Poetry - classic and contemporary

Obviously our Anglophilia leaks over into other types of literature, poetry being just one.

My most recent poetry reads from the UK were New British Poetry edited by Charles Simic & Don Patterson which, although women were unrepresented in the anthology, was pretty good. I also loved The World's Wife: poems by Carol Ann Duffy and have picked up her Feminine Gospels (although have not had a change to look too deeply into it.)

Let's talk detective fiction! Just kidding... ;)

It's going to be interesting seeing how Lives of the Poets progresses, since it encompasses not only English poets but English speaking poets from around the world.

In some ways I feel like reading the book is a way to reconnect with poetry since I don't read it that often any more and yet, in a way, it's kind of a dodge.

...and yet, in a way, it's kind of a dodge.

For me, it's a kind of bridge - back into the poetry.

I'm working through the essays on Elizabethans, and was reading Marlowe earlier. (Touchstones are persnickety tonight.)

#3 - That certainly sounds better than my appraisal :) I feel like I need to set aside time though solely devoted to the poetry itself. It is helpful, but sometimes I feel like I'm reading around the poems.

Yes. I understand having to make oneself stop and set aside the time. I had to make myself follow up the urge(s) to read the poetry, to slow down when they hit and change books. It's just that slowing, my own ignorance, and a love of prose (and 'story') that often deflect me from poetry. Yet, when I do read it, regret for that avoidance is common. Hopefully, this will change things. :)

I think Lives of the Poets is a great book, particularly because it tells me loads that I didn't know about American poets. (I'm a bit more clued in on the Brits, Ancient and Modern, although a bit more ancient than modern.)

The result is that my copy is impressively tatty and dog-eared, the sure sign of a much used book. But yes, we always have to go back to the poets - Blake, Edward Thomas and Wallace Stevens for me, at the moment.

I am having a little exploration of the modern British poets - WD Auden, Phillip Larkin, Andrew Motion, TS Eliot. Rather partial to Larkin although I am completely a neophyte poetry reader. Always a task-oriented person, it has been a shift for me to enjoy the poetic form.

#7

Larkin was an amazing poet, but is there anything in particular in his work that attracts you? He led a different kind of life.

Karen, another amateur poetry reader here, with much the same tastes you have mentioned, particularly Larkin whom I discovered through "This Be the Verse". His view of the world is bleak, but witty and so familiar. The way we might see things on a very bad day. His Jill is in my tbr pile.

'...bleak, but witty and so familiar.'

A fine description, and it gives me yet more eagerness to proceed. I'm reading Spenser, and in essays am just past Ben Jonson.

Re 7, yep, lots of good in Larkin, but the Old Fogeyism gets a bit wearing sometimes.

Interesting that you mention Andrew Motion in such august company. That doesn't often happen. Maybe its because he's Poet Laureate. His predecessor, Big Ted, was a far more considerable poet, I think, but I hope you enjoy the Motion. Would you recommend him?

We have to be careful how we use the word British, but the modern Irish poets - Heaney is the big name, I suppose, but I really like Patrick Kavanagh - are well worth a dabble. Or is this out of bounds in Anglophiles?

Expanding out from Ireland, there are a number of Scottish poets worth seeking out as well - Edwin Muir, Norman MacCaig, Douglas Dunn (especially his collection Elegies which deals with the death of his wife) and Kathleen Jamie, to name a few. Not to mention Sorley Maclean, the greatest Gaelic poet of the last century.

Another Irish poet worth reading is Tom Paulin; his book length war poem The Invasion Handbook is very good.

Yes, Norman MacCaig! A great poet.

Stones Thrown Through Me by Dean Wilson

Let me be
your target practice,
your very own John the Baptist.

I'm a lonely boy
with a lonely boy's ways
in need of a hobby
to keep me sane.

So cover me
in cherry blossom
and watch bruises form
like they're going out of fashion.

It's a funny old world it is
and becoming funnier
by the second.

I'm highly strung
and come with a lot of baggage,
not to mention a slow-puncture
I've had since the ice-age.

