RonPrice
THANKS CLIVE
In 1962 I moved from Burlington to Dundas Ontario to do my matriculation, grade 13. If I wanted to go to university it was essential that I pass nine subjects. And so it was from September 1962 to June 1963 I spent four hours every night and most of the hours on the weekend studying: Latin(authors and composition), English(literature and composition), maths(algebra, geometry and trig), science(chemistry) and history.
In 1962, the Australian essayist and poet Clive James informs us in one of the articles on poetry at his website(1) “a brace of small but influential penguin pocketbooks waddled into prominence: Contemporary American Poetry, selected and edited by Donald Hall, and The New Poetry, selected and edited by A. Alvarez. Hall picked on two immediately post-war books as marking the culmination of ‘past poetries’ and the beginning of a new poetry: these were Lowell’s Lord Weary’s Castle and Richard Wilbur’s The Beautiful Changes. For tremendous power under tremendous pressure, Lowell was your only man. For skilful elegance, but not for passion, Wilbur was likewise nonpareil. As Hall went on to point out, it was Wilbur who had the greater number of plausible imitators, and the typical duff poem of the fifties was the poème bien fait that was not bien fait — the Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur.
By 1962, mirabile dictu, Wilbur, in addition to The Beautiful Changes, had published Ceremony (1950), Things of this World (1956) and had brought out a large selection in England, Poems 1943-1956. Advice to a Prophet (1961) was also out in Australia by 1962, having been brought straight across the oceans by Faber with a haste well-nigh unseemly. Wilbur’s stock was high on both sides of the pond.” I was out in Australia by 1971, having been brought straight across the ocean by the South Australian government with a haste that surprises me even now. -Ron Price with thanks to (1) Clive James, “Kid Gloves: On Richard Wilbur,” 1994 at CliveJames.com.
I was too busy growing up, then, Clive...
to read all that stuff. From 1944 to 1962
running a different gauntlet to the one you
ran in Sydney; mine, it must be said, was
much easier than yours, Clive. You had a
much tougher set of years back then, Clive.(1)
My mother was into poetry, though,
back there on Seneca Street by the
lake, one of the big-five in Ontario.
Something must have rubbed-off
because here I am in my old-age
writing tons of stuff that will never
make it into books like the ones you
mention that came out back in ‘62....
She was also into a new religion(2)
which also rubbed-off back then
in the fifties when I was playing
baseball, hockey, football, trying
to get into girls without any luck
and, unlike you Clive, making it
big in school with my memory....
as a good-boy, Clive, back then,
unlike you; I started to treat my
mother badly much later in life.
Anyway, Clive, thanks for your
erudition and your memory; you
have enriched my life Downunder.
(1) Clive James, Unmerited Memoirs, 1980.
(2) The Bahá'í Faith
Ron Price
6 December 2009
(For the Absolute Astronomy
Discussion on Clive James)
In 1962 I moved from Burlington to Dundas Ontario to do my matriculation, grade 13. If I wanted to go to university it was essential that I pass nine subjects. And so it was from September 1962 to June 1963 I spent four hours every night and most of the hours on the weekend studying: Latin(authors and composition), English(literature and composition), maths(algebra, geometry and trig), science(chemistry) and history.
In 1962, the Australian essayist and poet Clive James informs us in one of the articles on poetry at his website(1) “a brace of small but influential penguin pocketbooks waddled into prominence: Contemporary American Poetry, selected and edited by Donald Hall, and The New Poetry, selected and edited by A. Alvarez. Hall picked on two immediately post-war books as marking the culmination of ‘past poetries’ and the beginning of a new poetry: these were Lowell’s Lord Weary’s Castle and Richard Wilbur’s The Beautiful Changes. For tremendous power under tremendous pressure, Lowell was your only man. For skilful elegance, but not for passion, Wilbur was likewise nonpareil. As Hall went on to point out, it was Wilbur who had the greater number of plausible imitators, and the typical duff poem of the fifties was the poème bien fait that was not bien fait — the Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur.
By 1962, mirabile dictu, Wilbur, in addition to The Beautiful Changes, had published Ceremony (1950), Things of this World (1956) and had brought out a large selection in England, Poems 1943-1956. Advice to a Prophet (1961) was also out in Australia by 1962, having been brought straight across the oceans by Faber with a haste well-nigh unseemly. Wilbur’s stock was high on both sides of the pond.” I was out in Australia by 1971, having been brought straight across the ocean by the South Australian government with a haste that surprises me even now. -Ron Price with thanks to (1) Clive James, “Kid Gloves: On Richard Wilbur,” 1994 at CliveJames.com.
I was too busy growing up, then, Clive...
to read all that stuff. From 1944 to 1962
running a different gauntlet to the one you
ran in Sydney; mine, it must be said, was
much easier than yours, Clive. You had a
much tougher set of years back then, Clive.(1)
My mother was into poetry, though,
back there on Seneca Street by the
lake, one of the big-five in Ontario.
Something must have rubbed-off
because here I am in my old-age
writing tons of stuff that will never
make it into books like the ones you
mention that came out back in ‘62....
She was also into a new religion(2)
which also rubbed-off back then
in the fifties when I was playing
baseball, hockey, football, trying
to get into girls without any luck
and, unlike you Clive, making it
big in school with my memory....
as a good-boy, Clive, back then,
unlike you; I started to treat my
mother badly much later in life.
Anyway, Clive, thanks for your
erudition and your memory; you
have enriched my life Downunder.
(1) Clive James, Unmerited Memoirs, 1980.
(2) The Bahá'í Faith
Ron Price
6 December 2009
(For the Absolute Astronomy
Discussion on Clive James)