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Vallance Review 55, March 2006 A Reader Survey of Percy Bysshe Shelley's
Photo © by Richard Vallance 2004 Percy Bysshe Shelley on Creativity in "The Defense of Poetry" (1821)
 Along with several other of Shelley's memorable poems, such as "Adonais"; "Mont Blanc'; "Ode to Liberty"; the "Mask of Anarchy"; the "Hymn of Apollo"; his justly famous sonnet "Ozymandias"; his heart wrenching eulogy, "Adonais", on the death of John Keats and above all, "The Cloud", which in certain particulars of imagery and symbolism parallels Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Shelley's Ode easily holds its own in any worthy repertoire or anthology of historical English poetry. Yet this Ode, if indeed ode it is, has not been without its detractors. Nor has Shelley himself, for that matter. Far from it. In the well nigh two centuries of literary criticism following his death by drowning in a sailing accident in Italy in 1822, the reputation of Shelley's poetry has suffered many vicissitudes. He was very highly regarded by almost all nineteenth century British critics, although a few of them, most notably Matthew Arnold, held certain apparently justified reservations about his efficacy as a poet. Matthew Arnold was the critic who first saddled Shelley with the somewhat equivocal epithet, a "beautiful but ineffectual angel beating in a void his luminous wings in vain" [1]. Strangely damning praise. Unfortunately for Shelley, this characterization of him as a (Romantic) poet was to stick, almost like crazy glue, throughout a good part of the twentieth century. Fortunately for us in the early twenty-first century, more painstaking recent research into Shelley's personally catalogued workings of his creative labours and his own insistent reliance on rich classical sources has tended to offset and balance out a good deal of the adverse criticism Shelley's poetry attracted in the last century. The harshest critic ever of Shelley's poetry was F.R. Leavis, whose almost savage criticism of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" reveals in retrospect a lot more about the failure of that critic's insight and of his own rather meagre imagination than it does, if at all, about any such failures on Shelley's part as an impassioned Romantic poet. Late twentieth century Shelleyian criticism would go a long way to right the score, as it were, on the lasting value of Shelley's poetry. Of particular note is William Keach's brilliant exegesis of Shelley's lasting contribution to English literature in his ground breaking critical work, Shelley's Style 1984 [2], which I highly recommend to any prospective student of Shelley. In addition to Keach's provocatively insightful survey of Shelley's boisterous poetic career, I would also refer to you my own equally thoughtful comments on Shelley in Vallance Review 38, October 2004, "A Review of Esther Cameron's Article Critiquing Percy Bysshe Shelley's, ‘The Defense of Poetry (1821)' ". In section 3 of that exhaustive review, I shed extensive light on successive generational perspectives of Shelley's poetry and of his own seminal work as a poetry critic in his "Defense of Poetry" (1821). In particular, I would draw your attention specifically to this telling conclusion I drew in that very review to Shelley's creative and imaginative powers as a poet: Shelley is at such pains to discriminate the more subtle workings of the Imagination, which seem almost to run rampant, in spite of the more elusive intellectual demands the process of creativity places squarely on the poet's shoulders. [3]
As the results of our reader survey of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" will reveal, "ordinary" readers of Shelley's great Ode (by whom I do not mean literary critics, myself included) seem, at least in our small survey sample, to be strangely at odds with some of the more sharply minded critics of his poetry, most of the latter more representative of the literary norms of their own era, certain decades of the twentieth century, than to illustrate any real insight into the workings of genius flashing through poetry of the great Romantic poets the likes of William Wordsworth, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley himself. In other words, any failure in Romantic poetry to achieve imaginative heights may be deemed more a failure in the imaginative powers of at least some of its self-appointed critics than in the poetry's own perceived merits. Too many late nineteenth and twentieth century critics of Shelley's poetry seemed prone to extremes in their summative evaluation of his merits as a poet of his Age. To quote the famous Roman bard, Horace, "Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace." [4] It was not to be until the end of twentieth century and the outset of the Third Millennium that scholars and critics of Shelley would once again seek to find "the golden mean" in their appreciation of Shelley's achievements as one of the great poets of the Romantic era. But enough of critics. Let's see what our modern twenty-first century readers of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" have to say about his famous poem. On February 1 2006 I sent out our reader survey on Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" to all interested