'Nothing useful is of lasting value,' wrote the criminally underrated poet AR Ammons, whose work I discovered this week. I would say that Ammons's poetry is devoted to the unappreciated, but Ammons himself would rebut that many, if not all, poets devote their own work to the cause. In Conserving the Magnitude, a celebration of the 'inexcusable... the merely tiresome, the obviously unimprovable,' he declares that 'the poets will yelp and hoot forever' in the service of these unfortunates.' But Ammons shoulders the task more noisily, more self-consciously, than your average poet. In For Emily Wilson, he is a vendor selling 'peashells' and 'cobs,' enticing bemused shoppers to appreciate 'the silky beds where seeds/have lain.' His 'whole economy [is] wrong,' observes a 'concerned' spectator. In Catalyst he invites us to '[h]onor the maggot.' In Cut the Grass he half-complains about his ability to marvel at the smallest wonder, sympathise with the pain of a dying 'squash blossom' and to make a philosopher's feast of a plane caught in the sun's glare. 'I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant/to be ignored,' he sighs. His poetic voice reflects this awkwardness, this alienation; it is halting by design, conscientiously strewn with colons which divide lines into staggered phrases which form a rambling whole.
A voice somewhat similar to Ammons's in tone, if not subject, is EE Cummings's. At its best, his poetry is marked by a giddy, breathless generosity best experienced, as Roald Dahl’s librarian advises Matilda, by ‘sit[ting] back and allow[ing] the words to wash around you, like music.’ Visually, Cummings’s poetry is recognisable by its disdain for capital letters and the liberal use of enjambment and bracketed asides, which create a kind of intimate, dreamy atmosphere. The defining feature of the poetry itself is a kind of surreal impressionism, which lines which either half-make sense, or not at all, grammatically and otherwise. Some are more conventional in tone; lines such as ‘all nearness pauses, while a star can grow,’ and ‘it is most mad and moonly,’ I could attribute to Dante and Shakespeare respectively. Others are more uniquely Cummings, wild and free: lines such as ‘(not where not here but neither’s blue most both)’, ‘(until his voice is more than bird)’ and ‘the sky of a sky of a tree called life.’ Cummings’s free twisting of grammar is particularly effective- enigmatic and alluring- when stretched on for lines and lines, punctuated by syncopated bracketed asides, such as here:
‘if (touched by love’s own secret) we, like homing
through welcoming sweet miracles of air
(and joyfully all truths of wing resuming)
selves, into infinite tomorrow steer’
(from “if(touched by love’s own secret)…”)
Or here, where ‘ams’ and ‘is’ stand in for the much duller “people” and “world”:
‘(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)’
(from “[2 Little Whos]”)
Fresh perspectives on much music recently. So not normally a huge Brahms fan, especially when it comes to his piano music, but you'd have to be desperately prejudiced to not fall for Gould's truly stunning recording of the Intermezzi. Lovingly measured, intense and yet finely shaded. Brahms had never made me feel this way before. Every piece felt like a finely hewn miracle.
I had another one of my occasional forays into Mozart recently, and was pleasantly surprised by the discovery of his quintets, which I enjoyed much more than most works of his I've heard before. Highly recommend. I sat outside the house one lovely midday admiring the brilliant blue sky, the glittering trees and soaking in the cheery chirp of the E-flat quintet, which fast became my favourite of the set. I've been having something of a chamber music phase recently; I've also come to appreciate many late Beethoven string quartets which had previously never clicked. I proved much more susceptible to the rawly trailblazing charms of No 13, and the Grosse Fuge, which I had never before taken to.
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