3. 'In Praise Of Limestone' by WH Auden

'In Praise of Limestone' ends our brief time with Auden, though I think I will return to this challenging, most individual writer. What an extraordinary poem it is — subtle and complex, oblique and ambiguous, fond and humorous, deep and light and serious as ever. Annoying, if you will, because of this. Yet, in its style and diction, clear-minded, clear-headed, clearly expressed. And full of memorable lines and phrases.

A word about context: it was Auden's first visit to Italy with his lifelong friend and sometime lover, Chester Kallman. This was the first poem Auden wrote in Italy. Limestone landscape was a beloved and symbolic landscape of Auden's, an integral geology of his native Yorkshire. Limestone is also a major part of the Mediterranean landscape. It is a soft, porous, sedimentary rock, fluidly forming underground streams and lakes, caves and caverns. 'Gennel' is a Yorkshire dialect word for a narrow alleyway between houses.

But what on earth is this poem all about? I have lots of ideas, but I hope these may emerge in a general discussion about the poem with some of you.

A few of those great lines and phrases:

 . . . Mark these rounded slopes 
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath, 
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs 
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle, 
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving 
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain 
The butterfly and the lizard . . .

Their eyes have never looked into infinite space 
Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb . . .

'I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing; 
That is how I shall set you free. There is no love; 
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.' 

. . . but when I try to imagine a faultless love 
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur 
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

2. 'Woods' by WH Auden

Here's another poem by Auden for comment and discussion. 'Woods' is the second poem in a series called 'Bucolics', which was published in 1952-53. The other poems in the sequence are similarly elemental and topographical: 'Winds', 'Mountains', 'Lakes', 'Islands', 'Plains', 'Streams'. Caedmon recorded Auden reading these poems in 1953; you can trace some of these recordings on the internet. In the liner notes Auden describes the common theme of these poems as 'the relation of man as a history-making person to nature'.

Compared with 'Consider This and in Our Time', the first thing you notice about this poem is that it's written in traditional iambic pentameter form — perhaps as a gesture to English culture before its decline or perhaps as mocking irony?

A few words of explanation: in the first stanza Piero di Cosimo's 'primal woods' refers to his painting 'Forest Fire' in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. In the sixth stanza 'Pan's green father' who 'raps out / A burst of indecipherable Morse' refers to a woodpecker.

This poem seems to me to be a concise poetic history (anthropological, social, political, cultural, spiritual and mythological) of the English (British) forest (and, by analogy, English culture): from savage to sylvan to well-kempt — to coarsened, depleted and degraded. Forests used to cover Britain; now there are only patches left. This theme of woodland (and cultural) destruction has, of course, increasing global resonance. I think the general direction of the poem is clear, but, as often with Auden, there are frequent obscurities: who are 'those vast lives that never took another / And are not scared of gods, ghosts, or stepmother'? (Stanza 4.) Why does the philologist feel at home in the forest's shade? (Stanza 5.) What is 'the water noise'? (Stanza 7.)

I love the lines 'The trees encountered on a country stroll / Reveal a lot about a country's soul' (Stanza 8.); and the very last line of the poem, 'A culture is no better than its woods', has the force of an undeniable truth.

What do you think about this poem?

1. 'Consider This And In Our Time' by WH Auden

I'm reading Auden's 'Collected Poems' at the moment, and it can be a frustrating as well as a rewarding task. For me there's no doubt that he's one of the great Anglo-American poets and one of the cleverest. However, this cleverness can be an obstacle: he sometimes sounds as if he's simply showing off. Auden has infuriated some readers and critics because of this intellectual cleverness — and also because of his wide range of diction and reference, and his poetic uncategorisability: no sooner does he master one form or style, then he perfects another. But whether he writes rhyming quatrains or free verse, lyric or light verse, parody or poetic drama, he is always uniquely Auden.

Like many of Auden's poems, 'Consider This and in Our Time' seems to me clear in its general thrust, but obscure in many of its details — so it's a good poem to study at the start of this blog, I feel. You can find the poem here; it is dated 1930.

When I read a poem for the first time I tend to read it straight off, trying to follow the main tenor of the poem, absorbing its atmosphere, allowing any meaning and musicality to speak directly to me as unconsciously as possible. I try to be open to it and its effect, ridding myself of any previous prejudice I may have had about the author or the poem's style and reputation. Bits I don't understand, or go completely above my head, I don't worry about. I may read it again like this, perhaps two or three times. Then I want to go back and work things out in more detail, look up words and references I don't know, ask questions, paraphrase certain sections. The wonderful thing about a good poem is that you can return to it again and again, and it will reveal more and more.

The general political, social and psychological ruination Auden portrays in 'Consider This and in Our Time' is, I think, fairly clear; what can be difficult is the particular way he writes about it, using words and phrases which may seem puzzling. Who, for instance, is the 'supreme Antagonist, / More powerful than the great northern whale'? Satan? The Devil? And why the specificity and deliberate obscurity of 'the great northern whale', anyhow? And what is 'life's limiting defect', and if it's death, why does Auden choose to describe death in such a ponderous and ironic way? And why do all the six lines which follow 'Long ago, supreme Antagonist' intentionally use a strange and clumsy syntax? Further on in the poem, why is the 'peril' 'polar'? And who are the 'boys' and why are they 'ruined'? And, later still, what's all this about 'fugues', 'irregular breathing', 'alternate ascendencies', 'explosion of mania' and 'classic fatigue'? (They appear to be manifestations of psychological illness.)

How important is it to clarify as far as possible the exact meaning Auden intends, or is it OK to get the general poetic gist? Did you like this poem or not, and why or why not? Or does one need to reread it several times, and try to unravel some of the ambiguities, before one even knows whether one likes it or not? I'm putting these questions to myself, and I invite you also to consider these questions. And I look forward to reading any thoughts and ideas you may have.

I'm particularly impressed by how Auden blends exact, revealing details — 'hawk', helmeted airman', 'cigarette-end smouldering on a border', 'the Sport Hotel', 'in furs, in uniform' — with expressions of a more amorphous and generalised unease (dis-ease?) — 'the powerful forces latent / In soils', 'immeasurable neurotic dread', 'haunted migratory years' etc.