1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,720 Seán Hewitt: The Glimpse. 2 00:00:05,790 --> 00:00:09,120 Kit Fryatt: I think it's about, you know, what is truth? You know, 3 00:00:09,150 --> 00:00:13,410 truth is words. You know it's it's hot air, as Falstaff might have 4 00:00:13,410 --> 00:00:19,080 said, you know. So the truth is articulated in the same words as 5 00:00:19,080 --> 00:00:19,620 flattery. 6 00:00:21,480 --> 00:00:23,700 Seán Hewitt: Welcome to The Glimpse. I'm your host. Seán 7 00:00:23,700 --> 00:00:27,300 Hewitt. Kit Fryatt's dynamic blending of ancient and modern 8 00:00:27,300 --> 00:00:31,920 poetry offers a road map to moments that seem familiar and feel a bit 9 00:00:31,950 --> 00:00:36,450 uneasy. He's written four books. The latest, Book of Inversions, 10 00:00:36,450 --> 00:00:40,230 co-written with Harry Gilonis, is based on ancient and early modern 11 00:00:40,230 --> 00:00:43,800 Irish originals, and will be published this year. He lectures at 12 00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:48,360 Dublin City University. Kit Fryatt is our guest today on The Glimpse. 13 00:00:51,960 --> 00:00:56,310 Kit Fryatt is an innovator, even when he is working on versions of 14 00:00:56,310 --> 00:01:00,600 medieval Irish poetry, his method is to invert, to turn the words 15 00:01:00,630 --> 00:01:04,290 upside down, to generously and richly throw the wealth of 16 00:01:04,290 --> 00:01:09,270 language, both inherited and new, into an unlikely dance. In his 17 00:01:09,270 --> 00:01:13,470 poems, experiments with form and meaning create an immersive sense 18 00:01:13,470 --> 00:01:18,660 of secretiveness and association, a place for the mind to play. I love 19 00:01:18,660 --> 00:01:22,620 them because they seem so unlike a lot of poetry, these are not poems 20 00:01:22,620 --> 00:01:25,620 that come with designs on us, or poems that are content with a 21 00:01:25,620 --> 00:01:29,460 single through line of interpretation. By turn satirical, 22 00:01:29,490 --> 00:01:34,230 foul mouthed and tender, ancient and modern, Kit's poems work at the 23 00:01:34,230 --> 00:01:37,920 cutting edge of what language can do. Kit Fryatt welcome to The 24 00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:39,630 Glimpse. It's very good to have you here. 25 00:01:40,050 --> 00:01:41,460 Kit Fryatt: Thanks very much. Thanks for having me on. 26 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:44,990 Seán Hewitt: You're very welcome. Kit, I mentioned there in the 27 00:01:44,990 --> 00:01:48,290 introduction your Book of Inversions, which I have been lucky 28 00:01:48,290 --> 00:01:52,640 enough to read. I was rereading it again recently, and in the intro to 29 00:01:52,640 --> 00:01:56,960 that book, you lay out quite a defiant but playful mode of 30 00:01:56,990 --> 00:02:02,390 writing, which you describe, or by way of Ezra Pound, describe as, "in 31 00:02:02,510 --> 00:02:07,580 a way, impolite," whether that's to critics or academics or to quote, 32 00:02:07,580 --> 00:02:11,480 unquote, "respectable poetry." I wonder if you could start by telling 33 00:02:11,480 --> 00:02:14,990 us a little bit about that impoliteness, or impoliteness as a 34 00:02:14,990 --> 00:02:16,670 way of approaching poetry? 35 00:02:17,020 --> 00:02:19,150 Kit Fryatt: Well, I have to say, first of all that Harry wrote the 36 00:02:19,150 --> 00:02:25,090 introduction, really. That's almost all his work. But I'm glad you 37 00:02:25,090 --> 00:02:31,660 mentioned Pound, because I think anyone who does that kind of 38 00:02:32,020 --> 00:02:36,040 "making versions," I hesitate to say translation, because I think 39 00:02:36,190 --> 00:02:40,480 there's an expectation of, perhaps lucidity. There's certainly an 40 00:02:40,480 --> 00:02:47,950 expectation of fluency, both in the sense of knowing and being fluent 41 00:02:47,980 --> 00:02:52,090 in the language from which you're making a version. And that's mostly 42 00:02:52,090 --> 00:02:59,350 not terribly true of a lot of the work that I've done. And Pound is 43 00:02:59,350 --> 00:03:06,430 the great enabler, I think in modern times at least of that kind 44 00:03:06,430 --> 00:03:11,440 of work, because he was famously a huge chancer who translated out of 45 00:03:11,440 --> 00:03:16,030 Chinese but didn't know Chinese. He's a difficult forebear. I think 46 00:03:16,030 --> 00:03:21,010 he's certainly impolite in all the colloquial senses, and his sort of 47 00:03:21,010 --> 00:03:26,290 poetic edgelordism is often very uncomfortable. And, you know, it 48 00:03:26,290 --> 00:03:31,630 tips over from edgelordism into, you know, kind of the fascistic 49 00:03:31,660 --> 00:03:38,050 politics that he espoused. So he's a really problematic forebear to 50 00:03:38,050 --> 00:03:42,670 have, but he is, at the same time enormously enabling. 51 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:45,720 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, that's the thing with modernists. A lot of them are 52 00:03:45,720 --> 00:03:46,980 difficult forebears. 53 00:03:47,100 --> 00:03:48,180 Kit Fryatt: A lot of them are fascists. 