REVIEW # 17: THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ TEACHES US ABOUT OUR HISTORY AND HUMANITY
February 10, 2024REVIEW #19: HONEYBEES AND DISTANT THUNDER IS A CREATIVE EXPLOSION!
March 17, 2024The Fire of Joy
By Clive James
Picador, 2020
Reading the blurb of Clive James’ anthology of famourite poems, I was struck by this statement: ‘His urgent wish was to share with a new generation what he himself had loved.’ That struck a chord with me. On my web site, part of my vision in establishing a publishing house for my poetry was ‘to reclaim our literary heritage for a new generation.’ We stand on a solid foundation of centuries of poetry; it would be a travesty for it to become another casualty of the instant obsolescence of the throw-away generation who have even made the throw-away line the centrepiece of their superficial communication, rather than focusing on the substance of the subject at hand..
In his introduction, James recollects his first university lecturers who stressed that the English poetry cannon did not come out of nowhere, ‘but had started in England at the time of Chaucer.’ James summarizes: ‘It was a story of someone writing something wonderful, and someone else coming along, reading it, and feeling impelled to write something even more wonderful.’ I think James’s point is not so much critiquing the prideful poet who wants to outdo those who came before them, as it is honouring the inspired poets of the past. The poets who saw writing as a noble pursuit because it observes humanity with perspective, and reflects upon the state of our thinking and the state of our social structures in a way that is instructive and insightful. In an age when history is being swept aside, or often wilfully misused for political point scoring, we need other means of tracing the development of society’s mores. Other ways of making people aware of the way former generations have thought. Have expressed themselves. Have made sense of the issues of their era.
A society that cuts itself off from the literary life and lessons of the past is in grave danger of collapsing because you need a strong foundation to build new ideas upon. There has to be cognitive pathways to explore ideas that new thinkers can cogitate on and critique, so that they have something to build on that informs their choices, and influences the direction they take. The Old and New Testament writers are analogous to the poetic tradition. The New only makes sense in relation to the Old, even though these writers are taking people’s understanding of God in many new directions. For their contemporaries, a solid understanding of the Pentateuch, the Psalmists and the prophets, enabled them to retain the eternal pillars of the old, yet be open to new insights from the teachings of Jesus and the way that might be applied in contemporary society. Who had ever heard of a servant king before Jesus came and showed us what that looked like? And what poetry there is in the psalms and the Song of Solomon and all through the bible.

THE FIRE OF JOY STILLBURNING BRIGHTLY IN CLIVE JAMES
Turning to James’s title, for a moment, even that builds on the idea of the poetic continuum. As he explains, it was inspired by his experience of the feu de joie ‘a military celebration when all the riflemen of a regiment fire one shot after another, in close succession.’ What an inspired image for the poets of each generation as they fire off their poetic volleys that can be heard echoing through future generations. Poetry speaks from out of community, into community and those voices provide a connecting thread through generations.
Humorously, James includes instructions to guide those who are reading poetry aloud. I think my own advice would be very different, but I laughed aloud at Number 4: ‘No amount of vocal beauty will compensate for the unfortunate fact that you have no idea what the poem means. Figure it out before you start.’ Sound advice indeed. For writers of poetry, I would add, if you can’t figure out where the punctuation goes, that is probably a strong indication that even you don’t know what your poem is about. Of course, many modern poets try to hide this uncomfortable truth by adopting the unpunctuated poetic ‘form’ (using that term very loosely). However, readers will not be fooled into believing there is a masterpiece hidden in that flurry of words, if only they could work out where each thought began and ended and how they were connected to each other.
Another point that James makes in his commentaries is the joy and clarity of poetry that uses everyday vocabulary (Cue Wordsworth’s radical departure from poetry written for the erudite academic to the language and subject matter that would appeal to the ordinary man). He also stresses that poems are written to be heard and remembered, rather than silently read. According to James, sound and rhythm are the heartbeat of a poem and they penetrate our hearts and minds and settle there forever, ready to be recalled whenever needed.
Throughout the book, James offers his commentaries on each poem and poet. Many of these are kind and put the poem in its socio-historical context which is helpful. Others are shockingly frank views, especially about Australia and his fellow Australians. There is a bitterness about his view of us ─ our apathetic indifference to poetry and our sleepy insouciance towards life in general. ‘The place is huge: as big as America. But you have to search hard to find anything going on,’ he says, cruelly. James depicts his mother country as a place where the most action in a day would be the dog getting up and flopping back down again when he’d had enough of the blow flies buzzing around him. Harsh criticism indeed. For a man with so much humour and insight, it demonstrates that we all have our demons, but we don’t necessarily recognize them in ourselves. To be fair, he was equally effusive in his praise of his contemporaries, describing Richard Appleton’s poem, ‘Barbaree Allen’ as a ‘masterpiece’ which he learnt off by heart upon hearing it. And he gave unequivocal praise to McAuley, Hope, Wright and Slessor whose writing he described as ‘a sweep of brilliance’ in those early days when everyone looked in awe to Europe for their poetic heroes and ignored the scribblings of the colonials.
Somehow, it seemed right that he added that snide postscript after a treasury of insightful and discerning commentary on his favourite poems. It was in keeping with his stark honesty and didn’t undermine anything that he’d said about each of the poets. It would be hard to find a book that had contributed more to my knowledge than that one and it reinforced, for me, both the joy and the reward to be found in becoming familiar with the creativity and craftsmanship of those poets who have come before us.