Steven Rowley Quotes

“What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.''I don't know it.''It's a poem.''I gathered.''I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.' I learned the poem in college and it stuck.”

“What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.''I don't know it.''It's a poem.''I gathered.''I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.' I learned the poem in college and it stuck.”

“My second thoughts condemnAnd wonder how I dareTo look you in the eye.What right have I to swearEven at one a.m.To love you till I die?Earth meets too many crimesFor fibs to interest her;If I can give my word,Forgiveness can recurAny number of timesIn Time. Which is absurd.Tempus fugit. Quite.So finish up your drink.All flesh is grass. It is. But who on earth can thinkWith heavy heart or lightOf what will come of this?”

“The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.”

“Auden is an accomplished rhymer and Shakespeare is not.”

“In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.”

“There are good books which are only for adults.There are no good books which are only for children.”

“The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent.”

“Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.”

“Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, “God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good”…She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me…I threw away gold. That’s a fact. That’s a natural fact.”

“In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Auden's homosexuality, and could not get over his prejudice. But much of the interest of Orwell lies in the fact that he was born prejudiced, so to speak, against Jews and the coloured peoples of the empire, and against the poor and uneducated, and against women and intellectuals—and managed, in a transparent and unique way, to educate himself out of this fog of bigotry (though he never did get over his aversion to 'pansies').”