54 00:03:50,220 --> 00:03:54,990 Seán Hewitt: I love the idea of him as a chancer, or as, in some ways, 55 00:03:54,990 --> 00:04:01,230 poetry as benefiting from taking a chance on things. You know, not 56 00:04:01,230 --> 00:04:06,000 quite playing by the rules or being a little bit playful with the 57 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:09,690 rules. I want to talk a little bit about that you know, versions or 58 00:04:09,720 --> 00:04:15,810 translations and what they're for and what draws you to them. 59 00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:19,950 Especially, would love to know about your process for making 60 00:04:20,670 --> 00:04:24,360 versions of poems in a language that maybe you don't speak like, 61 00:04:24,450 --> 00:04:25,710 how do you go about that? 62 00:04:27,790 --> 00:04:29,890 Kit Fryatt: So it's quite frequently collaborative. I've done 63 00:04:29,890 --> 00:04:34,030 this sort of work with Kimberly Campanello, for example. A 64 00:04:34,030 --> 00:04:39,280 sequence that appears in bodyservant is the result of 65 00:04:39,490 --> 00:04:44,980 collaboration on Stephen Fowler's "Yes, but are We Enemies?" project 66 00:04:44,980 --> 00:04:49,690 with Kim. And I found both in working with Kimberly and working 67 00:04:49,690 --> 00:04:52,420 with Harry, that they're much more scholarly than I am. I really am a 68 00:04:52,420 --> 00:04:58,000 chancer. So under Harry's influence, I spend a lot more time 69 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:03,550 with the dictionary. I spend quite a lot of time with various English 70 00:05:03,550 --> 00:05:09,280 and Irish dictionaries. I spend some time with the existing 71 00:05:09,310 --> 00:05:13,150 versions, the existing translations, James Carney, Jeffrey 72 00:05:13,150 --> 00:05:22,120 Squires, and I talk to people who do have a real fluency in Irish, 73 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:26,350 and then I ignore them. Because they tell me, you can't possibly 74 00:05:26,350 --> 00:05:33,970 say that. And so, yeah, it's quite an organic process. I think, in the 75 00:05:33,970 --> 00:05:38,530 sense that I don't have a set process, I think a lot of the 76 00:05:38,920 --> 00:05:44,980 versions have come out of different circumstances. I think for me, one 77 00:05:44,980 --> 00:05:52,000 of the reasons I do this is that it gives me something to work with. To 78 00:05:52,000 --> 00:06:01,540 start with, I'm very bad at that romantic thing, inspiration. So a 79 00:06:01,540 --> 00:06:04,630 lot of what I do comes out of already existing text. 80 00:06:04,990 --> 00:06:09,640 Seán Hewitt: I wonder what it is about the medieval that attracts 81 00:06:09,640 --> 00:06:12,760 you. You know, is there something about the sensibility of the 82 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:14,890 medieval, whether that's Irish or English? 83 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:17,810 Kit Fryatt: Well, those would be very different sensibilities. I 84 00:06:17,810 --> 00:06:24,980 think, yes. I think so, what is it? I think it's always seemed to me 85 00:06:25,010 --> 00:06:31,370 that the medieval world is a very living one to me. You know, I look 86 00:06:31,370 --> 00:06:41,030 back and I see people who are alive to me, who are sort of present. And 87 00:06:41,060 --> 00:06:47,840 I think there's something about language, perhaps before and at that 88 00:06:47,870 --> 00:06:57,680 early modern period of change is an extraordinary mixture of the poised 89 00:06:58,130 --> 00:07:04,970 and formal and very pithy and direct, yeah, I just felt like I 90 00:07:04,970 --> 00:07:10,280 can sort of feel people speaking through that language. 91 00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:13,840 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. You know that the 92 00:07:13,840 --> 00:07:19,150 idea of a poised and formal and pithy and direct kind of intention 93 00:07:19,240 --> 00:07:23,380 with each other, or maybe not even intention, but one of them allowing 94 00:07:23,380 --> 00:07:27,220 or giving way to to the other is something I really enjoy about 95 00:07:27,280 --> 00:07:31,750 medieval poetry as well. And there's a way that the poems 96 00:07:31,780 --> 00:07:37,750 Can feel so different when you look at them, because you know the 97 00:07:37,750 --> 00:07:43,120 spelling is strange, or something about the syntax might be off. But 98 00:07:43,120 --> 00:07:47,320 when you start to speak them, they come alive because you realize 99 00:07:47,590 --> 00:07:50,740 something about the language, or you begin to hear them. And in that 100 00:07:50,740 --> 00:07:53,470 way, it's kind of like unlocking a sort of life. 101 00:07:53,500 --> 00:07:54,880 Kit Fryatt: Yes, yeah, very much. 102 00:07:55,090 --> 00:07:57,850 Seán Hewitt: That is kind of secret as well, which I love, that that 103 00:07:57,850 --> 00:08:01,660 feeling. All right, you're going to read the title poem from your 104 00:08:01,660 --> 00:08:04,720 collection, bodyservant. Do you want to tell us a little bit about 105 00:08:04,720 --> 00:08:07,420 the poem before you read it? Or would you prefer to plow straight 106 00:08:07,420 --> 00:08:08,740 in? Yeah, 107 00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:12,791 Kit Fryatt: I'll say a little bit. It's sort of a composite, I 108 00:08:12,878 --> 00:08:18,850 suppose, of two medieval figures who were contemporaries overlapping 109 00:08:18,938 --> 00:08:24,559 and sort of two medieval places that I'm particularly interested 110 00:08:24,647 --> 00:08:30,092 in, the medieval, Gaelic world and the the Occitan world of the 111 00:08:30,180 --> 00:08:35,361 troubadours. So the the earlier figure is that of Giraut de 112 00:08:35,449 --> 00:08:41,509 Bornelh, the troubadour, possibly the most famous of troubadour poems 113 00:08:41,597 --> 00:08:47,305 "Reis glorios." It's often called an Obaid or an Alba, and it is a 114 00:08:47,393 --> 