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Tolkien the Poet: Our verdict on the New Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julian Golding. I'm
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an author and a passionate fan of all things Tolkien and joining me in that enthusiasm
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is my podcast friend Jacob Renica from over in America. So welcome Jacob to our discussion
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today. Thank you. And what we've decided to take on is Tolkien the Poet. Now this was
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inspired by the publication of this wonderful box set of the collected works of Tolkien,
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which has been put into three sections. They go from 1910 to 1919, then 1919 to 1931. And then
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the final volume is 1931 to 1967. So for example the 1919 volume includes some of his wall
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per tree, more about that and on. And then the last volume contains all the stuff that you know
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from Lord of the Rings and the middle one. 1931 is actually a sort of emerging hobbit-y style
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and some marillion poems I would say. Anyway there's plenty in there. I would say that probably
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only the absolute die-hard Tolkien fan will buy the three volumes because they are not cheap.
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But if you can get hold of a copy in your local library, I would particularly recommend
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where to start. I would particularly recommend going straight into poem 149 to 171 in the third
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volume, which is all the Lord of the Rings stuff. And once you've got that under your belt,
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you might want to pop back into poem 128, which is the fascinating
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errant tree poem, which we might spend some time talking about. And then if you want to think
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about the war years, go back to poem 58, which is called The Brothers in Arms, all of these are
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fabulous poems. Anyway, so that's the headlines. And now we're going to have the discussion about
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Tolkien the Poet. So Jacob, what did we learn about Tolkien the Poet by having a look at this
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three volume collection? There's quite a bit. And like you mentioned, this is an incredible
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piece of scholarship and the notes, the footnotes. So I kept, it took me so long to get through it
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because the footnotes and commentary were so fascinating. Pulling in elements from, to provide full
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context, from letters, which we've done a previous episode on, the newest edition of Tolkien's
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letters. So finding all the things, the place is in there where he's talking about writing poetry,
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his approach to poetry, why he even wrote poetry in the first place. And one of those, I think,
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for me, as you asked about Tolkien the Poet, there was a section from letters that I think
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sets up, why he explained why he wrote poetry or when he started writing poetry at the beginning.
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And he said, talking with one of his friends outside of a cathedral, and his friend asked him,
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why is it that cloud? Well, so Tolkien asked his friend, why is it that cloud so beautiful?
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And his friend says, because you have begun to write poetry, John Ronald,
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assuming that his writing of poetry is opening him up to sing the world more beautifully.
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But Tolkien says he was wrong. It was because death was near, and all was intolerably fair,
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lost air-grasp. That's why I was beginning to write poetry. So for him, it was this sense of,
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it wasn't poetry that's helping him see the world as beautiful and fragile,
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but rather, he saw this fragile world and death all around him. And so his response to that was
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poetry. It was putting that into words and kind of recording that. So I think that's a fascinating
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starting point for him was death, which we see as a major theme in Lord of the Rings, death,
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loss, and yet there's something that we see throughout here, this inevitable upward turn,
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this kind of eukedestrophic turn in his poetry, and in the development of his poetry to hope amid
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this loss and death. So something that kind of initially stood out to me, how about you, Julia,
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what sort of things kind of initially grabbed you looking at Tolkien to put? Well, we must shout out,
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talking about the scholarship, the editors, it's Christina Skull and Wayne G. Hammond,
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to whom we owe all this wisdom. So well done, guys, it's been obviously a labour of love.
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So yes, I agree what you're saying, and of course death was one of the
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themes that he explicitly said was behind Lord of the Rings. On many of his,
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a number of things he says Lord of the Rings is about, and that's one of them. I think also for me,
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looking at the poetry is just how much there is of it during his life. He carries on writing poetry
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right up to 1967, so right up into old age, there are particular moments which are very fruitful.
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So particularly his youth when the group of his school friends got together and poetry was the
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thing they were sharing predominantly between them. Sadly, as many of the listeners, this will know that
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most of that group or half, that group was wiped out by the First World War, and that was a
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sense of the loss of the poetic voice of that generation that Tolkien's kind of stepping up to be
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for them. And then of course the 20s, lots of poetry there, and then when he's writing his books,
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he is writing for particular narrative moments. So there is a lot of it, and the archive on it
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is extensive, so it's not just the, the reason why there's three volumes is because they're putting
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all the different versions of a poem down that they could recreate from the manuscripts. So it's
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not an easy read, it's a scholarship read. So sometimes if I was less interested in a poem, I would
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skim the various versions and go to the final version, and then we'll look back to see, to follow
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the narrative. So I think you can dip into this book in any way you like, and I was trying not to
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get weighed down by the scholarship, I'm not writing an essay on Tolkien. So I allow myself
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to enjoy the poetry as being poetry. So there is a lot of it. Then the next thing I would say,
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my next headline is, how much he experimented and played with verse, and this is a constant theme.
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What did you think about his experiments with nursery rhymes, for example? Did you get...
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That was when he says in that quote that it was death that really inspired him to poetry,
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but that wasn't the only thing that drove him. I'm sure that was an element, or at that time,
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looking back, he saw that as a major influence. But when he became a father, that's when he
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starts reworking these poets, these nursery rhymes, writing a few little verses just for his new
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child. When John was born, he just started writing his poem, a rhyme for my boy.
