List poems
 

In an essay in The Dyer’s Hand, Auden says that, like Matthew Arnold, he has his Touchstones, “but they are for testing critics, not poets.” He then gives a list of four questions he would ask a critic in order to see whether he can trust his judgement or not.

It’s the first of these that I’d like to make the subject of this thread: the lists. I’d be interested to see what examples people can offer of great list-poems.

Of course, the list of names is a standard set-piece in epic poetry – as in the example Auden gives from the Iliad. There’s the list of the inhabitants of hell in Paradise Lost, for example, which begins:

First Moloch, horrid King besmear'd with blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,

Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud

Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire
To his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite

Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain,

In Argob and in Basan, to the stream

Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such

Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build

His Temple right against the Temple of God

On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove

The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence

And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell.
Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons,

From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild

Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon

And Horonaim, Seons Realm, beyond

The flowry Dale of Sibma clad with Vines,
And Eleale to th' Asphaltick Pool.

However, it’s not only epic poets who get great effects from names. We can leap forward a few centuries and come to our very own John Whitworth, who has a number of poems that consist almost entirely of lists of beautifully selected names: Landscape with Small Humans, for example, has one recalling medicines from the 1950s. Here are the last seven lines:

Then there’s bags more stuff to keep you regular.
EX-LAX, ENO’S, ANDREW’S, MILK OF MAGNESIA.
Got the trots? CREAMOLA JUNKET’s what you eat.
ZAM-BUK OINTMENT soothes your Granny’s aching feet.
COD-LIVER OIL sets kiddies up a treat.

There’s a jar, a tube, a bottle or a tin
For a thousand ills. And there’s ASPIRIN.

He has another one in the same volume listing makes of cars (again in the 1950s), all in the yearning tones of one of the few kids whose Dad hasn’t got a car yet. After lines savouring such names as “Rolls Royce Silver Wraith Grand Touring Limousine, / Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, Bentley Continental” the poem ends with the pleading couplet:

What about a little one to make a start in?
M. G. Midget, Austin Healey, Aston Martin.

And, to leap back in time again, to the heroic style, here’s an Italian example, from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso:

Duca di Bocchingamia è quel dinante;

Enrigo ha la contea di Sarisberia;

signoreggia Burgenia il vecchio Ermante;

quello Odoardo è conte di Croisberia.


These lines come in the middle of a long list of knights who have come all the way from Scotland and England to join the fight against the paynims. There are three well-known English toponyms in that stanza; perhaps some help might be needed for the last one: Shrewsbury. Elsewhere in the same canto he refers to Varvecia (Warwick), Glocestra, Nortfozia, Pembrozia, Sufolcia, Esenia (Essex), Norbelanda (Northumberland), Dorsezia, Devonia and Sormosedia. It’s wonderful how exotic even Essex can be made to sound.

Anyway, the list-thread is now officially open. Please join in.

Like A Fiery Elephant.
 

List poems always bring to my mind this second stanza of "Rejectamenta" by B.S.Johnson. Common names, of course, rather than proper.

Clinker, ashes, leaves and branches mostly:
and batteries, bolts, oyster shells and cables,
rainpipe, a pair of scissors, a zip fastener,
grinding wheels, a marble washstand top,
springs, fuse insulators, a metal drug
phial, some rubber hose, odd socks, a pair
of army boots laced together, a rusted
toy train, umbrella stays, and inner tubes;
a gas-mask filter, car parts, a soapdish,
torn coalsacks, slate, part of a tiled
surround, a teapot, switches and contacts,
a woman's shoe, the twisted spring of a
lever-arch file, film spools, a spatula,
and tins; for polish, cigarettes, sardines,
milk, talc, oil - these alone recognisable
by their shapes, the myriad other types
rusted into nonentity, the edge
corroding last of all; who was it said
the path of civilisation is paved with tins?

From Poems (1964) Constable.

Forgive me, Gregory, but I have to ask--does Auden approve or disapprove of the critic who likes these things? :)

Off to hunt for a list poem....

The root of all riches
 

I really, really like this one:

Money

Money is a kind of poetry.
- Wallace Stevens

Money, the long green,
cash, stash, rhino, jack
or just plain dough.

Chock it up, fork it over,
shell it out. Watch it
burn holes through pockets.

To be made of it! To have it
to burn! Greenbacks, double eagles,
megabucks and Ginnie Maes.

It greases the palm, feathers a nest,
holds heads above water,
makes both ends meet.

Money breeds money.
Gathering interest, compounding daily.
Always in circulation.

Money. You don't know where it's been,
but you put it where your mouth is.
And it talks.

Dana Gioia

Cargoes

by John Masefield

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Sorry not to have been clear on this, Maryann. Auden says "If a critic could truthfully answer "yes" to all four, then I should trust his judgment implicitly on all literary matters."

Thanks, everyone, for contributing here. Some great poems. Allen, I've always loved that Masefield one.

Carl Sandburg could do this by the hour together and in "The People, Yes" he virtually turned lists into a book.

Here's a section he stole from the Irish:

Three things you can't nurse: an old woman, a hen, and a sheep.
Three who have their own way: a mule, a pig, and a miser.
Three to stay away from: a snake, a man with an oily tongue, and a loose woman.
Three things dear to have: fresh eggs, hickory smoked ham, and old women's praise.
Three things always pleasing: a cat's kittens, a goat's kid, and a young woman.
The three prettiest dead: a little child, a salmon, a black cock.
Three of the coldest things: a man's knee, a cow's horn, and a dog's nose.
Three who come unbidden: love, jealousy, fear.
Three soon passing away: the beauty of a woman, the rainbow, the echo of the woods.
Three worth wishing: knowledge, grain, and friendship.

Sorry, I just can't help myself! From Song of the Open Road:


Committers of crimes, committers of many beautiful virtues,
Enjoyers of calms of seas, and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitués of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons,

That crafty hermit-poet Robert Francis has a minimalist-list poem:


Coming and Going

The crows are cawing,
The cocks are crowing,
The roads are thawing,
The boys are bumming,
The winds are blowing,
The year is coming.

The jays are jawing,
The cows are lowing,
The trees are turning,
The saws are sawing,
The fires are burning,
The year is going.

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.


Hopkins