First Look at the Poetry of Ruth Pitter

Sunday Night Journal — June 7, 2010

I keep a list of planned topics for this journal, and this has been on the list for a while—for something close to a year, in fact, as I just discovered by looking through my email. It was in June of last year that Dale Nelson sent me a packet of information about Pitter, including a generous sample of her poetry and a copy of the introduction to her Collected Poems. I think this followed a discussion of her work in comments here, but since those comments don’t appear in searches, I can’t easily locate them.

I seem to have a fondness for minor poets, or I should say for minor artists in general. It’s not a deliberate choice on my part. I don’t think I’m doing it out of any sort of desire to be contrary or to go against the grain; if I am, it’s not conscious. I tend to be drawn to the modest, the unassuming, the plain, and also to the off-center and slightly, or more than slightly, strange. And as a rule, those qualities are not characteristic of capital-G Greatness in art.

So if Ruth Pitter is a minor poet—which is not my judgment, but a simple observation of the fact that no one seems to be claiming otherwise—that’s not much of a criticism, and a minor poet may have written some great poems, only not as many as the greater poets.

Pitter is one of those modern poets, of whom there have been more in England than in America, who did not embrace formal Modernism, and chose instead to stick with rhyme and meter. Auden, of course, is another, and he certainly proved that modernism in form was not a requirement for writing verse that speaks to our time. Or is our time still their time at all? I’m not sure, but I suppose it’s enough to say that Auden, for instance, was highly regarded in his lifetime and still is. I think the flight from strict form and fairly straightforward sense was not the inevitable thing that Pound, Eliot, and others tried to make it. I suspect that in general one ought to suspect poets who are also critics of erecting critical principles that justify and praise their own practice, which is probably more determined by what they can do than what they might do if they could choose their own gifts. I love Eliot’s poetry, and rank Four Quartets among my favorite books of any kind and any time, but I do think there was sometimes a self-serving aspect to his early criticism, an attempt to make it seem that the characteristically modernist modes of expression were historically inevitable.

The same sort of thing happened in music, and just as in music there were composers like Samuel Barber who proved by their achievement that hard atonalism was not the inevitable music of the future, so there were poets who proved that one could write very well in traditional forms simply by doing it.

And yet the modernists did have a point. Something had changed in the language, and it was harder in the 20^th century to use those techniques effectively. Or perhaps it was simply a change in taste and habits—but then those change the language, too...well, whatever the reasons, and the reciprocal causes and effects, it seems to me to be a fact that the strain of using rhyme and meter is often apparent in the work of those who chose to stay with them.

This is true sometimes of Pitter, and I think more often in her longer and more complex poems, which of course is not surprising. One of her great virtues, it seems to me, is a quick, sharp clarity, and this quality tends to be dissipated in the longer poems. Of the poems I’ve read, I prefer the shorter ones in some fairly simple quatrain form. At their best (well, the best of the two dozen or so poems I’ve read), her poems in this style are as skillfully natural-sounding as those of Wordsworth or Frost.

Her subject matter is both domestic and mystical, sometimes in the same poem. Sometimes the domestic aspect is decidedly earthy and even ribald, as in a comic poem about a lewdly-shaped potato (never explicitly described, but we can guess). It’s the mystical streak that makes her more than mildly interesting to me. It’s a very Christian mysticism, at least implicitly—I add that qualification because she came to Christianity relatively late, when she was well over forty, and I don’t know when most of the poems I’ve been reading were composed. Some are pretty specifically Christian, while others could have been written by one who is on the path, who clearly has the spiritual intuitions and desires which have led so many of us to the faith. Her conversion was heavily influenced by C.S. Lewis, and some of the poems seem to show thought like his. Whether this is influence or just natural affinity I can’t guess without knowing when the poems were written.

The Spring

Where is the spring of my delight,
Now every spring is dry?
There is no blossom in my sight,
No sun is in the sky:

The birds are still and love is past,
And danger whistles shrill,
And life itself now looks aghast
And birth becomes an ill:

And yet the spring of my delight
Leaps up beyond belief,
As if it sprang in very spite—
In very spite of grief:

And yet the secret stream of grace
Flows on, and swells the same,
As if from out another place
Where sorrow has no name.

