Lucky Caedmon

Caedmon, the first poet in English whose name we know, learned the art of song in a dream. According to Bede's Historia, Caedmon was an illiterate cowherd who couldn't sing. When, during this or that merry feast, it was decided that everyone in turn would contribute a song, Caedmon would withdraw in embarrassment, maybe claiming he had to go look after the animals. One night, somebody tries to pass Caedmon the harp after dinner, and he flees to the stables. There among the ungulates he drifts off and is visited by a mysterious figure, probably God. "You must sing to me," says God. "I can't," Caedmon says, if not in these words. "That's why I'm sleeping in the stable instead of drinking mead with my friends around the fire. But God (or an angel or demon - the text is vague) keeps demanding a song. "But what should I sing?" asks Caedmon, who I imagine is desperate, cold-sweating through a nightmare. "Sing the beginning of created things," instructs the visitor. Caedmon opens his mouth and, to his amazement, gorgeous verses praising God pour forth.

Caedmon awakes as a poet...

- Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry

Favourite footnotes: 12

This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and external evidence, has nevertheless, upon supposition of its truth, been made the foundation of the following ingenious and fanciful reflections of Miss Seward, amongst the communications concerning Dr. Johnson with which she has been pleased to favour me: 'These infant numbers contain the seed of those propensities which through his life so strongly marked his character, of that poetick talent which afterwards bore such rich and plentiful fruits; for, excepting his orthographick works, every thing which Dr. Johnson wrote was Poetry, whose essence consists not in numbers, or in jingle, but in the strength and glow of a fancy, to which all the stores of nature and of art stand in prompt administration; and in an eloquence which conveys their blended illustrations in a language "more tuneable than needs or rhyme or verse to add more harmony."
     'The above little verses also shew that superstitious bias which "grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength," and, of late years particularly, injured his happiness, by presenting to him the gloomy side of religion, rather than that bright and cheering one which gilds the period of closing life with the light of pious hope.' 

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     This is so beautifully imagined that I would not suppress it. But like many other theories, it is deduced from a supposed fact, which is, indeed, a fiction. BOSWELL.

- James Boswell, Life of Johnson

InDefinition - 84

Wetherspoonerism, n. accidental transposition of initial sounds or letters, drink having been taken. E.g.

Late home for supper,
he mustn't seem drunk.
'The pob cluck,' he begins,
And knows he is sunk.

- Wendy Cope, 'Timekeeping'

(Audio)Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 124

More importantly, I've just discovered that a distant family member was a keen enthusiast of Basil Bunting.

Nomenclatterrrr!!!

Yes,



but...

(Audio)Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 123

To be alive as Chaucer was not the same as to be alive as Milton - or Tennyson, or Eliot, or Plath.

- Peter Whitfield

Books I've actually finished lately:118

1) Epic poetry presupposes a professional tradition. 

2) 'They put him on the carved bed, and stood singers beside him,' [the same word is used for professional poets]... 

3) Everyone can wail in every family, but not everyone can make and sing the dirge.

- Peter Levi

Books I've actually finished lately: 117

Without my shadow I don't know how the other half feels.

- Nick Cave

(Jury's still out on the audio sample. Cave is reading it himself...)

Literary coincidences: 3

I've been tinkering with the idea of launching a small, low-admin South-East London literary festival, so this morning I was making notes as to whom I might be able to involve. Aspiring-writer mates, literary Facebook acquaintances, authors I've interviewed. Anyone from whom I might beg an under-remunerated favour, really, if they happened to be in the area. The last name I put down - on a might-as-well-ask basis - was Wendy Cope.

Out walking the dog just now, I was listening to The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz (psychoanalyst) when, in a chapter about love, a particular bit caught my ear:

As the poet Wendy Cope once told...

Inattendance

TOBY ZIEGLER: Was there any press there tonight?
ACADEMIC: For a poetry lecture...?

- The West Wing, 3;17

Books I've actually finished lately: 109

Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 100

For years now

I've had this
whistling
sound in
my ears

- WG Sebald

On translation

Even the Grammarians, tho' their whole bufinefs and ufe be only to render the words of an Author intelligible, are ftrangely touch'd with the pride of doing fomething more than they ought.

- Alexander Pope, in his preface to Homer's Iliad

On sincerity

I'm sure you've had to say things you haven't meant before. You've read friends'poetry...? Had girlfriends...?

- The West Wing

And quite a decent poem

about religion.

The worst poem I have ever seen

Yeats - in context

I went out to the hazel wood, / Because a fire was in my head, / And I had not had my Health & Safety briefing.

(Audio)Books I've actually finished lately: 88

Featuring far too many instances of the word 'sensuous' (and variants) - which ought seriously to've been reconsidered and/or edited when Derek Jacobi was booked to do the audio.

(Audio)Books I've actually finished lately: 87

Although I do have to say it doesn't sound a lot like Dan Stevens...

Books I've actually finished lately: 85