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That's just about somebody getting a little crown and buying it in the market. It's silly,
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it's quaint, but it's cute. So you see him really kind of playing, like you were saying,
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like playing with language, and with the nursery rhymes, you see that all over the place.
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I think you see him in some ways, he's participating in the tradition. This is something that comes
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up later, and this is a teaser for talking later about some of the poems that are in the Lord
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of the Rings, especially the poems for Rohan that are more patterned after Old English. He's not
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just kind of aping Old English poetic styles. He's using those as jumping off points and kind of
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putting them in conversation with the original poem, because in one of the footnotes,
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it mentions him kind of chastising other translators for trying to make the poem's message
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more palatable to contemporary experiences and expectations for poetry. He says that that was
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an act not of translation, but of destruction that you need to let these things stand on their own
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and give them their full voice, but it's okay, he took full liberty to say, I'm consciously
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taking this poem as kind of my sparring partner, and he would then play with it, so with the cat
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in a fiddle, which then later becomes the man in the moon, stayed up to late. He takes this little
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simple children's rhyme. He's not saying that he's going to like replacing it, but he does
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spin a larger tail out of it. It fits completely within the world of that original poem, but he is
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constantly looking to it, coming back from it, and this kind of interplay between these
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pretty existing ideas, and him, like you said, there's having fun and playing and kind of expanding
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using his imagination to kind of encourage this poem to flower in a way by his participation and
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engagement with it, that it's in fact honoring in some ways that original kernel of that poem,
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he's respecting it enough to take it seriously and to develop it. So that was something that
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is really fun to see him doing there, and that of course, I think fits in with this larger
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project of, you know, subcreation, right, taking ideas, things that exist, and then really shaping
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them into something different, consistent coherent, that is as life-like as possible, which includes
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comedy, in addition to, you know, drama and tragedy. Yeah, how about you, as you were reading
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some of these more playful poems, what were things that you noticed?
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Yeah, I was drawn to talking about the playful poems, because that is a thread that goes all the way
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through. So he starts writing these when he's a young father, sort of playing around with the
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idea of the nasty rhyme, having a sort of bigger backstory. And then he reworks some of them to
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fit into the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings when he needs a poem. So he goes to his drawer of,
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with a notebook of poetry and draws them out and shifts and changes them to fit the context.
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And then of course, later on, he puts together the Tom Bombardille collection of poems,
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where some of these get reworked again, and he blows off the dust of some others that he has.
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So, and then of course, he does publish that volume of poetry during his lifetime. So
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I would say he hoards poetry like a dragon and polishes them up for display at the right moment.
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And we should also mention, we probably won't go into detail about this, because I don't think
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either of Speak Anglo-Saxon or Elvish, but there are long poems written in other real and invented
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languages. He clearly, the thing about the connection between his interest in languages and
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his interest in poetry is sound, that these sound wonderful, even if you don't know what they
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are saying, that the translations provide a wonderful insight into what's going on, but in a way
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you don't need that, because it's the sound of them that is so intoxicating. And that is something
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which he did both professionally. There were some attempts to encourage students of
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these languages by writing new poetry for them in it, but also
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what you were mentioning about sparring with them and creating his own, and of course exploring
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the possibilities of Elvish in verse. So there's that area in the book as well. So if you're interested in
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this, do dip into those sections of the three volumes. By the way, it's very clearly signposted.
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Each volume has all the poems listed at the beginning. You just need to look down, find the one
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you want to follow and go to it. It's very clearly signposted. Anyway, what I want to talk about now
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is how so many of the poems of that early period start in one context and get dragged into the
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middle earth context. I've got a couple in mind, but was there anywhere you followed the footnotes?
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And I thought this is a really interesting evolution giving insight into his thinking.
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Yeah, the earliest one that really where I realized that this was going to take me a lot longer
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than I thought it was was getting into the the thick of the footnotes for the grimness of the sea.
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Later, you know, titled The Tides, later titled Seach Hand of an Elderday, finally titled The Horns
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of Yilmir or Olmo. So you see it's a poem that starts about just his feelings about the coast
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and the ocean against the shore. That's what it initially was, but then through these successive
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kind of iterations, revisiting, reworking, it becomes a poem about a song of 74 lines that
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tour makes for Airendel. So it goes from just using this capturing his feelings, staring at the
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coast to then being fully incorporated into his legendary in this epic poem essentially that's
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fully embodied by some of the characters that he's created here and actually done in their voice
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and from their perspectives to fit consistently within his larger legendary. So that was the one that
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for me kind of changed, you see it no pun intended, you know, ebbing and flowing between all of
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these different versions and all of the different individual, you know, strike-throughs and edits
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and reworks. So that one, that was probably the one for me that was the earliest on that just kind
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of signal to me like, okay, here's, like you said, he's hoarding these ideas that he has. I don't
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know if like hoarding, I'd say maybe I love that image. I'd say for him, it's kind of like cultivating.
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If gold was living, which the dwarves would say it is, so I don't want to say that gold, it doesn't
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actually have life, but it's, you know, he's kind of storing these away and then like bringing them
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out, not just like to polish them, but to kind of like water them and see if there's something that
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he can add to or join to this larger kind of organic organism of this world that he's creating.
