'The Comedy of the Disgraceful'

Yet another anthology, every autodidact’s friend: Unrespectable Verse (Allen Lane, 1971), edited by Geoffrey Grigson. That’s a fetching title. To give some idea of what he means by the adjective, Grigson says Kipling and Eliot possess “strong elements” of the unrespectable, while Rochester and Blake are among its “masters” – a very mixed bag, which is often what you want in an anthology. Defining his criteria, Grigson comes closer with “witty exasperation,” and cites Pope’s “Cibber! Write all they Verses upon Glasses, / The only way to save ’em from our Arses.” The anthologist, somewhat unconvincingly, distinguishes unrespectable verse from satire, observing that Pope writes the former and Dryden the latter. He misjudges and underrates Dryden, calling him “rubicund and bland,” but that’s another story. This I find more satisfactory: “In the unrespectable poem the writer, I emphasize the fact, speaks out of his own mouth.” Grigson goes on:

“I argue that the individual in his unrespectable poems speaks one, if not two kinds of truth: he is himself, he voices himself and his exasperation, his sense of the comic; he voices also his sense of the disgraceful—or the comedy of the disgraceful; he voices his sense of hypocrisy and false gods and unworthily sacred cows.”

If I understand Grigson correctly, we need unrespectable poetry more than ever. Hypocrisy thrives, false gods rule and sacred cows crap all over the place. To give you some idea of Grigson’s elasticity, the first poem in his anthology is Stevie Smith’s “Mr. Over,” and the second is Phyllis McGinley’s “The Day After Sunday.” You might question his taste (I don’t), but Grigson is no snob.

I first read Walter Landor six or seven years ago, and he soon entered my pantheon, the one I don’t care to defend against philistines. Grigson includes eight poems by the irascible epigrammist (more than any other poet except Anonymous, Pope, Rochester and Byron). Here’s one, “A Quarrelsome Bishop”:

“To hide her ordure, claws the cat;

You claw, but not to cover that.

Be decenter, and learn at least

One lesson from the cleanlier beast.”

And another, “Distribution of Honours for Literature”:

“The grandest writer of late ages

Who wrapt up Rome in golden pages,

Whom scarcely Livius equal’d, Gibbon,

Died without star or cross or ribbon.”

By Grigson’s definition, even encomium can be unrespectable. Here, while savaging the envious and mediocre in “To Dr. Delany,” Swift praises the masters:

"Thus Envy pleads a natural claim

To persecute the Muse's fame;

On poets in all times abusive,

From Homer down to Pope inclusive.”