In the second of our Easter Sunday posts we explore a flower-covered car wreck and a rain-sodden graveyard to consider what Easter has meant to two of our grumpiest poets. I keep returning to the two Thomases - Hardy and R.S. - even though they must be two of the most ... Read More...
Dabbler Verse
Philip Larkin, full of the joys of Spring? Nige thinks so... A while ago, over on the excellent First Known When Lost, Steve Pentz quoted Solar as a demonstration that Philip Larkin was not 'the dour personage of caricature'. Indeed not, though he could adopt the dour persona with wonderful conviction. ... Read More...
Nige looks at the strange legacy of Lionel Johnson's poem 'Dark Angel'... Born on this day in 1867 was Lionel Pigot Johnson, archetypal minor poet of the English Decadence (along with Ernest Dowson, who at least contributed two film titles, 'Days of Wine and Roses' and 'Gone with the Wind', to posterity). Tormented ... Read More...
Nige marks the anniversary of the death of Keats... It was on this day in 1821 that John Keats died in Rome, with Joseph Severn at his side. Rather than rehearse that heartbreaking scene, I'll mark the day with the last poem he completed, the finished version of which was in ... Read More...
On the eve of the 2012 Six Nations tournament, Gaw brings together his two loves: rugby and poetry... We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which ... Read More...
Nige appreciates female poets in general, and Kay Ryan in particular... Brit once made the observation that I read an awful lot of female novelists. It hadn't really occurred to me, but of course he's right - I do. Why? It's certainly nothing programmatic - it's just that (as it seems to me) for ... Read More...
Continuing his English seaside/contemplation of brief mortality in a godless universe theme, Brit introduces a children's nonsense poem with even more existential melancholy than Arnold's Dover Beach... Mervyn Peake’s book Rhymes Without Reason is the cultural item that has influenced me more than any other. I must have been about six or ... Read More...
There is no end to the talent contained within that Brit. Here's his Christmas poem. Festive doesn't always equal blithely happy, you know... Ghosts of Christmas Christmas, like revenge or copulation, Is mostly fun in the anticipation. It’s weeks, it’s days, and now it’s here, it’s here! And now it’s gone, in a haze of ... Read More...
The attractions of a Christmas legend, at least for some. Here's one to think about tomorrow, just before bedtime - a poem that refers to a country legend that farmyard animals kneel at midnight on Christmas Eve. By the time it was written Thomas Hardy had lost his faith. It encapsulates ... Read More...
Gaw finds Edwin Muir's memories of childhood particularly resonant... I'm reading Edwin Muir's autobiography, recommended here by masterly commenter Jonathan Law. As JL remarks, the account of his childhood is terrific. He seems remarkably able to inhabit a child's perspective - I've only witnessed it being done as well in Joyce's Portrait of the ... Read More...