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Is this something that he can transplant from this original context and will it survive
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if given the proper care and feeding in this new world legendarium? Because I think he assumes
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that the legendarium has been kind of essentially a constant his whole life. And so everything that
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he's created possibly has roots or connection. It's all watered by the same rain and, you know,
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in life and by the same sun that's, he's been, you know, experiencing his whole life. And so I
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think that's why he sees it as, that he could just like rifle through his, his file cabinet and say,
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here's a poem about, you know, any of these things and he would actually look at it and take it
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seriously as something that could possibly fit in here. And so that was so fascinating. This
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grimness of the sea going to the horns of Yilmere transformation as kind of his process of
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trying to get his mind around his whole life and his whole, you know, creative identity as a creator.
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So we're sorry, as a sub creator. Yes, that was probably one for me. I don't know, which ones for
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you were fascinating. Yeah, another one in that early batch is one called the Trees of Criterion,
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which is based on the real city of Warwick. Now Warwick is, it's probably about 50 miles north
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of Oxford and would have been a place that he, he certainly visited or met his wife there
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during these sort of war years at early stage of the marriage. It was one of the places he was near.
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So it was a very special, beautiful place for them. And it is a very beautiful city. It's got a
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fabulous, absolutely jaw-dropping castle, so very mythic. But what I think is very interesting
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about it is watching how a real place and a poem about a real, real place that you can identify
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and visit morphs into a city that could feel its part of the Silmarillion and Middle Earth.
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So if you want to watch the alchemy that goes on in a creative mind, watching the evolution of
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that poem is particularly interesting. And a very sort of small touch is poem number 83,
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which eventually becomes Sam's song about the troll. And you can notice the subtle differences
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that happen in this song, which begins as a kind of comic verse. And the reference in it that
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particularly drops out is churchyard. It becomes graveyard, if you know the poem,
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bones were found in the graveyard, because Tolkien takes out references to organized religion.
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He doesn't want to have a sense of, you know, after Christ, he wants to be back in the day.
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So little touches like that, and plus the troll undergoes a change, so it feels more in tune with
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how trolls appear in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit than in traditional fairy tales. So it sort
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of pulled into the gravity of his sort of planet of Middle Earth. So yeah, I think that's one of
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the things I learned watching this is almost like little versions of the evolution you can find
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by following the many extra volumes of Tolkien's work published by Christopher Tolkien. You can
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sort of see like small versions of this happening in poetry, which you see in the prose that's
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edited by Christopher Tolkien. So I think it's also a place where he puts his deepest thoughts.
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And before we move into the Lord of the Rings poetry, I thought we should do a shout-out for poem
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136, which is Mythapyr. Jacob, tell us about Mythapyr. Why should we all go and read that one?
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Yeah, well, this is a distillation of Tolkien's understanding of the, you know, myth-making,
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right? Mythopia literally means the creation of myths and his whole philosophy of subcreation.
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So it's a really great companion piece for his, you know, lecture on fairy stories later turned
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into an essay. So you kind of, if you look at Mythopia in conjunction with on fairy stories and
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Smith of Wooden Major, all three of those are kind of this trinity that really distill and illustrate
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in different ways what Tolkien sees himself participating in when he's writing and the utility of
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that. I know I've used the word utility is something that he would spit at. And so it's not
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utilitarian, right? It is celebratory. It is, and in some cases, devotional because this is
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something that he's fitting within his larger religious framework as well. So, yeah, so Mythopia,
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and this is, and this is something that's particularly dear to me. I think this is the first
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Tolkien poem outside of Lord of the Rings that I read, and I just fell in love with as I was kind
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of trying to understand his philosophy and his theory of myth making. But it's also when I was
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with you, Julia at Oxford, and this is the highest of recommendations for your courses that you can
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take through myth makers yourself. Julia was able to show me at Modeling College the little path
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where this is a poem that's kind of spinning out of a conversation that Tolkien has with
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CS Lewis that said a specific place, Julia can show you exactly where.
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Maybe not the moment where this actually hits, but the place where they're walking,
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that Lewis, Hugo Dyson, and Tolkien are kind of talking about myths in general and why they're
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valuable. This is the one that kind of starts with, before the poem starts, it says, it's from
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essentially Philomithus from Philomithus to Meizomithus. So, from the myth lover to the myth
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hater, and that's who is kind of coding for Lewis who says that myths were, they're beautiful,
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they're lies even though they're breathed through silver. So, they're beautiful, but ultimately they're
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not true. But what Tolkien was apparently this conversation revolved around what is truth in myth,
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and this was kind of with CS Lewis before he identifies this as one of his major, I guess like
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checkpoints or gates through what he passes in his reenchantment of Christianity, of Dyson,
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of him kind of returning to his religious roots. So, yeah, this is a fascinating poem,
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and then to have this one here given special attention is great, and to see it how it's not just
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a poem that he's just, you know, spinning this off from his imagination, but it's rooted in,
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when you look at the context, with his relationships with other people, and real conversations about
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meaning and life. And like you said, Julia, this is his, he's putting his deepest thoughts into poems,
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and so this isn't either an academic exercise, isn't just an academic exercise, it isn't just
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for fun, for kicks and giggles, this is where he's wrestling with the meaning of life in many ways,
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and his own life's work, and that's what I see happening here in in Ethiopia.
