In honor of A. E. Housman’s 160th birthday, ending in seven minutes, here is Charles Johnston, in Selected Poems<\/i> (London, 1985):<\/p>\n
Footnote to Housman<\/b><\/p>\n
To reach the top flight as a poet
\nyou must write an unreadable work,
\nso obscure that your friends will forgo it
\nand all but the bravest will shirk.<\/p>\n
Then the few who have read it, begrudging
\nthe waste of exertion entailed,
\nwill claim it\u2019s essential for judging
\nhow far you\u2019ve succeeded or failed.<\/p>\n
From admiring their own persistence
\nthey\u2019ll come to admiring the screed
\nand claim that it stands at a distance
\nfrom works that are easy to read;<\/p>\n
while the reader who skipped it is able
\nto pretend he enjoyed it himself,
\nand leave it about on his table,
\nand show it with pride on his shelf.<\/p>\n
It was Housman who worst neglected
\nthe force of this critical rule,
\nwith result that his faults are detected
\nby infants who read him at school,<\/p>\n
while we who admire him, defenceless,
\nlack some pompier twaddle to quote
\nand can find nothing prolix or senseless
\nto claim as the best thing he wrote.<\/p>\n
To learn from the fault he committed
\nis the first of poetical cares.
\nLucid intervals may be admitted,
\nbut be lucid the whole time who dares.<\/p>\n
I still can’t make up my mind whether ‘read’ in the last line of the third-to-last stanza is present or past, and therefore cannot read it aloud or to myself without stumbling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In honor of A. E. Housman’s 160th birthday, ending in seven minutes, here is Charles Johnston, in Selected Poems (London, 1985): Footnote to Housman To reach the top flight as a poet you must write an unreadable work, so obscure … Continue reading