Poetry

Monday

Alex Massie

Holy Gordon’s Prayer

There’s a telling line in this story from the Mail which (if true!) gets to the heart of Gordon Brown’s sense of himself. Apparently he was unhappy with the line of questioning being pursued by a recent TV interviewer, leading Brown to complain, off-camera, that “You are impugning my integrity.” Now if ever a complaint reeked of the Manse, this is it. Not that the Prime Minister is alone in parading his own estimation of his integrity as though it deflected not only criticism but, more implausibly still, the very grounds upon which such criticism might be offered; the late John Smith could take such a view himself. Smith was

Saturday

Max Egremont

Old gipsy-man

Who reads Ralph Hodgson’s poetry today? Probably few people under the age of 40 have even heard of this strange Englishman who died in 1961 in a small town in the American mid-west. His most famous poems are those once learnt by schoolchildren like ‘Time you old Gypsy Man’ or ‘The Bells of Heaven’, both little more than pleasant rhymes. But in his day Hodgson was admired by (among others) Robert Lowell, Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Spender and T. S. Eliot, who wanted him to illustrate the book that he had partly inspired — Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; the lazy Hodgson could have made a fortune from the project

Wednesday

Andro Linklater

Freedom and houghmagandie

The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford Robert Burns: A Biography, by Patrick Scott Hogg How to account for the phenomenon of Robert Burns? Not the man or his poetry, but the national icon, a Caledonian amalgam of Alexander Pushkin and Bob Marley? The process of idolisation began with the instant acclaim that greeted the publication of Burns’ first collection, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, in 1786. That it continues today in this the 250th anniversary of his birth is demonstrated by the publication of two new biographies. But to explain why is harder than it might seem. Logically Scotland and Burns should have been incompatible. A

Wednesday

David Crane

His own best biographer

Byron in Love, by Edna O’Brien ‘We would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem,’ wrote Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh Review, when the young Byron was unwise enough to expose his first, dismal book of juvenilia to the gaze of ‘Citizen Mob’, ‘and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers or differently expressed’. It is as well for a lot of us that there seem to be different standards for biographers ,because there can be even

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Deil’s Awa Wi’ the Exciseman (and several others)

Can this really be true? And if so, is it hilarious or horrifying? Or, perhaps, both… David Gest and, of all people, Michael Jackson are recording an album of Robert Burns’ poetry: Gest’s spokesman said the album is a modern musical take on some of Burns’ classic poems, and had been a long cherished project. He explained that he and Jackson were originally planning to do a musical about Burns’s life, but decided instead to turn his poetry into show tunes. Poems featured on the album include Ae Fond Kiss and Tam O’Shanter, the story of a man from Ayr who stays too long in a pub and witnesses a

Monday

Alex Massie

Prime Hutton

Lovely story told by Simon Hoggart in his Guardian column at the weekend: The death of Simon Gray lets me reprise a favourite story. He was a close friend of Harold Pinter, a great cricket lover. Once Pinter wrote a poem about his hero Len Hutton. It read, in its entirety “I saw Hutton in his prime / Another time, another time.” He sent it to several of his friends. Soon afterwards Pinter and Gray were at the same dinner party and Pinter asked what he thought of the poem. “I don’t know, Harold,” said Gray. “I’m afraid I haven’t finished it yet.” [Hat-tip: Stephen Pollard]