bookshelves: published-1976, winter-20132014, london, britain-england, poetry, autobiography-memoir, fradio, radio-4x
Read from January 02 to 04, 2014

Summoned by Bells by John Betjeman

R4x

1. Before MCMXIV: 4 Extra Debut. The late poet laureate's 'life in verse', from nursery to university. Read by the author. Recorded in 1960.

2. The Dawn of Guilt: The late poet laureate's 'life in verse', from nursery to university.

3. Highgate: The late poet laureate's 'life in verse', from nursery to university.

4. Cornwall in Childhood

5. Private School

Of course I enjoy Betjeman, even though it is unfashionable to say so - he waxes lyrical about the leafy lanes of Surrey and the noble hill of Highgate. He also penned extravagently about class and privilege, monied folks and gentlemen scholars, churches and botany. All rather soothing. ( )

I find poetry books in odd places (almost all "pre-owned") and I have no recollection where I found this book, first published in 1960, by British poet John Betjeman. It's an autobiographical book of poetry written in blank verse covering the poet's formative years. I couldn't help thinking he just decided to pull a Wordsworth.

The result for me is mixed. Sometimes his blank verse sings, especially when he's detailing things that fascinated him as a young person: the inner workings of the manufacturing side of his father's business, the seaside of Cornwall, and the subway system.

"The cabinet-makers shop, all belts and wheels
and whining saws, would thrill me with the scream
of tortured wood, starting a blackened plank
under the cruel plane and coming out
sweet-scented, pink and smooth and richly grained"

or

"Three days on end would the September gale
slam at our bungalows; three days on end
rattling cheap doors and making tempers short.
It mattered not, for then enormous waves
house-high rolled thunderous on Greenaway,
flinging up spume and shingle to the cliffs.
Unmoved amid the foam, the cormorant
watched from its peak. In all the roar and swirl
the still and small things gained significance."

And sometimes the blank verse is clunky, and more often, the story is dull. I think the dullness is partly because the nostalgia and landscapes are too distant from me in time and place and social class (though I must say I don't feel that way about Wordsworth). He's expecting "Highgate" and "Chelsea" to mean something to me and they don't. I can't relate to life in an English upper middle class boarding school (he has nothing original to add to general knowledge that I could detect) or being able to lark about Oxford without a care about expenses. There's quite a bit of name-dropping in the poem, some of which I get (Auden, Eliot) and others that mean nothing to me.

Still, the 115 pages were a fairly fast read, which is some form of success certainly. It didn't drag. I liked the recurrence of the bells throughout the text in different settings, which the title prepares us for and would be noticeable even without that prompt. If you're in the mood for a charming reminiscence, this might fit the bill, but he doesn't reach deep in any of it. I'll probably keep it on my shelf as an example of autobiographical poetry and extended blank verse. ( )

Haven't read it yet!