned after a long and grey absence.

It is a novella and Steinbeck’s second significant book, completed in 1933 and having taken, apparently, five years to write. It is the polar opposite of Of Mice and Men being laden with language and philosophy. What is does share, however, is a tragic inevitability as the protagonist Joseph Wayne is consumed by his love and worship of the land and eventually sacrifices himself to it, literally, when that land finally rewards him for his gift – not that he can then benefit. But others do, and that is perhaps crucial.

I sound like I am saying Of Mice and Men has no philosophy which would be inaccurate. But To A God Unknown is heavy-handed in this respect, not that this weight in any way dissuaded me – indeed, this and the voluptuous language Steinbeck was exploring to encapsulate such early literary and philosophical preoccupation is the book’s strength. There are times when Joseph’s communing with nature is so intensely realised that you want to partake wholly in its pastoral ideal, though that makes it sound more cerebral than acknowledging the primacy given to the physical commitment required in achieving that spiritual attainment.

It is above all, I think, a humanist attainment too. There seems to be an undercurrent of rejecting Christian precepts of humbling oneself before God in gratitude for what is given through the natural world, and Steinbeck offers a pantheism of which even Coleridge couldn’t conceive. Perhaps it would have been too pagan for someone like Coleridge too.

I am intrigued by the cover of the book that will end this posting and its notion of a ‘lust’ for the land – which is quite appropriate – but  is quite inappropriately [if comically] represented by the near-naked female. There is a strong and powerful quest for love through Joseph’s marriage to Elizabeth in the story, but this too has its tragic conclusion.

The Figurative Committee
make the most of their own
sod-breaking, warning me

of hearing a cliché
as it clanks, especially about
growing older and

digging frosts – the vegetable
patch completely dug
getting an enforced embargo

[that one too about to be
a spade-end on a stone like…
excised, being heard],

advising how to use the
ordinariness of getting older
without calling it an idea.

A lively and positive review of this anthology of poems about music, edited by Rupert Loydell and myself. Good to see, and can be read here.