Saturday Verse: William Empson (1906-1984)

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Saturday, February 1. 2014

Saturday Verse: William Empson (1906-1984)

The Teasers

Not but they die, the teasers and the dreams,
Not but they die,
and tell the careful flood
To give them what they clamour for and why.

You could not fancy where they rip to blood
You could not fancy
nor that mud
I have heard speak that will not cake or dry.

Our claims to act appear so small to these
Our claims to act
colder lunacies
That cheat the love, the moment, the small fact.

Make no escape because they flash and die,
Make no escape
build up your love,
Leave what you die for and be safe to die.

I believe this quasi- villanelle was written in the 1930s. I have quoted a brief bio of Empson on the continuation page below, from this site.

Empson, Sir William

b. Sept. 27, 1906, Hawdon, Yorkshire, Eng.
d. April 15, 1984, London

British poet and critic known for his immense influence on 20th-century
literary criticism and for his rational, metaphysical poetry.

Empson was educated at Winchester College and at Magdalene College,
Cambridge. He earned degrees in mathematics and in English literature,
which he studied under I.A. Richards. His first poems were published
during this time. Several of the verses published in Empson's Poems
(1935) also were written while he was an undergraduate and reflect his
knowledge of the sciences and technology, which he used as metaphors in
his largely pessimistic assessment of the human lot. Much influenced by
John Donne, the poems are personal, politically unconcerned (despite the
preoccupation with politics in the 1930s), elliptical, and difficult,
even though he provided some explanatory notes. Later collections of his
poetry included The Gathering Storm (1940) and Collected Poems (1949;
rev. ed. 1955).

Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930; rev. ed. 1953), one of the most
influential critical works of the first half of the 20th century, was
essentially a close examination of poetic texts. Empson's special
contribution in this work was his suggestion that uncertainty or the
overlap of meanings in the use of a word could be an enrichment of
poetry rather than a fault, and his book abounds with examples. The book
helped lay the foundation for the influential critical school known as
the New Criticism. Empson applied his critical method to somewhat longer
texts in Some Versions of Pastoral (1935) and further elaborated it in
The Structure of Complex Words (1951). Empson's verbal analyses were
based on the view that poetry's emotive effect derives primarily from
the ambiguities and complexities of its cognitive and tonal meanings.

From 1931 to 1934 Empson taught English literature at the University of
Tokyo, and he subsequently joined the English faculty of Peking National
University in China. He was Chinese editor at the British Broadcasting
Corporation during World War II and returned to teach at Peking National
University from 1947 to 1952. Empson was professor of English literature
at Sheffield University from 1953, becoming emeritus in 1971. He was
knighted in 1979.

He was also a distinguished poet who influenced younger poets in the
1950s. His Poems appeared in 1935, The Gathering Storm in 1940, and his
Collected Poems in 1955. Empson's poetry is characterized by ingenious
conceits using a subject matter drawn from astrophysics, mathematics,
and other sciences.

Posted by Bird Dog in Saturday Verse at 05:29 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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This is a fine poem, but it is not a villanelle. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is a villanelle. So is Auden's "Miranda." In a villanelle, the first and last lines of the first stanza become the alternating last lines of the subsequent four stanzas, then the two together become the concluding lines of the whole poem. Six stanzas, 19 lines in all.

#1 Frank Wilson (Link) on 2009-01-03 09:26 (Reply)

OK, Frank. Quite right. I did think it villanelle-oid, though.

Man, do we ever have good readers here.

#1.1 Bird Dog on 2009-01-03 16:33 (Reply)

When I was a schoolboy I invited him to come and address our small sixth form literary club and he agreed. My English teachers were appalled that I had somehow persuaded the greatest living critic to come along and address about half a dozen people, but there was no rescinding the invitation. So we all had a a pleasant evening. He was a lovely man.

#2 Caedmon (Link) on 2014-02-01 07:18 (Reply)

Wonderful!

#2.1 Bird Dog on 2014-02-01 07:35 (Reply)

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Saturday, February 1. 2014

Saturday Verse: William Empson (1906-1984)