Let me be
your moving target;
your reason for getting up in the morning.

Although I'm Dutch I especially like to read English poetry. Recently I bought the Selected poems by Alfred Tennyson and the Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake. Beautiful indeed.

A song of praise for the witches:

King Duffus

When all the witches were haled to the stake and burned;
When their last ashes were swept up and drowned,
King Duffus opened his eyes and looked round.

For half a year they had trussed him in their spell:
Parching, scorching, roaring, he was blackened as a coal.
Now he wept as a freshet in April.

Tears ran like quicksilver through his rocky beard.
Why have you wakened me, he said, with a clattering sword?
Why have you snatched me back from the green yard?

There I sat feasting under de cool linden shade;
The beer in the silver cup was ever renewed,
I was at peace there, I was well-bestowed:

My crown lay lightly on my brow as a clot of foam,
My wide mantle was yellow as the flower of the broom,
Hale and holy I was in mind and in limb.

I sat among poets and among philosophers,
Carving fat bacon for the mother of Christ;
Sometimes we sang, sometimes we conversed.

Why did you summon me back from the midst of that meal
To a vexed kingdom and a smoky hall?
Could I not stay at least until dewfall?

Claire Harman ed., Sylvia Townsend Warner: Collected Poems, p. 241

The Lady of Shalott - Alfred Tennyson

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott."

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, burning bright,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And around the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

I love poems that tell a story. The story of the innocent Victorian girl, taken to be the bride of a man she hardly knows, and knowing nothing about sex, has been the staple of many stories from the woman's point of view, but it's interesting to consider it also from the point of view of the (perhaps equally innocent) husband, to whom sex and marriage are also a mystery.

The Farmer's Bride written in 1916 by Charlotte Mew has always touched me deeply:

Three Summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe - but more's to do
At harvest-time than bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter's day.
Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman -
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

'Out 'mong the sheep, her be,' they said,
'Should properly have been abed';
But sure enough she wasn't there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before our lanterns. To Church-Town
All in a shiver and a scare
We caught her, fetched her home at last
And turned the key upon her, fast.

She does the work about the house
As well as most, but like a mouse:
Happy enough to chat and play
With birds and rabbits and such as they,
So long as men-folk keep away.
'Not near, not near!' her eyes beseech
When one of us comes within reach
The women say that beasts in stall
Look round like children at her call.
I've hardly heard her speak at all.

Shy as a leveret. swift as he,
Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
To her wild self. But what to me?

The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,
One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
A magpie's spotted feathers lie
On the black earth spread white with rime
The berries redden up to Christmas-time.
What's Christmas-time without there be
Some other in the house than we?

She sleeps up in the attic there
Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair
Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down
The soft young down of her, the brown,
The brown of her - her eyes, her hair, her hair!

That is lovely Booksloth. thanks for sharing.

Recently I've spent a bit of time reading Philip Larkin. Poems such as "Aubade", "Church Going," "At Grass," "MCMXVIIII" seem among if not the most profound ruminations on the daily despair and hopeless nostalgia that many people feel.

Doulton, I've been reading Larkin too. Striking I am glad I have been led into his work.

Perhaps those who have posted whole poems above have already answered this question, but it got me thinking... what poems do you know by heart and could recite at the drop of a hat, and why? (Not counting all you Scots haggis-spearers and Burns lovers).

I fell in love with Keat's Bright Star after watching the movie by the same name. I remember Ode on a Grecian Urn from high school, but Bright Star stays with me in a way that the other poem does not. I remember seeing Keat's apartment by the Spanish Steps in Rome where he died, longing to see his fiance again, and learning about the poem as an adult just brings everything full circle for me.

There are just lines of other poems that keep coming back to me, some of which I can no longer credit to their originators because I have forgotten the poet's names:

"I'm trying to take a lesson from the stories of the leaves/that are blown this way and that/before slowly coming to themselves."

