J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985)

J.V. Cunningham is an interesting poet, but not, to me, a loveable one. Does a poet have to be loveable? No, decidedly not. Certainly not in the sense of cuddly or adorable. What I guess I mean is “simpatico”. Cunningham does everything he can to be anti-simpatico. From his earliest poems, he expresses a profound distrust of the “will”, which I take to be disorderly impulse, unruly desire. What does he prefer? “… I praise / Far lamps at night, / Cold landmarks for reflection’s gaze. / Distant they still remain, / Oh, unassailed, apart!” Apollo, in other words. Dionysius is just too too. As a result, his poems are often dense, extremely compacted, frequently, at least early in his career, obscure. Slowly, over time, he developed his specialty – the epigram, the ultimate in classical clarity and concision. But these are not the witticisms of Oscar Wilde or Walter Savage Landor (what names for the masters of the merciless bon mot, Wilde & Savage!). Here are three samples from Cunningham:

“The ladies in my life, serially sexed,
Unscrew one lover and screw in the next.” [The title is “The Lights of Love.”]

“Death in this music dwells, I cease to be
In this attentive, taut passivity.”

“All hastens to its end. If life and love
Seem slow it is their ends we’re ignorant of.”

There are many interesting (that word again!) things in this collection. Some of these are: (1) Watching Cunningham evolve throughout the course of his first volume “The Helmsman.” (2) The highly simpatico introduction and notes by poet Timothy Steele. (3) Translations of several authors, mostly ancient, whose spirit Cunningham certainly shares. Here’s one example, from Martial:

“Sabinus, I don’t like you. You know why?
Sabinus, I don’t like you. That is why.”… (altro)