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Do you have a favorite poet whose reputation does not stand as high as you feel he/she deserves? Post some of that
individual's work here, and help give a poet a boost towards immortality! My own candidate for this category is Charlotte Mew (d. 1928). I believe that her slender output has kept her from getting more recognition (also, calling a poet "Mew" makes her sound like a cat noise.) CM was extremely skillful in handling complicated metrical schemes, and also in handling powerful emotions. I would like to give you "Madeleine in Church", but it's really too long. So here's one that is probably her most frequently anthologized poem: THE FARMER'S BRIDE Three summers since I chose a maid, Too young, may be - 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 'twadn'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's a stunner! Never heard of her, will look for more.
Here's another little-known lady, Virginia Adair. Very elderly now, lifelong teacher, I think at Cal Poly in the Pomona area, not sure. hardly ever published until very recently, a small book spanning decades was printed. I found this poem in New Yorker, one of her few published pieces, is how I know about her. This is from memory, but I think it's exact: It has one of the great closing lines in all poetry, methinks. GOD TO THE SERPENT Beloved Snake, perhaps my finest blueprint, How can I not take pride in your design? Your passage without hoof or paw or shoe print Revels in art's and nature's S-curve line. No ears, no whiskers, fingers, legs, or teeth, No cries, complaints, or curses from you start; But silence shares your body in its sheath, Full-functioning with no superfluous part. Men strive to emulate your forkéd tongue, Their prideful pricks dwarfed by your lordly length. Two arms for blows or hugging loosely hung Are mocked by Boa Constrictor's single strength. How dare men claim their image as my own, With all those limbs and features sticking out? You, Snake, with continuity of bone Need but a spine to coil and cruise about. Men fear the force of your hypnotic eyes, Make myths to damn your being, wise and deft. You, Snake, not men, deserve my cosmic prize. I'm glad you stayed in Eden when they left! --Virginia Hamilton Adair (music) |
I believe the Mew poem was rather thoroughly discussed in an earlier thread on this forum. With this and another poem in Norton, she is hardly unrecognized, as compared to many equally good or even better poets such as Lionel Johnson, John Davidson, Edith Joy Scovell, May Probyn, Henri Coulette, and Dick Barnes.
If a poet's contribution to our lives be considered, the case of Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929) seems especially deserving of notice. Does anyone here recognize her name? Does anyone here possess a book of her poems? Selected stanzas from her poem "America the Beautiful" have swelled hundreds of millions of hearts, and not only during upsurges of patriotic feeling such as that following September 11, 2001. An English literature professor at Wellsley College throughout her long working life, Katherine Bates wrote more than thirty books, including several volumes of poetry. Given the march of feminism,the growing emphasis on gay and lesbian rights, etc., it seems surprising that her life and her work have not attracted more interest in recent times. Here is an occasionally rhymed, heterometrical poem she wrote following the death of her fellow Wellsley teacher and life partner, Katherine Coman: Yellow Clover Must I, who walk alone, Come on it still, This Puck of plants The wise would do away with, The sunshine slants To play with, Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover, Which once in parting for a time That then seemed long, Ere time for you was over, We sealed our own? Do you remember yet, O Soul beyond the stars, Beyond the uttermost dim bars Of space, Dear Soul who found the earth sweet, Remember by love's grace, In dreamy hushes of heavenly song, How suddenly we halted in our climb, Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill, Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet, And gave them as a token Each to each, In lieu of speech, In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken, Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet With a strange dew of tears? So it began, This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover, To be our tenderest language. All the years It lent a new zest to the summer hours, As each of us went scheming to surprise The other with our homely, laureate flowers, Sonnets and odes, Fringing our daily roads. Can amaranth and asphodel Bring merrier laughter to your eyes? Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes, Keep any wistful consciousness of earth, Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love, Simplicities of mirth, Must follow them above With touches of vague homesickness that pass Like shadows of swift birds across the grass. How oft, beneath some foreign arch of sky, The rover, You or I, For life oft sundered look from look, And voice from voice, the transient dearth Schooling my soul to brook This distance that no messages may span, Would chance Upon our wilding by a lonely well, Or drowsy watermill, Or swaying to the chime of convent bell, Or where the nightingales of old romance With tragical contraltos fill Dim solitudes of infinite desire; And once I joyed to meet Our peasant gadabout A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat, Twinkling a saucy eye As potentates paced by. Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame From friendship's altar fire! How proudly we would pluck and tame The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay! How swiftly they were sent Far, far away On journeys wide By sea and continent, Green miles and blue leagues over, From each of us to each, That so our hearts might reach And touch within the yellow clover, Love's letter to be glad about Like sunshine when it came! My sorrow asks no healing; it is love; Let love then make me brave To bear the keen hurts of This careless summertide, Ay, of our own poor flower, Changed with our fatal hour, For all its sunshine vanished when you died. Only white clover blossoms on your grave. (The rhythm of this last line invites comparison with the famous last line of Hardy's "During Wind and Rain," does it not?) Miss Bates' books are nearly all long out of print. I have checked several large libraries and find none of her poetry books. G. [This message has been edited by Golias (edited February 25, 2002).] |
Leonie Adams.