As much as the best of the poems, I like Pitter’s preface to her Collected Poems. In only a few pages—four, to be exact—she says a great deal that is profound about art, life, and God. I’d really like to quote the whole thing, but here is a sample:

But the summits of poetry are mysteries; they are shiftingly veiled, and those who catch the glimpses see different aspects of the transcendental; but they have seen something, and they come down with the glory lingering on them. Overtones, undertones, echoes, intuitions, deep memories, ancestral fears and immortal longings, are gathered by the spell, raised from the dead, affecting the reader even to tears. Some people cannot pronounce some passages aloud without weeping. The mind has suddenly become a great soundboard, echoing far beyond its accustomed range into its own vast borderlands, where lost paradise and hoped-for heaven have betaken themselves; and we are shaken by a cosmic wind, and know ourselves for creatures of a far greater range than we are commonly aware of.

I think I spend about 10% of my time in the condition she describes, which can be induced by many things other than poetry, and the other 90% trying to keep myself from sliding into the pit in which the 10% appears as hopelessly wishful thinking.

Here are two articles I found online which I’ve only had time to glance at but which look very interesting: one on the friendship between Pitter and Lewis, the other a lengthy review of a biography of Pitter, Hunting the Unicorn.

I expect I’ll be buying the Collected Poems, though I don’t know when I think I’ll have time to read it. And thanks to Dale Nelson for introducing me to her. I think others may have recommended her as well, but, sorry, I don’t remember who.

The Wikipedia biography quotes her description of her Christianity as “Straight prayer-book Anglican, nothing fancy.” Not a very tenable position anymore, I think; if it were I might have remained one.

Comments

[Janet]

I think you better give credit to Sally. I'm pretty sure she originally introduced the topic.

That's a beautiful quote. Of course, it makes me want to read more than I have time to read.

I really need to write about Mary Karr, too.

AMDG

[Mac]

I don't suppose you remember what post it was on, do you? Or roughly when? Presumably sometime not too long before June '09.

[Janet]

No, I can't even find anything on Sally's blog and I know she's written about her. Well, the name of her blog is from a Pitter poem.

AMDG

[Mac]

That phrase happens to be in one of the 2 dozen or so poems I read. Right at the moment I can't recall the context (don't have the stuff with me).

[Sally Thomas]

I think I said I liked her a lot! I don't think I've ever written much about her, if anything, just thought about her. The credit really does go to Dale - I have this memory of chiming in with a "Me, too," when he mentioned her.

[Sally Thomas]

I am with you in liking "minor" poets, or at least modest and unsung ones. Mid/late-20th-century England seems to have been full of them. My favorite of the lot by far is Charles Causley, who died in 2003 or -04, I think -- not too long after we left, at any rate. He had a fairly distinguished reputation, actually, but lived a modest, quiet life as a schoolteacher in the Cornish town of his birth. While many of his poems are strikingly good, others are probably too "small" in their subjects or too interior to be really "great," I suppose, though I tend to like them anyway.

[Mac]

I don't recall having read Causley. But I used to have an anthology of British poetry since 1945 (or something like that), a little Penguin paperback which I bought in the '70s, so it only covered 25 years or so, and there were a number of poems in it that I really liked by people I'd never otherwise heard of. I wonder if he might have been in it...

One of these days I'm going to write about Phyllis McGinley, who has some really good stuff, usually fairly light but often enough revealing something unexpected.

[Janet]

Well, after searching through the archives I have come to the conclusion that we have never discussed Ruth Pitter, even though Maclin, Sally, presumably Dale, and I remember it. In fact, I'm about convinced that Ruth Pitter never existed.

AMDG

[Mac]

Well, don't start singing "Strawberry Fields".

[Janet]

I know that you know that if you really didn't want me to sing it, you shouldn't have deposited it in my head.

Sally, I really love those Causley poems that I have read on your website. I didn't realize that he was a 20th C. poet.

AMDG

[Rob G]

I keep meaning to look Pitter up -- thanks for the reminder. I don't read as much poetry as I should and I've been trying to remedy that. About a year ago I decided to keep a paperback of Wordsworth in my glove compartment so that if I'm ever stuck somewhere with nothing to read it'll always be there.

