[Nigel Holt]

Since discovering this forum, I have become aware of the many masterful poets who are part of the American formal canon.

Yet, they go unread or are known about by few, and are only kept alive by people such as Alicia, Tim and other concerned formalists on this board. It is thanks to them that I now search widely for different poets. One such I have found is Alan Seeger.

As far I as am aware, he has never been anthologised in any book of war poetry - precisely, it seems, for his old fashioned views of war and death in battle, which come across strongly in the poems I have read. This places him for me as a very useful counterpoint to the anti-war trend in WWI poetry. I imagine that the first poem: 'Rendezvous' is famous, though I had never heard it before buying a (cheap!) reprint of '101 favorite Poems' - which sticks rigidly to nineteeth and early twentieth century formalists (except for 'Grass', by Carl Sandburg)

I have posted these two poems (which I found excellent) for two reasons: firstly, to discover people's opinion of Seeger and how he is received by formalists today, and secondly, to know people's opinions on how he compares with other names of his time, such as Owens, despite him being 'the other side of the fence'.

His poems can be found here:
http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~libsite/w...poemsTC.htm#TC


Nigel


<u>I have a rendezvous with Death</u>


I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air---
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath---
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.


<u>Sonnet XVI: Who Shall Invoke Her</u>

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,
With single rites the common debt to pay?
On some green headland fronting to the East
Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.
Naked, uplifting in a laden tray
New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,
Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray
To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.
The morning planet poised above the sea
Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;
Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity
Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,
That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,
Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks for posting these, Nigel. I'd forgotten Seeger's name, but I knew Rendezvous With Death, of which the Oxford Companion to 20th C. Poetry rather sneeringly says: "If he is remembered at all it is for this moving evocation of a romantic stance which had already become obsolete by the war's end." Loved the sonnet, which is sooo decadent. Fighting for the French Foreign Legion, Seeger died at the Somme in 1916, aged 28, another of the young soldier poets so tragically extinguished in the trenches. I don't think he's in a class with Owen, but I can't help wondering what we'd have thought of Yeats if he'd died at twenty-eight.

[Nigel Holt]

Hi, Tim,

Hope you and Alan are enjoying your Christmas Day.

I find Seeger fascinating as he is the Rupert Brooke that managed to see the war - indeed, it seems he actively sought combat, and thus offers the perspective that is sorely missed from war poetry anthologies. It is the very dismissiveness of the post-war critics you have mentioned who ruled out a balanced view from war poetry which seemingly is still with us to this day.

Perhaps he is not as great as the anti-war (yet still prepared to fight it) poets from all sides, but I think he at least deserves to be plucked from a no-man's land of political correctness. There should be some balance. Having read Brooke's poetry, I do feel both should be given credit for some excellent poems - and a different opinion - not merely labelled as 'aberration' and be chided for not having twenty-twenty hindsight in Brooke's case, or forgotten, in the case of Seeger.

Best wishes,

Nigel

[graywyvern]

"With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay"

a pretty line

i will look in there again...