The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion
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Poems for 2015
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In A Library
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming and in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty,
And Sophocles a man;;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true:
He lived where dreams were sown.
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.
Wonderful Debs and very suitable for RR! More folks!
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More folks!"
Thx Madge. She lived in the town I live her. Her house is just down the road. I thought it might be a good choice since we are all lover of books.
Margaret Atwood wrote a poem called February but it is more about her cat!http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/...
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Brilliant! I love the line "... If I am (dead)He'll think of something."
That's one of the things I love about cats - their ability to move on and their relative independence.
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Deborah wrote: "I liked the pink bum hole line too because it always seems like a cat manages to put this in your face"It's a sign of submission:) I love their independence too.
Seeing as we're doing the months, I couldn't help being reminded of Flanders and Swann.A Song of the Weather
January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.
February's ice and sleet
Freeze the toes tight off your feet.
Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wert not so unkind!
April brings the sweet spring showers,
On and on for hours and hours.
Farmers fear unkindly May
Frost by night and hail by day.
June just rains and never stops
Thirty days and spoils the crops.
In July the sun is hot.
Is it shining? No, it's not.
August, cold and dank and wet,
Brings more rain than any yet.
Bleak September's mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood.
Then October adds a gale,
Wind and slush and rain and hail.
Dark November brings the fog
Should not do it to a dog.
Freezing wet December, then
Bloody January again!
January brings the snow ...
And a recording of them performing it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_eT40eV...
Haven't heard that for years Pip! Thanks!
Thanks for the Flanders and Swann! I still have three of their LPs (vinyl) and put them on when I need a particular type of delight in my life.
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A Song of the Weather
January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.
February's ice and sleet..."
I've never seen this and quite enjoyed it, thanks Pip
Abigail wrote: "Thanks for the Flanders and Swann! I still have three of their LPs (vinyl) and put them on when I need a particular type of delight in my life."Unfortunately my son made off with my turntable so I can't listen to mine, which I have been listening to almost since the day they started recording (they were Quakers, so were especially noted in my circles), but fortunately most of their work is on youtube.
Everyman wrote, “the were Quakers . . .”I had no idea they were Friends! What a lovely surprise! I was brought up mostly going to Episcopalian church but also sometimes to Meeting; since my guardian came from Philadelphia, we had roots in both paths. Have been reading a lot of Quaker writings lately, as character background for some of the characters in some stories I’m working on. I find they’re the most wonderful thing to read just before going to sleep. George Fox, John Woolman, Caroline Stephen, Rufus Jones.
Abigail wrote: "I was brought up mostly going to Episcopalian church but also sometimes to Meeting; since my guardian came from Philadelphia, we had roots in both paths. Have been reading a lot of Quaker writings lately, as character background for some of the characters in some stories I’m working on. I find they’re the most wonderful thing to read just before going to sleep. George Fox, John Woolman, Caroline Stephen, Rufus Jones. "As it happens, I grew up Quaker but sometimes attended Episcopalian church with my mother -- she came from a Quaker family, as did my father, but my maternal grandfather was an Episcopal minister, so my mother (as did her mother) had feet in both camps, and thus so did I.
Great names you're reading. (Rufus Jones is a cousin of mine, by the way.)
If your guardian was from Philadelphia, did you go to meeting there, and if so which meeting? I grew up in Germantown/Coulter Street meeting.
I grew up in Los Angeles and we went to the Pasadena meeting, but a lot of my ancestors are from Philadelphia. Delightful to virtually meet a cousin of such a beautiful writer as Rufus Jones!
MadgeUK wrote: "Margaret Atwood wrote a poem called February but it is more about her cat!http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/..."
You mean everything isn't about cats?
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Snow-Flakes (Biirds of Passage, Flight the Sevond) by Longfellow
Out of the bosom of the air
Out of the cloud-folds of her garment shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in the cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field
Deborah wrote: "Since I'm in the Northeast, and we have been inundated with snow, I thought this was appropriate."Nice, though from the weather reports we get back here your snow isn't coming slowly. And maybe not all that softly.
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This will seem out of place to many of you, dealing with the hideous snow storms and frigid temperatures of the Midwest and East, but where I am February is more a matter of torrential rains and tree frogs singing lustily in the evenings! Which gives me an excuse to advance the claims to notice of my favorite contemporary poet, Pattiann Rogers. (Maybe something to give all you frozen ones some hope for a milder future.) Hope it’s not too “warm” for anyone.THE POWER OF TOADS
The oak toad and the red-spotted toad love their love
In a spring rain, calling and calling, breeding
Through a stormy evening clasped atop their mates.
Who wouldn’t sing—anticipating the belly pressed hard
Against a female’s spine in the steady rain
Below writhing skies, the safe moist jelly effluence
Of a final exaltation?
