Hastings, November 19, 2005
"This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives—survives Prussia—my ambition and those names will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders . . ."
~Wilfred Owen's "Preface" to Poems by Wilfred Owen
(Siegfried Sassoon, ed., Chatto & Windus, 1920)
*****
This post is dedicated to Isabel, the thirteen-year-old tutee with whom I had the pleasure of exploring fiction, mythology, poetry and writing this past summer. Although she lives in Maryland, and I was, then, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we talked on the phone for an hour a couple of times each week and shared writings and comments via email. We continued working together after I returned to England at the end of August. It was during the weeks thereafter that we began to read poetry together, and as I had already been invited by Fay, a great and long-time friend who lives in our village, to a November 19th production of a play in Hastings concerning the friendship between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Isabel and I read some works of both of these poets, along with Emily Dickinson, John Keats, the Roberts Browning and Frost, and the Persian poet-mystic, Rumi.
Saturday, the 19th of November—the day of the play—finally arrived.
After a sun-drenched morning taking Lulu, the black New Forest mare we care for, on a hack on the village lanes and bridleways, Rebecca, Luka and I drove to Hastings to meet-up with Rachel, Rebecca's sister, and Colin, her boyfriend. Colin lives in a street-level flat in the Old Town section of Hastings, snug between two antique shops on a Diagon Alley sort of side street.
The five of us walked down to the beach where we skipped rocks across the water and watched (some of us in a rather alarmed fashion) two of the Hastings-fleet fishing boats approach the beach at full speed so as to ram their hulls onto the shingle before being hoisted beyond the tide line to their nighttime resting places, where they lay like a shoal of intact shipwrecks awaiting the early-morning waters of the morrow.
As we had a couple of hours to wander around Old Town before Fay and her housemate, Hannah, joined us for fish 'n chips and the play, we window-shopped our way up George Street and stumbled upon Boulevard Books. All of us bibliophiles, once through the door, without a word, we each made a beeline for that particular section of a bookstore which maintains its hold on us—Colin, an art student, was drawn to the art books; Rachel headed for the fiction section, conveniently adjacent to the art section as she is a museum curator; Luka, our fourteen-year-old daughter, found an old first-edition book with whimsical line drawings which parodied life in the British army, circa WWII; Rebecca, too, felt Fiction's pull; I searched for philosophy texts amongst the psychology section, which had apparently grown to encompass the philosophy section as well, the love of wisdom overcome by the study of man's soul.
Graham, the proprietor, appeared from around the corner with his hands covered in soot, caused, he told us, by his burning books in the back. Curious to witness this alleged book-burning, I moseyed back to where an open doorway led from the bookshop to his living quarters to find that Graham was wrestling with the contents of his fireplace. Freezing cold as it was, the idea of a raging fire tucked into a hidden recess of a secondhand bookshop stirred my romantic heart. I walked back to tell Rebecca of the fire and whispered into her ear, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if he were to invite us into the back for tea!"
This is an ever-present fantasy which I carry with me throughout my days in England, particularly while walking along the public footpaths of Sussex, which inevitably lead one past tempting estates, farm and oast houses, bungalows and cottages. Rebecca and all who know me well know of my tea invitation fantasy.
But Saturday, the dream came true.
About ten minutes after expressing my utmost desire, Rebecca announced to all in our party that we should probably be heading back to Colin's for tea if we were to have time for this before Fay and Hannah were to meet us at the Blue Dolphin for pre-play fish 'n chips. Having overheard Rebecca, Graham popped around the corner, returning again from his living room to the bookshop, to offer us all tea!
A few minutes later, he returned with a tea tray holding five cups, a pitcher of milk, sugar and a large pot of hot Camellia sinensis.
Ah, this was my sort of day ...
While enjoying our respective cuppa, Rebecca and I got better acquainted with Graham, this being our first time in his shop. He also runs The High Street Bookshop in Old Town. Turns out that Graham and his enterprising sons have also just, as of November, launched a new monthly magazine, called The Hastings Trawler, styled after The New Yorker. We bought a copy of this to bring home, as well as a couple of books, including a sixty-pence used paperback of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, which I've been meaning to read for several years now.
Suffice to say that the Stephen MacDonald play, entitled Not About Heroes and held at The Stables Theatre in Hastings, was superb. No matter that we are friends with one of the two persons cast in the play. The acting was topnotch, as was the dialogue between Owen and Sassoon.
Let not their poignant war observations go unheeded.
UPDATE (25 Jan 06): The Hastings Trawler now has a website at www.thehastingstrawler.co.uk.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives—survives Prussia—my ambition and those names will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders . . ."