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That poem was exquisite Golias, and thanks for bringing it here, what a repository you are! Speaking of Dick Barnes, I along with many others have enjoyed his work in The Susquehanna Quarterly, could I prevail on you to post what you might consider a favorite work of his?
Jim |
The late Dick Barnes' best work may have been his translations from Borges in league with Bob Mezey, but his own poems are also wonderful. Mezey has written of them: .....Metrical phrases and lines appear, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but naturally and subtly, like the rhymes, which are often internal, sometimes assonantal, almost always occasional, but used with telling effect......One sometimes sees this kind of completeness and authority in really good metrical verse; in this mode, where one is absolutely on his own, it is a small miracle. Dick Barnes earned the right to work in this mode by mastering the old craft, which rewarded him by refining what must have been a naturally good ear until it was a marvelous one..... What amazes me is that a man can write as well as Dick Barnes does and not be renowned for it.
Here's a Barnes poem, one of my favorites - a recollection from his childhood in the San Bernadino Mountains of California: A Winter Day Before the War Hidden a week in a blizzard, the sun came out and glittered on the snow; the sky was indigo. We went out to visit, Mother on snowshoes, a few of us kids on skis, when the air was so sweet it made you happy to breathe. We talked with two ladies on their stoop where icicles shone and dripped and went around Nellie Smith's gift shop to see an icicle a foot thick on the north side of the house. Nobody said that day was marvelous, but it must have been if it can stand out that clear in the mind, and bright when so many other days are forgotten or marked by something that happened. A day like that: well, who knows. Maybe any day. G. |
Hi!
At the risk of seeming merely controversial, and pace Robert Mezey’s judgement (with whom I find myself more often than not concurring), isn’t "A Winter Day Before the War" just a piece of lineated prose - and not very distinguished prose, at that? - Thus: Hidden a week in a blizzard, the sun came out and glittered on the snow; the sky was indigo. We went out to visit, Mother on snowshoes, a few of us kids on skis, when the air was so sweet it made you happy to breathe. We talked with two ladies on their stoop where icicles shone and dripped and went around Nellie Smith's gift shop to see an icicle a foot thick on the north side of the house. Nobody said that day was marvelous, but it must have been if it can stand out that clear in the mind, and bright when so many other days are forgotten or marked by something that happened. A day like that: well, who knows. Maybe any day. What am I missing here? Clive Watkins |
Originally posted by Clive Watkins:
.....isn’t "A Winter Day Before the War" just a piece of lineated prose - and not very distinguished prose, at that. What am I missing here? Clive Watkins Clive, You're not missing a thing. This type of stuff is wretchedly bad but no one will point it out. Good job. ewrgall [This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited February 15, 2002).] |
Thanks for all the good responses. Just a note here to recommend a book. I recently acquired "British Women Poets
of the Nineteenth Century" (ed. Margaret Higonnet, from Penguin Group). It contains all the poets you would expect, a few who aren't worth the space they take up, and several real finds. I was delighted to find several pages devoted to Michael Field (who was really two women), but the surprise gem of the book for me was a dramatic monologue called "Xantippe" by Amy Levy, who died young (by suicide) in 1889. I'm going to see if the used bookstores can help me find more work by Levy. **************** Just so as not to go off without leaving a poem, here's one by F.W. Bourdillon, who died in 1921 having written several volumes of verse, but only one memorable poem: THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world died With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done. |
I'm tempted to think, at times, that MOST of the poets I admire are underrated, at least by critical establishment. I guess that's just the quirkiness of fandom. I think of Housman, for instance, whose popularity has never flagged, but who seems always to be damned with faint praise by serious critics.
