Very dizzy poet declaims the modern novel

So the dizziness has returned with a vengeance . The meds are  no longer working it seems. Of course I’ve over done it . Going out , even teaching a bit . I was warned about this but didn’t listen so I’m housebound again.  Which is inconvenient because I have a  reading  engagement and a host of fun things to do. So dear reader you can guess my mood

At the same time I ‘ve stopped writing half way through a poem. I am in one of my can’t be bothered , can’t think of anything  frames of mind , so I just stop.

Having discoursed on ‘Jane Eyre’ for ages at my game gals book club ( we all now view Mr Rochester severely and feel he needs counselling for anger management and manipulation)  we are now reading ‘Angel ‘by Elizabeth Taylor  ( No not that one) .

 I must have read it in my twenties because I went through a series of such writers including Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamund Lehman all of who were very fine writers .

Their is prose elegant and exquisite and their narratives unusual . They write I suppose of a lost world that seems some what genteel now which may be why they are out of fashion. What irks me is the shabby  prize winning novels I read  that lack the  expert craftsmanship of these writers . Yet they have been forgotten. They are rather like those classic black and white movies a few of us still watch and love.

When I compare ‘When god was a rabbit’ ( my second book club’s selection) to the genuine emotion wrought in ‘The End of the Affair’ by Elizabeth Bowen …I do feel  most of these award wining novels have been dumbed down , their narratives opportunistic and ridiculous in places .  not every child suffers abuse in childhood, Ms Winman ..When the writer needs to explain her so called themes in a preface as far as I am concerned she had failed.  Onwards then with’ Angel’.

Bad Mr Rochester

I continue to read Jane Eyre. As an old bird now , I am struck by Mr Rochester's temper that teeters on the verge of actual violence towards women when he doesn't get his  own way. He drags Jane up to view his wife , then when she tries to leave him she has to use eye contact to stop him either raping or beating her.  CB tries to palliate his violence by presenting it as passion and a result of his past but it doesn't wash in the 21st century.

I found the scene where JE is destitute and reduced to begging one of the riveting episodes in the novel which is something I would have over looked as a teenager. So much so that the phone went and I was really disorientated for the moment.

I'm really seeing the 'Romantics' influence on CB particularly in the actions of Rochester who is given to flinging himself on sofas and crying.' Blimey' I thought' he's behaving like Frankenstein'.

Reader: I no longer love him......

I ‘m re- reading Jane Eyre for my book club. I studied it at O’ level and loved it then in fact it became my favourite book. I used to be able to quote passages of it and of course I was in love with Mr Rochester.

I think I’ve read it once since and somehow , I don’t know why,  but other novels have pushed it out of the way. There was a sense that I grew out of it.

 I ‘ve never had the urge to teach it and haven’t got a clue what its themes are except the gothic features.

In a way I’m reading it as a grown up and a cynical one at that. I do love the way it gallops along . Film versions have tended to distort my memory of certain scenes, for example Helen Burns is not made to stand out in the rain as  a punishment.

I’m picking up on the feminist sections of the novel. There is a lengthy paragraph in which Jane or indeed Charlotte complains about the social seclusion of females this is  also evinced in Jane’s desperate need to travel and see the world.

However this is rather contradicted by her use of ‘ My master ‘  when referring to Rochester to denote her love for him but also  as an awareness of her social status with regard to him.

I actually like the character of Jane , her passion and her courage at standing  by her principals. But Mr Rochester, well half way though and I am not in love with him any more. In fact he is very difficult to make out. Going on the hints about his past I find his courtship of Jane confusing , the tormenting with Blanches Ingram and the quizzing to find if Jane loves him. It may well be that he is as shy and unsure of her feelings and treading a fine line .

I find the gothic elements a bit clunky. I know Jane is naïve but it is convenient that she is from a generation of biddable women and of course she is unworldly and very young. Today most girls’ curiosity would have had them up that passage and into the room and none of your nonsense.

