[William A. Baurle]

Very rarely it happens, I come across a poem that just strikes me and seems perfect and complete. This is a beautiful marriage of form and brevity:


SOWING

It was a perfect day
For sowing; just
As sweet and dry was the ground
As tobacco-dust.

I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl's chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.

And now, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying good-night.


- Edward Thomas

[RCL]

Yes, lovely!

Ralph

[Barbara Baig]

Thanks for posting this. I love Thomas's poems; it's so sad that he didn't live to write more of them.

Barbara

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Barbara Baig

Thanks for posting this. I love Thomas's poems; it's so sad that he didn't live to write more of them.

Barbara

Yes, sad indeed. I downloaded a volume of his poems for my Kindle for $.99. Some of the poems are just these beautiful portraits of occasional moments in time, almost like fleshed-out Haiku, if that isn't too much of a contradiction. I wish I had discovered him long ago.

The world is upside down. The most treasured, canonical works of world literature go for pennies, while the digital diarrhea pecked out by hacks and charlatans sells for 10 or 15 USD.

[Rob Wright]

Yes, Thomas' poems are simple and superb. He's one of the few poets whose work I've committed to memory and that has held — possibly because of his masterful painting of images — the others just slip away for some reason.

Thanks for the posting.

Rob

[Barbara Baig]

William, RCL, Rob:
You might like to know about this recent prize-winning biography of Thomas: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...e-extract.html. As you probably know, he was a journalist who didn't begin writing poems seriously until a few years before his death; apparently the book (haven't read it yet) describes his friendship with Robert Frost and the effect that friendship had on his poetry.

Barbara

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Catch this thread, Barbara!

Duncan

[Gregory Dowling]

Tim Kendall has a new book on Robert Frost with Yale University Press, which I haven't seen yet, but I understand he has a good deal to say about his friendship with Edward Thomas. Kendall has written elsewhere on the two poets and also on Thomas separately. There's a lot to explore there: Frost has two wonderful poems commemorating Thomas (one of which can be seen in the thread that Duncan has linked to). And "The Road Not Taken" was originally sent in a letter to Thomas.

[Nigel Mace]

Not quite sure whether to post here or start a new thread, but some of you might like to know

a) that my partner, Vanessa Rosenthal, wrote a very fine play about Edward Thomas called "Out In The Dark", which she also presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival back in the 90s and that, subsequently, it was broadcast by BBC Radio 4. It was a portrait drawing on his and his circle's words and his poems and used music as part of the recreation of memory.

b) that Vanessa has a new play "KAREN'S WAY: a kindertransport life" about the kindertransport survivor and poet Karen Gershon opening at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August this year and it is based on the same approach which served the story of Edward Thomas so well.

I might in any case start a Karen Gershon thread. She deserves rereading and reflection.

Best to all, Nigel

P.S. What a shame the biog. didn't win - especially against such a flimsy, I think, opponent.