00:08:53,453 dawn poem. And the second figure in the composite is a slightly later 115 00:08:53,541 --> 00:08:59,688 12th and early 13th century figure Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh, who 116 00:08:59,776 --> 00:09:05,485 is the founder of a great dynasty of poets. He was a murderer. He 117 00:09:05,573 --> 00:09:11,545 killed a tax collector. He was a crusader as well. And so the figure 118 00:09:11,632 --> 00:09:16,990 that I imagine the poem is spoken from the point of view of a 119 00:09:17,077 --> 00:09:22,874 servant, a bodyservant. The figure that I imagine is somebody like 120 00:09:22,962 --> 00:09:29,021 Muireadhach, but that all kind of gets mixed up with the relationship 121 00:09:29,109 --> 00:09:34,906 between two men in "Reis glorios," which doesn't get remarked on a 122 00:09:34,993 --> 00:09:35,960 great deal. 123 00:09:35,930 --> 00:09:42,710 So this is bodyservant. I sleep at the foot of the stair the rough 124 00:09:42,710 --> 00:09:48,230 nights of the bed I know his sleeping breath and its feint 125 00:09:48,620 --> 00:09:55,370 perhaps he knows mine his lungs are congested he is close to sixty and 126 00:09:55,370 --> 00:10:02,960 I am past this year the middle of life. the fair hair he cut the 127 00:10:02,960 --> 00:10:09,680 night before we started for Cairo, a four years' pelt that would not 128 00:10:09,680 --> 00:10:16,430 shame the Magdalen is gone as he said it would be a stringy tonsure 129 00:10:16,940 --> 00:10:23,000 when an attack wakes him I bring milk and ale we have both killed 130 00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:29,930 men that he might live to this pass their grey shades stand between us 131 00:10:30,140 --> 00:10:36,560 so he seems insubstantial he suffers as tall men do worst with 132 00:10:36,560 --> 00:10:42,800 his knees, his back in the mornings he is agile like an anvil as the 133 00:10:42,800 --> 00:10:48,830 mounting block he refuses he and his wife had eleven children and 134 00:10:48,830 --> 00:10:56,390 some of them live far away he misses her hand beneath his head he 135 00:10:56,390 --> 00:11:01,910 says to put my hand under his head would be worth the ransom of the 136 00:11:01,910 --> 00:11:08,810 son of the king of Cairo but I've never been lucky there was a lady 137 00:11:09,290 --> 00:11:14,360 the guest of many important men he visited her when she stayed with 138 00:11:14,360 --> 00:11:20,450 them then I watched till dawn I knew her name but never her face 139 00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:25,130 she was a grey shape in thought like a place where a painter meant 140 00:11:25,130 --> 00:11:32,450 to fill in one of the three Marys, a grey form lying on the body I 141 00:11:32,450 --> 00:11:38,990 know better than my own its scar furrows turn and turn about the 142 00:11:38,990 --> 00:11:45,170 body to which I attribute every scar on my own lying on a grey 143 00:11:45,170 --> 00:11:51,590 form, until I called out my fine friend, here comes the dawn chief 144 00:11:51,590 --> 00:11:56,840 glory glorious lord here comes the dawn. 145 00:11:59,120 --> 00:12:02,270 Seán Hewitt: Thank you very much. I loved hearing you you read that 146 00:12:02,270 --> 00:12:07,490 poem. I want to draw listeners attention to how it looks on the 147 00:12:07,490 --> 00:12:11,240 page as well, because it's maybe something that they won't imagine, 148 00:12:11,690 --> 00:12:14,960 although I think you could hear it quite, quite well in your reading 149 00:12:14,960 --> 00:12:19,910 there that it moves all the way from the left to the right hand 150 00:12:19,970 --> 00:12:25,400 margin, sometimes in steps, if that makes sense, the lines step across 151 00:12:25,400 --> 00:12:30,440 the page, and sometimes the lines are right aligned, as I do. There's 152 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:34,850 like a small stanza that is right aligned rather than left aligned. 153 00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:38,930 You tell us a little bit about, you know, how you arrived at that form 154 00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:42,650 before we talk about the poem itself, if that makes sense. 155 00:12:42,900 --> 00:12:46,470 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, it just happened, I think, and can't be very 156 00:12:46,470 --> 00:12:50,820 illuminating about it. It sort of moved itself. It tossed and turned 157 00:12:50,820 --> 00:12:56,310 across the page. In that way you know that, that sometimes you just 158 00:12:56,310 --> 00:13:02,040 know how something's going to spread itself out across the page. 159 00:13:02,550 --> 00:13:07,590 When I see slightly unusual alignments on the page, 160 00:13:07,590 --> 00:13:12,510 particularly, I suppose, when I see things that are aligned in columns 161 00:13:12,510 --> 00:13:17,220 or things that are indented the same amount, I always want there to 162 00:13:17,220 --> 00:13:22,620 be a kind of vertical axis on which you can read that as well. So I try 163 00:13:22,620 --> 00:13:28,620 to do that. The little bit about hair, Muireadhach is obsessed with 164 00:13:28,620 --> 00:13:32,850 hair. He's one of poetry's great trichomoniacs. John Milton is the 165 00:13:32,850 --> 00:13:38,040 other one, I think. And he wrote about cutting off his hair before 166 00:13:38,340 --> 00:13:43,590 he goes on crusade. And he writes about the Virgin Mary's hair in 167 00:13:43,620 --> 00:13:48,780 great detail. So I wanted that to work a little bit, sort of a little 168 00:13:48,780 --> 00:13:54,600 bit vertically, as