| Title | : | Summoned by Bells |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0719533503 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780719533501 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published December 1, 1976 |
Summoned by Bells Reviews
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Listened to this in the car and had Betjeman's own fruity tones sounding forth. Stopped at traffic lights and in jams, I received one or two funny looks until I realized I still had it blaring out so as to be heard over the 'roar'...if that is not butching it up too much... of my smart car's engine forgetting that, now stationery, the engine was quietly ticking over and I had the deliberately laid back Poet Laureate screaming out like some mad harridan. Innocent bystanders, ears bleeding from the onslaught, stumbled home summoned not by bells but by a throbbing ache and I have probably put back the cause of his poetry about three decades in Poole.
Hearing him read though, at a normal level, you capture the glorious alliteration and the simplicity of the language. He is not, by any shadow of means my favourite english poet, not by a long way, but his honesty, the poignant references to the difficutlies of his relationship with his parents and his father's understandable but never to be fulfilled expectations; his first hero worship, the agony and ectasty inherent in this; his snobbish disregard of others and his arrogant assumption of success. All this couched in simple images and unpretentious language makes it easy to digest and easy to enjoy but, dare I say, also fairly easy to forget.
In all honesty, though I enjoyed the excursion, I doubt I will come this way again. -
Reading this feels like walking along an English country lane at dusk in summer, the faint smell of honey-suckle drifting on the cool breeze. It is familiar, and bittersweet
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With apologies to Sir John:
From luxury of breakfast
Taken in my room
And sound of birdsong interrupted
Only by the strains of Bach...
I wandered from my eyrie
Catching the early morning sun
Upon that early stubble
Rustle of autumn leaves upon the path
That led between the trees to school
And strolling with patrician ease
Into the Upper Quad
Feet crunching gravel
To Medieval History, with Ted
(Jesus) Master of Sankey's
Whose favours I'd preferred to those of Robin,
(Gonville and Caius), his smile
Always a touch too thin and hesitant
While Victorian annals I'd eschewed
However well served up by Briggs and Young
In favour of 'Annales' - Bloch and Southern
Whose pages, though at first obscure,
Shone like the stained glass in the Chapel
Deeper, though, in reds and blues
Of the Sainte Chapelle and Vezelay
Opening the aromatic pages
Of some newly-discovered tome
And weighing architectural merits
Of French v. English late Baroque,
Listening to Sinfonia Concertante
(HMV, Dorati, LSO)
I felt, at last, I'd come into my own...
What was my own?
I partly liked to shock
Proffer the opposite opinion
Duck out of games, run down the CCF,
And think them fools who tried their best ...
But cynicism soon gave way to doubt
Dark inexplicable feelings, trembles
That came, unwelcome, like dark clouds
I could not explain this new, unasked for, persecution
And in the end, they turned me down! -
Published in 1960, this collection of Betjeman's verse covers his memories of early years. Of childhood in London, holidays in Cornwall, schooldays at Marlborough College and University at Oxford.
I like the places and the time that the verses invoke. Memories of an Edwardian childhood in North London, right through to Oxford in the late 1920s, where Betjeman famously did not see eye to eye with one of his tutors, C S Lewis. Some people didn't like his verse, thought it too humorous and light-hearted for him to be made the poet laureate in the 1970s. I always enjoyed his rhymes and though him an interesting man. He championed all things Victorian, especially buildings. Form these early verses we see him on a bicycle visiting old English churches, much as I did when I was a boy.
So this slender volume is a delight of old memories and a time long since vanished. I have my first edition, from 1960 with a small selection of woodcut illustrations ahead of each verse, places I know in London, Cornwall, Marlborough and Oxford. When my volume arrived in the post a couple of months back, it contained a few old press cuttings inside the front cover. A review of the book from 1960, a picture of Betjeman in later life and an obituary of Augustus John, who died in 1961. I love those little snapshots into the life and likes of a previous owner. -
This book is interesting because it’s a sort of weird mix between poetry and non-fiction. In Summoned By Bells, Betjeman effectively tells the story of his life in a sort of weird mixture of rhyming and non-rhyming verse, with plenty of insightful commentary on the events that shaped his career.
