Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

When does English Poetry begin?

You could argue Caedmon’s Hymn, the earliest datable poem in Old English. But listen to it on the Poetry Voice: Caedmon’s Hymn isn’t written in English.

You could argue for Chaucer, who is readable with patience by any literate modern English speaker.

Or you could go straight to Wyatt. Who is perhaps the first English poet to sound like a modern poet.

He has been the subject of two superb but very different, and therefore complimentary, biographies recently. And there is or was a fine Penguin collected, which may not do him a great service since wading through the lot will remind you of how utterly conventional so much of the poetry produced at the court was.

The fifteenth century is a dead one for English poetry. So you could argue that poetry that is recognisable to a modern reader, both in form and language, begins after Wyatt and Surrey found their models or excellence in Italy. Wyatt Englished Petrarch. You can see the process by comparing this poem with Petrach’s Sonnet 190 which Wyatt is ‘versioning’, it’s part translation, part adaptation, all new poem. You can compare translations: http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/eng208PetrarchSonnet190.htm

But when you’ve got over the sense of an individual voice speaking directly to you and the striking images, you might want to consider the implications of the metaphor of the hunt as romantic pursuit. Think about what the hunters and their dogs do when they have finally trapped their prey. Welcome to the Renaissance.

John Donne (1572-1631)

Really John? Not one woman, anywhere?

I think most of Donne’s poems were published posthumously, and it may be that Donne never intended this particular piece to be printed. But it was, and I think it’s a fine example of a writing problem.

It’s easy to imagine someone who is hurt, feeling betrayed, confused and humiliated by someone he or she had trusted. You wouldn’t expect them to be thinking clearly for a while. They might say things they’d later regret.

It’s also easy to imagine someone in that situation turning to poetry as a form of catharsis.

But when you’ve expressed your bitterness and confusion, after you lashed out at whoever hurt you, what do you do with the end product?

Show it to a few friends, who understand your situation and sympathize, without taking your exaggerations seriously or as representing what you normally believe?

Show it to the individual who hurt you? As a form of revenge?

Publish it?

The modern fashion for selfie poems would seem to approve the last choice. But once the poem is published and available to strangers, it shifts the way it asks to be read. It goes from being a private, contingent howl, a statement of an emotion the poet should grow out of, to a public statement of considered fact that’s going to be around long after the emotion that inspired it has been reconsidered.

And once published readers have every right to feel that there is something wrong with this poem. The beautiful opening line, the obvious metrical control, the inventive images, the obvious skill of the maker, all seem strange vehicles for such an obviously out of control argument.