"There are two moments of darkness in my life/the time before you came/and the time after you left"- Mohammed Iqbal

"my head in my hands/and my hands full of dust."

These lines haunt me, like Hardy's "Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me."

>22 hailandclimb:
Your Hardy line is one that sticks in my mind too.

I think most of the poetry I really know to a "drop of a hat" level is stuff that's embedded in my brain from childhood - the usual Belloc, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, etc. ("The chief defect of Henry King was eating little bits of string..."). In my case augmented by bits of Grimm, Christian Morgenstern, Wilhelm Busch and the like from the German side of my upbringing ("Es war einmal ein Lattenzaun mit Zwischenraum, hindurchzuschaun...").

There aren't that many "serious" poems I would be confident of being able to recite all the way through. Mostly inherently "recitable" things like Tennyson, Housman (I went through a studenty phase of standing on top of the Wrekin declaiming "On Wenlock Edge, the wood's in trouble..."), Kipling, Burns. Otherwise very standard repertoire: one or two of Shakespeare's sonnets, certainly Keats's "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" and Shelley's "Ozymandias", and most of "Kubla Khan" and "The rime of the ancient mariner", one or two lyrics of Goethe and Heine. But with German poetry I mostly know the words of things that were set to music by Schubert - if it has a tune it's always easier to remember it.

Apart from that, and especially for the metaphysicals and the 20th century, I tend to remember fragments. A group of us at school tried to learn "The Wasteland" off by heart, but I wouldn't be at all confident of getting the bits in the right order now. Or indeed of remembering what comes from "The Wasteland" and what from elsewhere in Eliot. Larkin and Dylan Thomas are probably the only post-war poets I can really remember significant chunks of.

>23 thorold:

Talking of Dylan Thomas, you'd think I'd mention the line from Thomas' Fern Hill that has inspired my LT moniker (and my twitter handle)!

Time let me hail and climb/golden in the heyday of his eyes

I probably need to sleep more.

>24 hailandclimb:
How light the sleeping on this soily star,
How deep the waking in the worlded clouds.

>25 thorold:

:) I see what you did there.

My handle comes from the poem "Explained" by A. A. Milne:

Elizabeth Ann
Said to her Nan:
"Please will you tell me how God began?
Somebody must have made Him. So
Who could it be, 'cos I want to know?"
And Nurse said, "Well!"
And Ann said, "Well?
I know you know, and I wish you'd tell."
And Nurse took pins from her mouth, and said,
"Now then, darling, it's time for bed."

Elizabeth Ann
Had a wonderful plan:
She would run round the world till she found a man
Who knew exactly how God began.

She got up early, she dressed, and ran
Trying to find an Important Man.
She ran to London and knocked at the door
Of the Lord High Doodleum's coach-and-four.
"Please, sir (if there's anyone in),
However-and-ever did God begin?"

But out of the window, large and red,
Came the Lord High Coachman's face instead.
And the Lord High Coachman laughed and said:
"Well, what put that in your quaint little head?"

Elizabeth Ann went home again
And took from the ottoman Jennifer Jane.
"Jenniferjane," said Elizabeth Ann,
"Tell me at once how God began."
And Jane, who didn't much care for speaking,
Replied in her usual way by squeaking.

What did it mean? Well, to be quite candid,
I don't know, but Elizabeth Ann did.
Elizabeth Ann said softly, "Oh!
Thank you Jennifer. Now I know."

I like it, first, because Elizabeth Ann is my name. Second, I like the main character's religious curiosity. Many people take this poem as an expression of Milne's atheism, which I don't share. I prefer to interpret the answer to the question as being that God has always been there all along (like the doll), and that the answer is so simple that even a child could understand it. If I'm remiss in my interpretation, so be it, but I like that the poem is an indictment of anyone who can't give an answer for why they believe what they believe, whatever that happens to be, and of anyone who tries to squelch religious seeking.

Though it's not British, I can also recite the abbreviated "Simpsons" version of "The Raven" at the drop of a hat, as we used to tape the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes and probably watched that one over a dozen times.