Science and the Shabby Curate of Poetry

"When I find myself in the company of scientists I feel like a
shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing-room
full of dukes.

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the
world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists.
Unfortunately, poetry cannot celebrate them, because their deeds
are concerned with things, not persons and are, therefore, speechless."

W.H.Auden, The Dyers Hand, 1963

Quoted at the beginning of
Science and the Shabby Curate of Poetry. Essays about the two cultures.

Science and Poetry

"Misunderstanding and under-estimation of poetry is mainly due
to over-estimation of the thought in it. We can see still more clearly
that thought is not the prime factor if we consider for a moment not
the experience of the reader but that of the poet. Why does the poet
use these words and no others? Not because they stand for a series
of thoughts which in themselves are what he is concerned to communicate.
It is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is. The poet
is not writing as a sicentist. He uses these words because the interests
which the situation calls into play combine to bring them, just in this form,
into his consciousness as a means of ordering, controlling and consolidating
the whole experience. The experience itself, the tide of impulses
sweeping through the mind, is the source and the sanction of the words.
They represent this experience itself, not any set of perceptions or reflections,
though often to a reader who approaches the poem wrongly they
will seem to be only a series of remarks about other things. But to
a suitable reader the words - if they actually spring from experience
and are not due to verbal habits, to the desire to be effective, to factitious
excogitation, to imitation, to irrelevant contrivances, or to any other of
the failings which prevent most people from writing poetry - the words
will reproduce in his mind a similar play of interest putting him for the
while into a similar situation and leading to the same response."

I. A. Richards
in Science and Poetry
(1926)

The 'F' word

There is nothing so satsifying as being able to use the 'F' word in a piece of writing. There's a selfish pleasure to be had in the onomatoepia of a word that both shocks and consoles.

Of course a sophisticated educated writer would use the 'F' word sparingly, with care and thought for characterisation and dramatic effect. A sprinkling of 'F' s and 'B's, and even 'C's, can look artistic on the pages of an experienced writer. (Though 'C' s are venturing towards a more taboo-breaking readership I suspect).

But some of us just like the pleasure of writing 'naughty' words. Lots of. In every paragraph. Does this mean I am an inexperienced writer? Or that I had a very repressed childhood? Probably both.

Either way, F is for fun. Strictly on the page, you understand. That's why it's called Fiction.