Or I think of this poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her reputation has long been eclipsed by her husband, but a sonnet such as this one gives you an inkling of why, during their lifetime, it was much the other way around: Grief I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air Beat upward to God's throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, espress Grief for the Dead in silence like to death: Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet-- If it could weep it could arise and go. I have no idea why she isn't represented by THIS in the Norton Anthology, instead of the same old Sonnets from the Portuguese. Anthologies have a huge role to play in this issue, of course. |
Alicia, I agree with the tenor of your remarks on EBB, but I do think that her most famous anthologized poem, "How do I love thee," is indeed one of the best and most moving sonnets ever penned by man or woman. I think it may have been done in by its fame, in fact. I knew of this poem even before I started reading poetry, and as a youngster I tended to dismiss it is effusive and sappy dribble, but lately I've found that the fame that rendered it cliche had in fact deceived me into overlooking its profundity and depth. Anyway, I'm probably preaching to the choir.
I certainly put EBB at least on the same level of her husband, and quite possibly higher ("My Last Duchess" is great, but I'm hard pressed to come up with anything else he wrote that truly moves me). Also, I'm grateful to EBB for serving as an inspiration to Emily Dickinson, whom I tend to think of as underrated even as she is widely revered. |
Originally posted by A. E. Stallings:
Grief I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air Beat upward to God's throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare Beneath the blanching, vertical eye-glare Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, espress Grief for the Dead in silence like to death: Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet-- If it could weep it could arise and go. I have no idea why she isn't represented by THIS in the Norton Anthology, instead of the same old Sonnets from the Portuguese. Well, I like this but Elizabeth needed to work on it a bit more. In the third line "through the midnight air" is obvious filler just there for the rhyme, very trite compared with the rest of the poem. And in lines 6&7 "bare" and "glare" seem to be struggling. And line 8 has some counting problems. I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of dispair, Half-taught in anguish, disbelieving, dare Beat upward to God's throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls, as countries, lieth silent there Under the blanching and absolute glare Of the Heavens. Deep-hearted men express Grief for the dead in silence like to death: Most like a monumental statue set In ever lasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it: The marble eyelids are not wet-- If it could weep it could arise and go. ewrgall PS--Gee, its fun to crit a poet that you know isn't going to talk back. [This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited March 15, 2002).] |
Daud kamal..... underrated poets
Hello Gail,
Hope you'll be doing fine. Thanks a lot for providing a rare opportunity to post the works of some underrated poets, hope if I mention one from Pakistan won't hurt anyone. Professor Daud Kamal is one such fine poet. He got his early schooling Burn Hall at Kashmir;graduated from the Peshawar University, NWFP, Pakistan, obtained his tripos from the university of Cambridge. He then became a professor and was appointed chairman of the Department of English in 1980. Duad Kamal was writing poetry in English since his youth and was soon recognized, in a limited circle though, as an accomplished English poet. Ian Robinson editor of Oasis Book once said about Daud Kamal, he 'could teach a lot of English poets a thing or two'. The precision and definiteness of his language is a great skill he developed as a fine imagist poet. Here is a poem of his: Hoof-Prints The vein in the sky's forehead swollen today will burst tomorrow. Angry rivers do not discriminate between mud houses and ripening corn. What use is a rainbow? my child asks, twisting a curl on her thoughtful head. I remember a particular mountain pass and hoof-prints in the snow. Bury remorse deep in the rocky earth and let the water remove its own stains. .................................................. .......... Stone Bridge The rain's insistent drumbeat and a wisp of smoke between the beams. Rose-petal flames then jagged hills and finally a desert of ash in the fireplace. The room is suddenly cold - windows shiver- death is a hungry wolf. Oasis, oasis- someone shouts. Musk-melons in the marketplace. Embroidered caps laughter- cascading beauty of the young. But you have drifted back to sleep- under a stone bridge and out to an undpredictable sensuous sea. I have selected here some of his lesser known poems but do hope friends will like them, for he used to say: What are these words but intertangled weeds left behind by the receding tide. Thanks a lot for listening, take care...warmest regards/Abid |
Never mind
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It seems I was wrong about dredging up old threads. David ought to know. Sorry to have sounded grouchy.
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Abid,
Good to hear from you. I very much like the poems you posted. Take care, David |
We remember, even if we don't really read, Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker from the golden age of American light verse, but there were a number of very fine and popular poets of that time who are forgotten. Auden wrote an introduction to a Phyllis McGinley best seller. Joseph Auslander, who also wrote other poetry and was a major Petrarch translator, was one of the first poetry consultants at the Library of Congress, the position that evolved into our Poet Laureate. There were at least a half dozen similar others who were widely read at the time, such as David McCord.