if, almost as if it is hair as well. 169 00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:57,540 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, there are moments in that poem, and I think 170 00:13:57,540 --> 00:14:01,080 we've had a bit of an insight into into how it was put together, but 171 00:14:01,380 --> 00:14:06,960 there are moments that are almost seem to me like little holes in the 172 00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:10,770 poem or something to look through into another bit of a story that's 173 00:14:10,770 --> 00:14:15,540 then not fully given. And you know, there's backstory kind of glinting 174 00:14:15,540 --> 00:14:21,210 through the poem. And I wonder, are erasures or rearrangements 175 00:14:21,210 --> 00:14:23,010 important to the drafting of a poem? 176 00:14:24,200 --> 00:14:29,900 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, I think so. I mean there, I suppose the erasure 177 00:14:29,900 --> 00:14:35,990 is, is the lady herself, when I was writing that I was thinking about 178 00:14:35,990 --> 00:14:40,760 and looking at something else I love, are the wall paintings in 179 00:14:40,760 --> 00:14:44,300 medieval churches, very few of which survive in Ireland, by the 180 00:14:44,300 --> 00:14:49,460 way, more survive in England and still more, in continental Europe. 181 00:14:49,670 --> 00:14:54,260 But there's one I was looking at a picture of in an English church, 182 00:14:54,290 --> 00:14:59,840 which I think was probably meant to be a scene of the rolling away of 183 00:14:59,840 --> 00:15:04,640 the stone from Christ's tomb. And at some point, the painter had 184 00:15:04,640 --> 00:15:10,460 meant to put in the three Marys, but he never did. So that was one 185 00:15:10,460 --> 00:15:16,190 thing I was thinking of in terms of erasure. And the other, I suppose, 186 00:15:16,190 --> 00:15:21,890 is that in "Reis glorios," the important thing is the relationship 187 00:15:21,890 --> 00:15:27,710 between two men. And I think this makes Ezra Pound very jumpy when he 188 00:15:27,710 --> 00:15:35,180 translates it, and he adopts a very uncertain tone. Giraut begins every 189 00:15:35,180 --> 00:15:40,970 stanza with "bel campanho," "fine friend, beautiful friend," even. 190 00:15:41,780 --> 00:15:46,760 And then there's the refrain, "Et ades sera l'alba" and "here comes 191 00:15:46,760 --> 00:15:51,740 the dawn." And Pound does away with that he's very nervous about the 192 00:15:51,740 --> 00:15:57,620 whole thing. This is a poem about a man waiting, standing watch for his 193 00:15:57,620 --> 00:16:02,360 friend who is getting up to adulterous shenanigans inside, but 194 00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:07,670 the relationship is between these two men, and the watcher addresses 195 00:16:07,670 --> 00:16:10,850 his friend as this beautiful companion. Says he's the best, he's 196 00:16:10,850 --> 00:16:14,630 the greatest companion he's ever had. It's a real it's a real David 197 00:16:14,630 --> 00:16:17,810 and Jonathan poem actually, it's a real sort of surpassing the love of 198 00:16:17,810 --> 00:16:20,810 women kind of thing and Pound can't take that at all. 199 00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:24,710 Seán Hewitt: Now, you can feel that coming through in your own poem as 200 00:16:24,710 --> 00:16:29,720 well. I think you know that there's a lovely lift at the end that "my 201 00:16:29,720 --> 00:16:34,190 fine friend, chief glory, glorious Lord," you know, and it kind of 202 00:16:34,190 --> 00:16:39,440 reminds me of something you were saying before about that. You 203 00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:44,420 know, there's a sort of formality or reserve that seems to heighten 204 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:49,790 the directness of the poem, if that makes sense. You know, there's 205 00:16:49,790 --> 00:16:56,750 something about the language here that feels formal, but in feeling 206 00:16:56,750 --> 00:17:02,780 formal actually admits more erotic potential, perhaps than, than it 207 00:17:02,780 --> 00:17:06,470 were if, if it were solely direct, solely. You know, sometimes we 208 00:17:06,470 --> 00:17:11,540 expect intimacy to be given to us, or the erotic to be given to us in 209 00:17:11,540 --> 00:17:18,020 a sort of unabashed way. But sometimes when it's bashed, when 210 00:17:18,020 --> 00:17:26,570 it's reserved and in some way, shrouded in formal language, it 211 00:17:26,570 --> 00:17:32,120 sometimes is even more erotic, or has more potential for this sort of 212 00:17:32,150 --> 00:17:37,610 intimacy, because it seems secretive or subtle. And there's 213 00:17:37,610 --> 00:17:40,880 something in that kind of secretiveness that that makes us 214 00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:47,480 lean in and listen in a different way. Okay, Kit, I could talk to you 215 00:17:47,510 --> 00:17:52,220 a long time about the medieval world. I think it's time for a 216 00:17:52,220 --> 00:17:56,000 break, and when you come back, you're going to read one of my 217 00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:01,490 favorite poems. I'm so glad you've chosen it. It is a poem by Thomas 218 00:18:01,520 --> 00:18:09,530 Wyatt, and it's, I think, a very secretive and erotic poem. Okay, so 219 00:18:09,530 --> 00:18:11,420 we'll take a break and then we'll come back. 220 00:18:11,750 --> 00:18:12,830 Kit Fryatt: Okay, fantastic. 