tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post8370118360542467155..comments2024-01-02T15:12:14.699+00:00Comments on War Poetry: Fredegond Shove: 'The Farmer, 1917'Tim Kendallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17917270014209480898noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-82816379259733701842019-07-20T23:01:10.346+01:002019-07-20T23:01:10.346+01:00Agreed. I like this poem of hers, and the few othe...Agreed. I like this poem of hers, and the few others I've read. And there aren't many poets I really rate.Adrian Granthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13017617932795072149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-84836519363620506462014-05-07T15:49:43.875+01:002014-05-07T15:49:43.875+01:00I agree with Peter J. King. The initial blog by th...I agree with Peter J. King. The initial blog by the anthologist seems to invite readers to concur with his view of 'The Farmer', yet he himself does not explain why he thinks this poem is 'very ordinary'.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-11758009208444365902014-04-27T12:14:24.329+01:002014-04-27T12:14:24.329+01:00I do not find that Wilfred Owen's poem, "...I do not find that Wilfred Owen's poem, "Nocturne'' (June-August 1915) is 'more interesting' than Shove's "The Farmer". Neither you nor your readers seem to have recognised Shove's use of 'seed' as a metaphorical reference.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-73368231671643016952014-04-14T21:20:42.865+01:002014-04-14T21:20:42.865+01:00I'm a little surprised at the chorus of agreem...I'm a little surprised at the chorus of agreement here; when I first came across the poem, it struck me as being very good, and repeated readings have done nothing to shake that feeling. In fact I was wondering earlier in another Forum why it's neglected, hence my having been (belatedly, as it turns out) directed here by another member. People seem to be trying to find things to criticise, as, for example, the peculiar claim that the "that" in line 10 is mere padding for the sake of the metre -- as though she would otherwise have left out "that" in line with more recent practice (though not with mine). Perhaps if the initial blog entry had been more positive, so too would have been the comments?Peter J. Kinghttps://oxford.academia.edu/PeterJKingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-37737380250083772212013-05-18T13:30:08.837+01:002013-05-18T13:30:08.837+01:00Can you give me an example of a good poem please?Can you give me an example of a good poem please?Lucy Londonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-23187101477119056132012-09-17T23:03:10.849+01:002012-09-17T23:03:10.849+01:00@nellbeaton Shove is pronounced to rhyme with mauv...@nellbeaton Shove is pronounced to rhyme with mauve rather than love; perhaps that makes her fate a little better. In any case, they loved each other their whole lives long, as her memoir makes clear. Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16926660254710716748noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-37328859734782053812012-04-28T22:43:44.202+01:002012-04-28T22:43:44.202+01:00I agree it's not a good poem. But I find it in...I agree it's not a good poem. But I find it interesting, all the same. I agree with Dawn about the first nine lines. They are plain and interesting for being plain, and notably un-Georgic . When she gets to line ten the 'that' is a bad sign -- iambic padding, and after that her iambics, though they DO reflect the farmer walking over the feel, start to be sinisterly regular. At the same time, I rather like the way the farmer recurs several times. In fact, I find her repetitions deliberate, patterned and interesting. This poem would not make me despair of her. She is trying to hard and comes a cropper. How awful for the poor woman to have married a man called Shove. It wasn't worth being well-connected to get a name like that. She should have stayed a Maitland.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-5004924921721898392011-11-21T08:51:45.530+00:002011-11-21T08:51:45.530+00:00I've been teaching the Vaughan Williams settin...I've been teaching the Vaughan Williams settings to a singing pupil of mine. It suddenly struck me that the poems are execrable nonsense. Came across your analysis via Google, and now feel justified! Thanks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-21413524465309739242010-08-09T16:27:43.200+01:002010-08-09T16:27:43.200+01:00"I had better find out for myself, by reading..."I had better find out for myself, by reading all Shove's work". You'll search in vain, I think. None of her other work touches as explicitly on the war. An oblique reference in 'A Man Dreams That He Is The Creator', perhaps (incidentally published by the pacifist journal War and Peace).<br /><br />It might be worth pointing out that the Shoves were working for Philip Morrell at Garsington as a condition of Gerald's conscientious objector status. Juliette Huxley writes: "In those days of mixed emotions, sweet and sour, grim with war news, I saw a good deal of Fredegond Shove, Gerald’s wife, who lived like a Spartan at the Bailiff’s Cottage while he worked as a CO on the farm. The work was mostly cutting logs with Aldous, and the two of them did not form a happy team. Gerald was sacrificing his intellectual prospects to his pacifist principles with a grim taciturnity – hardly lightened by his visits to the Manor." Austin Robinson also comments that the Shoves "endured all the miseries of being ... pacifist in a world that was war-mad”. So while it is true that the Shove's were 'well-connected' in some ways, their situation was not quite perhaps as 'Crome Yellow-ish' as you imply.Charles Boothnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-10908540977495452242010-07-21T21:19:11.837+01:002010-07-21T21:19:11.837+01:00Thanks, both. Yes, you confirm me in my opinion th...Thanks, both. Yes, you confirm me in my opinion that it's not much good. There are flickers of interest, but why take up a page of an anthology with this when anything (ANYTHING!) by Owen, Sassoon, Gurney, Jones, Blunden, etc., would be more interesting?Tim Kendallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17917270014209480898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-30049640034354075052010-07-20T08:19:11.503+01:002010-07-20T08:19:11.503+01:00What might have been a brief and probably still mu...What might have been a brief and probably still mundane poem (like those single-stanza other candidates you mention) instead wound up padded and stretched and finally attenuated into a series of irritating commonplace observations. I admire a few images ("madly knit with death," "subtle cinctures of hills," "sullen veil," even the layered "twilight of this world"), but they belong in a poem of eight or ten lines. Fie on all anthologists who settle for being generous rather than rigorous, politically correct instead of poetically courageous, more completist than critical. (Step lively there, Tim... But please don't stop; your samples are instructive, enlightening, and great fun to enshrine--or shred. No wonder you have over 72,000 visits counted!)Ed Leimbacherhttp://www.mrebks.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-80114736604894010912010-07-19T21:14:24.320+01:002010-07-19T21:14:24.320+01:00I quite like the opening nine lines... but after ...I quite like the opening nine lines... but after that it seems less interesting. The farmer as a trigger for her imagination seems somehow unbelievable, unconvincing. It's also hard to reconcile the 'woman poet' aspect of the work with the poetry itself which would lead me to wonder whether it's predominant value is as a poem by a woman during wartime rather than as a poem per se.Dawnnoreply@blogger.com