parties on my e-mail address list, and I also posted the survey on our 3 major Yahoo poetry groups, Canadian Zen Haiku canadien, the New Pleiades Mirror and Sonnet Describe Adonis, asking respondents to please reply by no later than February 22 2006. While I estimate I reached a little more than 40 * e-mail recipients in all, it is difficult to determine how many of these recipients actually read the e-mail in a comprehensive manner. Moreover, it is impossible with any degree of certainty to ascertain how many of the 200 plus members of our poetry groups read the post with the survey. Regardless of how many or how few group members actually saw the post, only one respondent replied to the survey through the poetry groups. The other 15 respondents all replied via e-mail. Given 16 respondents all in all, we have a response rate slightly short of 40 % (or thereabouts), though here again, it is practically impossible to determine the response rate with any real degree of accuracy. This survey is not meant to be "scientific" in any way. In fact, what literary survey can reasonably hope to make such a preposterous claim? So why even bother making the pretense? On the other hand, however subjective and limited our little survey's results may be, they ostensibly serve a real purpose, not merely a narrowly perceived one. In the first place, the survey helps establish with some clarity the differences which subsist between critics' and readers' perceptions of great poetry — and many differences there are indeed. Critics sometimes tend to labour under the (likely mistaken) belief that their perceptions are the be-all-and-end-all where the evaluation of poetry and its greatness (or lack thereof) is concerned. Yet critics, however high minded they may be and whatever great importance they attach to their own exalted opinions of poets' achievements, comprise the most minuscule portion imaginable of the total readership audience such poetry entertains. Even though I myself am a poetry critic (as well as a poet to be sure), to my mind at least, it is the opinions of readers of poetry which count for far more than the pronouncements, however sublime or sententious, of critics. It is indeed passing strange how the value successive generations of critics assigns to the poetry of the greatest writers, such as Shelley, tends to fluctuate wildly, apparently in accord with the prevalent tastes of the era which the critics represent, while the poetry meantime speaks volumes for itself. Critics, including yours truly, come and go. Great poetry and its readers do not. I cannot help but harbour the sneaking suspicion, based partly on the results of this very survey and partly on my own sound intuition as a poet myself, that the vast majority of readers have always thoroughly enjoyed Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", right on down from his death in 1822 to the present day. And, as you shall now see for yourself, our survey results tend very much to bear our conclusions out, at least in so far as the present day, the early Third Millennium, is concerned. On one last note, I have decided to leave all demographic data about our respondents entirely anonymous, since I see no real advantage in publishing this information. Apart from the fact that our respondents range in age from 18 to their 60s and that they hail from Canada, the UK, the USA and Australia, the survey results are left to speak for themselves. NOTES: 1. I have highlighted in GREEN font the response for each question with which I as a poetry critic most agree. Still, you should take my agreement with our readers' choices with a grain of salt because I am merely a critic and the opinions of the poem's readers should take precedence here. 2. I have highlighted in BLUE font the answer which is the AVERAGE statistical reply for each question, where an average can be reasonably calculated. NOTE: where the average response agrees with my response as a critic, I REPEAT the same response in both green and blue font. However, there is only 1 response, i.e. 7 = 7 indicates a response = 7. 3. I have weighted the COMMENTS from most favourable to least for each question. 4. Where I deem it necessary to add explanatory comments as a poetry critic to the responses to any particular question, my comments are in CRIMSON font. * I have omitted the text of the Ode from this review, as it is 5 sonnets long. Should you wish to read the Ode in its entirety, I would simply refer you to Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Ode to the West Wind [Representative Poetry Online]. The exhaustive liner notes accompanying this online version of Shelley's famous ode offer a great deal of insight into the creative process which Shelley so painstakingly devoted to the fruition of his lovely Ode. Please answer each of the following multiple choice questions on Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind". A COMMENTS section is included with each question, if you wish to make any comments. 