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Yeah, it's got a funny start for our era, because it's part of the conversation, it starts dear sir.
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Sir, I said, although now long has changed, man is not wholly lost, not wholly changed,
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disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned.
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Man sub-creator, the reflected, reflected, get it right, the refracted light,
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through whom is splintered from a single white to many hues, and endlessly combined in living
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shapes that move from mind to mind. So I love the idea that we're all like splinters of light,
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and they move from mind to mind. So what you describe the stars, so if you come up with a great
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metaphor for the stars, I mean, I catch that splinter, and then I see the stars like that.
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He sees no stars who does not see them first of living silver-made, that sudden burst
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of flame-like flowers beneath an ancient song, whose very echo after music long has since pursued.
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So the idea is the culture of the myth is so powerful that we all see more clearly in a way,
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but we see different versions. Of course, we all know that white light, the divine light here,
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is made up of the rainbow. So if we get our red and our orange and our little snapshot,
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so we put them all together, we get back to some or approach some sense of the original white light.
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Anyway, so wonderful, wonderful poem, full of thought-provoking images, and definitely
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something a talking fan will enjoy reading. Okay, let's move on to the section I mentioned at
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the beginning is perhaps some of the most enjoyable, which is seeing him write the poems from Lord
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the Rings. I picked this one rather than the Hobbit, because though there are poems in the Hobbit,
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I think the Lord of the Rings ones in particular reveal his processes. They were written,
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not all of them, but many of them were written whilst he was working on the book. So they were
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written for the place in the book that he was going to put them, rather than early stuff being
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brought in. It does that a couple of times, but mainly in situ. Their hone for the position,
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and it's interesting to find out where they fall. So the notes are very good on this. It points out
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that you get most of them in the first two books, they fellowship with the ring, and then you get
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particular outbursts with Rohan and the Ense, and then after that there is some some poetry around
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the Perennial Fields, marvellous, liturative verse, and then there's a fantastic short song
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that Sam sings when he's waiting to or trying to find Frodo. So I will give you the first thing I
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learned from this, which I love learning, which is about poem 149, which is one ring to all the
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one ring to find. He couldn't decide the ring distribution. You have no idea how many there were
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when he was first setting out in the late 30s. He had, oh, is it three for the dwarves,
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nine for the elves, or is it? You can see him playing around with just what these rings of power
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about. It's absolutely fabulous. I love that, because you can literally see him making his mind up
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in the poem, and of course that then decides who the black riders are, and how many there are,
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and who the rings of the elves were, and how many there were, and the dwarves. So I absolutely love
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that. I think one of my favorite tidbits about that one in the footnotes is that in an interview,
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Tolkien recalls that he invented that verse while he was in the bath.
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Lots of bath poems, of course, as well. They're also in that one. There's the delightful note that he
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used to write out lists of rhyming words. So stone, foam, moan, roan, cone, and so on. So he'd make
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a list down the side of the page, and then he would look at that when he came to a rhyme.
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Obviously you're not going to use roan as in a roan horse. That doesn't fit, but stone,
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oh, that's a good one. And he would then put it in. So just to see the poetic work is absolutely
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delightful. So then the next area which I thought was fun to see was the similarity between the way
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the tombomberdill section of poetry emerged with the ent of treebeards poetry.
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In a way how Tolkien started writing prose and yet it became poetry and when tombomberdill
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slips back to and fro. So it shows you how as a writer he's so keyed into the rhythm and the
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poetry of what he is writing. And some of his descriptions are light poems. When you actually
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read them back you could rearrange them with white space and think, oh gosh, another poem.
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So I enjoyed seeing that being really sort of lifted out of place and examined.
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Yeah, that was a good one. I appreciated that too. And there was some in the reworking of
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Oh, it was later. I think it was it was Legolas' poem. Yeah, the song of Legolas where he,
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so in in between some of his he had, you know, several different re-workings of of this poem.
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And in one of that re-workings then he then adds a prose passage kind of like in between that.
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So it's really like so his the prose was inspiring the poetry but also it would go both ways.
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And sometimes you're like you're saying it's hard to tell the difference between the two.
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It's it's it's it's the prose is written in such an elevated register and the rhythm is such
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that you could break it out. And sometimes you see him trying out different, you know,
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ways of indenting, right? How are you actually breaking up lines of the poetry? So it's very
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a fluid process for him. It seemed that that he was being inspired. There's this, you know,
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again, like this ebb and flow of like this idea is an idea that is communicating itself better in
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poetry or in prose if it's in poetry. And he one of the things that he goes, you know, makes a
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point of is that these aren't just mere decorations that these are the poems are integral to
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the the story itself because he's not just, you know, inserting a poem for poetry's sake,
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it has to serve the plot. It has to clarify the thoughts and feelings of the individuals.
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It has to help distinguish between the different races that he's talking about that he's
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developing. So dwarf poetry is going to be different than Elvish poetry is going to be different than
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Hobbit poetry is going to be different from, you know, you know, Gondor, Rohan, they're all going
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to feel different. So it's part of creating more of the texture for this world and it's going to
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advance the plot in some way. And so this is where I think it's kind of comparable for those people
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who follow the history of musical, of musical theater that before the, the, in, in America,
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before Oklahoma the play, there would just, you know, there would be a story and then kind of like
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breaks for just kind of like song and dance and they do that and then kind of get back to the story.