Recently I've discovered John Clare via the English essayist Ronald Blythe, who writes wonderful journal-type pieces on English country parish life, and is the chairman or something of the John Clare Society. In one of his books Blythe uses excerpts from Clare's "Shepherd's Calendar" to head each section, and I liked them enough to buy a Clare 'selected poems' collection.

I've been meaning to go back to Masefield too, whom I liked a lot when I was younger but haven't read in a long time. And there are a couple contemporary poets I've wanted to sample, whose names escape me at the moment.

[Dale Nelson]

Pitter, Lewis, Owen Barfield and others were admirers of George Rostrevor Hamilton's small book The Tell-Tale Article.

GRH did a statistical study and found that modernist verse is characterized by exceptionally frequent use of the word "the." The effect is often to convey a drab sense of the familiarity and even banality of something, a sense supposedly, yet not really, shared by poet and reader. Since I generally don't read these poets, I will concoct an example of the sort of thing:

the grey dampness of the puddled afternoon

an echo like the memory of the evening's final cigarette

Pitter doesn't write like that.

[Mac]

Those are pretty good lines, Dale. :-)

I remember now you mentioned this before and I thought it was a striking insight. It will certainly make me self-conscious about doing that in my poetry.

Rob, I decided a few years ago I was going to read The Prelude and--maybe it was just my general level of distraction and inability to concentrate--but I found myself getting lost. I looked for an annotated edition but couldn't find one.

[Rob G]

Mac, I've been trying to read 'The Prelude' for 20 years. Seriously. I've started it at least four times but got bogged down each time and never finished it. Someday.

I do read through WW's selected poems every couple years (I have a 19th century selection edited by a certain Henry Reed -- it's inscribed "Dec. 8, 1868. To my wife with birthday congratulations. G.W. Mackey" It's probably the oldest book I own) and I often dip in here and there -- I dearly love 'Tintern Abbey', 'Intimations of Immortality', 'Michael', the "Lucy" poems, etc.

[Mac]

Well, I admit, Wordsworth was never a big favorite of mine in the days when I was studying literature, so I haven't put a lot of effort into him. It's nice to know someone else has the same problem with The Prelude, though.

[Paul]

I had to read the Two-Part Prelude for A-level Eng. Lit. Rather put me off Wordsworth.

[Mac]

And I guess nobody even attempts The Excursion?

[Paul]

I certainly never have.

[Rob G]

I've loved Wordsworth since high school -- I think it's due to both an ingrained vaguely pantheistic streak and a melancholy temperament. My favorite thing about Spring is that it means we're halfway to Autumn. :-)

[Janet]

This is the first time that I think I've seen Rob G and Robert Gotcher one right after the other in the comments queue. That could be downright confusing to someone who didn't know they were two different people.

AMDG

[melanie-pearl]

thanks for sharing the preface and your ideas here. it seems Ruth Pitter really did live the life of a poet/artist. the biography by King is really great. ...but then you probably don't need someone to interpret her poetry for you.

(i just posted about Pitter, myself---but I am no writer.)

[melanie-pearl]

i guess it wasn't fair to say "i am no writer." i meant i am not formally educated---i have lots of heart and little head knowledge. just know that if/when you see what i wrote about Pitter.

[Mac]

That's a great passage you quote from her on your blog. And a very interesting blog. Thank you.

[Mac]

Interesting and beautiful, I should say.

[Wynn]

Goodness me, for a group of literate types I'm rather shocked by your attitude to Wordsworth. I mean he is, inescapably, number 4 in the table behind only Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer. Every time you are moved by the natural world you are under his influence: he more or less invented the way we look at it. And if you don't want to there is no need at all to read The Prelude from start to end (after all, he never really finished it to his own satisfaction). Pick it up, flick through, and see what you alight upon. I personally always preferred Coleridge, but it was WW who helped make our world, and all poets worth their salt really need to read him. The Prelude is important because it tells us how he came to think as he did, and by extension how we come to think as we do...

[Mac]

Broadly, I would agree with you about his importance, although I'm not so sure about that ranking. I don't know that there is a number 4. Wordsworth doesn't seem to me to belong in the class with them. Though if you're talking mainly of influence it's a fair point. But that's a different question from whether one actually wants to sit and read the poetry. Just as a matter of taste, the Romantics in general were never my favorites--in the 19th c, I prefer the Victorians. Wandering around in The Prelude is probably a good idea. Or maybe a Best Of.