1. Please find a quiet moment to read Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind". As soon as you have finished reading the poem for the first time, please answer this question: On reading Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" for the first time, I find this poem to be (please check one response only): a 4 = a masterpiece of English poetry of the first order In this regard, as a poetry critic, I certainly find myself in agreement with the average reader response. There can be little doubt that there are finer poems than Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" (in its genre) in English. The only question is, which ones? The answer, highly subjective as it surely is, entirely depends on who you are and in which historic era you live. For instance, readers from the British Isles are more likely to rate Shelley's Ode more highly than do readers from North America. In fact, however small our survey may have been (and it is small), respondents to this survey clearly bore this assumption out. Another factor which weighs heavily in readers' responses to this question is their own preferences for the literature of a particular literary era. Granted, some poetry readers are frankly not all that fond of poetry from the Romantic Era. Those are the same readers who would rather we had surveyed a poem by a twentieth century poet, and perhaps even a "free verse" poem to boot, or perhaps a great poem from the Augustan Age of the eighteenth century. But such was not to be the case. Other readers are greater fans of Renaissance poetry than of Romantic, while still others would take Romantic poetry over that of any other era any day of the week. In short, the answer to this question, as indeed to every other question in this survey, is highly subjective. On the other hand, as a critic of poetry and in light of this poem's place of prominence in English Romantic poetry, I for one would be inclined to state that, in light of the synoptic view of all Shelleyian criticism over the past two centuries, here we have one of the finer poems in English, though not necessarily one of the very greatest masterpieces of the English Romantic Era. For instance, I myself am at once spiritually, emotionally and musically moved more readily by William Wordsworth's exquisite ballad-like "The Solitary Reaper" than I am by Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind". Having said that, I nevertheless regard Shelley's Ode as a tour de force of Romantic English poetry. c 4= a very fine poem It is worthy of note that not one of our respondents considered Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" to be anything less than a good poem, fair praise indeed, which is more than can be said for F.R. Leavis' scant critical praise for the Ode. e 0 = a fair poem READERS' COMMENTS: I cannot imagine a finer piece of literature than this. This, to me, is the poet at his prophetic best! Beautiful rhythms, a coherent rhetorical structure, striking images make this an unusually effective poem. Three streams weave a fine chord in this poem: the ravages of the western, autumn wind; the 3-3-3-2 sonnet format; and the a-b-a b-c-b c-d-c d-d rhyme scheme. I still have more favourites I have enjoyed personally. It is hard to read aloud because of a predominance of enjambement (lines without end punctuation). You have to take a deep breath after almost every second line. It reads well, but is rocky and un-wind like in more than a few places. Critic's response: the rocky rhythm is likely intentional in those spots where it predominates in the ode. 2. Allow yourself a while to let this poem "sink in", and when you feel comfortable with yourself and with the poem, return to it and read it again, and answer this question: Having carefully read Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" a second time, I would say that: a 5 = I love this poem COMMENTS: Anything that makes the reader pause and reflect as this poem does, one cannot help but be mesmerized by it! I love this poem but have read some more moving or descriptive. It is an excellent choice for this survey. There are some images that are "way over the top" as far as I am concerned, like "I bleed," but I love his rich language "clarion oe'r the dreaming earth " and "thou from whose unseen presence the dead leaves are driven" etc. Philosophically, poets want to be remembered, Millay has a poem to the reader who finds her verse when she is dead. Here, Shelley, who is only discouraged, as far as this reader can tell, is telling the wind to promote his work and spread it among the Philostenes (sic) of his day who don't appreciate him. From my own perspective, I am happier with the poem when he speaks to the actual wind of its actual work. Yet his most famous line "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" is tied to this idea of his own immortality. To me, the imagery of the wind scattering the dead leaves and seeds of nature in all of their colors and the azure Spring reawakening them was more interesting. The West Wind awakening the sleeping Mediterranean ... the locks of the approaching storm being bright hair uplifted from the head. I am a romantic and love this language play. The conclusion, while fitting, far from being a ‘prophecy,' is prosaic, even pedestrian, and goes limping. (It seems Wordsworthian, not what you would expect from Shelley, not after this rush of verbal energy.) But the point is the rotation of the seasons, which the west wind announces. While the conclusion to this Ode may appear, at least at first sight, to be somewhat prosaic, two factors tend to mitigate against such an