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But starting with, with Oklahoma, that was where the characters would stop and actually sing about
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what they were thinking and feeling as an aside and it would further the plot. And then from that
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point, then the pattern for musicals was the, the musicals and a side had to serve the plot.
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Or that was one of the primary purposes of this. It wasn't just a break from the seriousness of
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this. It was actually incorporated into there. And Tolkien is like, it's very much doing that that
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this is, he's taking such great care to, to make these poems distinctive and consistent with
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the rest of the mythology. And so he, these are doing so much work. And one of the points that
32:54
the authors, your, our, our editors of this volume, make is that a lot of the fans, or they're,
33:00
they're, I won't say a lot, but there are people among the fans of Lord of the Rings and the
33:05
Hobbit that just kind of skipped those probably more in the Lord of the Rings that they see the poetry
33:10
as an excuse to just kind of skip to the next prose section. But if you do that, you're actually
33:16
missing parts that are central to the story itself and even, and, and the enriching of the world
33:23
of, of Middle Earth. So slow down. So when you get to poetry rather than kind of speeding up and
33:28
just trying to get down along your way, one of the things I think that this book demonstrates is
33:32
the need to slow, to actually slow down when you get to the poetry, to then see, okay, why did
33:38
Tolkien write this as a poem rather than just, you know, say, uh, Eric Warren sang a song
33:45
and then move on. He's actually, it goes to quote it. So like, why did he do that? And if you take the time
33:52
to read it, then you kind of see, and what this, what this volume does is, less you behind,
33:57
you know, the curtain to see Tolkien's process of how seriously he took it and how, how much
34:02
development he's doing, that it, how much heavy lifting the poetry is doing for his world building,
34:07
for his character building. Um, and it's just, it's just phenomenal. Once you get to see what's
34:11
actually going on here. Yeah. And the editors do a wonderful job too at connecting poems to their
34:18
external context where that's relevant. So I enjoyed reading about, um, the wizard from the
34:24
Calivala, who has the Tom Bombadil or the other way around. Tom Bombadil has the power of song,
34:31
such as the wizard from that beloved work that Tolkien loved. Um, great for Finnish epic,
34:38
isn't it? I think. Yeah. All right. Um, and also, but not just things back in the past,
34:46
it mentions that the lament for Boromir has resemblance to a well-known to Tolkien's
34:52
generation poem by Kipling, who was probably the preeminent poem at the, poet at the end of the
34:59
Victorian era for most people. Um, so that's interesting to, and of course it's very different from
35:05
Kipling, but yet to find those echoes is interesting. Um, I have a particular, uh, enjoyment of the
35:16
evolution of the prophecy song. Now, the next of you who have come at this from just watching the
35:20
films, you miss this because, um, they, they leap over the, the Grey Company, but anyway, um,
35:29
the Grey Company arrives when Argonne is trying to work out how he can get to ministerial
35:35
thin time to save the city. And they come bearing another prophecy. There are several prophecies,
35:42
nudges, oh, from the, from history or dreams, telling people what to do. And this one
35:49
is the one about the Stone of Eric, the Eric. He has to go and the Stone of Eric would be a very
35:55
different thing. A Stone of Eric, um, he has to summon the army of those who didn't fight for Isldo
36:04
his ancestor. And what I really liked about this is seeing that what he's first thought
36:09
was originally, the prophecy would begin to start being fulfilled because three lords would be
36:17
present to summon them. And the three lords are obviously Argonne, but Legolas, who is the son of a
36:24
king and Gimli, who is a son of another very notable dwarf. So they were the three lords there.
36:31
But Tolkien moved away from that. And what he did by doing that is he left it open
36:38
that they may choose not to fulfill the prophecy at this time. It wasn't sliding down to inevitably,
36:45
oh, well, the three lords have turned up. So therefore, this is the moment. He cut that out and made
36:51
it simpler. So there's more jeopardy at the moment. And a very similar thing happened to, um,
36:56
poem 153 back in, um, Fellowship of the Ring where the Hobbits are singing one of their walking
37:02
songs. And it mentions that the Ring is going to be cast into the fire. Hang on a minute, they don't
37:08
know this. So he takes that out so that the Hobbits at that stage, I think they're just walking to
37:14
Rivendell and it makes Frodo's decision to be the one to carry the Ring from there to mount
37:21
doom a much bigger deal. So those particular evolutions of the poems were fascinating to see how he
37:29
moved away in a good, productive way from his first thoughts to simplify the poems and take out
37:36
any plot spoilers, um, which weren't necessary or helpful at that point. Do you want to say anything
37:46
about the, um, the wonderful, eliterative verse in the Rohan Battle of Palermo Field section?
