Monsignor Ryan’s Reflections on “The Naming of Cats”

The Naming of Cats was published in 1939. It was featured in a poetry collection called, “Old Possums Book of Practical Cats”. This collection contains whimsical poems about feline psychology and sociology. “The Naming of Cats “ particularly describes the names of cats and how they receive them. This is addressed to humans by the “lyrical voice” who tries to teach the reader more about feline life. The poem shares the mysteriousness and the deviousness of cats. Most of the poems in “Old Possums Book of Practical Cats” were written in the 1930’s and included in letters to T S Eliot’s godchildren. In 1939, these were included and first published. “Old Possums Book of Practical cats” includes fifteen poems. The last one in the collection, “Cat Morgan introduces Himself”, was added in the 1952 edition. The Naming of Cats” and “Old Possum Book of Practical cats” was adapted for stage by Andrew Lloyd Webber. His appraisal is the best-known musical adaptation of the poem.

“The Naming of Cats”, has a great number of literary devices such as allusion, similes, and repetitions. Personification is one of the main literary devices as cats are given human characteristics. The “lyrical voice” acquires a didactic, but playful tone. He/she explains about the naming of cats, but at the same time, he/she plays with the external references and different types of allusions. The rhythm scheme of the poem is ABAB and produces a short and rhythmical dialogue.

The “lyrical voice” explains how a cat can have three different names firstly, the name given by their human family, secondly a particular name, thirdly an unknown name for humans.

The poem begins by stating the importance of the naming of cats. There is an allusion to “Alice in Wonderland” to compare the reader’s possible thought while reading to a reference he/she knows and has read about. (“You may think that I am as a mad as hatter”).

Notice the emphasis made in capital letters to the number of names a cat has. Then the “lyrical voice” talks about the first name, the family name and gives examples of names (such as … /all of them sensible everyday names”) these repetitions and rhyme schemes create a particular rhythmical pace in the poem which is almost song like. Then the “lyrical voice” proceeds to talk about the second name a cat has. This is a particular name which the cat possesses as it brings pride to the cat.
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Finally the “lyrical voice” talks about the third and last name. There is an emphasis on the impossibility of knowing this name (“and that is the name you’ll never guess/the name that no human research can discern”). But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. There is some mystery about the final name, as the narrator states it will never be known to humans as is evidenced in the final lines (“of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:/his ineffable, effable Effanineffable”). This change in rhythm and structure allows the “lyrical voice” to finish the poem dramatically and to capture the reader’s attention.

Thomas Stearns Eliot 1888 – 1965 

T. S. Eliot was a British essayist, playwright and social critic. Although he was born in the United States, he became a British citizen in 1927. He moved to England in 1914, at the age of 25, and stayed in England for the rest of his life.

He is renowned as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was one of the leading figures in the Modernist movement in the early 1900’s. Among his most famous poems are: “The Waste Land”, “The Hollow Man”, “Ash Wednesday” and “Four Quartets”.

​T S Eliot won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1948.

Monsignor Ryan’s Reflections on “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” 

“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” is probably Edward Lear’s most famous poem, and a good example of Victorian nonsense verse. But can we really analyse nonsense literature, or subject it to critical scrutiny? After all, the very name implies that it is not supposed to make sense. Yet whenever a poem attains iconic status, it is worth reflecting on how it achieved that status.

“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” was first published in Lear’s 1871 collection, “Nonsense, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets”. The poem, in summary, tells of the love between the owl and the pussycat and their subsequent marriage, with the turkey presiding over the wedding. They obtained the wedding ring from a pig who sells own his own for a shilling. It is not so well known that Edward Lear wrote “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat for a friend’s daughter, Janet Symonds who was born in 1865 and was three years old when Lear wrote the poem. Janet was the daughter of a friend, John A. Symonds who was a pioneering poet in his own right. Concerning “The Owl and Pussy-Cat” is one male and one female? We have a definite answer supplied by Lear himself in a little known sequel. There it is revealed that the owl is male and the pussycat female.

The word “runcible” in the poem was a coinage of Lear for this particular poem. Yet nobody is sure what “runcible” actually means. It is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as simply a nonsense word coined by Lear. Lear himself didn’t help matters. As well as applying the word to a spoon he went onto to use “runcible" to describe his hat, a wall and even his cat.
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But this still leaves us with the question is “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” meant to mean anything or is it a delightful fantasy? After all it features anthropomorphic animals: the owl and the pussycat can talk, the owl sings a song and plays the guitar, the pig is involved in financial transactions and the turkey officiates at ceremonies. So is this making a commentary on Victorian society? There are endless interpretations and theories. My own opinion is that we are dealing with nonsense literature and should consequently treat it as such. We are clearly in a fantasy world here, and should surely simply enjoy the delicious use of language, rhyme and imagery.