interpretation. First and foremost, the concluding sentence, "Can Spring be far behind?", far from being merely a rhetorical question, is in fact a plea on the poet's part for us, as readers, to join him in his prophetic invocation of spring as the renewer of all things truly perennial, if not eternal. Prophecy, which Shelley so carefully defines in his ground-breaking "Defense of Poetry" (1821), one of the seminal works of poetic criticism in all of English literature I would urge you to read, plays a key role in the very creative process underlying the composition of any great poem, the "Ode to the West Wind" notwithstanding. In fact, it may readily enough be ascertained that Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is perhaps the quintessential embodiment in poetic form of the very theories which he is at such great pains to expound in his thought-provoking "Defense", all the more reason to read it with an eye to critical appraisal. While it is relatively easy to dismiss a conclusion such as this to what would otherwise seem to be a profoundly philosophical Ode, we should be on our guard lest we allow the preconceptions of our own day and age to colour and distort the real symbolic meaning Shelley meant to invest this concluding sentence with. Otherwise, I ask, why would he have even bothered ending such a sweeping, majestic Ode with such an apparently weak conclusion? My question begs an answer, but no easy answer is likely forthcoming. I for one am quite certain that Shelley was fully aware of the impact, strong or weak as the case may be, of his Ode's conclusion, given the great care he lavished on the composition of the entire Ode, which went through at least four major revisions before he was satisfied with it [5]. 3 To me, Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is BEST defined as: a 5 = An Ode COMMENTS: The comments to this question cannot be reasonably weighted according to my criteria. Although the poem has a mournful or funereal aspect, it heralds the west wind as the motor behind the cyclical phenomena of nature, and associates it not with a movement from birth to death, but with that from death to rebirth. It is elegiac in certain respects, but I think it is an ode in the same way that Keats' poem ‘To Autumn' could also be called an ode. To me, this is an ode and also a series of sonnets. It is a series of sonnet-like forms, but it fits very neatly into my definition of an ode. 4 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" moves me emotionally a 0 = so deeply I wept to read it COMMENTS: Great suspense in this poem, and a wonderful, hopeful ending... It almost had a cliffhanger! I really like it, and yes, it does move me. I am not one for weeping, but this was my first encounter with the poem, and I was moved a whole lot. I was moved more by the energy of the lines than by any emotion the poem evokes. Nature and her elements, and one who is "carried away" by that power are all things that move me, so I feel in harmony with the poet, but am not quite as carried as he appears to be; I am – let's face it – surrounded by a more modern sort of smog of modernism, which my own personal mysticism rejects. But my reading is not enough in these romantic periods to allow me total comfort with what Shelley is totally comfortable with. I am usually only emotionally moved by poems reminding me of places or people I have loved, or poems about human relationships. I'm not a fan of the intense poses of Romanticism. 5 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" appeals to me intellectually a 3 = profoundly. This is a great philosophical poem COMMENTS: There are deliberate references to Dante's simile of a volume the pages of which have been scattered throughout the universe like leaves, in the Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, 85-90. ** (Some of the lines are even hendecasyllabic, with eleven syllables (the standard line in Italian verse): ‘Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is'; ‘My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!') Critic's response to the preceding comment. This particular comment illustrates profound insight on the part of the reader, who is obviously familiar with:
Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna, This poem speaks to the senses, without question, and it makes an intellectual statement in a most dramatic and eloquent fashion! Although mostly emotional, its geographical references are precise! 6 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" appeals to me spiritually a 1 = profoundly. This poem is a turning point in my spiritual life COMMENTS: Indeed, this is spiritual in nature, too. It is my belief that this would be consistent with art at the higher level, in any case. Art, refined, to me is always spiritual, and this is the epitome of literary art! It was enough of a challenge that I really liked to read it. You would have to be made of stone not to have some kind of spiritual reaction to this poem. The identification of spirituality with nature and freedom (‘Be thou me, impetuous one!') has great appeal to me (as have Chinese Buddhism and Taoism, where a similar identification may be found). His references to spirit are classical intellectual concepts not the heart's inner spirituality. 