37:56
Yeah, this is, yeah, and these are really interesting. And I think you see a lot here of,
38:02
those, especially like I mentioned earlier with with Rohan, that his academic studies, right, his
38:07
profession, uh, of, you know, professor, um, dealing with, you know, Anglo-Saxon, literature, old English
38:14
that that really colors, uh, his interpretation of, you know, these, these events that he is
38:22
himself creating. And so he has these stories and then he's, you know, coming in and
38:28
playing the bard afterward, you know, recounting, uh, these, these events and doing so in a way that he
38:35
feel would be lived in and in world. Um, uh, and so yeah, so I, I, I, I mentioned that there was,
38:43
you know, a, a particular, uh, poem that he was drawing from, uh, the wanderer, uh, was one of
38:52
these poems, uh, that he, that was the, for the, where now the horse and writer, um, is that,
38:57
is that the particular one that you're talking about? Well, there's, there's a few, so all the
39:03
illustrative first, um, so some of them are pre the battle. And then some of them are, um, accounts
39:13
of the battle and the sort of roll call of the dead. Um, I think one thing that struck me is
39:22
how this links back to that poem I mentioned at the beginning, um, the Brothers in Arms, because
39:29
that's got a feeling of a similar idea of people being buried under the swelling grass. Um, he
39:38
fell alone. I heard him cry. I could not reach him, save to die. Too late beside him, let us lie,
39:45
make him a grave beside the sea, heap the same earth over me, there together, let us be,
39:51
build our barrow broad and high that homeward sailors passing by may mark the headland where we lie,
39:58
silent as long as time shall be in narrowhouse without a key and so on. So,
40:05
surely when he's writing these laments, he was already using the idea of barrows and the old
40:12
Anglo-Saxon burial practices, or his real loss of his real friends back in the end of the First
40:21
World War. So when he's writing the laments for the dead Pellano field, I think there's more power
40:31
knowing that he, he lost friends in war and it's a very fitting, beautiful way of marking that.
40:40
I always find it incredibly moving. That list of names, I was back to, I was reading this morning,
40:45
I had tears in my eyes, um, and I've read it so many times. We don't know, don't really know
40:51
anything about the, the names mentioned there, but I just find it really moving the list of people,
40:57
it's like looking at the names on a senator or, or in the wall of a church, we got one in our
41:04
little village church with the names of the lost, look at it at Sunday, it's a similar, powerful
41:11
effect. Yeah, that is absolutely true, and I think, and that's something that also comes across
41:17
in like Greek literature, and I, as it's something I noticed in my most recent, like reread of the
41:22
Iliad, um, was, you know, they're, seemingly randomly, there'll be some person called out and
41:28
it says this person, and then gives like a line, and they don't have any sort of role within the
41:34
larger narrative, but they were just, you know, uh, Tom, who, who showed up, who is conscripted
41:40
into service, and he, you know, people really liked him, he had, he had people over to his house
41:45
and he made them feel good, uh, and like, and he died, and that that's tragic. So like, when I
41:49
would see these little individual names in that, those lists called out, it was, it was the, the
41:54
anonymity in some ways that lent a greater weight to that character, um, that yes, this was a person,
42:02
but there's, you could tell that, okay, this person had a life, right? This person was,
42:08
was valuable just for being a person, and here they were, they died in this, so it's,
42:12
so it's tragic in that sense, but in another sense, they are being memorialized, uh,
42:18
for ages to come, because they were part of this, you know, heroic, uh, battle, and that's
42:23
something that I think Tolkien, we see, um, as he's, uh, looking at the difference as he's playing
42:29
with some of these old English poems, and some of them, he's saying, uh, the tendency, being just
42:36
kind of more downward, uh, toward despair, um, and, and pure lament, but in the re-workings of these,
42:45
uh, uh, these different poems, or his sparring, his engagement with, he always kind of adds some,
42:52
some ray of hope. There's something that is kind of worked into there that adds, and even if,
42:57
though they died, there's something either beautiful about their death or something that's hopeful
43:01
in moving beyond the death of that person, even if it is just the memory of their light, that
43:08
that's something that can, you know, overcome this kind of chasm of death that's been created
43:12
by the death of this person, but that light can be drawn forward, and it's drawn forward in these
43:17
kind of epic traditions that's, that's just beautiful coming. And I would say at this point,
43:22
that if you are a bit cold to the Pellennor Phil's poetry, immediately run away and go and listen
43:29
to the BBC dramatized version where they have an absolutely brilliant setting to music of this,
43:39
it's fantastic. And it shows you how powerful the poetry is if you imagine it's sung,
43:45
and it's so well done. In fact, a lot of the poetry is done brilliantly in that BBC adaptation
43:50
from the 80s, set to wonderful music, so highly recommended. Okay, so, um, just sort of finishing
43:57
off on the Lord of the Rings material before we give our verdict. I would say that my favorite poem
44:04
of them all is the one that Sam sings when he's in Curious Angle in Western lands beneath the sun,
44:13
that one, beautifully sung by Bill Nye in the BBC version. And it's a song I used to sing
44:19
to my kids as a lullaby. Oh, sure. I'm a real, um, Tolkien,
44:25
keen, they get indoctrinated young in our household. Um, and I was fascinated to watch the evolution of
44:33
my favorite poem because it started out much more complicated, more lines, more verses.
44:39
It kind of morphed into the Bilbo I sit beside the fire and think. It became a bit more like that
44:47
as though it was a Bilbo song. And then it became, for me, if you want someone to say to you,
44:54
what is the essence of Tolkien poetry? It's this. So the first verse is about the beauty of middle
45:00
earth, the stars in the sky and the trees. And then the second verse is defiance.
