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.

Speaking of speaking of things and of reading poetry, Patrick does it beautifully. I wish he'd let me know when he's recorded any.

For the record, I don't think Adelstrop is a bad poem.

I quite like it.

Edward Thomas is listed in Harold Bloom's Western Canon.

Thin

>>(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?)<<

I have a dim and distant memory of being told that the Oxford/public school anglicised pronunciation of Latin had been very different from continental standards (I believe you will still get variations in French/German/Italian accents), and only changed at some point in the late 19th century. So it's possible Owen had been taught the old ways; or just badly.

Thanks for the kind words, stokebailey. I haven't done much recently, but it'll all be in the Librivox catalogue.

Latin is pronounced in lots of ways (chanting the responses to a service in St Peter's typically throws up half a dozen different pronunciations just among your immediate neighbours.) And doubtless when Horace wrote that poem, Latin pronunciation varied around the Empire at least as much as English does today.

But how Roman poetry is scanned has nothing to do with pronunciation. For the metre to work, the words have to be elided the way I've indicated.

In this at least, Owen's grammar school seems to have given him an inferior education to the one the Jesuits were beating into us a couple of miles away.

>>In this at least, Owen's grammar school seems to have given him an inferior education to the one the Jesuits were beating into us a couple of miles away.<<

Fify-odd years can make a lot of difference. But I was taught for a time by people of his generation - and weren't some of them still haunted by that war.

Turning from poetry to prose (if I may), what do you think is the best WW1 novel (or novels)? I'm curious because I just read <i>A Farewell to Arms</i> for the first time. Years ago I read <i>All Quiet on the Western Front</i>, which I think I prefer.

August 1914 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Dublin

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess


Thin

Don't forget about poet Isaac Rosenberg.

Thin

Birdsong

Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy

Librivox is preparing audio collections of WW1-related prose and poetry - don't know when they'll be ready.

And "No Man's Land", from Serpent's Tail, s a fascinating anthology of extracts of texts from a wide range of combatant countries:
http://www.serpentstail.com/book-detail/9781846689253

All bad poetry is sincere>>

even McGonogall?

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/...ridge-disaster

Stoke, if you like THree Men, do you know Mr Pooter? - "Diary of a Nobody" by George and Weedon Grossmith.

Ann, hi.

Thanks, yes, I have requested "Nobody" from the library based on mentions in Three Men's forward. Our excellent entire system seems to have one copy of both books. Just finished Three Men on the Bummel, also loved it.

I'm sure that you will like Mr Pooter, Stoke.

HG Wells' a History of Mr Polly is also in the same vein and very readable. [though it's probably 30 years or so since I picked it up so memory may be deceiving me!]

>>All bad poetry is sincere>>

even McGonogall?<<

<i>Especially</i> McGonagall. It's the innocent incompetence that makes it so funny and poignant at the same time.

(PS: stokebailey might like to know the late Keith Waterhouse wrote Mrs Pooter's Diary to put the other point of view. And the BBC did a a TV adaptation of Diary of a Nobody with Hugh Bonneville that seems to be available on DVD).

Spot the Gilbert and Sullivan connection ;-)

W.S. Gilbert, was friends, I think, with Jerome K. Jerome. Otherwise G&S connection escapes me, durn it.

Gilber's Disagreeable Man. "I've an entertaining snicker." Hear Patrick read it, for fun, on Librivox. Accept no substitutes.

Thanks for Mr. Polly rec, Ann. I'm in particular need of gentle yet literate escapism just lately.

George Grossmith was famous for singing the "patter" songs in G and S operas

oh, that's right. He was KoKo, wasn't he? I need to watch Topsy Turvy again. Thanks, Miss P.

Not that I understand a word of this discussion. But some that are having it might be interested in a course given this winter at the College de France (in French) on the literature of the first world war. Available in video on line from the College de France website and can be downloaded to listen on an iPod, as I do in my car.

http://www.college-de-france.fr/site...-2013-2014.htm

Apparently while the British were writing poems, the French were writing novels, or so the professor claims. I have been working my way through the ones listed for the course and finding it quite interesting.