PS
As Shakespeare reminds us in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ You may find at that third date that the object of your desire does not have a favourite poem, never did, and never will. Poetry may not be their thing. Love may not be their thing.
Or love may be their thing, but not for ever.
I asked the triple-Oscar-winning lyricist, Sir Tim Rice, to suggest one of his lyrics to include here as a poem to learn by heart. He sent me a couple of possibilities, ‘Anthem’ from Chess and ‘High Flying Adored’ from Evita, plus, as he put it, ‘one of my own favourites, the almost totally unknown “You Have To Learn To Live Alone”, from my English translation of a French show, Starmania, recorded by Cyndi Lauper in 1991.’ That’s the one I have chosen.
You Have To Learn To Live Alone
by Tim Rice
(born 1944)
We sleep together, close and warm
We calm each other through the storm
We set up home, but in a while
We’re tempted by another’s smile
When it’s all played out
If the truth were known
You have to learn to live alone
They dance around the fading light
He holds her closer every night
He fell in love but she did not
But in the end he’s all she’s got
When it’s all played out
When the truth is known
You have to learn to live alone
We fly around the world too fast
We cannot make a moment last
We love the crowd, we sing and play
We do it all, we get our way
When it’s all played out
When the birds have flown
You have to learn to live alone
When we’re all played out
If the truth were known
You have to learn to live alone
Love may not be your thing. Romantic love, that is. It may pass you by – or run away as you run towards it. That’s life. Or can be. And is for many. In which case, I have an alternative poem for you to learn. A friend gave it to me. It is one of my favourites.
Friendship
by Elizabeth Jennings
(1926–2001)
Such love I cannot analyse;
It does not rest in lips or eyes,
Neither in kisses nor caress.
Partly, I know, it’s gentleness
And understanding in one word
Or in brief letters. It’s preserved
By trust and by respect and awe.
These are the words I’m feeling for.
Two people, yes, two lasting friends.
The giving comes, the taking ends.
There is no measure for such things.
For this all Nature slows and sings.
This feels the right place, too, for these four lines:
From Dedicatory Ode
by Hilaire Belloc
(1870–1953)
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Boy Stood on the Burning DeckPoetry in performance
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, ‘let us flee!’
‘Let us fly!’ said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
Ogden Nash (1902–71)
Ogden Nash is fun to read and fun to learn and fun to perform. I particularly like his verse about the flea and the fly in the flue because it’s a bit of a tongue-twister and I am partial to those.
Once a fellow met a fellow
In a field of beans.
Said a fellow to a fellow,
‘If a fellow asks a fellow,
Can a fellow tell a fellow
What a fellow means?’
Everything I know about diction I learnt from the late, great Sir Donald Sinden (1923–2014), a fabulous thespian of the old school who could do the lot and did – from Shakespearean tragedy to high farce, from TV sitcoms to wide-screen weepies. It was Sir Donald who explained to me that when it comes to speaking on stage ‘it’s the vowels that give you volume and the consonants that give you clarity’. He introduced me to a simple vocal warm-up exercise that gets the mouth moving and gives you an opportunity both to open your vowels at volume and to hit your consonants with clarity. Before any performance, Sir Donald would position himself in front of his dressing-room mirror and repeat the following mantra:
Hip bath, hip bath,
Lavatory, lavatory,
Bidet, bidet,
Douche!
When it comes to good diction, that’s really all you need to know.
My father had excellent diction. He was a lawyer, not an actor, but loved learning poems by heart and performing them for family and friends. He was born a long time ago, on 11 July 1910, at the beginning of the reign of King George V. He was brought up, therefore, before the era of radio and television, iPhone, podcast and YouTube. He was seventeen before he saw his first ‘talking picture’. As young people, he and his elder brother and sisters made their own entertainment, at home, in the parlour, where they gathered around the piano to sing songs, or in the drawing room, in front of the fireplace, where they took it in turns to recite poetry to one another.