45:08
Though here at journey's end, I lined up and it's very deep that bit. So it seems to me like a
45:14
little perfectly formed summary of everything that's brilliant about Tolkien. So there you go. That's
45:21
worth the price of the admission, isn't it? How about you? Have you got a favorite poem?
45:26
I think, yeah, I just kind of want to echo that one. I think that was for me looking at him,
45:31
reworking that one. And that's really where it hit home to me, his revisions, because at the earliest
45:37
versions of that, it was, it was really a lament. It seemed like, but then as it's slowly being
45:43
revised, it has this upward curve that's towards it. Even though they'll start with like the beauty,
45:50
but then it's still, it was like, and now, you know, the world is dark. You know, I'm in a sea of shadow
45:55
or I'm, you know, it was one of the phrases that ended, you know, being used. And so from being
46:00
just kind of lament, pure lament to then this, you know, upward turn that you're still, the sun is
46:07
still shining above the dark. About the shadows. Right. This is a sun and stars shall ever dwell.
46:13
Yeah, see that's, and that's, but then that wasn't in the earliest versions, right? So you see
46:17
Tolkien almost going through this, this evolution that you see with, I think, himself, even with
46:24
like war poetry, with seeing, you know, being bogged down by, here's this death and this, you know,
46:29
inequity and destruction of both human life and the natural world, right? With industrialization,
46:38
and this, you know, this long defeat, but you see, then, you know, that there is this hope,
46:43
this belief, and something that can transcend that. And so you've kind of seen this poem, a microcosm
46:49
of Tolkien's kind of personal evolution. And I'm wondering if, you know, I think, yeah, this poem,
46:55
you have, I think is a great way to kind of end our discussion about poetry because this poem
47:00
itself, the, you know, our editors point us to a legend, the English legend of a menstrual
47:09
who is searching for King Richard, the first of England. And, you know, who went around,
47:14
wasn't sure where the, the, the, the King was being kept. And so the menstrual would go and sing
47:19
this song and, and wait for the response, you know, to the following verses. And, and went from
47:24
Castle to Castle until finally, he heard the responding verses and knew that's where the King was.
47:29
And so Tolkien is playing with that idea because, and they think and say that because he mentions
47:35
that, that episode in a letter to somebody else. So they knew that he knew about it. So,
47:39
well, I knew about it outside of this. It's a fake, you know, anyone who reads kind of
47:44
myths and legends here, the Bard's name is Blondelle. And Richard the Lionheart managed to get
47:51
himself quite a good PR in history. He wasn't actually, but he's, he's done quite well. He's the
47:56
good King in Robin Hood. The Disney, the Disney film. Yeah, apparently. He wasn't really folks.
48:02
Sorry. But anyway, in the missing legends, he comes out well. And indeed, Blondelle locates him
48:09
by singing a song outside his window. So, yes, you have like, yes, this is important. So,
48:14
the story. So it's not, you know, again, like, a thing. It's not just a wholesale copying of it,
48:19
but it's taking that idea and recasting it as the seed for something beautiful that's happening
48:24
here. So you have that kind of the, the academic engagement with story and tradition.
48:29
You have his kind of like personal evolution of, you know, how he's dealing with death and loss.
48:37
And also, I think maybe even for his own creative process. And this is, I'll quote this from,
48:44
right from Lord of the Rings, it's kind of like, right before the poem, he launches into the poem.
48:49
It kind of talks about how Sam starts kind of like spinning up to say the poetry. It says to his
48:56
surprise, to Sam's surprise, it moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell. He begins
49:02
to sing. He murmured old childish tunes out of the shire. So he starts with picking all these,
49:07
you know, nursery rhymes songs that he heard. And then, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo's rhymes, right? So
49:13
Bilbo was taking these, you know, elvish poems that he'd learned in the Dorfus poems. And he would
49:20
share those. So from the larger world, they weren't simply childish tunes or nursery rhymes.
49:26
These were ones that were kind of had more bit of an adventurous, epic feel to them. So he has,
49:30
you know, childish tunes out of the shire he's murmuring. He takes snatches of Mr. Bilbo's rhymes that
49:34
came into his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength
49:39
rose in him. And his voice rang out while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.
49:45
So he's taking these simple ideas, but then his own experience and thoughts are kind of
49:50
then giving content to that general form that he is, in a sense, like purveying because he,
49:57
again, he's honoring those those songs and everything that came before. And then adding to that being
50:02
a participant of that, not replacing them, but being a participant in that just like you see,
50:07
you know, with their discussion between Sam and Frodo that we're all part of the great story,
50:12
right? What if somebody would say, you know, about the same things about us, would somebody ever
50:18
say a story or write a poem about us? It's silly to think of, but then like, well, they would have
50:23
thought the same things in their time. But after, you know, in retrospect and having developed a
50:28
maturity, you can see that your own life is something that's worthy of poetic, you know,
50:34
reinterpretation of. And that's something that this song I think is kind of a microcosm for
50:40
everything great that we see about Tolkien's process as a poet, as a creator, right, as an artist,
50:46
is all right here. And we have this book, it's a wonderful collection to thank for this kind of
50:51
people in the current to see into, right, Tolkien as an artist, as a human, and his whole experience.
50:59
And it's just, it's just wonderful, highly recommended worth his way in gold.