In a sense it is a very gothic novel dealing with horrendous sins of the past that lead to extreme behaviour and serious psychological scars. The novel gets away with its screams in the night and the mysterious Grace Poole   because CB has set the novel both inside and outside the real world , Thornfield being so isolated.

In which I change names....how very Hollywood!

I'm sitting here incubating a cold .Nothing out of the ordinary for most people. But I haven't had a cold for over 5 years.  Now I'm not showing off , it's simply that for 3 of those years I've been house bound by a balance disorder which is 50% controlled by drugs now . However' the dizzies ' the devil may care name we MAV sufferers give to the disorder implying somehow, it's fun do join us, is often exacerbated by a virus such as the common cold...so I am braced to see what is going to happen. I do feel dizzier so have good old brain sedating Valium at the ready.

The reason for this preamble or ramble is that right now poetry and dizzies are inter linked for me. Rendered house bound for so many years, I had nothing else to  do but write everyday . Previously as teacher I could only write at snatched times during holidays or the odd work free weekend , so I never really improved. However, something happened two years ago.  I read 'In the palm of your hand', a poetry hand book by Steve Kowitt which helped me understand 'show don't tell' so  improved my writing and  lead to a swiftly written sequence of poems about my mother and the past . I sent them off to publishers and one Saturday evening as I was working in my Zoo on Face Book whilst simultaneously watching 'Strictly', ( How's that for an evening),  a phone call came through from Doug at Koo Press.....when after a long conversation I meekly asked' So are you going to publish?'  I was absolutely euphoric at his response and rang everyone I knew , especially my enemies.

So now I have two ambitions,  trying to get better and trying to get better at poetry, which is why I changed the name of the blog to 'the dizzy poet'.

something about a title

I do like collections with quirky titles . For example I 've just read about a pamphlet called Mr Luczinski makes a move by Peter Daniels. I think it's the name that I am attracted to it conjures up a sense of character and the phrase 'makes a move 'is intriguing suggesting something a bit shady.

The same applies to the titles of poems , if I'm trawling through anthologies or indeed the Internet (my second home)  when there is so much good poetry to read..it's the strange or blackly humerous title that makes me stop.

Selima Hill is the mistress of the bizarre title both for her poems and collections . Her most recent pamphlet ' How to wear animal prints' caught my interest immediately and the collection does not disappoint.

First Post

 The idea behind this blog is to chart my misadventures as a writer and indeed any other unusual events that cross my path. I like the odd , the overlooked and 15 years of teaching as trained me to notice almost everything. Indeed I am surprised when my far more clever friends discoursing about themselves tend to miss things . An example of this would be during afternoon tea in a hotel where my brilliant friend, who has a first , failed to notice the women sporting wigs who very clearly were all going through chemotherapy.

I called this blog ' a poet manque' because I love the word manque.....aspiring to but not actually making it often attributed to failed actors. I adopted this title not in a self pitying way , I am too old for that but as evidence of self knowledge .

So in this spirit....I am the world's worst net worker . In  my attempts to infiltrate the poerty community I attended another poetry reading at Canterbury Library.  Again I was that most dangerous of creatures, a woman on her own ,  that seems to have the same effect on the room as if a tiger had just walked in.  Consequently no one approached me and it was in fact very cliquey mostly because they all knew each other and were doing the MA at UCK. MA s in writing my bete noir.  I do  feel that if I saw a woman sitting on her own I would approach and talk to her .  I was eventually saved by a charming elderly lady who is herself a very fine poet. Why is it I wonder that the older generation are so open ,well mannered ready to talk to any one?

Part of the blame may lie in me.Because the poets are all so confident of their works' value and indeed are prize winners in some cases, I go into 'meeting famous people mode' . This is why I feel too shy to approach them myself so who knows I may be misinterpreted as standoffish?

Anyways, the poets were excellent. The poems were clipped, accomplished and in a different class to my efforts. Maybe MA s are poets' finishing schools because they seem so polished and made my baggy old efforts amateur  by comparisons. They achieve a level that I really don't think I can achieve.  So I came away feeling firmly put in my place. Still as I exited the cathedral bells were ringing , it was a  wonderful sound.