Didn't hear you Flanner
 

Oh, dear, the link doesn't work

Worked for me. Not sure I understand the point but then again I'm one of Flanner's "stupid" Americans.

He was talking earlier about Adelstrop and I think he was interviewed on Radio4 about it

This is, say a small group of relatively literate and poshish Englishpeole, the best known poem in the English language.

It isn't, but it's an extraordinary poem for several reasons.

One is that it's a bloody good poem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlestrop).

Second, relevant to Americans: it's famous in England because it's THE great poem about the summer before WW1: the Arcadian England that WW1 destroyed. It also destroyed Edwards Thomas: a chum of Robert Frost - and Frost's "Road less taken" is widely thought to refer to Thomas' decision to join the Army (which caused his death)

Third, though, it's almost unique because we know a lot more about the event that caused the poem (published 1917) to be written. From Thomas' diaries, and wonkish research on old railway timetables, we know that at 10.20 on June 24, 1914, he got the Cotswold Line train at Paddington, arriving Kingham 1240 and - unwontedly on most Cotswold trains in 1914, but just as scheduled on that train, that day - at Adlestrop at 1248. Where the weather - and the birds, and the cloudlets - were exactly as they are today.

Among those he was visiting that day in Herefordshire was indeed Robert Frost.

I wasn't listening to R4 this morning, because I was getting a job out of the way. So I could go outside at 1248 and read the poem aloud to all the birds of Oxfordshire, under the cloudlets in the sky.

As you can see from the timestamp: must dash.

I hope you spotted my deliberate mistake ;-)

What have you got against the birds of Gloucestershire, flanner?

If they're flying over my garden, they aren't birds of Gloucestershire. The site of the former Adlestrop station is so close to the county border, most of the birds Thomas could hear would have been in Oxfordshire.

If he could hear any. At 1248, most sensible birds round here were dozing, though at this time of the year the racket they kick up at dawn (c.0400 BST) would rouse a corpse. There certainly isn't a bird shortage. They were even quieter at 1348, which is 1248, God's time (we didn't invent British Summer time till 1916) and the real centenary of Thomas' unwonted stop.

So two explanations:
- Thomas was fantasising. Like many makers of films about English summer afternoons (think Losey's Accident), he just assumed they were bird-loud, because summer evenings and early mornings are so noisy. OR
- Modern birds are too wimpish and lazy to sing once it warms up. We've put something into the water, or the worms, or something, that's changed their singing habits.

I think Greenpeace should investigate. If they've got any money they haven't gambled away.

The song of a blackbird is one of the sweetest sounds on earth. However it is designed to be heard over acres of woodland. At 4am perched on the flat roof by my bedroom window, it can be a bit too loud

Flanner, are you a relatively literate <b>and</b> poshish Englishpeole, or just a relatively literate Englishpeole, or just a poshish Englishpeole, or just a regular ol' Englishpeole? ;)

That is just lovely.

Brilliant MissPrism. Thank you.

Self-evidently, anyone typing "Englishpeole" isn't literate.

I COULD blame Foodors' lack of an edit function - but blaming others is deeply unEnglish.

All bad poetry is sincere.

--Oscar Wilde



Thin

As much as I'd love to take dear Mr. Wilde's every epigram as gospel:

1. Oh, yeah?
2. He gets to define bad poetry?
3. He could detect sincerity, or lack thereof, in a poem?

Oh come on.

We all get to define bad poetry. But you've got to have cloth ears if you think Adelstrop's bad poetry.

My beef isn't the poem. It's the misuse of all WW1 poems in Britain to create a wholly bogus fantasy of widespread anti-war feeling in Britain - and the self-delusion of a certain sort of Radio 4 listener that more than 1% of the population have ever heard of the poem.

I was pushing 60, and actually walking through the village, when I first heard of it.

Gosh, Flanner, I remember Adlestrope from years ago. Where did you get your education - do I remember correctly that the Jesuits had something to do with it? When I was at school, the First World War poets were all the rage, and I recall a pupil senior to me saying the old lie "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" at a speech day. Similarly, a friend was very keen on the poems of Edward Thomas.

All bad poetry is sincere.

--Oscar Wilde

And don't forget Noel Coward -

"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is"

And he would know....

"Where did you get your education "

About two miles as the crow flies from where Wilfrid Owen got most of his.

After the age of 14, I never encountered a poem in English.

In a number of other languages: tomes and tomes of the stuff (did you know the Horace you quote is scanned "dulc'et decor'est pro patriahh mori", which absolutely isn't how Owen seems to think it's scanned?)

The quality of education at our grammar schools was never what modern mythology makes it. I've never had a formal lesson in any post-1649 history, in the post-AD 69 history of anywhere outside the island of Britain and have read precisely one Shakespeare play.

As for Victorian novelists...

Oh, boy. Speaking of Victorian novelists, a chance to plug Three Men in a Boat. I'm reading it now and love it. Sincere in spots.