~Wilfred Owen's "Preface" to Poems by Wilfred Owen
(Siegfried Sassoon, ed., Chatto & Windus, 1920)
This post is dedicated to Isabel, the thirteen-year-old tutee with whom I had the pleasure of exploring fiction, mythology, poetry and writing this past summer. Although she lives in Maryland, and I was, then, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we talked on the phone for an hour a couple of times each week and shared writings and comments via email. We continued working together after I returned to England at the end of August. It was during the weeks thereafter that we began to read poetry together, and as I had already been invited by Fay, a great and long-time friend who lives in our village, to a November 19th production of a play in Hastings concerning the friendship between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Isabel and I read some works of both of these poets, along with Emily Dickinson, John Keats, the Roberts Browning and Frost, and the Persian poet-mystic, Rumi.
Saturday, the 19th of November—the day of the play—finally arrived.
After a sun-drenched morning taking Lulu, the black New Forest mare we care for, on a hack on the village lanes and bridleways, Rebecca, Luka and I drove to Hastings to meet-up with Rachel, Rebecca's sister, and Colin, her boyfriend. Colin lives in a street-level flat in the Old Town section of Hastings, snug between two antique shops on a Diagon Alley sort of side street.
The five of us walked down to the beach where we skipped rocks across the water and watched (some of us in a rather alarmed fashion) two of the Hastings-fleet fishing boats approach the beach at full speed so as to ram their hulls onto the shingle before being hoisted beyond the tide line to their nighttime resting places, where they lay like a shoal of intact shipwrecks awaiting the early-morning waters of the morrow.
As we had a couple of hours to wander around Old Town before Fay and her housemate, Hannah, joined us for fish 'n chips and the play, we window-shopped our way up George Street and stumbled upon Boulevard Books. All of us bibliophiles, once through the door, without a word, we each made a beeline for that particular section of a bookstore which maintains its hold on us—Colin, an art student, was drawn to the art books; Rachel headed for the fiction section, conveniently adjacent to the art section as she is a museum curator; Luka, our fourteen-year-old daughter, found an old first-edition book with whimsical line drawings which parodied life in the British army, circa WWII; Rebecca, too, felt Fiction's pull; I searched for philosophy texts amongst the psychology section, which had apparently grown to encompass the philosophy section as well, the love of wisdom overcome by the study of man's soul.
Graham, the proprietor, appeared from around the corner with his hands covered in soot, caused, he told us, by his burning books in the back. Curious to witness this alleged book-burning, I moseyed back to where an open doorway led from the bookshop to his living quarters to find that Graham was wrestling with the contents of his fireplace. Freezing cold as it was, the idea of a raging fire tucked into a hidden recess of a secondhand bookshop stirred my romantic heart. I walked back to tell Rebecca of the fire and whispered into her ear, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if he were to invite us into the back for tea!"
This is an ever-present fantasy which I carry with me throughout my days in England, particularly while walking along the public footpaths of Sussex, which inevitably lead one past tempting estates, farm and oast houses, bungalows and cottages. Rebecca and all who know me well know of my tea invitation fantasy.
But Saturday, the dream came true.
About ten minutes after expressing my utmost desire, Rebecca announced to all in our party that we should probably be heading back to Colin's for tea if we were to have time for this before Fay and Hannah were to meet us at the Blue Dolphin for pre-play fish 'n chips. Having overheard Rebecca, Graham popped around the corner, returning again from his living room to the bookshop, to offer us all tea!
A few minutes later, he returned with a tea tray holding five cups, a pitcher of milk, sugar and a large pot of hot Camellia sinensis.
Ah, this was my sort of day ...
While enjoying our respective cuppa, Rebecca and I got better acquainted with Graham, this being our first time in his shop. He also runs The High Street Bookshop in Old Town. Turns out that Graham and his enterprising sons have also just, as of November, launched a new monthly magazine, called The Hastings Trawler, styled after The New Yorker. We bought a copy of this to bring home, as well as a couple of books, including a sixty-pence used paperback of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, which I've been meaning to read for several years now.
Suffice to say that the Stephen MacDonald play, entitled Not About Heroes and held at The Stables Theatre in Hastings, was superb. No matter that we are friends with one of the two persons cast in the play. The acting was topnotch, as was the dialogue between Owen and Sassoon.
Let not their poignant war observations go unheeded.
UPDATE (25 Jan 06): The Hastings Trawler now has a website at www.thehastingstrawler.co.uk.
posted by Sean M. Madden at
8:12 PM
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