Poetry Notebook (31 page)

But surely Eugenia has stopped listening, and is checking the menu for room service. At least we can say, however, that Arnold, by perpetrating such a blunder, helped to define
what makes ‘Dover Beach’ so wonderful: in its clear cascade of distilled but unstrained speech, nobody from classical times except Sophocles makes a credited appearance, and even his
bit is part of the argument, not just a classical adjunct parked on top of the edifice like a misplaced metope or triglyph. Milton, of course, schooled himself well in the trick of pulling a
learned reference into the narrative texture, but all too often, no matter how smoothly the job is done, the most you can say of it is that it sounds good.

•

But sounding good can’t even be called a requirement. It’s a description. A poet who can’t make the language sing doesn’t start. Hence the shortage of
real poems amongst the global planktonic field of duds. In the countries of the Anglosphere, the poet’s first relationship is with the English language even when the poet is indigenous. There
is therefore no mystery, although there is some sadness, about the shortage of Australian Aboriginal poets: the pseudo-progressive idea dies hard that there is something imperialistic about making
it compulsory for Aboriginal youngsters to study the language of the white invader. Until the corrective opinion of such inspired Aboriginal leaders as Noel Pearson prevails, it will go on being
true that too few people of Aboriginal origin are masters of the country’s principal language. Published in 2009, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature attempted to compensate
for this imbalance artificially by including anything in English from an Aboriginal writer that might conceivably be construed as a poem, even if it was a political manifesto. It wasn’t the
first attempt in Australian literary history to give Aboriginal culture a boost into the mainstream. Back in the 1930s to 1950s, the Jindyworobak movement did the same, with whitefella poets
rendering themselves unreadable by using as many of the blackfella’s totemic terms as possible. New Zealand might have been in the same position with regard to the Maoris (nowadays known as
the Maori, for purposes of confusion), had it not been for the advent of Hone Tuwhare (1922–2008), in whose poem ‘To a Maori Figure Cast in Bronze Outside the Chief Post Office,
Auckland’ the bronze figure speaks thus:

After twenty-five lines of brilliantly articulated bitching, the statue signs off:

Tuwhare was himself a Maori, so the argument was over. Finally it is the vitality of language that decides everything, and this hard fact becomes adamantine as one’s own
vitality ebbs. Nevertheless, I still make plans to live forever: there are too many critical questions still to be raised. Most of them can never be settled, which is the best reason for raising
them. For instance, who needs a smooth technique after hearing Hopkins praise ‘All things counter, original, spare, strange’? Well, everyone does, because what Hopkins does with the
language depends on the mastery of mastery, and first you must have the mastery. And how can we write as innocently now as Shakespeare did when he gave Mercutio the speech about Queen Mab, or as
Herrick did when he wrote ‘Oberon’s Feast’, or even as Pope did, for all his show of craft, when he summoned the denizens of the air to attend Belinda in Canto II of
The Rape
of the Lock
? Well, we certainly can’t do it through ignorance, so there goes the idea of starting from nowhere. Better to think back on all the poems you have ever loved, and to realize
what they have in common: the life you soon must lose.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Clive James is the author of more than forty books. As well as essays, he has published collections of literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels, plus five volumes of autobiography. As a television performer he appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the ‘Postcard’ series of travel documentaries. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature. He holds honorary doctorates from Sydney University and the University of East Anglia. In 2012 he was appointed CBE and in 2013 an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Also by

CLIVE JAMES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Unreliable Memoirs   Falling Towards England

May Week Was In June   Always Unreliable

North Face of Soho   The Blaze of Obscurity

FICTION

Brilliant Creatures   The Remake

Brrm! Brrm!   The Silver Castle

VERSE

Other Passports: Poems 1958–1985

The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958–2003

Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958–2008

Angels Over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003–2008

Nefertiti in the Flak Tower: Collected Verse 2008–2011

TRANSLATION

The Divine Comedy

CRITICISM

The Metropolitan Critic
(new edition, 1994)

Visions Before Midnight   The Crystal Bucket

First Reactions
(US)   
From the Land of Shadows

Glued to the Box   Snakecharmers in Texas

The Dreaming Swimmer   Fame in the Twentieth Century

On Television   Even as We Speak

Reliable Essays   As of This Writing
(US)

The Meaning of Recognition   Cultural Amnesia

The Revolt of the Pendulum   A Point of View

TRAVEL

Flying Visits

First published 2014 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2014 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-6915-1

Copyright © Clive James 2014

Cover artwork © Claerwen James
Author Photograph © Robert Banks/The Age

The right of Clive James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
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liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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