221 00:18:23,160 --> 00:18:25,500 Cathy & Peter Halstead: We hope you're enjoying this second season 222 00:18:25,500 --> 00:18:29,880 of The Glimpse. It's just one small part of the Adrian Brinkerhoff 223 00:18:29,880 --> 00:18:34,650 Poetry Foundation. We're the founders Peter and Cathy Halstead. 224 00:18:35,160 --> 00:18:40,350 Our goal is to make great poetry more accessible to everyone, and we 225 00:18:40,350 --> 00:18:45,060 do that in a variety of ways, through partnerships, our film 226 00:18:45,060 --> 00:18:51,600 series, this podcast and our website, brinkerhoffpoetry.org. We 227 00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:56,130 hope these works will lure you into a parallel universe, the way a 228 00:18:56,130 --> 00:19:00,600 Möbius strip brings you into another dimension without leaving 229 00:19:00,600 --> 00:19:03,660 the page you're on. Thank you so much for listening. 230 00:19:06,570 --> 00:19:08,970 Seán Hewitt: Welcome back, everyone. So Kit, the poem you've 231 00:19:08,970 --> 00:19:12,570 chosen for us is one of my favorites. It's Thomas Wyatt's. 232 00:19:12,660 --> 00:19:16,170 "They fle from me." For those of our listeners who haven't read 233 00:19:16,350 --> 00:19:20,580 Wyatt before, can you tell us either a little bit about him or 234 00:19:20,580 --> 00:19:21,210 about the poem? 235 00:19:22,410 --> 00:19:27,630 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, okay. So Thomas Wyatt was born in the early 16th 236 00:19:27,630 --> 00:19:36,270 century, 1503 or 1504 and he was a courtier at the court of Henry the 237 00:19:36,270 --> 00:19:42,660 Eighth a very dangerous place to be. Somehow, he survived to die 238 00:19:43,560 --> 00:19:50,490 young, nonetheless, he dies suddenly after a lot of kind of 239 00:19:50,490 --> 00:19:55,140 diplomatic toing and froing, he was he had a fairly thankless 240 00:19:55,140 --> 00:20:01,890 diplomatic career, but he's known perhaps most for his activities at 241 00:20:01,890 --> 00:20:06,720 the court of Henry the Eighth. He's an interesting figure because 242 00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:12,450 he managed to make the transition from Catherine of Aragon to Anne 243 00:20:12,450 --> 00:20:16,980 Boleyn. He was also very close to Anne Boleyn, and he spent some time 244 00:20:17,010 --> 00:20:23,790 in prison, possibly at the time of Anne's execution. There's a phrase 245 00:20:23,790 --> 00:20:29,250 in one of his poems which is often taken to indicate that he witnessed 246 00:20:29,250 --> 00:20:34,860 the execution of Anne Boleyn and her supposed lovers, whilst himself 247 00:20:34,860 --> 00:20:43,680 being in prison. So his poems are often read in that dark, paranoid 248 00:20:44,250 --> 00:20:50,820 atmosphere of the Reformation court of Henry the Eighth as that 249 00:20:50,820 --> 00:20:55,980 cataclysm was happening. You know that that thing, which means that 250 00:20:55,980 --> 00:21:00,660 we can't go back in some ways, to to that medieval world? 251 00:21:00,930 --> 00:21:04,740 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, they're so evocative of that, that world and 252 00:21:04,740 --> 00:21:11,040 time they seem to have a kind of candlelit, shrouded darkness around 253 00:21:11,040 --> 00:21:14,250 them. Would you read? "They fle from me." 254 00:21:17,300 --> 00:21:21,110 Kit Fryatt: They fle from me that sometyme did me seke With naked 255 00:21:21,110 --> 00:21:28,310 fote stalking in my chambre. I have sene theim gentill, tame and meke 256 00:21:28,430 --> 00:21:31,760 That nowe are wyld and do not remembre That sometyme they put 257 00:21:31,850 --> 00:21:36,800 theimself in daunger To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge 258 00:21:37,130 --> 00:21:43,040 Besely seking with a continuell chaunge. Thancked be fortune it 259 00:21:43,040 --> 00:21:47,900 hath ben othrewise Twenty tymes better, but ons in speciall, in 260 00:21:47,900 --> 00:21:52,040 thyn arraye, after a pleasaunt gyse, When her lose gowne from her 261 00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:57,050 shoulders did fall And she me caught in her armes long and small, 262 00:21:57,770 --> 00:22:03,710 Therewithall, swetely did me kysse, And softly said, "dere hert, howe 263 00:22:03,710 --> 00:22:12,560 like you this?" It was no dreme: I lay brode waking. But all is torned 264 00:22:12,560 --> 00:22:16,670 thorough my gentilnes into a straunge fasshion of forsaking; And 265 00:22:16,670 --> 00:22:22,160 I have leve to goo of her goodeness, and she also to vse new 266 00:22:22,190 --> 00:22:29,390 fangilness. But syns that I so kyndely ame served, I would fain 267 00:22:29,390 --> 00:22:32,120 knowe what she hath deserved. 268 00:22:33,650 --> 00:22:37,880 Seán Hewitt: Thank you very much. One of the things you know I love 269 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:45,560 about Wyatt is there is a sort of almost codedness or something to 270 00:22:45,620 --> 00:22:52,100 the poems that leaves you unsure quite exactly what is going on. And 271 00:22:52,100 --> 00:22:55,460 I think the first thing about this poem that I still have a question 272 00:22:55,460 --> 00:23:00,050 about is, right at the beginning, "they fle from me." You know, he 273 00:23:00,050 --> 00:23:05,000 doesn't really tell us who who "they" are. It seems in my head 274 00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:10,220 there, they appear like deer or creatures or animals. You know that 275 00:23:10,700 --> 00:23:18,140 they they once took bread from his hand, the line. "That nowe are wyld 276 00:23:18,170 --> 00:23:21,980 and do not remembre/ That sometyme they put theimself in daunger /To 277 00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:26,630 take bred at my hand." You know this admission that the speaker of the 278 00:23:26,630 --> 00:23:31,460 poem is quite a threatening character in some sense. You know, 279 00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:36,950 if these are wild creatures, they put themselves in danger to be near 280 00:23:36,950 --> 00:23:42,110 him. And the idea of you yourself being a danger is quite startling 281 00:23:42,110 --> 00:23:42,740 admission. 