Hey, Big Spender!

      Slate's Stephen Metcalf, in a review of the latest biography of Stephen Spender, dares to wonder why the biographer chomps at the bit when it comes to assessing the quality of Spender's poetry. There's a touch of frustration in his tone, a tone that gets the better of Metcalf as he proceeds-- oh, p'shaw, the irony!-- to avoid entirely the question himself.  

      I never thought Spender a particularly good poet-- his rhythms always seems stilted, his voice awkward, his observations often trite and hackneyed, and some of his lines dreadful ("mourned by scholars who dream of the ghosts of Greek boys" is a particularly bad one). But take a glance about the Net, and you'll find precious little of Spender, even the site with his name devoted not to him but to a trust. So, in a gesture of fairness, this blog would turn your attentions to this poem, which I provide all by its lonesome because the Doc is in no mood to type. But, in the end, one has to wonder: why won't we let him slide away into oblivion, and I think the answer has almost entirely to do with the sustained and rather facile fascination with hangers-on, with Dunstan Ramsays and Bosie Douglases (the first fictional, the second more fictional for having been real). That assessment probably seems horribly churlish, to say nothing of glib. But let's face it: too many, I would say "even" but "especially" in the academy, are less interested in matters of poetry than in matters of gossip and celebrity-- with the academy being particularly interested in skewing (and skewering) figures more than doing genuine criticism. (Gawd forbid.) And for those interests, figures like Spender seem delectable: a life in letters, a legitimate subject for study, and yet, and yet, an awesome backdoor into the world of sneakaboo name-dropping and callous life-judging. Now that's the real stuff. Grumble, grumble, grumble.   And as long as cultural materialism maintains its hold in the academy (though, it should be noted, its grip is loosening somewhat), I don't see any of this changing very fundamentally any time soon. Gar.... But here's a poem of Spender's, offered so you can read it and assess for yourselves. Me, I'm not impressed by it, but, who knows, I could very well be in a minority opinion around here.

Not Palaces

Not palaces, an era's crown
Where the mind dwells, intrigues, rests;
Architectural gold-leaved flower
From people ordered like a single mind,
I build. This only what I tell:
It is too late for rare accumulation,
For family pride, for beauty's filtered dusts;
I say, stamping the words with emphasis,
Drink from here energy and only energy,
As from the charge of an electric battery
To will this Time's change.
Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,
Dinker of horizon's fluid line;
Ear that suspends on a chord
The spirit drinking timelessness;
Touch, love, all senses;
Leave your gardens, your singing feasts,
Your dreams of suns circling before our sun,
Of heaven after our world.
Instead, watch images of flashing glass
That strike the outward sense, the polished will,
Flag of our purpose which the wind engraves.
No spirit seek here rest. But this: No one
Shall hunger: Man shall spend equally,
Our goal which we compel: Man shall be man.

    That programme of the antique Satan
Bristling with guns on the independent page,
With battleship towering from hilly waves:
For what? Drive of a running purpose
Destroying all but its age-long exploiters.
Our programme like this, but opposite,
Death to the killers, bringing light to life.

--- 1933

"As from the electric charge of a battery...." Oh dear.... "That programme of the antique Satan?"   "For what?!?"   The less said, the better, probably.