Edward Lear 1812-1888

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet.

He is principally known for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a literary form he took pride in popularising.

Monsignor Ryan’s Reflections on “Funeral Blues” (Stop All the Clocks)

“Funeral Blues” (Stop All the Clocks) was written and first published in 1938. It is a poem about the immensity of grief: the speaker has lost someone important but the rest of the world doesn’t slow down or stop to pay its respects-it just keeps plugging along as if nothing has changed. The speaker experiences this indifference as a kind of torment and demands that the world grieves too.

Grief in the poem, is thus presented as deeply isolating, an emotion that cuts off the people who grieve from the world around them. It conveys an unrelenting pessimism best exemplified by the last line, “For nothing now can ever come to any good’. The poem is morose, sad elegy that wonderfully describes the feelings associated with grieving.
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The poem is principally famous for modern audiences thanks to its appearance in the successful, romantic comedy, “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.

W. H. Auden 1907-1973

Wystan Hugh Auden was an English poet, playwright, critic and librettist. He exerted a major influence on the poetry of the Twentieth century. Although born in York he grew up in Birmingham. He was known for his outstanding intellect and wit. His first book of poems was published in 1930 with the help of T. S. Elliot.
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Just before the outbreak of Word War II, Auden emigrated to the United States. It was there in 1948 that he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his work, “The Age of Anxiety”. Much of his poetry is concerned with moral issues and evidences a strong political, social and psychological context. He collaborated in writing libretti for the musical works of Benjamin Britten, Stravinsky and Mozart.

Rupert Brooke 1887-1915

Monsignor Ryan’s Reflections on “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester”

This poem takes me back to Primary and early High School. As they say, “You have to crawl before you can walk…”. This is what caught my imagination and gave me a taste for poetry. The rhyming couplets and the even meter, which some critics find boring and pedestrian, appeal to me. For me it is sheer nostalgia! It transports me to my youth and childhood. The quotation that propelled Rupert Brooke into the national psyche:

“If I should die, think only this of me,
That there’s some corner of a foreign field 
That is forever England.”

This is from his fifth war sonnet, “The Soldier.” The war sonnets (this is not the time nor occasion for visiting them) are probably Brooke’s finest poetry, Their quality often clouded because of the sentiments of glory they embody, were out of date almost as soon as they were expressed. Sadly Brooke died, not in the tragic heroism of Flander’s Field but rather more prosaically from sepsis as a result of a mosquito bite. He was en route to the Dardanelles when this happened. This was only six weeks after completing “The Soldier”.

Modernist critics made the Georgian poets obsolete. Brooke was judged to be a popular rather than a consciously literary poet. Having died at such an early age, he was not given the chance to redress this. Had he survived the War and been up against the likes of T.S. Elliot who knows how he would have responded to the challenge?
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Of his Collected Poems my favourite is “The Old Vicarage” the poem he wrote in Berlin in the Spring of 1912. The Old Vicarage” named after the house in the Cambridge Village where Rupert Brooke had rooms, is a poem of nostalgia. The village was and still is an English idyll. Sitting at a table in a Berlin café, “The Old Vicarage” is Brooke’s version of “home thoughts from abroad”. Brooke recalls the scene he was missing. The poem shows Brooke’s ability to use verse, not just for varying degrees of musicality, but for scene-painting. The poem is a paean not just to this rural idyll but to English history and its people and to the ease of England compared to the regimentation of Germany. Brooke would see little of his Arcadia but in “The Old Vicarage” Grantchester he left us the perfect picture of it.

Rupert Brooke was born on 3rd August 1887 at Rugby in Warwickshire. Rupert attended Rugby School where his father was a housemaster. At school Brooke excelled in both academics and athletics. From Rugby School he proceeded to King’s College, Cambridge where he completed a degree in English Literature.

He was an English poet known for his war sonnets written during the First World War.
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After graduation he toured North America, New Zealand and the Pacific islands. He returned home shortly before the outbreak of World War I. At the outbreak of war he enlisted in a division of the Royal Navy. In 1915 he set sail for the Dardanelles. En route he developed sepsis as a result of a mosquito bite. He died on the Greek island of Skyros and he is buried in olive grove on that island.