(New month old post: from “Reel-to-Reel Recordings” posted 24th December 2014)
Dad turns to the microphone on the mantlepiece, clears his throat, and adopts a suitable air of gravitas.
“I will now read some of my favourite poetry”.
The sound of muted giggling emanates from me and my brother sitting on the floor next to the tape recorder.
“Ernest Dowson’s Vitae Summa Brevis,” he announces.
The whispering in the background becomes audible.
“What’s he on about?”
“He says Ernest Dowson had some Ryvita for his breakfast.” More snorting and sniggering. Dad continues.
“They are not long, ...”
“What aren’t? Is our Sooty’s tail not long?”
“... the weeping and the laughter, love and desire and hate...”
The disruption intensifies as Mum bangs on the window and shouts something muffled from the yard outside. Dad struggles to keep going.
“I think they have no portion in us...”
The door curtain is swished back, and Mum enters the room and interrupts loudly.
“When I tell you your dinner’s ready, it’s ready, and you come straight away.”
The recording ends.
Would Ernest Dowson’s melancholy poetry and vivid phrases ever have emerged from out of his misty dream in such an unsupportive, philistine family?
Wicked children, you and your brother, hope you have grown up by now. Real life has very little to do with poetry, your father must have learnt that lesson the hard way.
ReplyDeleteWe were quite young, amused by the absurdity of reading poetry into a tape recorder. I think, though, that the point of poetry is that it is like life. Dowson could the phrase "wine and roses" but said that they don't last.
DeleteThanks for the giggle, Tasker.
ReplyDeleteIt still makes me giggle to think of it.
DeleteDinner first, then poetry. Your Mum was right!
ReplyDeleteMy mum thought it funny to disrupt my dad's poetry reading. She can also be heard singing in the background.
DeleteHahaha - I saw it before my eyes - and giggled with you and your brother, though today I admire the noble intent of your father to teach you little rogues awe for the sublime art of poetry.
ReplyDeleteI've not thought of it in that way before - that he was attempting to show us an appreciation of poetry. I suppose it worked, albeit years and years later.
DeleteI sympathise wholeheartedly with your father. Sometimes mundanity and ignorance get in the way when we reach out for a better yet more fragile place...
ReplyDeleteThey are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
It's a fine line between pretentiousness and reaching out. We all understood that at the time. It's a bleak poem to have been written by someone so young.
DeleteWhat could possibly be pretentious about a poem? I don't get it.
DeletePerforming it into a tape recorder can be.
DeleteIt's your blog so I will shut up now,
DeleteOh my. Do you have this tape? I cannot imagine what it would be like to hear my parents' voices again, or to hear the childish voices of my brother and sisters and I.
ReplyDeleteYes. The original post (Reel to Reel Recordings) has extracts near the end, or here:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBUzuZ7Igqo
What a gift to be able to to hear that all once again. I love this! Your dad sounds like a man who took pleasure in words and songs and his family. A good man.
DeleteOur Dad loved to tape us when we were little and learned songs in kindergarden. There is one where my sister (older by a year) starts to sing a song about a family of ladybirds. When she gets to the second verse, I can be heard correcting her lyrics. She just keeps singing undeterred while my attempts at correcting her become more and more desperate. It ends in tears. (I was 3 and she was 4 years old at the time.)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to hear them. For mine see previous response to Debby.
DeleteRecording a poetry recital at home? That made us titter. On the other hand F has sympathy with your Mum - when dinner is ready the world must stop and attend to eating it, or there will be trouble! We have a friend who married into German Swiss family and she had to learn that when dinner was ready the patriarch demanded that everyone attend immediately to show respect for the time and effort that the matriarch had put into preparing and serving the meal - 'darned right' says F who has more than once threatened to put a meal in the bin if the less important aspects of life don't get put on hold by everyone else in order to address the meal at its best.
ReplyDeletePhoebe takes exactly the same view, Tigger. When meals have been prepared and are ready and waiting in the packet, then they should be served and eaten straight away, not one at a time.
DeleteI feel for your father, quite a thing to record a serious poem in front of two rascally boys! My mother loved poetry but it was generally the sentimental variety that made me wince. Like her, I also love poetry and both read it and write it, it gives me great pleasure.
ReplyDeleteIf you listen to the tape (see link in response to Debby above) it's clear my dad also saw the ridiculous aspects.
DeleteI'm not much of a poetry writer, but there is a lot I like and can recite from memory.