The reason why Parker survives and McGinley does not is at least twofold--McGinley relies more heavily on topical references that we no longer recognize, and Parker at her best (which was not as common as one would hope) is just plain better. It's also true that humor of the period will sometimes make even someone with a non-PC self-image cringe--particularly the dialect poems, which were extremely popular at the time. I'd add some samples but I am away from my beloved books. |
Great topic! I found a page on Joseph Auslander here, where there are a few of his poems and a bio. The only Petrarch by him I could find is this audio sample from a CD of Auslander’s translations of Petrarch. And what a fine translation it is.
It made my morning to learn about Auslander. Thanks, Mike. |
After five or six, I was all set to turn away from McGinley forever, and with sound reasons. Then I found this:
The 5:32 She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two, Blacked out, dissolved, I think I would remember (As if transfixed in unsurrendering amber) This hour best of all the hours I knew: When cars came backing into the shabby station, Children scuffing the seats, and the women driving With ribbons around their hair, and the trains arriving, And the men getting off with tired but practiced motion. Yes, I would remember my life like this, she said: Autumn, the platform red with Virginia creeper, And a man coming toward me, smiling, the evening paper Under his arm, and his hat pushed back on his head; And wood smoke lying like haze on the quiet town, And dinner waiting, and the sun not yet gone down. Thanks, Bill |
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When I was an undergrad, we read Rolfe Humphries' Lucretius. Decades later I see it is very fine modern blank verse. Since I never see his name anywhere, he must be an underrated poet. Other translators of the classics, such as Fitzgerald, Lattimore, and Fagles, are possibly underrated even if much read, considering their role in keeping poetry alive.
I hope to post more fully on this before long, but I will consider Frank Stanford to be "underrated" until the battlefield where the moon says I love you is widely recognized as one of the greatest American poems ever. |
One of my favorite poems is by Vachel Lindsay, another often forgotten, overlooked, or underrated poet:
The Flower-Fed Buffaloes The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring In the days of long ago, Ranged where the locomotives sing And the prairie flowers lie low: The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass Is swept away by the wheat, Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by In the spring that still is sweet. But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring Left us, long ago. They gore no more, they bellow no more, They trundle around the hills no more: With the Blackfeet, lying low, With the Pawnees, lying low, Lying low. And here's another one: Euclid Old Euclid drew a circle On a sand-beach long ago. He bounded and enclosed it With angles thus and so. His set of solemn greybeards Nodded and argued much Of arc and of circumference, Diameter and such. A silent child stood by them From morning until noon Because they drew such charming Round pictures of the moon. |
Taufiq Rafat, another uderrated Pakistani poet
Hello David / and friends,
Hope you'll be doing fine. Thanks for liking Duad Kamal's poems and also for saying hello....stand obliged. Here is another Pakistani poet who wrote poetry in English like Duad kamal and created a Pakistani idiom. Though Daud excelled in precision and mastery over the language. Taufiq's poems are taught in prescribed curriculum in secondary school and college courses in USA, Australia, Africa as well as here in Pakistan. Due to my efforts poems of Duad kamal and Taufiq Rafat have been included at graduate level English Literature courses under Pakistani/Post-colonial Literature in English category by Gomal Unversity Dera Ismail Khan, Khyberpakhtunkwa where I live. Here is a very simple poem by Taufiq Rafat displaying the culture of Indo-Pakistan sub-continent: Vultures Like vultures they gather when someone dies. Cousins and uncles and aunts not seen for years are dolefully here heads wagging and generating cries for each newcomer to the house. After two or three days they will be gone (who knows for how long) with a back-patting embrace, and bedding borrowed from neighbours and the hired crockery will be counted and returned. Lahore 24 June,1981 Hope the wry humour of the poem perfectly reflects what happens when a dear one dies in the family here in our culture. Thanks to everyone......warmest regards/Abid |
Here's an interesting blog with a whole string of pieces about neglected poets (click on that label):
http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/ Duncan |
Vachel Lindsay's not forgotten by me. That first poem about the Buffalo I found in a Penguin anthology, though it is true a rather old one. ALL his poems can be found on the internet. Go see.
