The poetry of George Macbeth and A War Quartet (1969)

                    Too young to fight, too old to forget.


                               

                                        A  U boat shells a merchant ship which has remained afloat
                                        after being torpedoed at the Battle of the Atlantic.
                                        Public domain, courtesy of 'Wikipedia' 




George Macbeth was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland 1932. His father was a miner. The family moved to Sheffield when George was three , where he remained until  attending New College, Oxford. Later to become a prolific poet , novelist, and poetry editor. ,Macbeth spent many years working for BBC, particularly wish such programmes as Poets Voice ( 1958- 1965) , Poetry Now  ( 1965-1976) and New Comment  (1959-1964). Associated with 'The Group', a loose alliance of poets based in London during the 1950's and 1960's whose work often tackled controversial subjects such as death, religion and war. In 1964, Macbeth was published in the 'Penguin Modern Poets' series along with Jack Clemo and Edward Lucie-Smith. He also read his work at the famous Poetry Olympics at the Albert Hall in 1965. Giving up broadcasting in 1976, Macbeth wanted to devote himself to writing. In 1992 he died from complications arising from motor-neuron disease.

I have  recently read Jeff Nuttall  ( 1933-2004 ) seminal work 'Bomb Culture'  (1968)  about the British Underground from 1956-1967. Nuttall's argument , borrowing heavily from Norman Mailer, was that the teenagers of the 1950 's were the first generation of young people who had to grow up with the knowledge that humanity could destroy itself into extinction via the use of the H-bomb. This led to a whole new sub-culture created by the young generation. Nuttall also felt that the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ensured that the older generation would be tarnished in the eyes of the young. The Bomb thus served as a complete break with the wars of the Past.

Interesting to see that George Macbeth, though only a year older than Nuttall, had a much more complex relationship with World War 2, George Macbeth's upbringing  had seen some harrowing moments. A land mine dropped in an air raid detonated and wrecked the family home whilst George and his family sheltered under the stairs. A few months later, George Macbeth's father, who was serving as an air raid warden, simply did not come home from working during an air raid, and was never seen or heard of again. Effectively joining the 'missing' of World War 2.

Macbeth's poem 'The Creed', written upon realising that had reached the age of 46 ,mentions how World War 2 would forever be a presence in his life.

"Child of that sluggish war,
As I am that will never die
There will always be bombers there
At the back of my burning head.
And my father in uniform."


In 1969, George Macbeth published his most ambitious World War 2 poetry collection 'A War Quartet' The books cites quite an extensive bibliography and Macbeth makes it clear that the four poems are the product of dedicated historical research. The four poems depicted four turning points in World War 2; the Battle of El-Alamein , the Battle of Britain, ,the Battle of the Atlantic, and the Battle of Stalingrad. (These four poems are arranged  out of historical sequence ).

On the cover of 'A War Quartet '  Macbeth advised that he wrote " For me, as for so many of my generation-too young to fight, too old to forget.The War was a formative event. and it remains an obsessive memory.To treat it as a dream-like trauma, rather than as lived experience may at worst provide a convenient filter, and at best a chance of insight."

The phrase 'a chance of insight' is intriguing. A historian's case against War Poetry having an influence on how a conflict is viewed,  is often based on the notion that a poem will not explain why the war began or ended, in other words will not disclose why someone is serving in the ranks or caught up in an air raid. A poet's defence is that poetry records or recreates  impression  of crucial  human experience. People turn to poetry in times of emotional intensity, to read out at a funeral, or wedding, or at an Remembrance event.  For example Sassoon poem to the World War 1 dead - 'Aftermath' with the refrain 'Have you forgotten Yet' ? can say more in two minutes hard hitting language than a whole book on the subject ever could.

