8:10am and the rain is lashing on the windows. Slither of cars outside. Low grey skies. What better to do on a day such as this than mark exam papers?
Well, quite a lot of things - including reading 'On Growth and Form' by D'Arcy Thompson. Nelly The Sculptor first put me on to this (having, in turn, been directed to it by Harry Gilonis if my memory serves me right). Never an easy read for me - heroically placed 23rd out of 23rd in most of my Maths and Science classes at school. As Dr Muffett put it in Chemisty: "I have taught you all I know - and you know nothing".
Nevertheless, I can cope with passages such as this:
"The waves of the sea, the little ripples on the shore, the sweeping curve of the sandy bay between the headlands, the outline of the hills, the shape of the clouds, all these are so many riddles of form, so many problems of morphology, and all of them the physicist can more or less easily read and adequately solve ... They have also, doubtless, their immanent teleological significance; but it is on another plane of thought from the physicist's that we contemplate their intrinsic harmony and perfection, and 'see that they are good'." (p7)
Riddles of Form - now that's a good working title ...
3 comments:
That's a great working title -- I'm really glad you're pursuing this idea. You have one guaranteed reader already...
W
PS I had no idea about the "Little Wing" connection (it's one of my favourite Hendrix songs). I listened to it this morning, but I still couldn't see the relation. Wikipedia seems to think "Mlle Mabry" is actually Gil Evans's arrangement of "The Wind Cries Mary". Now I'm really confused. Still, Gil Evans plays Hendrix? I had no idea about that . . .
Argh! Silly me - you're right. I get my Hendrix titles confused. Sorry!
Yes, I did have ... perhaps still do have ... a CD of Gil Evans plus orchestra doing Hendrix arrangements. Ben (aka Out To Lunch) hated it when I played it at a party in Bristol many years ago but I have a fondness for the record.
I think it all goes back to the never really realised Miles-Jimi collaboration.
re. 'Riddles of Form' - whaddya think? I wonder if it could embody its very ideas in its form - i.e. eschew the typical Routledge-style textbook for something closer to a work of art in itself.* Sort of like Robert Smithson's essays? Confront the reader rather than explain everything away. Poundian juxtaposition. Olsonian collage. Open Field poetics hit the classroom!
I wonder ...
The C.
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* and/or parody the form. (An exam paper format which poses ten questions about what is wrong with the current teaching of poetry. ((Spicer does something like this in his Poetry as Magic class)).
e.g.
1. What is wrong with the teaching of poetry in the classroom?
2. Why do students hate poetry?
3. Why are English teachers so afraid of poetry?
4. Name three poets you have studied who are NOT published by Faber and Faber.
5. Why DOES poetry matter?
6. Which poem makes you want to: laugh? cry? sing a song? be sick? jump out of the window? grab a piece of paper and start writing your own? peel an orange?
etc. etc.
Time Allowed: a lifetime. )
I can't think of anyone better placed to do it. I think you're right to go playful rather than hectoring -- although a serious point is being made...
I haven't come across Robert Smithson or Spicer's Poetry as Magic -- more to follow up!
Love the Faber question. I've just ordered Andrew Duncan's The Failure of Conservatism in Modern British Poetry (Salt), which I hope lives up to expectations. This is what he has to say about Larkin: "what a creeping depression and lowness of spirit seeps out of the work. Larkin precisely defines what poetry should not be: poetry is exciting, Larkin is depressing; poetry is hyperassociative, Larkin discourages the formation of ideas; poetry is emotional, Larkin is frigid and prudent; poetry is social, Larkin dislikes other people; poetry takes risks, Larkin cringes."
How refreshing is that? -- esp. when Larkin recently came top of The Times list of the Greatest British Writers Since 1945 (with Ted Hughes in fourth place)!
W
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