7 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is a 0 = far too long and too verbose for my taste COMMENTS: To say this is too long or too short is to bring into question the author's own abilities to render judgment on such matters, and I would not dare say anything but that it is a timeless masterpiece! If it were not the length it is, it would have been another kind of poem! The length of a poem does not matter, it is only how good the poem is that matters. I don't mind longer poems, but this one, with the style of English, seemed to drag on after a little while. This is probably because I was born into more modern poetry, and have never read very many of the classics. (unsure above) This is a tricky question; I am not sure how to answer it. Since I am a very verbose writer; I better pass on this question. Writing contests today all want "flash fiction," stories of 500 words or less, etc. I understand the idea of keeping poetry to a certain length and meter, but Shelley was experimenting with crossed forms here, if I am right, kind of playing with his readers then and now by calling it an Ode. 8 As far as I can judge, Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is a 10 =10 a beautifully structured poem, carefully crafted and consummately composed F.R. Leavis, what are you on about? COMMENTS: Without doubt one of the finest pieces of work I have ever encountered! Each section, like a musical movement, has its place in the overall composition. Some of his rhymes grate my modern ear: fierce and universe or Wind and behind, but he surely did a lot of work on meter in these sonnets! I see now why he had to say "I bleed..." Still a little too maudlin for this poet. 9 In his poem, "Ode to the West Wind" , Shelley's use of imagery is a 6 = absolutely masterful, nothing short of sheer genius COMMENTS: unquestionably a work of genius! It must have taken a good while to get all these complimentary images side by side, holding hands with each other. See note [5] below and my comments as a poetry critic on Neville Rogers' definitive insights into Percy Bysshe Shelley's careful successive revisions to his famous Ode. The style of English makes some images unclear and hard to understand, but most are well conceived and well executed. 10 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is the work of: a 9 = a masterful poet at the height of his creativity COMMENTS: It would be hard to imagine a poet being at a higher level of performance than Shelley, in this case! I've read few of Shelly's works, but of what I have read, this is the most masterful. He was an amazing poet, and I believe that was from his height. It has slight room for improvement, but set a bar of achievement that is hard to this day for poets to reach. 11 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is the work of: a 6 = a fully matured poet COMMENTS: I don't believe any poet can truly be 'fully' matured. There will always be some growth. This critic's and this poet's response? Touché! All poets, past and present, do well to keep this fundamental principle of poetry composition firmly in mind. 12 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" demonstrates: a 4 = brilliant psychological insight into human nature, the work of a sheer genius COMMENTS: Any good poet must be able to define the human experience and people's characteristics, that is the only way to identify with them, Shelley does this by noting the sorrow, joy, and emptiness, and worship in this lyric. N/A = NONE OF THE ABOVE = None of the above... to me it is more a human being's emotional and spiritual response to the nature of nature itself. 13 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" demonstrates: a 3 = brilliant knowledge and understanding of meteorology for his era (the early nineteenth century) COMMENTS: What about those underwater "oozy woods that wear the sapless foliage of the ocean?" I had to return to that stanza several times to understand how he was describing corals or whatever it is what grows well underwater... but one surely can FEEL the sensation of how the funnels of wind affect plant life even underwater. Pretty impressive, Shelley. I cannot recall after a few readings that there are many meteorological references. I guess I wasn't looking for them. 14 The allusions to Classical MYTHOLOGY in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" are: a 5 = brilliantly expressed and very easy to understand even if I know little about classical mythology COMMENTS: Shelley, in my opinion, created a masterpiece that was not entirely difficult to follow. That, in itself, was a stroke of genius also. He eases us in with terms like Spring and West Wind that any fool can align herself with. Even a term like Maenad seems like dryad, naiad etc. If I am a fantasy reader, I have some familiarity with these terms. There is a reference to a bay with a capital B, but my knowledge of geography being that of a typical untraveled citizen of the USA, that could be geographical or mythological, and --- in either case --- not necessary to understanding the poem. I give Shelly and A+. I was forced to read some poems in high school whose point was centered around understanding myths that were not real or familiar to me. Not at all the case here, very accessible. The references are obscure and cause one to have to pull out the Ye Olde Dictionary of Greek Mythology to see if Shelley has made an accurate play of the places and gods or is stretching his pen like a rubber band. The length of the poem, and the Old English makes some of the allusions unclear. As well, I have never known a great deal about classical Mythology. 