282 00:23:43,070 --> 00:23:44,450 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, yeah. 283 00:23:44,990 --> 00:23:48,230 Seán Hewitt: In that poem, you know, you spoke about the proximity 284 00:23:48,260 --> 00:23:52,880 to the court here, and this poem comes with its rumors attached 285 00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,930 to it. Now as we as we have it, and I'm right, I think in remembering 286 00:23:56,930 --> 00:24:00,650 that there is a rumor that this is a poem about Anne Boleyn. Have you 287 00:24:00,650 --> 00:24:01,190 heard this? 288 00:24:01,930 --> 00:24:05,710 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, it's very difficult to know with Wyatt, it's 289 00:24:05,710 --> 00:24:11,530 difficult to know when he wrote the poems that he did. It's odd. I love 290 00:24:11,530 --> 00:24:15,430 these poems. I'm not terribly interested in connecting them to 291 00:24:15,430 --> 00:24:20,140 the court politics or the personalities of the time. And I 292 00:24:20,140 --> 00:24:24,370 sort of realized this when wading through biographies of Wyatt, I'm 293 00:24:24,580 --> 00:24:28,450 actually not interested in this. What interests me, I think, is that 294 00:24:28,450 --> 00:24:34,030 that cataclysm of the Reformation that you know, in 1516 if you like, 295 00:24:34,150 --> 00:24:39,580 just before you know, Luther posted the 95 Theses, England is 296 00:24:39,580 --> 00:24:44,110 the most pious Catholic country in Western Europe, and known for 297 00:24:44,110 --> 00:24:49,000 their their piety, and 20 years later, for reasons which don't have 298 00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:52,690 a great deal to do with religious conviction, they're going through 299 00:24:52,690 --> 00:24:57,130 this cataclysm a few years later, you know, another 20 years 300 00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:03,640 and the fabric of Catholicism is being destroyed. And I think Wyatt 301 00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:08,080 fascinates me in that sense, because he straddles an old world 302 00:25:08,110 --> 00:25:14,620 and and a new in terms of his court affiliations and in terms of his 303 00:25:14,620 --> 00:25:19,210 religious ones, he seems to have been quite a convinced Evangelical, 304 00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:23,740 but he's very very secular also. When he writes to his son, 305 00:25:24,190 --> 00:25:27,460 there's not very much, there's only the merest sort of, 306 00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:33,070 kind of conventional nods at religion, which suggests, again, 307 00:25:33,070 --> 00:25:36,070 that he wasn't, you know, kind of one of the new hot, gossiping kind 308 00:25:36,070 --> 00:25:38,530 of Protestants, either that kind of interests me. 309 00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:41,540 Seán Hewitt: Yeah. But there's something about these poems that 310 00:25:41,540 --> 00:25:47,630 seems quite surprisingly secular. I remember when I read this at 311 00:25:47,630 --> 00:25:53,690 university, it was after a long term of medieval poetry in which 312 00:25:53,690 --> 00:26:00,500 I'd I had to kind of marshal an armory of biblical knowledge to 313 00:26:00,530 --> 00:26:04,640 kind of access what, what was going on in these poems. And then when we 314 00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:11,570 arrived at Wyatt, I felt a sort of modernity in them, because, because 315 00:26:11,570 --> 00:26:15,080 they seemed so secular, which is strange, considering the world that 316 00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:18,890 they came out of. This poem, seems to me, in a way, that many of 317 00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:27,290 Wyatt's poems do to be about change or changeableness, you know, here 318 00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:32,360 he, he starts off with various visions of different times. You 319 00:26:32,360 --> 00:26:36,800 know, it encapsulates a lot in this poem. We have kind of an aftermath. 320 00:26:37,100 --> 00:26:42,140 Then we have this one special moment, and then we have this, this 321 00:26:42,140 --> 00:26:46,190 phrase that I got stuck on the first time I read this poem, which 322 00:26:46,190 --> 00:26:53,030 is her right "to vse new fangilnes," which again, points 323 00:26:53,030 --> 00:26:59,150 towards not necessarily fickle, fickleness, but a changed method. 