{"id":384,"date":"2008-03-21T08:50:56","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T12:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=384"},"modified":"2008-03-21T08:50:56","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T12:50:56","slug":"rowan-on-auden-wtf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"Rowan on Auden: WTF?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week Rowan Williams <a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/print\/0,,332735368-127656,00.html\">contributed a preface<\/a> to the <em>Guardian&#8217;s<\/em> little pamphlet of Auden poetry. Did anyone at any stage, read what he wrote? In particular, did anyone actually read the following two sentences?<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>The technical skill is always exceptional. You&#8217;d call it dazzling if it were not so all-pervading (if not unobtrusive, at least) apparently intrinsic to the poetic argument and energy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>I left in the first one because without it the second makes no sense at all; with it, you can at least see that he is talking about Auden&#8217;s technical accomplishment. But what is he saying about it? In particular, what might it possibly mean to say of <em>anything<\/em> that it is <span class=\"loony\">all-pervading (if not unobtrusive, at least)<\/span>?<\/p>\n\n<p>What makes me so <em>angry<\/em> about this is that Rowan is meant to be a poet himself. He is meant to care about proper words in proper order, even when phoning in something for a newspaper. A phrase like that would bring any real poet out in hay fever.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is also fairly shaming that no one at the <em>Guardian<\/em> rang up and demanded that he rewrite it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week Rowan Williams contributed a preface to the Guardian&#8217;s little pamphlet of Auden poetry. Did anyone at any stage, read what he wrote? In particular, did anyone actually read the following two sentences? The technical skill is always exceptional. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=384\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=384\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}