"Business Girls" by John Betjeman (poetry reading)

[HerbyPumpkin]

You can see all this today (14/7/2011) as you journey into London in the early morning.

Absolutely nothing has changed.

But what sympathy this man has for the litlle, simple things of Life.

[jeremy1000100]

Read by someone who just does not undestand Betjaman at all

[SpokenVerse]

@jeremy1000100 It would be better if you actually said what was wrong with it. Or, better still, read it yourself and post your reading. Otherwise, your understanding isn't much use, is it?

[floppetylove]

I've never heard him speak before, but he sounds exactly as I had imagined...His voice fits his poems perfectly

[SpokenVerse]

@floppetylove It's not Betjeman speaking, I read everything in this SpokenVerse channel.  You can find Betjeman's voice on the web quite easily, though.

[FinestWarrior]

can anyone break down this poem? is it a iambic poem?

[SpokenVerse]

@FinestWarrior It's trochaic tetrameters but every other line is catalectic.

[oscarelgy]

i dont consider the poem voyeuristic. betjeman certainly adored women and this is empathic certainly, but i get no sense of a sensual or sexual motif in this work.

[AgingFishwife]

Hi Spokenverse, I agree it's voyeuristic. If it was just that though, it wouldn't be the light, humorous, pleasant little poem that it is. It's not *just* the speaker perving at the idea of all those girls in their baths, although that's there - that's part of what makes it humorous. It also gives a sympathetic (I think) picture of getting up in the morning in an English bedsit with its gurgling water pipes, thin walls, draughty windows etc. And that helps make the poem likeable as well.

[AgingFishwife]

Me? I think the poem is sort of sympathetic but ambiguous. It's about that moment when you're sitting in the bath looking at the peeling plaster (in my flat)/draughty skylight before starting another day. But it flips between the point of view of the bather, and a man standing outside the house looking up at the tacked-on bathrooms and imagining all those women having baths inside. All those poor lonely women...

It evokes its time and place very well as well, another reason to like it.

[AgingFishwife]

Sounds a bit like my mornings. Things don't change much...

loveyoutodeathbut, I don't think there is a deeper meaning. It's just about loads of single women getting up on the mornings in their lonely bedsits, boarding houses and shoddy flats, and having a hot soak before the day starts and they have to go off to their low paid dead end jobs in London in the 40s or 50s.

[applicate321]

hi agingfishwife,

checked out jhonny winters on your channel, cool. when I first read the poem I assumed it was about working girls (prostitutes), I think because I associate Cambden with seedy vice. the bath cleansing (so to speak) before they would work. Dhalias glimpsed through garden doors, glimpsing at beautifull nature but never being close to it.

The final verse offering empathy.

dunno if this is an accurate reading, but its how I interpretated it when I first read it.

[AgingFishwife]

Hello applicate321

It's possible this is what he means. I can see how 'business women' could be a euphemism for working girls.  And he does say they are going to a windy street - I assumed this was on the way to work but they could be working *on* the street. But prostitutes normally work at night, not in the morning - the timing's wrong.

[loveyoutodeathbut]

I'm not sure of the deeper meaning of the poem, but I am most anxious to learn!