When my father died he left me two of his favourite books, best-selling Victorian volumes that had been given to him by his father:
GARRY’S ELOCUTIONIST
Selections in prose and verse adapted for
recitation and reading
Edited with introduction, by
Rupert Garry
Author of the elocutionist’s vade mecum:
ELOCUTION, VOICE AND GESTURE
And
SUCCESSFUL RECITATIONS
The Royal Reciter and The Imperial Reciter
in one volume
Edited by Alfred H Miles
Alfred Henry Miles (1848–1929) was responsible for scores of books on assorted themes, ranging from poetry (The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, in ten volumes) through warfare (Wars of the Olden Times: Abraham to Cromwell) to advice for the lovesick and the lovelorn (Wooing: Stories of the Course that Never Did Run Smooth). He wrote poetry himself, usually in a rumpety-tumpety patriotic vein –
There’s a doughty little Island in the ocean,
The dainty little darling of the free;
That pulses with the patriots’ emotion,
And the palpitating music of the sea …
– and took the view that the ‘easiest, and therefore often the most successful, recitations are those which recite themselves; that is, recitations so charged with the picturesque and the dramatic elements that they command attention and excite interest in spite of poor elocution and even bad delivery.’ I hope you will find a few such in the pages that follow.
Rupert Garry reckoned he knew the secret of successful recitation: ‘After distinct articulation and correct pronunciation comes Expression, which has been called the soul of oratory; for without it all reading, speaking, or reciting is soulless and unintelligent. Expression depends primarily upon a due attention to four points – Inflection, Modulation, Emphasis, Pause.’
Garry is also keen on ‘Correct Breathing’ (through both mouth and nose: ‘the secret of breathing properly is to keep the bellows well filled’), ‘Appropriate Gesture’ (but no ‘unmeaning gesticulation’, please) and ‘Proper Feeling’ (‘You must try to imagine that the thoughts embodied in the words you are uttering are your own’).
When it comes to understanding and learning a poem, my advice would be exactly what Garry’s was in 1888: ‘First, you must read it carefully to see what it is about. Next, you must read it over several times in order to get at the author’s meaning
. Read slowly, and at the end of each sentence, ask yourself what the author meant to convey to the minds of his hearers.’
Trust the author. Respect the author. Speak what you see on the page, noticing how it is presented on the page. Reflect what you find on the page. Don’t pretend what you are reading is prose for the sake of sounding ‘natural’ or more ‘real’. Poems aren’t prose. If there are rhymes at the ends of lines, don’t apologize for them: relish them.
There are infinite ways to perform a poem in public. The one essential is that you should be heard, which is why my four fundamental rules are: stand up, speak up, look up, look out. Beyond that:
Take your time.
Don’t rush. Don’t mumble.
Go for clarity and simplicity. Let the words do the work.
Don’t feel you have to infuse your performance with ‘feeling’. Let the feeling emerge from the text.
Keep your hands loosely at your side or lightly held together in front of you.
Only use gesture as you would if you were telling a story to a friend. Remember T. S. Eliot’s useful note: ‘poetry remains one person talking to another’.
The poems in this chapter have very little in common with one another (some are funny, some are sad; some are obviously dramatic; some more subtly thought-provoking), except that each of them works brilliantly when performed. They all sound good out loud. As they say in poetry-slam circles: they deliver on the phonaesthetics front.fn1 Somehow something gets added to them when you lift them off the page, because they all either make a definite point in a declamatory style (e.g. ‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins and ‘Television’ by Roald Dahl) or they tell a specific story, sometimes set out as a yarn, sometimes presented in the form of a letter, sometimes given as a first-hand account of a personal experience.
The first six are ones that my father learnt as a boy and could recite to his dying day. I learnt them from him. ‘The Listeners’ by Walter de la Mare, ‘Welsh Incident’ by Robert Graves and ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ by John Betjeman are three that I learnt for myself when I was a boy.
When Oscar Wilde was seventeen, in 1871, he became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, where his classics tutor was the celebrated Professor J. P. Mahaffy, whom Wilde later described as ‘my first and best teacher’, ‘the scholar who showed me how to love Greek things’. Mahaffy wrote a book called The Principles of the Art of Conversation (1887) and in it he declared: ‘The presence of a strong local accent is usually a hindrance to conversation. It marks a man as provincial, and suggests that the speaker has not moved much about the world, or even in the best society of his native country, in which such provincialism is carefully avoided, and set down as an index of mind and manners below the highest level.’
