Everyman's East Coker

"What is the late November doing..."

On my way back through Somerset, after a meeting with my brother today (at our haunt of olden days, The Stag's Head in Yarlington), I thought I would make quick visits to Castle Cary (of Parson Woodforde fame) and East Coker (of William Dampier fame), before returning to Dorset.

Recent visits to Castle Cary have brought home very forcibly words from T. S. Eliot's "East Coker"

"In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass."

"Houses live and die: there is a time for building...
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane"

"...each venture

is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion"

After my paper on Odysseas Elytis was presented at the recent conference in Corfu, a question was apparently raised about my stated preference for clarity in poetry, in the context of our "Post-Eliot" poetic environment. Compared to Elytis, I would have answered, Eliot is a model of clarity!