I have been a busy girl. One of the misfortunes of my workload this last year or two is that I haven’t been keeping up Patrick Kurp‘s remarkable blog, “Anecdotal Evidence.” These are daily mini-essays, erudite, witty, and – how does he do it? – he’s apparently inexhaustible. In the 16 years he’s been running the blog, he’s only missed one day, to my knowledge. And it took a Texas flood to give him a coffee break.
While yours truly has just missed two weeks of posts, he has been indefatigably pumping it out. For example, taken almost at random, a few days ago he was discussing Uncollected Poems and Prose of Edwin Arlington Robinson (Colby College Press, 1975), which he called “an unruly grab bag of remnants.” Robinson’s “witty, aphoristic, sometimes acerbic conversational manner” is in full play during a 1916 interview:
“Within his limits, I believe A.E. Housman is the most authentic poet now writing in England. But, of course, his limits are very sharply drawn. I don’t think that any one who knows anything about poetry will ever think of questioning the inspiration of A Shropshire Lad [1896].”
He goes on to praise the work of Kipling and John Masefield, and adds, “But I do not think that either of these poets gives the impression of finality that A.E. Housman gives.” By “finality” I think Robinson means inevitability, the sense that Housman’s lines, his rhythms and word choices, could not have been otherwise crafted. We read them and can’t imagine them otherwise.
I’ve always admired Robinson’s Yankee common sense, hard-headedness and lack of ostentation – in life and in verse. My judgment of Housman is similar – another no-nonsense fellow. According to one scholar, Housman was familiar with Robinson’s but not impressed: He told a correspondent he “got more enjoyment from Edna St. Vincent Millay than from either Robinson or Frost.” De gustibus . . .
De gustibus non est disputandum indeed. I’m rather fond of Millay myself. Check out his blog here. You won’t regret it.
Tags: A.E. Housman, E.A. Robinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Patrick Kurp