In today's poetry feature Stephen Pentz considers the business of growing old - not that he's complaining, mind... As a preface to the following poem, I would like to state that I am not complaining -- nor will I ever complain -- about "growing old." I think that complaining about one's ... Read More...
Poetry
On this day in 1970, a crow spotted a craggy-faced, heavy-set poet, and was inspired to write... The diary of a crow, on this day in 1970: Woke up in a foul temper. I was really, really pissed off. Sat atop a tree and shouted my head off. I was still pissed ... Read More...
From Wordsworth to Auden, a surprising number of famous poems have been blighted - or sometimes, improved - by printing errors, as Jonathan Law reveals... In a post a while back Frank Key gave us his startling revisionist take on a well-known poem by Sylvia Plath: In her mad poem ‘Daddy’, Sylvia Plath makes ... Read More...
Gaw explores 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 accomplished miserabilists in British poetry. Grumpy old men inhabiting ... Read More...
Today's poetry and painting piece features Edward Thomas, Paul Nash, W.H. Davies and birds' nests... In addition to their intrinsic beauty, the bare trees of late winter and early spring offer an opportunity for the discovery of birds' nests. This thought brings to mind Edward Thomas, who was a great searcher ... Read More...
The true story behind the famous poem by Robert Browning... Good evening. My name is Guus. If I may, I will tell you an anecdote. I am an ancient and somewhat crumbling gent, and it might be thought that I would have a veritable storehouse of anecdotage to draw upon, but ... Read More...
Spring is coming - time to keep your eyes on the ground, suggests Stephen in this week's Dabbler Verse feature... There is something to be said for winnowing, for paring down. The culture around us encourages short attention spans and hyperactive grasping after chimeras. Don't get me wrong: I am in ... Read More...
In today's poetry feature, Stephen finds peace at the journey's end... I first encountered the word "bourne" in the title of a poem by Christina Rossetti. I had no idea what it meant, but I immediately felt that it was a lovely word. There was something about the look and the ... Read More...
Nige unearths a neglected gem of Victorian poety by the almost-forgotten Jean Ingelow... Unless a man is an extraordinary coxcomb, a person of private means, or both, he seldom has the time and opportunity of committing, or the wish to commit, bad or indifferent verse for a long series of years; ... Read More...
Despite his reputation as the World's Grumpiest Poet, R.S. Thomas wrote a number of lovely, short Christmas poems. Our resident Dabbler Verse expert Stephen Pentz offers a compendium... The word that comes to mind when I think of R. S. Thomas is fierce. However, having said that, I feel that I ... Read More...