tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post4168737749241536668..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: A Crowd of StrangersUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-32485922719500331902011-11-19T08:42:22.659-08:002011-11-19T08:42:22.659-08:00Don,
Lovely thought on a weatherish night.
The t...Don,<br /><br />Lovely thought on a weatherish night.<br /><br />The thing with Wordsworth's great poem -- far superior I think in the "young" version than in the later revision, which is often taken as the "official" text, though much of the early freshness has been lost -- is that a lot of people who would be poets now not only haven't read it, but would disdain doing so.<br /><br />But as Phil Whalen once said in a poem (to paraphrase), most things that were once considered great ARE great, and have been considered so for good reason.<br /><br />Bolt and bar the shutter,<br />For the foul winds blow:<br />Our minds are at their best this night,<br />And I seem to know<br />That everything outside us is<br />Mad as the mist and snow.<br /><br />(And that top Whistler, yes, just keeps getting better the more we look at it.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54468156483137119512011-11-19T08:02:03.580-08:002011-11-19T08:02:03.580-08:00Tom:
Just a fantastic post, from the first Whistl...Tom:<br /><br />Just a fantastic post, from the first Whistler image to all the fascinating end comments (you've sent this ignorant old man off - virtually - to reserve the Williams at the library) at the end. <br /><br />I reread the Prelude this summer and you focus right on the sections that grab. This crowd scene a transcendent moment in literature - second sight, indeed.<br /><br />As you speak to the odd leaps of the mind and how we get from one thing to the next, I'd just previous to arriving at this post (as I slowly go back through all I've missed these last couple of weeks) been reading <a href="http://poemhunter.com/poem/mad-as-the-mist-and-snow/" rel="nofollow">Yeats' "Mad As The Mist And Snow"</a> and it instantly blended in to the Wordsworth in my poor addled brainpan.<br /><br />Nice to get a bit of sizzle going in the old pan now and again and I've you to thank.<br /><br />best,<br />DonIssa's Untidy Huthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07352841590717991698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-44001681312880933372011-11-14T09:33:07.412-08:002011-11-14T09:33:07.412-08:00Tom,
Thanks for calling my attention back to WW&#...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for calling my attention back to WW's lines (yet again), which ARE readable indeed (second 'comment' below trying to remember what the first had said when it didn't seem to have gone through, and not getting it quite right), and in particular these '' "Until the shapes before my eyes became/A second-sight procession, such as glides/ Over still mountains, or appears in dreams;" And also for your note on "One of . . . several . . . problems with the recent incessant re-orderings of literary history has to do with the way values tend to rise and fall in the stock market of critical opinion with the lightning speed of commodity futures & c. in the hands of hedge-fund managers."STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-78380359583353886862011-11-14T06:47:17.430-08:002011-11-14T06:47:17.430-08:00That's fair enough.
Funny, I was once a gradu...That's fair enough.<br /><br />Funny, I was once a graduate student at the college next door to the one where Terry Eagleton was an undergrad. At that date, it seemed we both aspired to be poets.<br /><br />"The road not taken" -- there must be a banal Robert Frost line to cover every occasion.<br /><br />"Lumping-in," always a wee bit of a problem. But then I've always felt uneasy in <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/crowd-of-strangers-ii-waiver-imaging.html" rel="nofollow">lumpen situations</a>, whether of the bought sort, or even the allegedly "free".<br /><br />(This is the "Land of the Free", Conrad, but if I were you, I'd stay well away from your southern border, if all possible. That wiseguy poet who died while still a boy, Frank O'H, has that immortal line "Fuck Canada"... which has really backed-up on itself, over the years.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-32559914974083233822011-11-14T04:38:38.671-08:002011-11-14T04:38:38.671-08:00Tom,