51:05
So the verdict on the three volume is five stars with the caveats we said it's not an easy read,
51:14
but it is a really fascinating read. And I think that I came away thinking, well, I wouldn't say he
51:20
was a great poem poet of the 20th century, because so much of the poetry is, is connected to
51:29
the specific world, but it makes him a great narrative poet. He's innovative, he's got a variety
51:36
of registers because of the cultures he's exploring. And he also captures a sort of jewel-like
51:43
intensity about the world, literally often with the words of jewel. So I think the atmosphere he
51:50
creates is beautiful and fascinating, particularly good on the natural world. He does this with
51:57
fairly simple words, simple nouns, natural images, powerful rhythms. And they make great songs.
52:05
So I think he's, I think he's the best poet who is a novelist, if you see what I mean, a poet
52:12
within a novel. I think that's where I would put him. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, it's nothing that you would
52:20
put aside other poets, historic poets. You wouldn't put it next to, well, I might put him next to
52:28
Homer just because Homer was writing with myth as well, right? But if you're looking at just, you know,
52:33
at poets like contemporary poets, it's not the same. This is something like you said, Julia,
52:39
he's doing it within the context of this larger myth. And so I think of stories that I've read
52:47
of within fictional worlds and poems that are, you know, part of whatever, you know, fantasy novel
52:57
that I read. This certainly is, you know, the top. This is kind of the sterling example of what
53:04
thoughtful integration of poetry can do for a work of fiction and a work of art.
53:12
Okay, so just a sort of deep breath and we're going to leave middle-air now and just to finish
53:17
with our where in all the fantasy worlds question that we try to land on in mismakers,
53:23
where in all the fantasy worlds do you think it'd be good to be a poet who is writing the
53:29
eleges and the laments? Because I feel that that's a particularly strong vein in
53:37
his poetic collection. Where would you think it'd be really great to be a poet of the
53:47
the dirge or the elegy? Yeah, yeah, no, this is that's a great question. And I think as I was
53:53
thinking about it, I might have nodded towards this a little earlier. I think the Trojan War
54:03
in the Iliad and there's, and by the way, if you haven't read the Iliad in a while, are you
54:07
a force to read it as a student? There's a beautiful audio version of it, Alfred Molina,
54:16
is a classical trained Shakespearean actor and movie star in his own right in film,
54:26
but he does a wonderful, wonderful reading of the Iliad. And so that's really, I think, where I
54:34
learned to appreciate the Iliad more was then going back to it after a while and then listening
54:38
to his recitation essentially of it, understanding that like the poetry of death, right,
54:45
of war, and what kind of Homer was able to do there. So if you're looking at the quasi semi-mythic
54:56
historical world of the Trojan War as presented by Homer, I think that that's one that just their
55:06
view on death, the good death was beautifully captured in the Iliad. So it's not a purely
55:19
classical sort of work of fiction, but I think that there are certainly fictional and mythic
55:26
elements there that it'll be close enough for me to say that I would choose a bard that's with
55:34
the Greek or Trojan armies that's recounting the the loss of their soldiers.
55:41
Yeah, I guess that, you know, when you ask that question, you think, well, what would it be like
55:46
in Alice in Wonderland? You end up with a comic film, don't you? And so I was wondering
55:52
to think of a world which could do with some lament poetry, and I was thinking actually Star Wars.
55:59
I do with some because they don't really, they've got some great themes provided by John Williams,
56:07
but I don't remember them really focusing much on culture. So it'd be really interesting
56:16
to have someone give it some serious thought about, you know, the lament for the death of
56:22
Hans Solo, sorry, that's plot spoiler. That would be really interesting because you could
56:28
then combine it with the idea of the force and what lives on. So that would be, I think, a really
56:34
fascinating place to be a writer of lament. And you know what? And speaking of that, like there is,
56:39
and if you want to bring in a tip, something to read, there are two different poetic re-workings
56:46
of Star Wars that I knew that now was Julie even inspired me to go and look at. One of them
56:52
is William Shakespeare's Star Wars, like barely a new hope is the first thing it came out. And so
56:59
it's fully reworked into Iambic Pentameter, and there's some very clever things that he does there.
57:06
I want to see with some of those death themes if the author there actually goes into some of those,
57:14
you know, allergies. So there's one. There's also another one that is the odyssey of Star Wars.
57:21
And so it's more in the, you know, hexamic dectilator, dectimator, right, right? With, yeah,
57:27
so it's more done in, you know, classic Greek form, as opposed to, you know, a British contemporary
57:34
with Shakespearean. So I want to check especially the kind of Homeric re-working of Star Wars,
57:40
to see how they treat the death scene. So thank you, thank you for, for bringing that. I think
57:46
that is fascinating. I want to see if somebody does that, but you're absolutely right that that,
57:49
and I think that's what with Lord of the Rings, that's one of the things that gives it,
57:51
it's death is that death is treated as something that is serious and worthy of reflection and
57:57
sitting with, and that's something you don't get everywhere. Yes, and possibly we'll report back
58:02
if we find something here. Okay. Thank you so much, Shaker. We've been talking for a while,
58:08
but it is a big subject. Surprisingly large for most of us who didn't realize that talking
58:13
was such a poet. Thank you very much for listening.
58:23
Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast.
58:26
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