324 00:26:59,330 --> 00:27:03,380 You know, these characters seem like people who have methods and 325 00:27:03,380 --> 00:27:08,870 designs on each other. You know, they seem deliberate in the way 326 00:27:08,870 --> 00:27:13,850 that they go about conducting an affair, which, which I think kind 327 00:27:13,850 --> 00:27:18,470 of leads into the sexiness of of the poem that they they know 328 00:27:18,470 --> 00:27:21,800 what they're they're doing in the second stanza. What struck me this 329 00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,880 time when you were reading, it was the the erotics of the poem 330 00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:31,100 seem surprising to me in that second stanza, because it is the 331 00:27:31,100 --> 00:27:36,500 woman that that catches the speaker, and "When her lose gowne 332 00:27:36,530 --> 00:27:40,700 from her shoulders did fall and she caught me in her armes, long and 333 00:27:40,700 --> 00:27:48,710 small." That idea originally, we have an image of a man as predator, 334 00:27:49,190 --> 00:27:54,230 or as potential predator, these wild animals that might be put 335 00:27:54,230 --> 00:27:58,460 themselves in danger to come near him. And then in the second stanza, 336 00:27:58,790 --> 00:28:04,790 he is happy to be caught. You know, there is a sense of abandoning one 337 00:28:04,790 --> 00:28:10,040 version of a character and one kind of gender relation in in that 338 00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:12,590 stanza, do you think that's that's true? 339 00:28:12,780 --> 00:28:19,110 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, I think so. The first stanza casts the speaker as 340 00:28:19,110 --> 00:28:22,530 Huntsman, and I think the reason we think of deer is perhaps because of 341 00:28:22,530 --> 00:28:27,600 who so is to hunt. Yeah, and, you know, we think of him as kind of 342 00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:30,930 the huntsman of that poem. He's also sort of self deprecating about 343 00:28:30,930 --> 00:28:36,990 his abilities when he actually catches up to the deer, then she is 344 00:28:37,140 --> 00:28:42,090 marked out not as not for his use. I was just thinking, as we were 345 00:28:42,090 --> 00:28:46,110 saying, how secular he is, but he's also an interpreter of the Psalms, 346 00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:50,820 and then they're very, very sophisticated interpretations. I 347 00:28:50,820 --> 00:28:56,370 think he's, yeah, he's, he's an innovator. I think that that idea 348 00:28:56,370 --> 00:28:59,790 of change is not something that's just happening around him, it's 349 00:28:59,790 --> 00:29:06,030 something that he is doing, both in, you know, in in all the new 350 00:29:06,060 --> 00:29:12,660 things that he brings into English poetry. But here as well, that 351 00:29:12,660 --> 00:29:18,030 change between the the huntsman of the first stanza and then he 352 00:29:18,030 --> 00:29:22,110 suddenly, he is sort of enmeshed in, in a net, yeah, is one of the 353 00:29:22,590 --> 00:29:27,300 one of the changes and yeah, nothing is stable in this world. 354 00:29:27,420 --> 00:29:28,800 Everything is transitory and mutable. 355 00:29:29,660 --> 00:29:33,440 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, mutable seems to be the word that encapsulates so 356 00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:37,340 much about this poem. You know, when I was reading this, and I 357 00:29:37,340 --> 00:29:41,620 should say the version that you read from them was kept in its 358 00:29:41,620 --> 00:29:49,420 original spelling, and to me, that adds a sort richness that is lost 359 00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:53,860 when it's glossed into modern spelling. Um, why did you send us 360 00:29:53,860 --> 00:29:55,540 the original version? 361 00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,760 Kit Fryatt: Um, yeah, for precisely that reason. I don't think he's, 362 00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:03,740 he's not quite modern. And and most anthologists make a decision right 363 00:30:03,740 --> 00:30:06,860 about when, when to start modernizing. And sometimes it 364 00:30:06,860 --> 00:30:10,610 happens from after Chaucer, you know, after Middle English. 365 00:30:10,820 --> 00:30:12,980 Sometimes it happens with Shakespeare, sometimes it happens 366 00:30:12,980 --> 00:30:19,520 with Milton. But I think even well, almost well into the 18th century, 367 00:30:20,030 --> 00:30:24,920 modernization often takes something away, some kind of texture from 368 00:30:25,100 --> 00:30:30,710 writing of all kinds. Yeah, and I think, you know, even a text like 369 00:30:30,710 --> 00:30:33,710 the the one I sent you has punctuation added. There's no 370 00:30:33,710 --> 00:30:36,260 punctuation in these poems as they're written in the manuscripts, 371 00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:41,630 and that that brings with it a kind of an even more dizzying kind of 372 00:30:41,630 --> 00:30:48,680 range of meaning, because the only resource for pause, for, you know, 373 00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:51,530 kind of breaking, is the line break itself. There's no internal 374 00:30:51,530 --> 00:30:59,450 punctuation at all. The capitalization is is wild and 375 00:30:59,450 --> 00:31:03,530 sparse. You know, that's something I'm really, really interested in, 376 00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:09,920 is the line and the line break as poetry is really, poetry is really 377 00:31:09,950 --> 00:31:13,340 chief resource. Yeah, that's what poetry is. 378 00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,390 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, you know, in some ways, putting it into modern 379 00:31:16,390 --> 00:31:21,400 spelling and even punctuating it is kind of putting manners onto a poem 380 00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:27,340 that that is so much livelier without those those impositions, 381 00:31:28,090 --> 00:31:33,520 