BookTalk.org

Chris is encouraging us to jump right in and get the threads multiplying. First up for discussion, A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman.

Here is a website with a digitized version of the book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=cTMiAA ... lt#PPP5,M1

From Wikipedia:

Alfred Edward Housman (pronounced /ˈhaʊsmən/; 26 March 1859

Okay, Saffron, you have a head of steam, I can see. Good going. We have Chris keeping a close watch on the poetry nuts. I might have to hang back a bit until a certain business I have is completed. I hope at least a few others will have a look at "A Shropshire Lad." I think they might like it. It definitely is a period piece, but can get under your skin. Well, some might say the book is a downer, but if you like melancholy as I do, it's one to read. I think the poetry forum this far has been too cheerful anyway (when it wasn't about sex, which is also cheerful come to think of it). I have a few of these poems in my memory banks.

DWill

I'm so glad that everyone has chosen to read this.

I first discovered Housman in high school. He was one of the only poets that I knew of at the time who wrote verse that talked about explicitly homosexual love. I'm not sure if there are any in this particular collection, but his love poems are passionate without being vulgar and intimate without being obscene. He's one of the only Edwardians, in my opinion, that can write convincing poetry displaying the love between two men.

DWill:

I think the poetry forum this far has been too cheerful anyway (when it wasn't about sex, which is also cheerful come to think of it).

Well now, Will, sex is only cheerful if one is able to indulge. It can be a rather melancholic and woeful topic otherwise.


Saffron

Poetaster wrote:
I first discovered Housman in high school. He was one of the only poets that I knew of at the time who wrote verse that talked about explicitly homosexual love. I'm not sure if there are any in this particular collection, but his love poems are passionate without being vulgar and intimate without being obscene. He's one of the only Edwardians, in my opinion, that can write convincing poetry displaying the love between two men.

I don't know much of his biography and didn't know about his writing on homosexual love. I can't recall any such in this collection, either. My impression is that his life was devoid pretty much of outward incident. He was a scholar, as Saffron told us, and I read that he devoted much of his time to editing a classical author who was obscure even to classicists.

I think perhaps his love of classic writers is reflected in the structure of the poems, which are tight and epigrammatic, not a word wasted or out of place. Occasionally the compression of the language causes me some trouble in making out the sense.

I like that there is a nominal author of these poems named within the poems. He is Terence (which suggests a classic writer but also is probably a common English name--Penelope?) The one that begins "Terence, this is stupid stuff", the very last one, is probably my favorite, though much different from the rest. In it, Terence defends his preoccupation with melancholy. He convinces me, at least!

DWill

One memory I have connected to Housman is from the old Dick Cavett show, which the oldtimers may remember. Cavett had the great British actor John Gielgud on. Geilgud recited one of the poems from "A Shropshire Lad," "Bredon Hill" (XXII). By the time he had finished, tears were streaming down his cheeks. But like the great actor he was, he never broke up, maintaining his strong voice to the end. You have to love a man like that.

By the way, the volume of the poems I have is a 1932 edition published by Arden Book Company, which I bought for 5 cents. It has a number of lithographs by Elinore Blaisdell that do what they are intended to, add a visual dimension to these poems. It's always nice, too, to read the poems of a single poet in the separate volumes that he/she put out, rather than in collected form. If I were a book collector, poetry volumes are what I would be most interested in collecting. Think of a first edition of something like Robert Frost's North of Boston.

DWill

Quote Saffron:

Well now, Will, sex is only cheerful if one is able to indulge. It can be a rather melancholic and woeful topic otherwise.

Oh Saffron - spot on. I love and am loved in return, I know. But my, I DO miss the passion!!!!

Perhaps we will find something to console us in Houseman!!! If not we can all lean on one anothers shoulders and feel melancholy 'togetherness'!

We won't be discussing every poem, of course, but I'd like to bring up the first for several reasons.

1. It seems to provide a time-stamp for the collection. I guess I had had the impression that the era was WW I, but appartently not so.

2. Housman puts a fair amount of information into this poem, which is not easy to do while managing the rhymes. He establishes the 50th birthday of Queen Victoria; he introduces in st. 3 the soldiers who have died in foreign lands in order to save the Queen. In st. 7, he brings in the living members of regiment belting out "God Save the Queen." Three generations are joined in st. 8 in the noble attempt to save the Queen.

3. Question: Is this a full-on patriotic tribute or are we to see irony? Do the soldiers indeed assist God in saving the Queen? It might be something that I, 21st century American, will have trouble answering. I was always puzzled by God Save the Queen. It might take Penelope to straighten this out for me!

(I guess it would have been most convenient for me to post the poem, too. Sorry. I will next time.)

DWill

Thanks for getting us started, Will. I'm not sure we want to post the entirety of each of the poems. I think I will just copy and paste the stanzas you cite. I do think we American's will need a bit of help with this one. After listening to my daughter (just back from London) talk about a man on the Tube going on and on about how much he loves the queen and what a wonderful woman she is, I suspect the intention of the poem is straight forward patriotism/loyalty to the crown.

1887


#3

Now, when the flame they watch not towers
About the soil they trod,
Lads, we'll remember friends of ours
Who shared the work with God.

#7

"God save the Queen" we living sing,
From height to height 'tis heard;
And with the rest your voices ring,
Lads of the Fifty-third.

#8
Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you've been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.