15 The METRE of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is: a 5 = absolutely masterful, the work of a sheer genius COMMENTS: Again, it would be presumptuous to question the expertise rendered in this presentation vis-à-vis meter, which gives this work such a life force! Superlatives make me nervous; he has a great command of iambic pentameter, but is not slavish about it; I admire that. This critic's response to this comment? Again, touché. Any poet who is slavish to about iambic pentameter is its avowed victim. The result is mind-numbing rhythm (or if you would have it otherwise, metre) in poetry, a pitfall Shelley studiously and wisely avoids [RV] There were some points where the word choice caused the metre to fluctuate slightly. I only noticed this after the careful second read. The second line is off, though I think I understand the intent of its diversion from regularity. 16 The overall RHYTHM * of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is: a 6 = absolutely masterful, the work of a sheer genius COMMENTS: Verdict: meter and rhythm of the highest order! To come to know the rhythms (the diction), the reader has to try reading it aloud. By ‘rhythm' I understand the rhythms of speech. The metre is like the bass line in music, on which speech rhythms (the rhythms of diction) and larger rhythms, like those created by rhyme and rhyme scheme in a stanza, build and through which they insinuate themselves. (When the stress in the rhythm of speech does not fall where it should in the metrical pattern, we could speak of variation or ‘counterpoint.' James Fenton catalogues the many variations which iambic pentameter accommodates in a chapter devoted to it in An Introduction to English Poetry, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). This particular respondent has taken the trouble and effort to read up on James Fenton's excellent survey of the several variants which iambic pentameter so readily accommodates in English poetry. I for one would highly recommend further consultation of Fenton's book [RV]. The older English format of the poem made it seem a bit 'thick' in my opinion, but still very well done. Too jumpy and rocky at parts, to many hard Ees, Aes, and Ies to run smoothly like the wind. Even harsh winds swoop and crash and timber, but they cannot break and stimy and keel. Dissonance is an area for improvement. Cf. 17 2 = below same.... 17 The overall RHYTHM * of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" suits the poem's THEME (or subject matter, if you will): a 9 =9 = brilliantly, to the "t". The poem's rhythm matches its theme almost exactly. COMMENTS: It is not possible to alter anything in this work and not render it a lesser work of art. Indeed the rhythm resounds to the heights in this work. Oh, it fits it perfectly, no doubt about that. The meter makes the poem rush and surf the reader along! It is just right for getting us as readers to fly with the wind. The repetition of a long syllable followed by two to four short syllables sets up a rhythm like that of a wind storm, which is then set off by the dissonance of the last two lines of each sonnet; the alliterations also mimic a storm's arhythmic variations. Well, exactement. Go figure! [RV] None of the above. The wind is random, whether it comes from North, South, East or West; it does not really have a rhythm, whatever the time of year. It might have a rhythm if it were blowing through wind chimes or a particularly rustly kind of tree.... otherwise I don't think so.... It loses cadence much of the time, there are too many stops and pauses. 18 For me, The THEME (or subject matter, if you will) of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind is: a 6 = crystal clear, as though I were gazing into a mirror of the poet's Mind COMMENTS: Hear me, hear me, take me, carry me, broadcast me. Very sexual in nature; he wants the wind to do for him what Juliet asks the night sky to do for Romeo, spread out in stars after he is conquested (sic= conquered) by the force of their encounter. The theme is quite clear in my mind, though I likely could read the work over many times and garner that much more with each reading. 19 On the whole, I would conclude that Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his "Ode to the West Wind" has: a 6 = brilliantly conveyed his message and intent with this poem. It is the work of
