TE Hulme: Images at Play

I sometimes wonder why I don't come across more appreciation of and commentary on the Imagist poet TE Hulme (1883-1917). The answer is probably that he wrote only a small number of poems (around 25), and just a few were published during his lifetime. He is probably better known as a literary critic and a philosopher.

He established the Poets' Club and the School of Images (the latter including Ezra Pound), both of which explored new directions in English poetry. Hulme had a colourful life and was known as a strong (not always appreciated) personality. He died in World War I, in West Flanders, blown up by a shell he didn't see coming (those around him did, and threw themselves to the ground.) He was 34.

TE Hulme isn't exactly a household name. He has always seemed to me to occupy a particular niche. It is thought that if he had lived, he could have become one of the most influential literary figures of the century, but he didn't have a chance beyond what he accomplished before his death. I just love his poems.

Most of Hulme's poems were only a few lines long. I love short poetry (my own poems average about 10-14 lines - more than 20 lines is a long poem for me) and I don't think it gets enough credit. A poem leaving a lasting impression in six or twelve lines may stay with a reader forever. Hulme's poems are clear-eyed, balanced between warmth and dispassion, wistfully playful and very precise. I can't ask for much more in a poem.


AUTUMN (TE Hulme)


A touch of cold in the Autumn night - 
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.


'Autumn' reminds me a little of Tolkien, to the extent that I wonder if the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings might have been influenced by it. Perhaps because of that, it makes me think of much of the writing I enjoyed as a child: a mix of comfort, adventure and a slight eeriness.


THE EMBANKMENT (TE Hulme)

(The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night)


Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.


'The Embankment' is especially evocative to me as it's a part of London I know well. The 'flash of gold heels' seems to spark, an irony considering the man's search for warmth. It's a whimsical, sad and (again) faintly eerie poem, and it always makes me think of how there are still so many homeless people looking for shelter around Waterloo and Embankment.

Hulme isn't really known as a "war poet", despite his dates and his death. But he left this poem on a return to England from the front. It was probably transcribed (edited?) by Ezra Pound, but there seems little doubt as to its authorship. The final lines leave me stunned. Indeed, the 'mind is a corridor' under trauma. He said it perfectly.


TRENCHES: ST ELOI (TE Hulme)

(Abbreviated from the Conversation of Mr TEH)


Over the flat slopes of St Eloi
A wide wall of sand bags.
Night, 
In the silence desultory men
Pottering over small fires, cleaning their mess-tins:
To and fro, from the lines,
Men walk as on Piccadilly,
Making paths in the dark,
Through scattered dead horses,
Over a dead Belgian's belly.

The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets.
Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.
Beyond the line, chaos:

My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.
Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.

"This Is an Alien City": Amy Lowell's 'A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.'

This is another painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw, depicting Chelsea in London. I think that you can expect to see Grimshaw at least occasionally on this blog when I write about London.

I'm still browing and reading through London: A History in Verse, edited by Mark Ford. This anthology really does capture the spirit of London - its events, places and people - across centuries. It is the dark and the light; I wonder if any other city has so much of each. Unified and scattered, sinister and exhilarating - I think London's poetry may carry its essence even more so than its art or photography, for instance. (But then, I would think that...) What fascinates me is that certain themes seem to flow down the centuries and recur so frequently. These include the city as a brooding, dark personality made up of tiny fluttering voices; the underground nature of London, whether that's the actual London Underground or its hidden and lost rivers; and the use of names, its streets and squares and boroughs, with an almost totemic power.

2012 is by some reckoning the 100th anniversary of the Imagist movement in poetry. This enormously influential movement, which helped to launch modernist poetry, concentrated on "clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images." Its early proponents included Ezra Pound and T E Hulme.

Another poet deeply involved in the Imagist movement was Amy Lowell (1874-1925). She was a highly prolific American poet (and businesswoman) who moved between the US and the UK, working to promote the Imagist movement in American poetry. She is now perhaps best known as a critic and anthologist, and as someone associated with more famous figures, but her poetry is wonderful in its own right and is recognised for its variety and sensuality.

This poem, 'A London Throughfare. 2 A.M.', is a bleak portrayal of the city, very closely observed. This is the city as state of mind, reflecting isolation and radiating hostility. It is easy to imagine that under similar circumstances, another poet (or even the same poet in a different frame of mind) might see the scene as beautiful. The fact that Lowell sees the distant moon as a friend, and the city as alien, is very telling.



A LONDON THROUGHFARE. 2 A.M. (Amy Lowell)


They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another,
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city:
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.