Top And Bottom

This morning when I was showering I got to thinking about various poets I have taught over the years. Yes, I know it's odd to be thinking about that in the shower of all places, but that's just how it happened to be. (In the interests of full disclosure, I also found myself thinking about various houses I have lived in and visited and which I had the fondest memories of, but that's not really the point of this little screed.)

Now when I say 'taught' I mean something in between doing the absolute full monty of the complete works (something I don't think I've ever done) and just a single poem because it cropped up on an exam paper somewhere. I was struck by the fact that somehow or other I've managed to touch on a fair number of poets within those parametres, and was further struck by the extremes of those I really did not enjoy teaching at all and those who were a blast to deal with. (I suppose the fact that I've been thoroughly enjoying teaching some of Carol Ann Duffy's stuff over the last couple of years may have provoked in some small way these ruminations.)

Without any doubt the poet I've least enjoyed teaching is W.H. Auden - which is weird because the poems of his I have taught have been almost uniformly very fine and very 'teachable', at least on the surface. But nothing has ever seemed to work somehow. When classes have got the point it has always felt to me like they did so in a kind of mechanical fashion.

At the other extreme, I'd place Thomas Hardy. Don't know why it is but Hardy, even at his clumsiest, just works. I suppose it could be that he's recognisably writing poetry with obvious formal qualities, so there's the craft to appreciate, yet he's a bit like you and me, a bit of a duffer, a bit obvious in what he's got to say, so very comfortable in his way. You feel like you know him somehow. Nowadays he'd be called 'relatable', a quality that's easy to sneer at but which makes for a happening sort of classroom.