We think differently nowadays. We celebrate local accents. ‘Speak as you are’ – that’s the rule in 2020. RP is no longer PC. ‘Received pronunciation’ is not taught in our leading drama schools any more. Once young actors were encouraged to speak in what was essentially the accent of the educated metropolitan middle classes. It is probably still quite useful to be able to do that if you’re hoping for a bit part in The Crown, but if you are going to perform a poem in public you can do it in whatever accent suits you – or suits the piece.
Political correctness is a tricky business. It is considered acceptable for the American character actor, John Lithgow, to play Winston Churchill with an English accent; but would it be a mistake to speak any of the poems by African-American writers that are here in an African-American accent if you come from a different heritage? Probably. Can you give a Welsh lilt to your reading of ‘Welsh Incident’ by Robert Graves if you don’t have genuine Welsh blood coursing through your veins? Possibly not. There are poems here that could only have been written by women, like ‘Phenomenal Woman’ by Maya Angelou: is it acceptable for a man to perform them? You decide.
When my father performed some of these poems he gave full vent to his histrionic tendencies, and I think, when it’s appropriate to the poem, it’s fun to do the same. Happily, the poets help you out. Speak the words as you find them and you will find they sound much as the author intended:
‘Mr. Woilde, we ’ave come for tew take yew
Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quoietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.’
Speak the words as you find them; speak one line at a time, enjoying the rhyme; pay attention to the punctuation; tell the story; take your time; do it your way. On YouTube you can find performance poets and rappers speaking their stuff their way. Check out John Cooper Clarke and Kate Tempest doing their thing: they’re mesmerizing. You can try imitating them – or not. Via YouTube listen to T. S. Eliot, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness and Edward Petherbridge each reading Eliot’s great poem, ‘Journey of the Magi’ (page 384). Each speaks it in a different way. Listening to them is a reminder that there is no ‘definitive’ reading to be had of any poem. The reading will reflect the reader. Let your readings reflect you.
And enjoy.
Casabianca
by Felicia Hemans
(1793–1835)fn2
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck,
Shone round him o’er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form.
The flames rolled on – he would not go,
Without his Father’s word;
That Father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud: – ‘Say, father, say
If yet my task is done?’
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
‘Speak, Father!’ once again he cried,
‘If I may yet be gone!’
– And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death,
In still, yet brave despair.
And shouted but once more aloud,
‘My Father! must I stay?’
While o’er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder sound –
The boy – oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea! –
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part –
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart!
The Siege of Belgrade
by Alaric Alexander Watts
(1797–1864)fn3
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade:
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom.
Every endeavour engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune fighting – furious fray!
Generals ’gainst generals grapple, – gracious G–d!
How honours Heaven heroic hardihood!
Infuriate – indiscriminate in ill –
Kinsmen kill kindred, kindred kinsmen kill:
Labour low levels loftiest, longest lines,
Men march ’mid mounds, ’mid moles, ’mid murderous mines!
Now noisy noxious numbers notice nought
Of outward obstacles, opposing ought.
Poor patriots! – partly purchased, partly pressed, –
Quite quaking, quickly ‘Quarter! Quarter!’ ’quest,
Reason returns, religious right redounds,
Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds.
Truce to thee, Turkey! – Triumph to thy train,
Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish vain victory! Vanish, victory vain!
Why wish we warfare? Wherefore welcome were
Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xaviere?
Yield, yield, ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell;
Zeno’s, Zampater’s, Zoroaster’s zeal,
Attracting all, arms against acts appeal!
Beat! Beat! Drums!
by Walt Whitman
(1819–1892)fn4
Beat! beat! drums! – Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows – through doors – burst like a force of ruthless men,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying:
Leave not the bridegroom quiet – no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums – so shrill you bugles blow.
Beat! beat! drums! – Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities – over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds;
No bargainers’ bargains by day – no brokers or speculators. Would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums – you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums! – Blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley – stop for no expostulation;
Mind not the timid – mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties;
Dancing by the Light of the Moon Page 17