I don’t know much about him, but I grabbed this book from the charity shop bins outside where I work and then discovered that it’s a first edition. It’s a beautiful book and I’m proud to own it; not for everyone, though. -
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
The late poet laureate's 'life in verse', from nursery to university. Read by the author. Recorded in 1960. -
This autobiography-in-blank-verse covers Betjemen's middle-class childhood in pre-WW2 England, and his first year at university. He is a witty, lively poet, and his descriptions of his childhood are self-deprecating, astute, and sometimes funny. At times, his poetry captures the beauty of place or nature in vibrant, original ways, and can be very moving. At other times, his blank-verse is pedestrian, and his thoughts are trite. The last chapter of the book, describing Betjeman's failed year at university, is where the book really falls down: Betjeman sycophanticly describes lecturers and friends, and repeats the kind of Oxbridge stories that weigh many memories. However, there's a lot to like here, and it's a shame it ends on such a bum note.
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This is wonderful Betjeman, providing a great insight into his family life and his time at Marlborough College as a boarder and at Oxford University, from where he was sent down for failing in Divinity. There is much good humour but also a poignancy to the difficulties he highlights with regard to the relationship with his father with whom he had little if anything in common. It is a relatively quick read and at its conclusion it relates the humourous tale of his time as a cricket coach / teacher.
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A truly amazing achievement. The flowing prose so smoothly written draws you seductively through childhood reveries densely detailed in recounted metre, while aesthetic passions so fervently indulged (in poetry, church architecture, and Cornwall), can't help inspire a deep love of antiquity and reading for pleasure.
The poet on a bildungsroman journey from teddy bear innocence to university dropout failure and beyond.
Just the idea is enough to win you over; autobiography in blank verse. The execution, as ever with Betjeman, is second to none. -
I’m pretty sure I read this, found on the poetry shelves in the University of Texas at Arlington library, as an undergrad about a half century ago. I remember mostly enjoying it, though much of the “public” school and university world must have been quite arcane to a working class Texas boy. And some of the references are still arcane, though I’ve read zillions of pages of English lit since then. But it’s a deft and fairly interesting version of an often shallow young manhood.
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I read this short blank verse autobiography in carefully apportioned pieces, just because it's such a delight. It's a wonderful illustration of how the natural timbre of language, without resorting to rhyme, can rhythmically charm the ears - particularly if composed in Shakespeare's favoured iambic pentameter.
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An iconic book - a best selling verse autobiography by one of England's great eccentrics-poet, lover of architecture and the railways, TV and radio celebrity. Probably a mystery to most people born before 1980 but Betjeman was and still is an English institution.
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A beautifully descriptive piece of work.
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Absolutely delightful.
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Lost in the dream
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Sorry it’s just not my thing, I read the whole book but just couldn’t get on with it. Poetry is not my chowed genre but a new year and a new genre. I shall seek another poet. Any recommendations??
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Not having much of an appreciation for poetry, I picked up this attractive verse autobiography to learn more about Betjeman and his formation. That it does wonderfully. And I'm sure the versing is exceptional, too. Well recommended to all.
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I find poetry books in odd places (almost all "pre-owned") and I have no recollection where I found this book, first published in 1960, by British poet John Betjeman. It's an autobiographical book of poetry written in blank verse covering the poet's formative years. I couldn't help thinking he just decided to pull a Wordsworth.
The result for me is mixed. Sometimes his blank verse sings, especially when he's detailing things that fascinated him as a young person: the inner workings of the manufacturing side of his father's business, the seaside of Cornwall, and the subway system.
"The cabinet-makers shop, all belts and wheels
and whining saws, would thrill me with the scream
of tortured wood, starting a blackened plank
under the cruel plane and coming out
sweet-scented, pink and smooth and richly grained"
or
"Three days on end would the September gale
slam at our bungalows; three days on end
rattling cheap doors and making tempers short.
It mattered not, for then enormous waves
house-high rolled thunderous on Greenaway,
flinging up spume and shingle to the cliffs.
Unmoved amid the foam, the cormorant
watched from its peak. In all the roar and swirl
the still and small things gained significance."
And sometimes the blank verse is clunky, and more often, the story is dull. I think the dullness is partly because the nostalgia and landscapes are too distant from me in time and place and social class (though I must say I don't feel that way about Wordsworth). He's expecting "Highgate" and "Chelsea" to mean something to me and they don't. I can't relate to life in an English upper middle class boarding school (he has nothing original to add to general knowledge that I could detect) or being able to lark about Oxford without a care about expenses. There's quite a bit of name-dropping in the poem, some of which I get (Auden, Eliot) and others that mean nothing to me.