sheer genius, second to none COMMENTS: This is a work of genius. If not, then what might be? We modern readers are not a patient lot or a metaphysical lot, but maybe some of us who are poets are. Are we speaking of the general readership here, or the general public? Those with the interest in reading Shelley will probably catch his fever in reading and re-reading this poem, but maybe we will need to read it in group settings and encourage one another. Something in the way he moves.... but how many of us hear the song without being exposed a few times? I've read clearer poems; but again, this is mostly due to the old English. 20 Having read Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" twice and answered the previous 19 questions, I would subjectively rate this poem as an example of an English masterpiece on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the WORST possible score and 10 is the BEST, as follows... (Please assign a value from 1-10) TOTAL = 16 respondents 10 X 5 TOTAL rating = 134.5/160 AVERAGE RATING = 8.5 * NOTE: although our readers' responses would suggest an average weighted score of 8.5 for Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", it is likely that the weighted score should be slightly higher than even that, since fully half of our respondents rated the poems as 9 or higher. COMMENTS: This is a 10, without hesitation on my part. If there is anything found lacking in this work of art, then the lack would be in the reader, certainly not in the author. This work is of the highest order. I like this poem very much and only gave it a 9 because it is not my absolute favourite of all time. This is a great subject for the Vallance Review. A very good choice for VR, Richard. I know how much you LOVE Shelly's work. I will read the review when it comes out, and I know that then my problems with this poem will be ironed out. By the way, Richard, I really think you should do this sort of thing more often! Shelley gives a vivid description of the west wind. It represents freedom. He wishes his expression to be as free. I don't have anything bad to say about the poem in general. This is a highly subjective notion. I assign that number based on how likely I might be to re-read the poem myself (likely) how likely to read it to students in a writing class (unlikely) read it to friends who are casual writers (unlikely) or reread it with others who enjoy poetry (likely). I also assign the number because I admire how he wound the agitation of iambic pentameter with a nature theme and an extravagant desire. Italics mine [critic's] Richard, I'm afraid this poem to my ear suffers from the subsequent and additional 200-odd years of seasonal/ mythological cliché that typify so much mediocre poetry. Through no fault of Shelley's, a modern reader approaches it with a certain jadedness, as I've quoted Harold Bloom before, the ‘burden of belatedness'. Having said that, I think the poem displays a masterful use of meter/rhythm and builds in an unforced manner to an entirely credible, ‘earned' climax. The ‘pacing' I would say is authentically derived. It has too many problems to be read over and over again, a great poem is beautiful and sumptuous, it makes the reader a lover, whether it is a love distant or close a poem must make the reader in love with it. "Ode to the West Wind" does not request this in form or tone until the last part. He seemed to wander off the subject early on and too belatedly compared the wind to his own feeling of being a free-spirit. I found the rhythm too jerky; perhaps this was a deliberate effort to mimic the gustiness of the wind but it didn't work well for me I think this poem would be a high to mediocre example of great English poetry partly because the meaning is so often obscured by the flowery imagery and partly because I don't consider terza rima a natural poetic structure for English language poems. The line, "I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!" is a bad one, with or without the exclamation marks. Are our readers' choices the critics' choices? In a nutshell, it depends. If we are to take the results of our reader survey of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" as a yardstick of the abiding literary and poetic value of his Ode, it would surely appear that, after nearly two centuries, Shelley's Ode does represent a pinnacle in the poetic opera of the Romantic Era (ca. 1770-1835). Recent literary criticism, mostly since the 1980s, but some of it even earlier than that, most notably the critical appraisals Neville Rogers [5] and C.M. Bowra before him [6] brought to bear on Shelley's poetic opus as a whole and on this Ode in particular would seem to bear our readers' perceptions of the poem out. Nineteenth century critics by and large reserved high praise for Shelley. In spite of his reservations about Shelley's efficacy as a poet, even Matthew Arnold was largely positive for Shelley. Early twentieth century critics, such as T.S. Eliot, were less glowing in their assessment of Shelley's overall worth as a poet, laying the groundwork for many rather unfair critiques of Shelley's poetry that were to ensue well into the sixth decade of the twentieth century. By far the harshest critic of Percy Bysshe Shelley and of his "Ode to the West Wind" was F.R. Leavis, as I have already amply illustrated. F.R. Leavis' mostly adverse critique of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poetry in general and of his "Ode to the West Wind" in particular does not seem to respect one of the fundamental precepts of literary criticism, which is the critic's ability to remain as impartial and as non-judgemental as is humanly possible, or as I have previously adduced in this review, to abide by Horace's Golden Mean. Leavis variously depicts Shelley's poetry as ‘the typical final product having little to do with thinking.." (pg. 271), demanding "that active intelligence shall be, as it were, switched off..." (pg. 272); and his