C Day Lewis - The Poet's Task
This was an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 1 June 1951. Lewis stood in front of the students as a practising poet and this lecture would serve as an introduction to the world of poetry. He starts off by saying that young people should learn to love poetry without at first becoming too critical. It would be the wrong way round to learn everything about form and linguistic techniques before embarking on reading poetry. The reader of poetry should embrace as much as he can: he likened it to not being afraid to sowing wild oats ( I noted the male dominated metaphors and the examples of male poets with some amusement). Lewis went on to say more experienced writers and readers of poetry can distinguish better poetry that "most illuminates human experience in which moral and sensuous truths go deepest."

Poetry can be seen as a game, a sort of revel in making and discovering words and phrases; to keep working at them, to refine them, perhaps to rewrite them with new experiences. Lewis here was talking about his own methods of poetry making as he goes on to say that his experiences during wartime made him re-evaluate his childhood and his dreams. He talks about culture and conventions of history and that to appreciate much of the poetry of past eras it is important to be aware how the best poets were able to work within that culture and still produce works of genius. Whatever the era Lewis says we are looking for poets that are getting to the heart of a given experience. On the subject of more difficult poetry, from a poets perspective it can be said that:

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand

He ends his lecture on an upbeat note saying that the poet's task among other things is "to incline our hearts towards what is lovable and admirable in humankind" Perhaps he needed to say this after giving examples of poems by Thomas hardy and T S Eliot.

This was a lecture which would probably have been delivered over a timespan of about 45 minutes to a lecture room full of students. There is nothing revolutionary here and although it starts engagingly enough, it does gets a little bogged down. Lewis was not lecturing to entertain; it was all serious stuff, however he makes his points clearly enough and it reads well - 3 stars. ( )