There are the poets of the canon, and then there are the poets you think with. I mean, poets whose method has a bearing on your own. They are often to be found not on the highroad of literature but on some byway, off the beaten track. Richard Lovelace has always been such a poet for me. A precocious young man, member of parliament at fourteen, a cavalier aristocrat who once wore cloth of gold and silver, but who, after the execution of Charles 1, was so poor that he was forced to eat his boots. He died young, in squalor. He is best known for his lyrical poem To Althea, from Prison, which has the lines: “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”

The elegance of his lyric poems, often set to music, is indisputable. But the reversal of fortune he underwent was a formative influence on his writing. A key poem to understanding this is his Advice to my Best Brother – Francis Lovelace – who was sent out across the Atlantic to become the second Governor of New York in 1668. The editions of Lovelace’s poems are unfortunately littered with errors – especially the poems published posthumously (and probably over-hastily). For instance, the first line of this poem is supposed to read – “Frank, wil’t live unhandsomely? Trust not too far…” Well, I’m pretty sure the “un” has crept in by error, as it makes no sense and it ruins the scansion – so I have removed it.

Frank, wil’t live handsomely? trust not too far

Thy self to waving seas: for what thy star,

Calculated by sure event, must be,

Look in the glassy-epithete, and see.

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Yet settle here your rest, and take your state,

And in calm halcyon’s nest ev’n build your fate;

Prethee lye down securely, Frank, and keep

With as much no noyse the inconstant deep

As its inhabitants; nay, stedfast stand,

As if discover’d were a New-found-land,

Fit for plantation here. Dream, dream still,

Lull’d in Dione’s cradle; dream, untill

Horrour awake your sense, and you now find

Your self a bubbled pastime for the wind;

And in loose Thetis blankets torn and tost.

Frank, to undo thy self why art at cost?

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Nor be too confident, fix’d on the shore:

For even that too borrows from the store

Of her rich neighbour, since now wisest know

(And this to Galileo’s judgement ow),

The palsie earth it self is every jot

As frail, inconstant, waveing, as that blot

We lay upon the deep, that sometimes lies

Chang’d, you would think, with ‘s bottoms properties;

But this eternal, strange Ixion’s wheel

Of giddy earth ne’er whirling leaves to reel,

Till all things are inverted, till they are

Turn’d to that antick confus’d state they were.

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Who loves the golden mean, doth safely want

A cobwebb’d cot and wrongs entail’d upon’t;

He richly needs a pallace for to breed

Vipers and moths, that on their feeder feed;

The toy that we (too true) a mistress call,

Whose looking-glass and feather weighs up all;

And cloaths which larks would play with in the sun,

That mock him in the night, when ‘s course is run.

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To rear an edifice by art so high,

That envy should not reach it with her eye,

Nay, with a thought come neer it. Wouldst thou know,

How such a structure should be raisd, build low.

The blust’ring winds invisible rough stroak

More often shakes the stubborn’st, prop’rest oak;

And in proud turrets we behold withal,

‘Tis the imperial top declines to fall:

Nor does Heav’n’s lightning strike the humble vales,

But high-aspiring mounts batters and scales.

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A breast of proof defies all shocks of Fate,

Fears in the best, hopes in worser state;

Heaven forbid that, as of old, time ever

Flourish’d in spring so contrary, now never.

That mighty breath, which blew foul Winter hither,

Can eas’ly puffe it to a fairer weather.

Why dost despair then, Frank? Aeolus has

A Zephyrus as well as Boreas.

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‘Tis a false sequel, soloecisme ‘gainst those

Precepts by fortune giv’n us, to suppose

That, ’cause it is now ill, ‘t will ere be so;

Apollo doth not always bend his bow;

But oft, uncrowned of his beams divine,

With his soft harp awakes the sleeping Nine.

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In strictest things magnanimous appear,

Greater in hope, howere thy fate, then fear:

Draw all your sails in quickly, though no storm

Threaten your ruine with a sad alarm;

For tell me how they differ, tell me, pray,

A cloudy tempest and a too fair day?

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I’m sure W B Yeats had this poem to hand when he wrote The Second Coming. It’s worth noting that Lovelace is the supreme poet of falconry, and has a poem describing a falcon ascending so high that it cannot be seen by the falconer.

