Martha Fowke Sansom - On Being Charged With Writing Incorrectly

I'm incorrect: the learnèd say
That I write well, but not their way.
For this to every star I bend:
From their dull method heaven defend,
Who labour up the hill of fame,
And pant and struggle for a name!
My free-born thoughts I'll not confine,
Though all Parnassus could be mine.
No, let my genius have its way,
My genius I will still obey:
Not with their stupid rules control
The sacred pulse that beats within my soul.
I from my very heart despise
These mighty dull, these mighty wise,
Who were the slaves of Busby's nod,
And learned their methods from his rod.
Shall bright Apollo drudge at school,
And whimper till he grows a fool?
Apollo, to the learned coy,
In nouns and verbs finds little joy.
The tuneful Sisters still he leads
To silver streams, and flowery meads.
He glories in an artless breast,
And loves the goddess Nature best.
Let Dennis haunt me with his spite;
Let me read Dennis every night,
Or any punishment sustain,
To 'scape the labour of the brain.
Let the dull think, or let 'em mend
The trifling errors they pretend;
Writing's my pleasure, which my Muse
Would not for all their glory lose:
With transport I the pen employ,
And every line reveals my joy.
No pangs of thought I undergo,
My words descend, my numbers flow;
Though disallowed, my friend, I swear
I would not think, I would not care,
If I a pleasure can impart,
Or to my own, or thy dear heart,
If I thy gentle passions move,
'Tis all I ask of fame or love.
This to the very learnèd say,
If they are angry - why, they may:
I from my very soul despise
These mighty dull, these mighty wise.

---

This poem, and others, were published anonymously in the Barbados Gazette; they were later republished in a collection under the name 'The Amorous Lady'. The author lived in England but had a lover in Barbados; that's as far as 'Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology' goes on the matter. I take my authorial attribution from Moore et. al, Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions, a more recent work which gives a brief biography of Sansom and her literary efforts under various pen names.

Wednesday Reading Report

Because I'm reading eight things at once, many of them are very long, and it'll be quite a while before I've got through enough fiction-for-fun reading to make another review post.

What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading? Eight things at once! It's been a while since this happened - making small progress on a wide range of things instead of steady progress on three or four.

Two Oxford Anthologies of poetry: Eighteenth Century Women Poets and Canadian Verse. I'm about halfway through both and doubt I'll finish either by the end of the year.

James Joyce, Ulysses: In theory I'm reading along with a reading group here, but in practice I haven't been for weeks. Bloom is just heading home after a day avoiding his adulterous wife. I'm finding Joyce technically interesting but not engaging.

The Riverside Chaucer: I'm working through the whole thing for the first time, but I started about 2/3 of the way through, with the Legend of Good Women, and soon will go back to the start. I just started the Romaunt of the Rose, which I am not too thrilled by.

The Romance of Horn, ed Mildred K. Pope: Working through this one stanza-by-stanza and doubt I'll finish it by the time it's due back in Feb. Horn and his fellows just got marooned on a rudderless boat. Thomas d'Angleterre is a lazy bastard who rhymes whole stanzas on the past participle.

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: Oooh, shiny. I was impressed with this from the start, although found it heavy work and a bit standoffish at the start - I found I wanted to put it down after half an hour or so. That effect is dwindling now, though, and I'd carry it around and read it in more places were it not so large.

Goodreads also thinks I'm reading 'The Female Quioxte', but let's be honest, I'm not reading it, it's just sitting in my Kobo with an electronic bookmark in it.

Finally, add to this the weekly poetry allocation for the course I'm teaching at the moment. This week's notable poetry reading experience was finding that I actually quite like Blakes "The Tyger" after having marked it up to within an inch of its life. It bored the pants off me prior to analysis.

What did you recently finish reading?

- Chaucer: I just finished the section marked 'Shorter Poems' in the Riverside. Some of these were amusing - the Complainte to his Purse chief among them. I'm also wondering if I can draw some schorarly insight out of comparing 'Womanly Noblesse' with 'Complaint to his Lady' or similar, especially if combined with a comparison between Ariadne's marrige in the Legend of Good Women and someone else's more passionate courtship. Chaucer doesn't use specific terms of friendship but there do seem to be two registers of opposite-sex interaction here...

- Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

- Amys e Amillioun ed. Fukui: the Anglo-Norman variant of the tale. Every time I thought I had something interesting going on in a marriage negotiation it turns out I had one fewer women in the scene than I thought, or had mistaken a count for a queen, or otherwise been foiled by titles and pronouns. However, I have something moderately interesting although not scintillatingly original to say about the difference between this and the Middle English redaction.

What will you read next?

More Chaucer, and Horn's arrival in Brittany, are on my agenda for this week. Next week's first-year poetry includes Shelley's 'Ozymandias' and Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting', among others that don't thrill me much.

I'm also fidgety for lack of secondary readings at the moment, so shall add Classens 'Love of Words and Words of Love' and Jaeger's 'Ennobling Love' to my on-the-go list.