[A. E. Stallings]

Weirdly, most of my favorite poems are by what must be, in the scheme of things, relatively minor poets. (Though some, such as Housman and Ransom, fall into a special category I call the Great Minors.) Here are two by Robert Graves. (He is also one of those rare poets who writes a beautifully clear prose--rather than a fussy poetic one. I like my genres neat.)

I think I first encountered this gem on the London Underground some ten years ago, as part of their Poems on the Underground project. It is a curious piece--a fragment, with a nursery-rime bounce to it.

Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.


And here's another I like (particularly the end). The rimes are interesting--progressing through degrees of slantness.

Sick Love

O Love, be fed with apples while you may,
And feel the sun and go in royal array,
A smiling innocent on the heavenly causeway,

Though in what listening horror for the cry
That soars in outer blackness dismally,
The dumb blind beast, the paranoiac fury:

Be warm, enjoy the season, lift your head,
Exquisite in the pulse of tainted blood,
That shivering glory not to be despised.

Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark--a shining space
With the grave's narrowness, though not its peace.

[Tom]

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[This message has been edited by Tom (edited January 30, 2005).]

[Tim Murphy]

Alicia, Seeing Graves as the topic of your thread, I thought Great! I can post the birdcatcher poem! Wrong. If I'm not mistaken he wrote it when he was twenty-one, roughly the age I was when it enGraved itself on my capacious memory on one first reading. What a great poem! I am very glad that I did NOT write my best poem at so tender an age.

[A. E. Stallings]

Tom--I think that there is a lot of good writing going on now, but it is kind of hard to get much perspective right now on it. Two living poets that I regularly read and reread, as I do my favorite dead ones, are Richard Wilbur and Seamus Heaney (though I don't think his latest book up to snuff). Many of the moderators and poet lariats are writing "cool" poems--Caleb's Poem Tree web site is a good place to check out.

Tim--Was he that young when he wrote it? That is rather depressing. By the bye, there is a poem by Graves that I remember liking very much, but cannot seem to find it anywhere. I know I am not making it up. I think it is also an early one. Three quatrains maybe, in the voice of a child, complaining about the moon, which is strangely pernicious. I think it begins, "I hate the moon." Do you know it? I'd be grateful if anyone would post it here. Perhaps I read it in a biography of him.

[A. E. Stallings]

This is bizarre! I just found it. I have been looking for this poem for over a year. It isn't in my ratty old selected ("chosen by himself") and I couldn't find it on the internet, and I haven't access to a library here. But then I was flipping through my old Penguin "Georgian Poetry"--and there it was. I like the child's voice here. Somehow, it is strangely sinister, particularly the vagueness of the last line. (In fact, in some ways, prophetic, as Graves was involved in a night raid in WW1 during a full moon--which meant almost certain death under the circumstances.) The odd lines should be indented...

I Hate the Moon

I hate the Moon, though it makes most people glad,
And they giggle and talk of silvery beams--you know!
But she says the look of the Moon drives people mad,
And that's the thing that always frightens me so.

I hate it worst when it's cruel and round and bright,
And you can't make out the marks on its stupid face,
Except when you shut your eyelashes, and all night
The sky looks green, and the world's a horrible place.

I like the stars, and especially the Big Bear
And the W star, and one like a diamond ring,
But I hate the Moon and its horrible stony stare,
And I know one day it'll do me some dreadful thing.

[robert mezey]

I respect Graves as a devoted and pretty good poet
but for whatever reason I've never warmed to him,
or felt any complete pleasure in his poems. But
one stanza has been in my head for as long as I can
remember, and I love it.

Here is her portrait, gazing sidelong at me,
The hair in disarray, the young eyes pleading--
"And you, love? As unlike those other men
As I those other women?"

[Tom]

Robert Graves is always a good guy to read, every now and then.
But, Alicia, why is it hard to get perspective on writers now? It is easy to say so, but why? For several generations now poets have poured out their anti-creativity blather and every poetry course chicken-feeds young minds. The poison of people like John Ashbery has infected thousands.
So why is it hard to get perspective on present poets. I say it is not hard to see what is what. And just what are you doing there without a library??

[Golias]

My favorite bit of Graves appears in "I Claudius," where Claudius asserts the superiority of Quintus Ennius to Virgil, the latter being, as he implies, a mere imitator of the former. Then he gives his (Graves') translation of a fragment from Ennius:


The ash was hewn, the high white fir laid low;
Down toppled they, the princely pines, and all
That grove of countless leaves rang with the timber's fall.


Can there be anything finer?

As for contemporary writers of cool verse, Tom, there is a nearly unknown poet who is better, as Bob Mezey once observed, than 95% of poets publishing today.

He is Kevin Cawley, archivist at The University of Notre Dame. Quite a few of his cool poems have appeared in The Susquehanna Quarterly, to which he has been a regular contributor since the first issue back in the spring of '99. Check him out. <A href=http://www.traditional-poetry.org/cawley.htm><U>Here,</U></A> for example.

[mandolin]

Golias, those are good, especially "The Walk."

Graves has many wonderful poems -- "The Christmas Robin," "Prometheus," "The Naked and the Nude," "The Persian Version" -- but lately I keep coming back to this one:

The Twin of Sleep

Death is the twin of Sleep, they say:
BANNED POST BANNED POST For I shall rise renewed,
Free from the cramps of yesterday,
BANNED POST BANNED POST Clear-eyed and supple thewed.

But though this bland anlalogy
BANNED POST BANNED POST Helps other folk to face
Decrepitude, senility,
BANNED POST BANNED POST Madness, disease, disgrace,

I do not like Death's greedy looks:
BANNED POST BANNED POST Give me his twin instead --
Sleep never auctions off my books,
BANNED POST BANNED POST My boots, my shirts, my bed.

[A. E. Stallings]

Golias and Mandolin--thank you for sharing those.

Tom--a good question. You are right that we should be able to tell the good from bad at close quarters. I suppose what I mean by perspective is this--there are so many new books of poetry coming out, and so many journals, and so many poets, it is impossible to even keep up with it. I periodically read a fine poem on Poetry Daily or in one of the magazines, and I try to make a mental note of the author, but I don't always follow up on it. (And for those interested primarily in formal poetry--some of the best formal poetry is published in mainstream journals--so it isn't enough to limit oneself to the formal ones.) I try to buy any book that gives a glimmer of hope, but there are limits. Anthologies, particularly of movements, often tend to look foolish in later years--it is often the poet who isn't included, or who gets only a page or two, that towers in later generations. So I guess what I'm saying is that I feel that there are fine poets writing today, but that it is as like as not that I am ignorant of them. (Having said that, some younger poets to keep an eye out for are Kate Light and Greg Williamson.)