your points are all well taken. Perhaps my c...Tom,<br /><br />your points are all well taken. Perhaps my characterizations of significant thinkers & social theorists like Raymond Williams as "Marxists" only serves to unfairly lump him in with the too comfortable academic ideologues (like Terry Eagleton,e.g.)who wouldn't have anything to say about most things without the "Kapital"-crutch. Jodi Dean also comes to mind.<br /><br />I appreciate Williams's working class background, and sympathies. But what I learned from his great work is that nothing's beyond "critical reading" (a little reminiscent also of Derrida's "nothing beyond the text"): not even Williams himself.Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74491255756597140802011-11-13T22:39:58.174-08:002011-11-13T22:39:58.174-08:00Conrad, I'm delighted to find a fellow appreci...Conrad, I'm delighted to find a fellow appreciator of Williams' magisterial work, which has opened many doors for this particular reader. Again, here, though, the category-location of RW's insights within the convenient box of "Marxist scholarship" tends to have two problematic effects. First, it overlooks the extremely close historical/literary study that underlies every word of Williams' text -- he had in a real sense "lived every word" before ordering his judgment of the words into what might be called theory. I find that uncommon among theorists, all too many of whose analyses of literature put the cart (the theory) before the horse (the work). (All that impartial close reading takes time, of course; and Time is Money, of course, when you're not having fun.) And second, given the fact that "Marxist" is currently a descriptive term that has fallen out of general favour -- as though the stubborn refusal of Marx's on-the-ground observations and consequent conclusions to equate with the present reality of academic conveniences, perks, tenure, dwarf-hauteur & c., all that good stuff which makes of every proper academic theorist these days, a little capitalist in sheep's clothing -- I find it more suitable simply to think of Williams as a reader, historian and critic first, a theorist only after that, and finally, a "Marxist" only because he correctly perceived the unavoidable historical implications and applications of Marx's extremely penetrating insights; which get harder and harder to swallow every day, for the ensconced academic classes.<br /><br />But to get back to Williams' great book, it's surely to be recommended to anyone who would care to read and think about writing in English from the 16th through the 19th centuries.<br /><br />In this acute critical examination of Wordsworth's account of the shock of coming from his village into the bewildering London streets, Williams correctly discovers an early encounter with an entirely new form of social organisation. <br /><br />"This is direct observation of a new set of physical and sense relationships: a new way of seeing men in what is experienced as a new kind of society. It is, in this sense, a new kind of alienation..."<br /><br />As to your very pertinent query -- <br />"Is the present Occupy movement in postindustrial America an exact analogue??" -- I suspect it may be a rhetorical question. In any case, I'd say no, hardly. On the other hand, it would be foolish to think that a reorganisation of society is not being considered by many, many people right now. And high time it is that such thoughts occurred. It's just that in the two hundred years since Wordsworth's vision, the complications and elaborations of the structures of a society which he only dimly inkled have left us such a with a gargantuan, labyrinthine, monstrously cemented blow-up of that kind of horror-world, things have evolved to a point where nothing can be understood, everything is hidden, and the powers of authority supporting and simultaneously concealing this massive, grotesque construction are so massive and extensive, it's very hard to imagine that it will all be blown away by plopping some Ikea tents in a public plaza, chanting a bit, and taking lots and lots of pictures of the person/s adjacent taking pictures of you.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47374245622545099172011-11-13T22:37:52.281-08:002011-11-13T22:37:52.281-08:00Artemisia, Conrad, Steve, many thanks.
