Discovering the writings if Betjeman, and the argument over Muses in Poetry
I have recently come across the work of the writer John Betjeman, who heretofor I had only known for his political activities, being vaguely aware of his writing capacities.
I read his ode to the muse of whom he wrote, A Subaltern’s Love Song, and the simplicity and movement of the poem shows to me what is so wrong with what we call poetry today.
A debate on an article in the Guardian website showed a body of opinion that to write for a muse like he did was foolish and patrionising to womenfolk, and all at once I felt angry and sad that this could be thought to be so.
For if one cannot write a poem to a woman… why should a man write at all?
John Betjeman
My own efforts have created the Lady of the Sweetest Smile series, while not the top class of literature, are sufficient for my contribution to culture nonetheless.
A society that loses contact with poetry. has lost a part of its soul, and in our society and all its ills, poetry to the common man is seen as elite and irrelevant.
You do not have to be educated to write poetry, and should not have to be to read it, unless its on an obscure topic.
The work of the often primary school only educated Weaver Poets from Ulster, Scotland and the North of England shows what can be created as they wrote regular verse and Standard Habbie formats both in English and their native Doric sourced dialects.