A Book of Substance

The Fire of Joy is (putatively) the last book by the expatriate Australian poet Clive James (1939–2019) and deserves a longer consideration than Ian Shircore was able to give it in his wide-ranging article in the January-February issue of this magazine. It’s the kind of book that every poet of substance ought to be encouraged to compile and leave behind.

Unfortunately, because of his achievements in so many other fields (television, cultural commentary, fiction, memoir, song lyrics) there has often been a reluctance to see James as a “poet of substance”. Until the more sombre late collections written during his extended final illness, many readers were inclined to dismiss James as a “dilettante”, an “entertainer”, a writer of “light (or lightish) verse”.

Whatever other people may have thought, James always thought of himself as a poet. His interest in it was effectively lifelong and extended well beyond his own personal ambitions in the form. The Fire of Joy is an opportunity to see how extensive (and, at times, how idiosyncratic) this interest was.

It’s tempting, therefore, to misread this book as “Clive’s Greatest Eighty” (at least from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Stephen Edgar). Ostensibly, it’s a collection of poems that the reader will find conducive to “getting” by heart and reciting when given the chance by an indulgent host or hostess.

James had a prodigious memory so the task was probably easier for him than most. The criterion of memorability has indeed affected James’s choice of poems but not exclusively so. In several cases, he has overlooked poems which would have been far easier to memorise than the one chosen.

The reader of The Fire of Joy soon realises, however, that there is also another agenda at play. James, more fundamentally, is concerned to pay tribute to the poets (in English) across five centuries whom he and many others have admired or been influenced by. Of course, the poems selected must, as if by synecdoche, stand as a representation of the poet’s work in general—a difficult task at any time, as James himself sometimes laments.

It is here, too, that James’s idiosyncrasy (some might say perversity) is most often seen. Our Virgilian guide will too often bypass a better-known and probably more suitable poem for the one that first made an impact on him or that he associates with some fondly remembered period of his life. “The Kraken” by Tennyson is one example. James admires its “stygian special effects” when he could so easily have used a superior poem such as “Ulysses” or “Crossing the Bar”.

Occasionally, James also employs this strategy to draw attention to a poem too often overlooked. And, of course, he is keen to avoid the bland predictability that any moderately well-read non-poet could generate if given the opportunity.

As Ian Shircore points out in his article, the original plan involved a hundred poems. Pressure of time, it would seem, compelled James, in the last year of his life, to settle for eighty-three. This makes it even more likely that readers will, as they invariably do with every anthology, complain about omissions. No Dryden, they will say. No Pope. No Blake. No William Carlos Williams (indeed not much free verse at all).

When the reader reaches the twentieth century he or she notices that the space created by such omissions is used to feature a number of poets who had little or no reputation in the field but who were better known for something else. G.K. Chesterton is one. Vita Sackville-West is another—though readers may nevertheless be glad to have their attention drawn to particular poems. Sackville-West’s “Craftsmen” is disconcertingly impressive. I’m not so sure about the anapaests of Chesterton’s “Lepanto” however.

At other times, James uses his space to “rehabilitate” a poet who was perhaps “unfortunate” in his political affiliations—or wasted his talents in dissipation. Roy Campbell is indicative of the former and Brian Howard, the model for Evelyn Waugh’s Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited, is an example of the latter.

Occasionally James also spotlights a female poet whose work is often overlooked. Charlotte Mew is one example. Elinor Wylie, another perhaps. And U.A. Fanthorpe, more recently. For the statistically minded, thirteen of the eighty-three poets are women.

All this, however, is to overlook the most important of the book’s charms, namely James’s commentaries. They range from half a page to a couple of pages and are unfailingly interesting and often witty. Rupert Brooke’s, for instance, begins: “Rupert Brooke’s reputation never recovered from his popularity.” His entry on Thom Gunn finishes by quoting a famous line of Gunn’s and then reminding us of an important truth: “‘One is always nearer by not keeping still’ is a reminder that poetry wouldn’t matter at all if it didn’t matter so much.”

Hardly less significant are the reservations James has about the poets he’s chosen. He has an almost cruel way of summing up their careers and reminding us of where they went wrong. His comments on Emily Dickinson are one example. (“You look at one of her poems and think, ‘Yes, she could probably have made a good poem out of that’.”) He does, however, at the end concede about Dickinson that “Shadows still hold their breath when she speaks”.

One soon realises how convenient it is that James’s poets are nearly all dead and so will not have to read what he has to say about them. By my count, only three are still with us. And now Clive himself has gone.

Occasionally one has a sense of an old score being paid off—or a pub argument being won long after everyone’s gone home. James’s account of Robert Lowell’s career is far from charitable and the poem he chooses is a “translation”. He is still forced to admit, however, that “For the Union Dead” was an example of where Lowell’s “twin-yoked capacities for complexity and simplicity worked sumptuously together”. The adverb “sumptuously” is typical of James at his best as a (non-academic) critic. One should also note, however, that it follows a summary dismissal of Life Studies, arguably Lowell’s best book—which, James opines, “too often consisted of confessing the embarrassments of other people”.

Reading The Fire of Joy a year or so after Clive’s long-postponed death is a poignant experience nevertheless. Not as poignant perhaps as his poem “In Town for the March” (about the father he never knew and grieved for all his life) but poignant even so.

The Fire of Joy is a book which contains much of the best of both the man and the poet: the wit, the humour, the cleverness, the erudition. It also contains his blind spots, his overconfidence, and possibly a little self-deception.

In the latter regard, a comparison between Clive and his good friend Peter Porter is instructive. Together they made six of the best half-hour radio programs about poetry you are ever likely to hear. They’re still available on clivejames.org and are mandatory listening. Both poets were expatriates and made their determined way through the thickets of literary London for most of the twentieth century’s second half. Today Peter Porter, almost certainly the superior poet (if we force ourselves to make such choices) is known these days mainly to fellow poets and discerning lovers of poetry. Clive, however, is a “household name” and likely to remain so for a long time.

From a poet’s point of view then, most people know Clive James for the wrong reason—or one of several wrong reasons. It’s therefore more than a little sad to hear him say at the book’s conclusion: “When I myself come home it will be in a box of ashes, but I chose the right spot to be born, just as I chose the right profession—poetry—and followed it to the end.”

“Hang on a minute!” you want to say, but it’s too late. As Clive knew only too well, poetry will go on without us.

The Fire of Joy: Roughly Eighty Poems to Get by Heart and Say Aloud
edited by Clive James
Picador, 2020, 310 pages, $34.99

Geoff Page’s poetry has appeared in Quadrant over several decades. His own anthologies include 60 Classic Australian Poems, The Best Australian Poems 2014 and The Best Australian Poems 2015