the coffee philosopher

Posted on August 15, 2014August 14, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

‘The Fall Of America: Poems Of These States 1965-1971’ By Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg, I would argue, wrote two great poems (Howl and Kaddish), one good poem (America) and then a bunch of other stuff.

Is that unfair? He was the outstanding public figure of a movement that was hugely influential and played and outsized role in the creation of a certain idea of the artist. The idea of the artist as shaman, perhaps. Yet his own work was, I can’t help but feel, a chronicle of diminishing marginal returns.

I can’t remember if this scene was in the book, but in the movie Trainspotting, Sick Boy uses the career of Sean Connery to illustrate a point about the tragic, downhill slope of life. Connery was James Bond and then everything else he did, if you’re honest about, Sick Boy argued, was ‘shite.’

America, despite moments of brilliance, is Ginsberg’s Untouchables. Sure, Connery won a best supporting actor Oscar for it, but really, does it hold a candle to having been the indelible presence he was as Bond? Bond, in this case, being a stand-in for Howl and Kaddish.

As a result, I had a huge problem getting into this little book. I’d re-read Howl and Kaddish and was struck by their power – a power that I’d forgotten. Now, I wish I had stopped there. Unlike the others, this one appears more deeply unstructured – a sham Whitmanesque, propulsive journey (and definitely with Whitman’s signature form – the long lines interspersed with deep indentations), but without Whitman’s careful (if exuberant) craftsmanship.

Posted on August 14, 2014July 6, 2016 by the coffee philosopher

‘A Treatise Of Civil Power’ By Geoffrey Hill

I saw Hill read once and he was an engaging and erudite (without being obfuscatory) reader, but at the time, I chose a to buy a collection by one of the less known poets in attendance, but when I was browsing Politics & Prose while waiting out some traffic, I saw Hill’s A Treatise of Civil Power on sale and couldn’t resist.

It’s a damn melancholy book. I keep on thinking that it’s referring to some Latin treatise by a Cicero or Tacitus type of character, but it’s actually a reference to Milton and he draws heavily on seventeenth century English history and a Miltonic style (and very Miltonic enjambments). In writing poems about centuries old quarrels and the (usually failed) efforts to resolve them peacefully and successfully, it’s difficult not to take away a deep pessimism from the poems. Without being terribly dense, the poems also manage to have a strange feeling of density. Maybe it’s the archaic style (I’m also reading some Ben Jonson and while his poems, with their irregular spelling and very different modes of writing than our current ones, are more difficult to read, their is an airiness to them that you don’t find three quarters of a century later).

He also wrote an entire poem in memoriam of the British philosopher, Gillian Rose. I had to look her up. Apparently, they had some kind of quarrel and he wrote (fondly? sadly? regretfully) of her prickliness and their disagreements (whatever they were). So even when he moves forward in time, it’s still powerfully melancholy. And melancholy is the right word. Not sad. Something with a cavernous, time-spanning and more baritone to it than ‘sad.’ Something like ‘melancholy’ (though I don’t remember that he ever referenced Burton’s book/poem/treatise sui generis, Anatomy of Melancholy).