Yet the problem is that 'A War Quartet' doesn't quite work. One sort of admires Macbeth for attempting such an ambitious project. Particularly in 1969 when the Vietnam War was of a concern to the younger generation, he seemed to be going against the grain. In the seminal biography 'Walking Wounded-The Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell 'by Andrew Taylor, Macbeth  is portrayed as being hesitant to write about World War 2 due to the fact that he was not a combatant. Vernon Scannell, born ten years earlier in 1922, served in the North Africa campaign and the Normandy invasion, is shown to have encouraged George Macbeth to have written poetry about World War 2.


Firstly the Battle of El Alamein , which opens 'A War Quartet ' was part of the Desert War : This was the one campaign within  World War 2 that was so covered by poets, many of them who actually fought there. Keith Douglas,Hamish Henderson, Edwin Morgan, Sorley Maclean, G S Fraser, George Campbell Hay. Great initiatives took also took  place with organisations such as The Oasis Trust to encourage those in uniform to write whilst they served in North Africa.. George Macbeth's take on the Desert War doesn't seem add anything to what had been written before.

"So when, days later,we
Looked back from Libya, saw the flowing line
of turret after turret, fortress like
As if a city stirred, such awkward tears
Throttled us, that we blinked in strange grit, steamed
Inside the famous metal, touched it felt
Victory tangible.
             And those we killed,
Or captured after so much turmoil, where was their star bound?"

Next section 'Autumn Victory' about a Battle of Britain shows an improvement, featuring bomber crews preparing for take off.

                    "In a blur
of green and reaching leaves, hitting the wind,
All  plunged against their boundary, split and pulled,
Easing the joy-stick to their mid-riffs, wings
Gather of others' muscles, to quick fans
Cloud-ramming, jubilant
                        In a surge of air
The sky flowered with fighters."

The main character, the pilot, visits London where he manages to find a woman serving as a WAAF for quick sex which is interrupted by an air raid. The pilot then wanders, stunned in the aftermath of the bombing

The next sequence is under the sea. Featuring a U boat commander who has to surrender to the Allies. Again the notion of the war just being some of perverse dream is raised . It manages to convey the claustrophobia of life on a U-boat

"             A sort of morbid fear,
Acute-sensed, looked over, swelled my body.
Became an instrument, as if the sea
Entered my blood, mixed with it.
                                           In strange salts
Her monsters watched
                      In my narrow bunk, awake
Under the blue alarm light, I would like
Listening to each miniature noise-pit flick
of the gyro compass, an irregular click
Like someone sharpening a pencil, control-noise
Lifted or fallen.."


The final and shortest section of 'A War Quartet' concerns Stalingrad , and is written from a German point of view. Somehow just doesn't quite flow. In the introduction to 'A War Quartet, Macbeth cites the success of James Schevill's lyrical sequence 'The Stalingrad Elegies' from 1964 , based on the letters of German soldiers, to show that a poet does not need to be an eye witness to the events that they are writing about.

                                           " After
the fire-war from the air, the snow-war from
The ground

                Settle in cellars, bombs
Mines and grenades expended, we came down to guns
Duelling.
             Each had heroes, men
Who never wasted fire
                                    The was the month
Of the sniper.
                      We had a crack one under tin
A hundred years off.
                     In six days, he ruled
The area we could walk in, pinned our lives
With quadrant fire
                 Then, in a fit of risk
Lifting a mitten on a stick, he lost
Full Secrecy....."


NOTES  & LINKS

George Macbeth's Collected Poems '1958-1982 'has been out of print for many years.

'A War Quartet ', George Macbeth, was originally published by Macmillan in 1969, and reprinted twice in 1970, then seems to have fallen out of print. Both 'Collected Poems' and 'A War Quartet ' were available on Amazon Co UK last time I checked.

Tribute to George Macbeth from  King Edward VII school Sheffield

Feature on George Macbeth from High Windows Press

Further work by Michael Bully

Bleak Chesney Wold   Charles Dickens / 'dark' Victoriana

13th century history blog

A Burnt Ship  17th century war and literature blog