one of the things that I love about this poem is the the kind of quite 382 00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:38,890 startling insistence on truth, which seems strange almost, but you 383 00:31:38,890 --> 00:31:43,030 know, when you get to The start of the third stanza. And I think even 384 00:31:43,030 --> 00:31:48,430 the stresses here are interesting. There "was no dreme: I lay brode 385 00:31:48,430 --> 00:31:54,790 waking." You know, even the "I lay brode waking," you have to kind of 386 00:31:54,790 --> 00:31:58,030 stress every bit of that. So it's pulling your attention to the fact 387 00:31:58,030 --> 00:32:02,800 that this is not made up. It's not a it's not a facet of the 388 00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:07,090 imagination. Why do you think that's so important to Wyatt or to 389 00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:16,150 Kit Fryatt: Um, I think because, I mean, he, he lived in a world which 390 00:32:07,090 --> 00:32:07,780 this poem? 391 00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:21,400 was continually being pulled between kind of truth and 392 00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:26,830 necessity. I think we're still very much in in the world of of the 393 00:32:26,830 --> 00:32:33,340 court, which is haunted by the specter of flattery. Fauvel, as you 394 00:32:33,340 --> 00:32:39,310 know, the medieval, you know, the Middle English word is and and you 395 00:32:39,310 --> 00:32:43,810 have to do a certain amount of that, you know, you have to tell 396 00:32:44,410 --> 00:32:48,940 all these, these kind of politic untruths, but at the same time, you 397 00:32:48,940 --> 00:32:54,610 have to preserve yourself from being thought of as a flatterer. I 398 00:32:54,610 --> 00:32:58,600 mean, Wyatt was known even among people who are very proficient at 399 00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:04,060 playing this game, as someone who was eloquent, who was a brilliant 400 00:33:04,060 --> 00:33:09,760 speaker, and yet he failed at almost every juncture. He failed in 401 00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:14,110 his, in his diplomatic missions, or we can think of him as a great 402 00:33:14,110 --> 00:33:17,920 success as well. I mean somebody, somebody else who, who was perhaps 403 00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:25,540 less adept at verbal games would probably have have gone to the 404 00:33:25,540 --> 00:33:27,610 scaffold, which he didn't. 405 00:33:29,100 --> 00:33:33,810 Seán Hewitt: So, yeah. I mean, it's a language and rhetoric as a life 406 00:33:33,810 --> 00:33:37,440 or death situation sometimes in that, in that instance. 407 00:33:37,750 --> 00:33:42,340 Kit Fryatt: Yeah, yeah. And I think it's about, you know, what is 408 00:33:42,340 --> 00:33:47,050 truth? You know, the truth is words. You know, it's, it's hot 409 00:33:47,050 --> 00:33:52,480 air, as Falstaff might have said, you know. So the truth is 410 00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:57,160 articulated in the same words as flattery. Words are all we've got. 411 00:33:57,190 --> 00:34:01,120 Yeah, which is sort of the predicament of the poet. 412 00:34:01,540 --> 00:34:06,250 Seán Hewitt: Yeah, words alone are certain, good or not as the case 413 00:34:06,250 --> 00:34:11,050 may be. Kit all right, thank you so much for talking with me. 414 00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:14,360 Kit Fryatt: Thank you so much, Seán and it's been a great pleasure and 415 00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:15,440 great privilege. Thank you. 416 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:24,330 Seán Hewitt: Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host. Seán Hewitt. 417 00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:29,580 Kit's poem, "bodyservant," from his book bodyservant, published in 2018 418 00:34:29,610 --> 00:34:32,880 was aired with permission from Shearsman Books. Thomas Wyatt's 419 00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:38,040 poem, "They fle from me" is in the public domain. Coming up next week, 420 00:34:38,100 --> 00:34:42,270 poet Martina Evans weighs in on the power of a cat and why Frank 421 00:34:42,270 --> 00:34:46,020 O'Hara's poem, "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," 422 00:34:46,260 --> 00:34:51,660 inspired some of her work. Make sure to subscribe to The Glimpse 423 00:34:51,690 --> 00:34:55,020 wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find episodes on our 424 00:34:55,020 --> 00:34:58,950 website, Brinkerhoffpoetry.org/podcast, We'd 425 00:34:58,950 --> 00:35:02,010 also love to hear from you. Drop us an email at the glimpse poetry 426 00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:06,960 podcast@gmail.com The Glimpse is a production of the Adrian 427 00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:11,520 Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. I'm your host, Seán Hewitt. Our senior 428 00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:15,270 producer is Jennifer Wolfe, Kat Yore is our technical director and 429 00:35:15,270 --> 00:35:19,050 mixing engineer. Editorial Director. Amanda Glassman is our 430 00:35:19,050 --> 00:35:22,920 curator and production coordinator, Amy Holmes is the foundation's 431 00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,460 Executive Director, and our co founders are Cathy and Peter 432 00:35:26,460 --> 00:35:28,860 Halstead. Thanks for listening.