Lovelace is the master of the oxymoron: “a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction. As a rhetorical device, an oxymoron illustrates a point to communicate and reveal a paradox.” Such contradiction permeates his verse. His poems are essentially paradoxical – indeed he has a poem entitled A Paradox – and it’s entertaining. Oxymoronic usage is everywhere:

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I cannot tell who loves the Skeleton

Of a poor Marmoset, nought but boan, boan.

Give me a nakedness with her cloaths on.

                              (second half of La Bella Bona Roba)

So scattering to hord ‘gainst a long day,

Thinking to save all, we cast all away.

                              (conclusion of The Ant)

This couplet is complex. It brings to mind the action of sowing: the sower scattering the grain in order to hoard the harvest later.

Mention should also be made of his incomparable satire – On Sanazar’s Being Honoured With Six hundred Duckets By The`Clarissimi of Venice for composing an Eligiack Hexastick of The City. This is, believe it or not, a satire aimed at poetry competitions! The text, too long to quote here, can be found at https://www.best-poems.net/richard-lovelace/on-sanazars-being-honoured-with-six-hundred-duckets-by-the.html

Within the formal elegance of Lovelace’s poetic architecture, nothing is out of bounds – prostitution, pubic hair (the hidden muffe), contempt for the powerful (Against the Love of Great Ones). I think the neglect that his work labours under is evidence of the shallowness of generalisation that the notion of a canon of literature exemplifies.

What have I got from him? Lovelace’s world was turned upside-down by the civil war. His poems succeed in expressing that topsy-turviness. Now that sense of a reversal of viewpoint is very much a factor in my own imaginative process. Inside the Castle – the title poem of my first collection – written when I was nineteen – was a reaction to reading Kafka. I was inspired by the notion that if K could find no way of getting into the castle, then its inhabitants could find no way out. The Temptation – included in the same collection – circles around the idea that Christ is the tempter. I enjoy the educational illustrations that were associated with “The World Turned Upside Down”. What is wrong with this picture – the butcher is butchering the butcher, the wife is beating her husband, the horse is riding the man? I have created performance art revolving around this idea. I have stood on my head wearing my underpants inside-out outside my inside-out shirt and suit, all worn back-to-front. Such behaviour has not endeared me to the poetry world which is generally strait-laced. My interest in oxymorons and reversals has led me to the work of Robert Browning and Andre Gide. Browning’s My Last Duchess is a poem which is the key to unlocking the notion of a persona, of empathy with a character who proves to be vicious. Gide’s novel The Immoralist also explores this idea, which was the dynamic behind my long poem The Ogre’s Wife (title poem of a collection published by Anvil in 2009), which speaks through the voice of a woman married to a serial killer. A recent poem – The Warrior – seeks to explore the psychology of a soldier serving in the IDF.  

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I am not suffering, me, from post-traumatic stress disorder.

There is a reason for what we do. Their wives have weaponised

Their wombs. Our problem is our democracy.

We call it mowing the lawn, think of it as a cull

To keep their population down. For this is our land, you see.                                    

Well, that’s how I see it, me, and I’m not one to over-ride

The will of God – nor will I commit the sin of suicide,

Since it would be a crime to reduce the number of those

Fighting on our side. So you can stuff your PTSD

Up your sanctimonious arse. Back at home, my wife demands

That I get out the mower. For all flesh is grass.

I have shot little girls in the head before, and mothers

In the belly. I remember what was taught in class.

You reap what you sow! the righteous angel

Calls out to each pregnant cow, tightening the trigger-finger.

Imagine a serial killer who’s a magnificent poet.

A genocidal composer. An artist who can paint in blood

Without it turning brown whose work is pretty good.

I know a supporter of causes whose art is actually shit.

And casualties who can’t write for toffee. There is an art

To what we do. Inevitably, since there have always

Been skirmishes and sieges, scorched earth and the need

To see things through. Marley put it best you know: Get up,

Stand up. Stand up for your rights. So don’t you lecture me.

I drop the visor down, you see, when I prepare for the slaughter.

But when command rotates our squad and I return from the front,

I am no different to any of you. You should see me with my daughter.

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For tell me how they differ, tell me, pray,/A cloudy tempest and a too fair day? There is such unease expressed in that last phrase. Some of Lovelace’s lyrics seem consoling – Stone walls do not a prison make…But much of his poetry eschews consolation. I know that there is a current desire to see poetry as essentially reassuring. But for me this reduces the art to the triteness of a ‘Get well soon’ card.