[Julie Steiner]

Very interesting rhymes in the following sonnet. I like the presentation of solidarity among collective solitudes in the last 3.5 lines.

Cheap Seats, the Cincinnati Gardens, Professional Basketball, 1959
by William Matthews

The less we paid, the more we climbed. Tendrils
of smoke lazed just as high and hung there, blue,
particulate, the opposite of dew.
We saw the whole court from up there. Few girls
had come, few wives, numerous boys in molt
like me. Our heroes leapt and surged and looped
and two nights out of three, like us, they'd lose.
But "like us" is wrong: we had no result
three nights out of three: so we had heroes.
And "we" is wrong, for I knew none by name
among that hazy company unless
I brought her with me. This was loneliness
with noise, unlike the kind I had at home
with no clock running down, and mirrors.

[Kevin Rainbow]

Dancing Girls
by Arthur Peterson

Welcome once more, ye dancing forms
That do intoxicate my soul!
Your beauty is a magic bowl
Whose draught my weary spirit warms.

Forward and backward, round and round,
Like nymphs Arcadian on the lea;
Naught but the rhythmic dance I see,
I hear naught but the music's sound.

The music's sound, the rhythmic dance,
The happy faces flushed, the feet
Time keeping to the music's beat,
The lovely limbs, the tender glance!

O what more beautiful than this?
Than maidens in the mazy dance?
A draught it is that doth entrance
My soul: delight's elixir 'tis!

[Clive Watkins]

"Betjeman was successful in his day, but he's largely forgotten (save for 'Slough'), which is sad. Much of his work is delightful."

Forgotten by whom?

Clive

[E. Shaun Russell]

Originally Posted by Clive Watkins

"Betjeman was successful in his day, but he's largely forgotten (save for 'Slough'), which is sad. Much of his work is delightful."

Forgotten by whom?

See my follow-up response a few posts later.

[Clive Watkins]

Then there is this famous piece:

James Wright: Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home,
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan, 1963)

Clive

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Shaun

Thanks for pointing me to your further perfectly just remarks about Betjeman. I would guess that here in the UK he is possibly one our best remembered poets, perhaps especially by people who would not regard themselves as part of the Great Poetry World. (But I imagine similar things could be said about many American poets, too, viewed from outside the US.)

All the best!

Clive

[Martin Elster]

Here's a fun monorhyme:

To Kate, Skating Better Than Her Date

Wait, Kate! You skate at such a rate
You leave behind your skating mate.
Your splendid speed won't you abate?
He's lagging far behind you, Kate.
He brought you on this skating date
His shy affection thus to state,
But you on skating concentrate
And leave him with a woeful weight
Pressed on his heart. Oh, what a state
A man gets into, how irate
He's bound to be with life and fate
If, when he tries to promulgate
His love, the loved one turns to skate
Far, far ahead to demonstrate
Superior speed and skill. Oh, hate
Is sure to come of love, dear Kate,
If you so treat your skating mate.
Turn again, Kate, or simply wait
Until he comes, then him berate
(Coyly) for catching up so late.
For, Kate, he knows your skating's great,
He's seen your splendid figure eight,
He is not here to contemplate
Your supersonic skating rate—
That is not why he made the date.
He's anxious to expatiate
On how he wants you for his mate.
And don't you want to hear him, Kate?

— David Daiches

[Julie Steiner]

This excerpt from Wordsworth's Prelude was revised several times, so other versions are available online, but this is my favorite. The move from simile ("like an untired horse") to metaphor about the skate-wearing children ("All shod with iron") has a lovely intensifying effect, I think. The use of "reflex" for "reflection" might simply be colloquial for Wordsworth, but it's unusual to me, and I like it very much--the idealistic young skater not just chasing a star, which is an impossible goal, but the reflection of one before him on the ice: also impossible to reach, but seemingly less so, being just a bit before him on the ice. And then there's the description of becoming the dizzy center of the universe around which the earth moves when he stops. Reminds me a bit of "earth's diurnal round" in "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal."

Skating
by William Wordsworth

from The Prelude, Book I

And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not their summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us — for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six — I wheeled about
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures,— the resounding horn,
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din,
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the reflex of a star
That fled, and flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the grassy plain. And oftentimes
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me — even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

~~
William Wordsworth
from The Prelude; or, Growth of a poet's mind: An autobiographical poem, 1850

Seamus Heaney wrote a poem about Wordsworth's skates. Text and geographical commentary here.

[Maryann Corbett]

Here's Richard Wilbur's three-part sequence "Running."

The line about whacking keds is a permanent fixture in my head.

(If this has been posted above, pardon me; I did scan but didn't see it.)

[Martin Elster]

Thanks, Maryann, for the link to "Running." I really enjoyed the poem as well as the analysis.