A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. Here lies a kitten good, who kept A kitten's proper place. He stole no pantry eatables, Nor scratched the baby's face. He let the alley-cats alone. He had no yowling vice. His shirt was always laundried well, He freed the house of mice. Until his death he had not caused His little mistress tears, He wore his ribbon prettily, He washed behind his ears. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. |
George Starbuck isn't as popular around here, or anywhere, as I would expect. His poems are pop-art graffiti done in day-glo colors: urban and erudite and oozing with technique.
the Staunch Maid and the Extraterrestrial Trekkie hommages à Julia Child Stand back, stand back, Thou blob of jelly. Do not attack A maid so true. I didn't pack My Schiaparelli To hit the sack With a thang like you. You maniac! Go raid a deli. Pick on a snack Of barbecue. A nice Cal-Jack? Some Buoncastelli. Here, have a daiq- Uiri. Have two. Like a Big-Mac Machiavelli She tossed him crack- Ers and ragout. She fed him rack Of lamb, sowbelly, Absinthe and cack- Leberry stew. And while she crack- Ed the eggs and velly Adroitly hack- Ed the lamb in two, Like that weird ac- Tress on the telly, Kept up the wack- Y parlez-vous. You shall not lack For mortadelle. You shall not lack For pâte à choux. You shall have aq- Uavit quenelle Mit sukiyak- I au fondue. Not yet you stack Of paralelly Pulsating vac- Uoles of goo, You sloshing brack- Ish stracciatelli Of dental plaque And doggy doo! I still must frac- Ture the patellae And baste the back- Sides of a few Agneaux-de-Pâques- Avec-Mint-Jelly Before I ac- Quiesce with you. I said back back! Have Mrs. Shelley Or Countess Drac- Ula re-do You you great hack- Work by Fuseli. I'm not the quack To unscramble you. She threw him mac- Kerel en gelée, Mulled Armagnac, Ripe Danish blue. She staggered back. He swore by Hell he Had come to shack And not soft-shoe Just at the ac- Me of Indeli- Cacy and ac- Rimony too, While she distrac- Ted him pellmelly, The massed attack Came in on cue: Her Uncle Zack From Pocatelly, The whole Galac- Tica and crew On a Kawasak- I-Granatelli- Ford-Lotus trac- Tor cab crashed through. They had a tac Nuke from New Delhi. They had a black- Snake from the zoo. A few Kojak- Eries from Telly. Biff Bam Fppplt Twack. Poop poop a doo. They hacked that frac- Tious vermicelli Till the tentac- Ulations flew. A rather tack- Y, rather smelly Business, but chac- Un à son gout. Without a knack For belly-belly, Without the ac- Umen to do Celeriac Farcie Duxelle, What would a crack- Er damsel do? |
I second Orwn on George Starbuck. The wit of him! Check out his "Space-Saver Sonnets," but also notice how endlessly inventive he is:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-starbuck I agree with Bill that Rolfe Humphries was an excellent translator. I still like his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses more than any other I have seen. Susan |
A lot of names come to mind -- everyone here will have lost causes to nurse, if they're wise. John Heath-Stubbs, Roy Marz, William Meredith, R.H. Morrison and William Jay Smith are some of mine. I wouldn't argue that they're great poets, just that they've written some poems that touched me.
At any rate, I haven't seen Kathleen Raine mentioned, so I thought I'd offer this: The Pythoness I am that serpent-haunted cave Whose navel breeds the fates of men. All wisdom issues from a hole in the earth; The gods form in my darkness, and dissolve again. From my blind womb all kingdoms come, And from my grave seven sleepers prophesy. No babe unborn but wakens to my dream, No lover but at last entombed in me shall lie. I am that feared and longed-for burning place Where man and phoenix are consumed away, And from my low polluted bed arise New sons, new suns, new skies. xxxxx- Kathleen Raine |
Two of my personal torches:
Englishwoman Ruth Pitter, though she was the subject of a recent biography by Helena Nelson (must read!). Henri Coulette, Pasadena homeboy, dead 22 years, despite the best efforts of Donald Justice, Robert Mezey, Dana Gioia, and most recently, Gregory Dowling, who's been trying to coax a note from me, which I hope to have to him on the first good day. Frank |
I'm glad to see my nagging and wheedling are having some effect on that conscience of yours, Frank...