Steve, I a...Artemisia, Conrad, Steve, many thanks.<br /><br />Steve, I am impressed by the close minute-to-minute recalibration of your response to the Wordsworth passage, which appears to have gone from "readable" to "almost" readable in the mere space of seven minutes.<br /><br />(One of my -- several -- problems with the recent incessant re-orderings of literary history has to do with the way values tend to rise and fall in the stock market of critical opinion with the lightning speed of commodity futures & c. in the hands of hedge-fund managers. In propria persona, I'd -- almost! -- be tempted to suggest that the 1805 Prelude was actually readable from the get-go, and has somehow, miraculously, managed to stay that way, notwithstanding the progressive dumbing-down of the several waves of modernist, postmodernist & c. centuries.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-10674849909370405002011-11-13T16:54:05.555-08:002011-11-13T16:54:05.555-08:00Tom,
Thanks for these Wordsworth words, which wit...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for these Wordsworth words, which with help from Whistler, Dore and anonymous become (almost) readable after all. Onward with occupying the campus and planet ("With rocks and stones and trees") ---<br /><br />11.13<br /><br />light coming into sky above still black<br />ridge, white circle of moon in branches<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> between leading to new next,<br /> “beginning” following<br /><br /> from form in which, “itself<br /> so to speak,” returns<br /><br />silver of sunlight reflected in channel,<br />shadowed canyon of ridge across from itSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-33608780242830929282011-11-13T16:47:42.985-08:002011-11-13T16:47:42.985-08:00Tom,
Thanks for these Wordsworth words, which wit...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for these Wordsworth words, which with help from Whistle, Dore and anonymous begin to become readable (after all). Onward in occupying the campus and planet ("With rocks and stones and trees") ---<br /><br />11.13<br /><br />light coming into sky above still black<br />ridge, white circle of moon in branches<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> between leading to new next,<br /> “beginning” following<br /><br /> from form in which, “itself<br /> so to speak,” returns<br /><br />silver of sunlight reflected in channel,<br />shadowed canyon of ridge across from itSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-62170946449332949422011-11-13T12:06:14.355-08:002011-11-13T12:06:14.355-08:00Wonderful Wordsworth poem!Wonderful Wordsworth poem!Artemesiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06120821017998835883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-69540796266009341802011-11-13T09:47:10.953-08:002011-11-13T09:47:10.953-08:00Williams's "The Country and the City"...Williams's "The Country and the City" is the best chronicle (in Marxist scholarship certainly)of the effects of the 'enclosures' and migrations of displaced rural workers on literary sensibilities of the period (what he terms "structures of feelings"). The Wordsworth commentary is very illustrative.<br /><br />I find particularly enlightening in Williams his critical reading of authors like Jonson, Carew(mostly rich, well-propertied types) who'd tried but couldn't quite conceal the exploitive relations between workers and landscape their poetry revealed.<br /><br />Is the present Occupy movement in postindudstrial America an exact analogue??Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-8746149040589694502011-11-13T09:06:41.121-08:002011-11-13T09:06:41.121-08:00I thought -- "Escher!" -- too, with the...I thought -- "Escher!" -- too, with the Doré.<br /><br />Happy you got into this one, Nin. Wordsworth has such a reputation as a partykiller ... but, maybe it's showing my age again (all over again!), I find the best of him enthralling.<br /><br />That Whistler bowled me over. Another famous partykiller (well, I suppose it was the mother did him in).<br /><br />(Sic transit Mom.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-71724269726023718912011-11-13T08:19:52.103-08:002011-11-13T08:19:52.103-08:00I love this post. I was never much of a Wordsworth...I love this post. I was never much of a Wordsworth fan, but now I am thinking I might need to revisit him. I love the London Nocturne, the shadowy figure there. And the Over London--by Rail, which looks almost Escher-ish.Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-79759310599842999782011-11-13T07:36:40.039-08:002011-11-13T07:36:40.039-08:00The flocks of occupiers taking pictures of each ot...The flocks of occupiers taking pictures of each other up at the campus these nights have reminded me that the new solidarity has bred a kind of mutual photo-op mutation of the crowd-of-strangers feeling.<br /><br />But the real provocation of this return to the venerable WW were these touchstone lines by Stevie Smith, the anti-Wordsworth, in the previous post:<br /><br />When you sat on the couch<br />With that tigerish crouch<br /><br />By a curious antediluvian association of ideas, those lines made me think of <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/william-wordsworth-slumber-did-my.html" rel="nofollow">"A slumber did my spirit seal"</a>.<br /><br />I know everyone will be waiting breathlessly to know my #2 favourite passage from The Prelude: <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/william-wordsworth-disappearing-line.html" rel="nofollow">the strolling Bedlamites</a>.<br /><br />(The street people of those times were included in occupying a sort of knowable community, at least.)<br /><br />And for more from the same ageless bard, see the middle bit <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/mutabilitie-of-englishe-lyrick.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com