Thank you, Clive, for posting these poems and for your thoughts about the craft of them. The restraint of the poems contains a depth of feeling. And there is a lot here worth thinking about and learning from.
Andrew

Clive, thanks for adding "Roads" for me.

With regard to the poem I inserted above, "No One So Much As You", I believe Helen thought it was written about his mother, and vice versa.

After Clive and I met at Grasmere, he was kind to send me The Collected that came of Thomas' short career. Frost was lucky in his friendships. I know pretty well what Thomas advised on Road Not Taken, arguably Frost's first great poem. And I know that the young Ezra Pound introduced Frost to Harriet Monroe, the founding editor of Poetry. Clive and I are great walkers, as was Edward Thomas. I might be flattering the living at the expense of the dead,but he shared something in common with us: the "accuracy of observation" that my Master demands of young poets.

The first world war mowed down an entire generation of poets. I don't know how my grandfather survived it. I used to think that the loss of Wilfred Owen was the worst. But I have come to think that the loss of Edward Thomas was the worst. I have read accounts of boys who were hit over their hearts but had a copy of A Shropshire Lad in their breast pockets. Housman saved them. Clive, thank you for this thread.



[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited August 04, 2007).]