“When
I thought what I could do
Fifty
years ago, I knew
There
must be something I'd do well,
What
it was I could not tell;
I
had not done it, that was clear.
Nor
have I now. How can there be
Ignorance
enough left to me
For
hope to feed on, when there isn't
Enough
delusion for ambition?”
Not
exactly a writerly pep talk but one values Sisson’s no-nonsense insights into the
human capacity for self-fabulation. And put this poem into biographical perspective:
Sisson published almost thirty volumes of poetry, numerous translations from four
languages, a novel and much critical work, much of it written while holding
down a job as a civil servant (about which he published a standard text, The Spirit of British Administration, in
1959). In “No Address” from the early nineteen-seventies, Sisson writes: “Pliny,
Horace, Cicero, talk to me; / I am a dead language also. / The poetry owners
cannot make me out. / Nor I them.” In “The Trade” (the writing trade, presumably)
from Who and What (1994), he writes:
“The
language fades. The noise is more
Than
ever it has been before,
But
all the words grow pale and thin
For
lack of sense has done them in.
“What
wonder, when it is for pay
Millions
are spoken every day?
It
is the number, not the sense
That
brings the speakers pounds and pence.”
In
1965, Sisson published an essay on the Dorset poet William Barnes (1801-1886),
who was hugely prolific and often wrote in dialect. Sisson says Barnes was “not a local poet except
by accident,” one who “exploited the natural speech of his boyhood.” He writes:
“His
use of dialect probably enabled him to maintain his liberty of feeling amidst
the uncomprehending pressures he must have faced from his social superiors.
Barnes is not there to encourage a factitious oddity, but on the contrary to
demonstrate that the poet has to develop in a straight line from his origins,
and that the avoidance of literature is indispensable for the man who wants to
tell the truth.”
When
Sisson published his collected essays in 1978, including the piece on Barnes, he titled the volume The Avoidance of Literature.
1 comment:
For another writer's view, see the following:
http://acommonplacefromeastrod.blogspot.com/
Flannery O'Connor's advice might surprise you.
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