Still, the 115 pages were a fairly fast read, which is some form of success certainly. It didn't drag. I liked the recurrence of the bells throughout the text in different settings, which the title prepares us for and would be noticeable even without that prompt. If you're in the mood for a charming reminiscence, this might fit the bill, but he doesn't reach deep in any of it. I'll probably keep it on my shelf as an example of autobiographical poetry and extended blank verse. -
Betjeman himself said of this he'd gone "as near prose as he dare". If you can get beyond the thee and thy and the frequent apostrophising of roads, beaches, churches and childhood friends, it evokes a vanished world of comfortable privilege very effectively.
No matter how much i reread it, it's always enjoyable. Betjeman knew what he was doing, as with the collected poems he did what he did well and stuck with it. The narrating voice has a wry distance on the story, which allows for shades of very British self-deprecating Irony.
Favorite story: The precocious Betjeman, in Highgate Junior School, has decided to be a poet. He writes his collected poems out by hand in a book he's been given for the purpose:
And so I bound my verse into a book,
'The Best of Betjeman" and handed it
To one who, I was told, liked poetry
The American Master, Mr. Eliot.
That dear good man, with Prufrock in his head
And Sweeney waiting to be agonized,
I wonder what the thought? He never says
When now we meet, across the port and cheese.
He looks the same as then, long, lean,and pale,
Still with the slow deliberating speech
And enigmatic answers. At the time
A boy called Jelly said: "He thinks they're bad"-
But he himself is still too kind to say. -
John Betjeman tells the story of his early life in 115 pages of blank verse, interspersed with short poems in more formal forms. I've been meaning to read this for years, and have really enjoyed sinking into it over a beautiful summer weekend. Betjeman is so good on the physical sensations of childhood: the safe warmth of the nursery, the sights and sounds of seaside holidays, the privations of public school life, but he is also very perceptive about family tensions. He vividly examines the strains between his parents and the disappointment and anger his father feels at young John's failure to be the fifth generation of Betjeman to enter the family firm, preferring instead to live a dissolute life at Oxford, being sent down before he could take his degree. This is frank and vivid a memoir as any told in a more traditional form.
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I had recently discovered a selection of Betejeman's verse and was reminded that I had once planned to read his verse autobiography. 'Summoned by Bells' was, for me, a delight. Betjeman is a poet of great technical skill, not unlike Larkin or Thomas in his inventive explorations of poetic form, however, he is also less profound than those two champions. In Betjeman's world, cheerfulness is always breaking in and I was grateful to spend a few hours in the company of a learned and sociable companion as he recalls his life of considerable privilege. This book is pure pleasure and it offers a portrait of an England of roast beef on Sunday and sea side vacations. I wonder what he and Ray Davies would have made of each other?
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This is a very beautiful edition of this now classic title; to read and to holdfast. Cover and contents warmly remind of the beautiful and happy things in life. I like Betjeman’s clear and deliberate decision to remember and record in blank verse predominantly what he found good in his life, for what there was to be thankful for. In such a light, even academic failure at Oxford doesn’t seem quite as damaging as it might have so read in prose. Or am I guilty of taking that view in knowledge of his later highly popular success?
Betjeman’s acknowledgement to Messrs Mears & Stainbank for campanological advice amuses me. How refreshing it is to see such honest desire to be correct in the detail. An excellent example to us all! -
So evocative from such sparse verse, amazing!
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Just re-read this, in the edition illustrated by Hugh Casson. What a fine thing it is, and the illustrations are perfect. This is JB on the train journey from Waterloo to Padstow:
The small fields waiting, every blackthorn hedge
straining inland before the south west gale.
The emptying train, wind in the ventilators,
puffs out of Egloskerry to Tresmeer
through minty meadows, under bearded trees
and hills upon whose sides the clinging farms
hold Bible Christians.
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Not a great fan of Betjamin, although he is quite endearing at times, he's also very mannered and glib.
There's a story about him arriving in slippers to a tutorial with C S Lewis. He writes poetry that equates to carpet slippers - very comfy, but don't take you very far. -
I enjoyed the early stages, and I found his self perception to be particularly interesting - but as it wore on, and with the constant refrain of how hard put-upon are aesthetes, I found it hard to prevent myself flicking on a few pages to hurry the experience to its conclusion.
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I got this book because it was a verse autobiography of Betjeman and pleasantly illustrated. Sadly, I have little appreciation for verse, so haven't gotten the best out of it. But I liked the book, and five stars.