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I’m glad you mentioned her, Ed. I have her Collected next to my desk these days. She has some gems. Here’s another: The World It burns in the void Nothing upholds it Still it travels. Traveling the void Upheld by burning Nothing is still. Burning it travels The void upholds it Still it is nothing. Nothing it travels A burning void Upheld by stillness. —Kathleen Raine And her study of Blake is, I think, the best that's been done. |
Here are two more by Kathleen Raine:
Go Loudly, Pentheus Behind the time when dogwood starts to flower I work and dance inside long changing days to find the taste, the marrow of the hour and twist it like a snake into a phrase that stings with all the passion of a kiss and smiles with anger in a lying mask behind your back and turning in your wrist: I give you back in blood the thing you ask. And while you climb the mountain like a child, expecting pleasures and a pretty dance, I'll screw your trouble into a spring wild and deadly in the hidden trap of chance. Under your well-laid palace stones I've cracked and wriggled like a rooting lightning-gale and gently, sweetly in the bright birds of fact I'll wind fat songs of fancy up your trail. Go loudly, grin behind your mask as dead as I will make you in a ringing glade. I take joy in the sour blood I've said into your ignorant ears. Now fade and take my phosphor in your vein as suddenly as it has ripped your sky. Hear as you die the innocent refrain of birds inside your blue unseeing eye. ENVOI Take of me what is not my own my love, my beauty, and my poem - the pain is mine, and mine alone. See how against the weight in the bone the hawk hangs perfect in mid-air - the blood pays dear to raise it there, the moment, not the bird, divine. And see the peaceful trees extend their myriad leaves in leisured dance - they bear the weight of sky and cloud upon the fountain of their veins. In rose with petals soft as air I bind for you the tides and fire - the death that lives within the flower, oh, gladly love, for you I bear. |
Frank, I don't know if you were aware of this, but Coulette was unable to get his poems published in magazines at the end of his life. A sad situation.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/29/ma...ce.html?src=pm Thanks, Bill |
I missed this discussion. One of my favorite poets is C. S. Lewis, who is known as a children's writer and theologian but wrote poetry all his life and published in journals like Time and Tide and Oxford Review. Here's one I liked:
The Meteorite Among the hills a meteorite Lies huge; and moss has overgrown, And wind and rain with touches light Made soft, the contours of the stone. Thus easily can Earth digest A cinder of sidereal fire, And make her translunary guest The native of an English shire. Nor is it strange these wanderers Find in her lap their fitting place, For every particle that's hers Came at the first from outer space. All that is Earth has once been sky; Down from the sun of old she came, Or from some star that travelled by Too close to his entangling flame. Hence, if belated drops yet fall From heaven, on these her plastic power Still works as once it worked on all The glad rush of the golden shower. |
Here is a lovely, if oddly punctuated, poem by Laurie Lee. Not only underrated, but hardly known as a poet.
The Evening, the Heather The evening, the heather, the unsecretive cuckoo and butterflies in their disorder, not a word of war as we lie our mouths in a hot nest and the flowers advancing. Does a hill defend itself, does a river run to earth to hide its quaint neutrality? A boy is shot with England in his brain, but she lies brazen yet beneath the sun, she has no honour and she has no fear. I would have punctuated it thus: The Evening, the Heather The evening, the heather, the unsecretive cuckoo and butterflies in their disorder; not a word of war as we lie, our mouths in a hot nest and the flowers advancing. Does a hill defend itself? Does a river run to earth to hide its quaint neutrality? A boy is shot with England in his brain, but she lies brazen yet beneath the sun. She has no honour and she has no fear. |
Not true, Philip! This one is much anthologised and rightly so:
Home from Abroad Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways, My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant, I set my face into a filial smile To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent. But shall I never learn? That gawky girl, Recalled so primly in my foreign thoughts, Becomes again the green-haired queen of love Whose wanton form dilates as it delights. Her rolling tidal landscape floods the eye And drowns Chianti in a dusky stream; The flower-flecked grasses swim with simple horses, The hedges choke with roses fat as cream. So do I breathe the hayblown airs of home, And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows, And as the twilight nets the plunging sun My heart's keel slides to rest among the meadows. Laurie Lee My Many-Coated Man (1957) |
Karl Shapiro, hands down. Wrote a book on prosody and an entire poem 8 or 9 ottava rimas devoted to a Cadillac--in anapestics, I believe.
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Shapiro's Essay on Rime, a verse treatise on poetry--subject matter, thought, and prosody--is the greatest!
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Thanks for posting this! It is truly hilarious, the best send-up of Du Bellay I've ever seen! I'm still laughing! ;) Off to look him up, as I've never read him before. I anticipate several hours of enjoyment! Thanks to you and Philip for listing him! Thanks, Bill |
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