deployment of imagery and of symbols as symptomatic of "ecstatic dissipation" (pg. 274) and "viciousness and corruption" (pg. 276) [7]. However, F.R. Leavis' peculiarly harsh conclusions are greatly at odds with those Neville Rogers would arrive at less than a decade later [5]. Rogers at least took the trouble to avail himself of the painstaking research Shelley obviously devoted to every single stage of the composition of his "Ode to the West Wind", a poem he was to fully revise no less than four times. F.R. Leavis' unsavoury conclusions about the overall merits (or lack thereof) of Shelley's poetry are, in short, based on nothing but mere conjecture, and bad conjecture at that. In the close to five years I have been writing the Vallance Review, I have never found occasion to take exception to the work of another critic, especially one with so well established a reputation as that of F.R. Leavis. However, I would like to stress and I do so emphatically, that no literary critic ever has the right or prerogative to level unfounded and undocumented criticism at any poet. This is precisely what F.R. Leavis has done. His own personal biases and his obvious distaste for any poet or for poetry which displays strong emotion is written all over his critical review of Shelley's poetry. One gets the distinct impression that F.R. Leavis was afraid of poets, such as Shelley (and perhaps Keats) whose Romantic sublimity was and is most vividly expressed through the sheer intensity of their emotions, shared empathetically in the most powerful imagery and symbolism with their fellows, which is to say, with humanity at large. If this is not one of the fundamental tenets of great poetry, then I don't know what is. Powerful emotion intensely expressed is not the hallmark of great poetry in and of itself. Far from it. In fact, intensely emotional poetry can be and has historically all too often been penned. If creative discipline and the cohesive powers of the Imagination are found to be lacking, then the poetry flops. However, such a charge cannot be laid at the threshold of Shelley's greatest poems. Fortuitously, his "Ode to the West Wind" ranks amongst his most accomplished poems. Overall, the critical appraisals of those critics who lived closest to his own day and age, namely, critics of the Romantic and Victorian Eras, and the general body of Shelleyian criticism of the latter twentieth century right on through to the present day, have indeed borne out the high estimate our readers have conferred on Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" in our present survey. While Shelley's reputation did indeed suffer quite the blow in the early to mid-twentieth century, as he approaches his Bicentenary, Shelley's star once again shines in the firmament of the great Romantic poets. Allow me to quote this telling comment by a recent critic, William Keach, whose thoroughgoing study of Shelley's poetic achievements, Shelley's Style is greatly at odds with F.R. Leavis' anachronistic damning of Shelley's genius, since, unlike Leavis before him, who mistakenly took Shelley's breathtaking kinesthetic speed for sloppiness in composition, Keach much more aptly concludes that we should not mistake:
Faint solace indeed for a critic like F.R. Leavis. Here William Keach quite justifiably reinforces Neville Rogers' conclusions concerning the particular care Shelley invested in the composition and frequent revision of his wonderful "Ode to the West Wind". With his conclusions and those of Neville Rogers before him I wholeheartedly concur. © by Richard Vallance, February 26 2006, with the editorial assistance of Bradley A. Bucsis, Pamela Murray and Kevin Regalbuto References & Notes [1] FROM: Matthew Arnold as a Literary Critic. To be fair to Percy Bysshe Shelley, it is advisable to read Arnold's essay on Shelley as an English Romantic poetry in its entirety. You can find Matthew Arnold's essay on Shelley in: Arnold, Matthew, "Shelley", pp. 363-380, in: Culler, Dwight, ed. Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, © 1961. xxiv, 582 pp.
Diligit, tutus caret obsolenti Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda Sobrius aula. [6] C.M. Bowra. The Romantic Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press [a Galaxy Book], © 1961. 300 pp. I refer you specifically to Bowra's Chapter on Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Prometheus Unbound", pp. 103-125, in which he advances this estimate of Shelley's gifts as a Romantic poet: Shelley solved this problem with bold originality. To make his ideas vivid and persuasive, he evolved a system of coherent symbols which would appeal as poetry and yet take away nothing from the metaphysical character of his subject. To him the philosopher and the poet were so closely blended that he saw general ideas almost as particular objects of devotion,...[7] F.R. Leavis, "Shelley", pp. 268-288 in: Abrams, M.H. English Romantic Poets [Modern Essays in Criticism]. London: Oxford University Press, © 1960, 1968. 384 pp. [no ISBN] [8]. See [2] above, op. cit., pg. 157.
Richard Vallance is the author of: Canadian Federation of Poets: Poetry Lessons: Lesson & Exercise - Week 18 SONNETS in The Canadian Federation of Poets weekly Poetry Progress Lessons & Exercises series
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