Duffy's Pastoral
Duffy has written a poem in response to the extraordinary ash cloud from an Icelandic Volcano. The overhead flights may have started again as I write, but the extraordinary days long respite from aeroplane noise, otherwise so utterly relentless, has inspired Duffy's poem 'Silver Lining' .
It's a nice poem, humble enough to acknowledge its own selfish perspective, but taking that moment of respite from the modern world which the brief absence of flight paths symbolises, and making of it something of a modern day pastoral poem, with its nostalgic look back to past times, when the rural idyll of an unspoilt land was seen as a kind of golden age, of birdsong and literary flourishing.
'I could write my childhood there,' suggests Duffy - there on the blank slate of our suddenly silent airspace. Duffy, in the vein of a Romantic writer appropriating pastoral concenrs, could inscribe a mythical personal past, a pure clean open air childhood, onto nature itself, typified by the clear wide open skies.
'Britain's birds/ sing in this spring' she observes, linking them back to the birds singing in the bare ruined choirs of Shakespeare's sonnet 73, and the birds of the early twentieth century, singing from Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire in Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', itself a nostalgic poem. Isn't it peaceful, the poem (Duffy's, but also Thomas's) says: this is the nourishing, creative silence of a past time, and the backdrop of past poetry. The flight ban offers a sudden resurgence of poetic possibility, due to the silence it offers. Yet of course this is all a fairly artificial analogy if one starts to think again about the massive problems all this has caused both to business and individuals. But the pastoral was never a realist mode. We know there's ash up there, but it's not much mentioned in the main body of this poem.
And of course we all hanker for a bit of space and peace, a retreat from the busy world. The poem should have resonance on this level for everyone.
But what do we do with that respite when the flights have started up again? Perhaps like a poem itself, it needs to be remembered for its own sake, and the alternative histories and possibilities it offers.
It's a nice poem, humble enough to acknowledge its own selfish perspective, but taking that moment of respite from the modern world which the brief absence of flight paths symbolises, and making of it something of a modern day pastoral poem, with its nostalgic look back to past times, when the rural idyll of an unspoilt land was seen as a kind of golden age, of birdsong and literary flourishing.
'I could write my childhood there,' suggests Duffy - there on the blank slate of our suddenly silent airspace. Duffy, in the vein of a Romantic writer appropriating pastoral concenrs, could inscribe a mythical personal past, a pure clean open air childhood, onto nature itself, typified by the clear wide open skies.
'Britain's birds/ sing in this spring' she observes, linking them back to the birds singing in the bare ruined choirs of Shakespeare's sonnet 73, and the birds of the early twentieth century, singing from Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire in Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', itself a nostalgic poem. Isn't it peaceful, the poem (Duffy's, but also Thomas's) says: this is the nourishing, creative silence of a past time, and the backdrop of past poetry. The flight ban offers a sudden resurgence of poetic possibility, due to the silence it offers. Yet of course this is all a fairly artificial analogy if one starts to think again about the massive problems all this has caused both to business and individuals. But the pastoral was never a realist mode. We know there's ash up there, but it's not much mentioned in the main body of this poem.
And of course we all hanker for a bit of space and peace, a retreat from the busy world. The poem should have resonance on this level for everyone.
But what do we do with that respite when the flights have started up again? Perhaps like a poem itself, it needs to be remembered for its own sake, and the alternative histories and possibilities it offers.
Comments
Post a Comment