Collected Poems

by Kathleen Raine

Since her first collection of poems published in 1943, Kathleen Raine has been writing a kind of mystical nature poetry all her own, a poetry immersed in the quiet air of solitude and imagination. Vita Sackville-West, writing in the Observer , spoke of her "curious purity": "Her poems are like drops of water, clear, self-contained, and sometimes iridescent with the elusive colors of mysticism". Collected Poems is the lifework of a visionary, a celebration of the miracles of nature and man's place among them. Now in her ninety-second year she has chosen this work from eleven published collections and from other uncollected and unpublished sources. The earliest poems were written in the mid-thirties, the latest in the late nineties.

Genres: Poetry, Read For School

388 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Kathleen Jessie Raine CBE was an English poet, critic and scholar, writing in particular on William Blake, W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy.

Reviews

[Naomi]

I have had the pleasure of doling these poems out to myself as though they were exquisite truffles. Raine's spiritually infused personal yet transcendent poetry is a delight. Following the poet on her life's journey both invites reflection on one's own spiritual journey and meditation and offers glimpses across the distance at Kathleen Raine. A marvelous collection to dip into repeatedly, this one will go on my reread shelf at home.

[Richard Smith]

Kathleen Raine wrote on William Blake and W B Yeats, married two men, had two children, and held to her death an unrequited passion for the homosexual Gavin Maxwell. Perhaps through frustration she cursed him, lost his pet otter, and, she believed, caused him to die of cancer. She grew up in Northumberland, but lived mostly in Cambridge, London, and the Lake District, despite writing: "In Northumberland I knew myself in my own place; and I never 'adjusted' myself to any other or forgot what I had so briefly but clearly seen and understood and experienced."

I knew none of this when I read her Collected Poems. Indeed, I had never heard of her until I read two poems by her that spoke very directly to me in Philip Larkin’s Oxford Book of English 20th Century Verse. Neither of the two poems I read in Larkin’s collection was included by Raine in her Collected Poems, and perhaps she (like most people) was not the best judge of her own work.

Those two poems were enough to prompt me to track down a copy of her Collected Poems (which is not in print), and I’m glad I did. I’ve read it right through, and some of the poems struck right to my heart. Others I could barely follow. She’s a poet in the lyrical tradition of Shelley and Yeats, and many of her poems reminded me of those of Dylan Thomas, a near contemporary.

I learnt all that is in the first paragraph of this note from Wikipedia after reading her poems, but now I realise that I saw her life in her poems. What else could she write about?

When I have a moment I will copy out the many lines that appealed to me and place them on my blog.

[Eden Hunter]

Dark, austere, and vatic, but at the same time full of sadness and unrequited love, Kathleen Raine's poetry is unlike anything else I've ever read. In the introduction to this book Raine says that all her poems are really different versions of the same poem. I think this is because all her poems aim to use verse and language as a catalyst for a kind of mystical awakening, to show you a vision of the world of ideals, to give you an intimation of what it might be like to die. This kind of poetry is certainly not for everyone. If you dislike thinking about death, or if you have no feeling for mysticism and occultism, I doubt you'll get much out of this book (The second of these ideas cuts both ways - I wouldn't recommend Raine's collected poems to anyone who devoutly follows a single religion, just as I wouldn't recommend them to a rigid secularist). In an autobiographical essay Raine said she has tried to speak "from solitude to solitude." I have never felt at home here, always felt lost, and Raine's poetry is precious to me because it shows me a way to dream of another world.

I want to try and clarify the point about the aim of these poems, and I think the best way to do that is by giving a sketch of Raine's aesthetic philosophy. The philosophy underneath these poems can crudely be described as a mix between Plato's theory of forms and William Blake's deification of imagination. Like Plato, Raine believed that the sensible world is a dim shadow of a divine world of pure ideas. But unlike Plato, whose method for accessing the divine involved discursive argument and rational intellectual contemplation, Raine follows Blake in identifying imagination as the mystical faculty. In dreams, visions, and mental images, echoes of the other perfect world resound. Hence the role of poetry as a catalyst of mystical experience.

Fans of Kathleen Raine may be interested to know that there are many poems that didn't make it into the Collected Poems, and that many others are substantially different in the Collected Poems from their first publication. It seems like Raine consciously tried to banish Christian symbolism from her poems, and I am not sure if this makes them better. I hope Raine draws some more scholarly attention so that these issues can be examined in a systematic way. La Recherche de l'Absolu, maybe her most impetuous, violent, and formally experimental poem, is unfortunately missing from the Collected Poems. Here is an excerpt from it (Full poem is available on Poetry foundation):

Here it whines and in long streams tears the sky
Here rushing roaring deafening approaches passes recedes
Here in thud thud thud of unlife batters
Destroy destroy long past killing, past that end
Past past that dear frail life
That has a voice to howl, whose scream is anguish,
Whose roar is pain is terror is rage
Is grief, and under the battering blows is dead
Heart-beat, for oh the sacred heart is stopped.
The Word's last shattering sound before the nothing
Means nothing, tells nothing.

[Dug]

Elle aime pas trop les gens. Les coquillages c'est fascinant.

[Ameythist Moreland]

“Do I Imagine Reality
Or does the real imagine me?
Unimaginable imaginer
What part does the imagined play?”

[Gabriel Clarke]

The earlier poems are lyrical, joyous marvels. The 50s and 60s are drier, rooted in metaphysics and dogma (though constantly ceding centre stage to the natural world and immanent forces behind it). But the crown is a long, deeply felt, tragic sequence of 130 short poems where she works through the death of Gavin Maxwell and her unrequited life-long passion for him. Heartbreaking and beautiful.

[eb^_−☆]

LU et au programme de l'agrégation : * L'entièreté de The Year One – 26 poèmes (p. 61-101).
* On a Deserted Shore – 24 courts poèmes : phrase d’exergue, poème d’ouverture et poèmes 1
à 12 (p. 177-182), poèmes 121 à 130 (p. 212-214), poème de clôture (p. 215).
* The Presence (1987) – : Light Over Water (p. 281-282) ; The Presence (p. 287).
* Living With Mystery (1992) : Fire (p. 309-310) ; London Dawn (p. 311-312) ; All this (p. 315-316) ; Poppy Flower (p. 320-321).

je peux pas mettre un rating alors que j'ai pas tout lu mais il me tarde de l'analyser en classe.

[Pollymoore3]

I noticed that my copy had been signed at some point by the author, who would by then have been over 90. Favourites: "Spell of Creation", and "Message from Home".

[Ems]

Pureeee bravo a moi ca avance l #agreg (non)

[Pauline AMIN]

I don’t know? Maybe I’m not into poetry? Maybe i need someone to help me understand?

[audrey]

I found myself loving her poetry and the multiplicity of references to Greek mythology

[Emma Lesage]

Poems often very sad and gloomy but with a glint of love and hope. Perfect poetry read for a gloomy autumn day 🍁

[Richard Smith]

I may have read and enjoyed the same book that I read two years ago and completely forgotten. A sign? Anyway, a blog:

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...

[Jo]

some of these are pure magic

[malo]

pas ouf

[Autumn Amber]

Lyrical and thought provoking.