Very Old Cambridge Tales: 1

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF GRANTA

POEM:

Horror

The Studio,
Fowlmere.
4.11.67

Dear Sir,

Many of your readers will be aware of the present popularity of Concrete Poetry.

We Concrete Poets aim at expression by emphasizing the meaninglessness of the words we use.

Poetry today should be as much a part of one’s normal life as lavatory paper or cornflakes, and we therefore treat words as expendable, consumable commodities like these. The days when words had associations are over. We can no longer speak of the ‘meaning’ of a word in a poem, only its independent, abstract presence.

We arrange words in such a way that, if you had not ‘read’ them first, you would be able to tell what they were trying to say by the configuration they are set in. This is much more demanding than mere reading.

Thus a spectator at a concrete poem might spend several hours, or even a day or two, if he has the patience, contemplating such a poem, whereas with most previous poetry it took far less to understand the poet. This is one of the advances we must credit Concrete Poetry with.

I offer above one of my latest word sculptures, which you may like to print along with this letter to show those of your readers unacquainted as yet with CP that there is ‘something in it’. In all modesty, in this poem I believe you will perceive a synthesis of form and ‘meaning’ scarcely excelled by Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, or Eliot.

The vast, empty spaces of white within and outside the poem, and its complete, endless form, articulate an absolute and perfect expression of the isolation of horror, and by extension the poem is the ultimate existential expression of Man’s loneliness in the face of the Universe.

Moreover, the longer you contemplate the poem (which I believe may be the shortest ever penned), the more revelationary and ‘meaningful’ it becomes. This is not to mention a possible Freudian interpretation.

Yours sincerely,

ERWIN J. BUNTHORPE

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.