There might be some toads who actually believe
That the loin-shaking thunder of the banks, the evening
Filled with damp, the warm softening mud and rising
Riverlets are the facts of their own persistent
Performance. Maybe they think that when they sing
They sing more than songs, creating rain and mist
By their voices, initiating the union of water and dusk,
Females materializing on the banks shaped perfectly
By their calls.
And some toads may be convinced they have forced
The heavens to twist and moan by the continual expansion
Of their lung sacs pushing against the dusk.
And some might believe the splitting light,
The soaring grey they see above them are nothing
But a vision of the longing in their groins,
A fertile spring heaven caught in its entirety
At the pit of the gut.
And they might be right.
Who knows whether these broken heavens
Could exist tonight separate from trills and toad ringings?
Maybe the particles of this rain descending on the pond
Are nothing but the visual manifestation of whistles
And cascading love clicks in the shore grasses.
Raindrops-finding-earth and coitus could very well
Be known here as one.
We could investigate the causal relationship
Between rainstorm and love-by-pondside if we wished.
We could lie down in the grasses by the water’s edge
And watch to see exactly how the heavens were moved,
Thinking hard of thunder, imagining all the courses
That slow, clean waters might take across our bodies,
Believing completely in the rolling and pressing power
Of heavens and thighs. And in the end we might be glad,
Even if all we discovered for certain was the slick, sweet
Promise of good love beneath dark skies inside warm rains.
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I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt;
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
For I impair not beauty, being mute,
When others would give life and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
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BY D. H. LAWRENCE
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.
And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.
Thanks, Madge! You should check out other works by Pattiann Rogers—a lot of joyful and insightful poems based on keen observation of the natural world.If I may, another little-known paean to spring?
“Fern Song,” by Hildegarde Flanner
Had I the use of thought equivalent
To the moist hallucination of a flute
I could be saying how
A certain music in my woods has driven
A certain female fern to tear
In panic from her good black root.
But no transparency of clear intent
Assisting me,
I only guessed at what the singer meant
That hour I heard his intervals prolong
Beyond security of common song
Into a raving sweetness coming closer
While the lyric animal himself
Was still remote,
Since thrush may have a mile of music
In one inch of throat.
This is the commemerative poem, composed by our Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, and read by Benedict Cumberbatch in Leicester Cathedral today at the reinterrment of King Richard III (see Croissants 10):Richard
My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil,
a human braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
emptied of history. Describe my soul
as incense, votive, vanishing; you own
the same. Grant me the carving of my name.
These relics, bless. Imagine you re-tie
a broken string and on it thread a cross,
the symbol severed from me when I died.
The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the Resurrection of the Dead …
or I once dreamed of this, your future breath
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.
I shall know why, when time is overAnd I have ceased to wonder why;
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky
And will tell me what Peter promised
And I, for wonder at His woe
I shall forget the drop of anguish
That scalds me now, that scalds me now
- Emily Dickinson, "XXXIX Time and Eternity"
MadgeUK wrote: "This is the commemerative poem, composed by our Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, and read by Benedict Cumberbatch in Leicester Cathedral today at the reinterrment of King Richard III (see Croissants ..."A forgettable poem about an unforgettable man.
This one is less forgettable and more fun, even if you don't agree with the politics. To be sung to the tune of "Candle in the Wind".Contains mild bad language.
Candle In The Wind (Richard III version)
Goodbye, Yorshire's rose
May you ever rot in the dark
You only reigned for two crap years
Then lay in some car park
You called out to our country
Which you vainly ruled by force
And, like you, I've got a hunch
That you never found that horse
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a nephew-killing git
Locking princes in the Tower
And the rest of it
Then your body was hacked to pieces
Out on Bosworth by your foes
Your candle's briefly relit for
An evening TV show
Tom Freeman @Snoozeinbrief
LOL. Good one and captures the triviality of it all. To be fair to our first female Poet Laureate, it can't be easy writing poems to order.
MadgeUK wrote: "LOL. Good one and captures the triviality of it all. To be fair to our first female Poet Laureate, it can't be easy writing poems to order."Glad you enjoyed it :-)
As for the Poet Laureate... No it can't be easy, but isn't that her job? To write poems to order, I mean. I wasn't sure whether or not this was a paid position, so I looked it up. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
"The salary has varied, but traditionally includes some alcohol. Ben Jonson first received a pension of 100 marks, and later an annual "terse of Canary wine". Dryden had a pension of £300 and a butt of Canary wine. Pye received £27 instead of the wine. Tennyson drew £72 a year from the Lord Chamberlain's department, and £27 from the Lord Steward's "in lieu of the butt of sack".
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poet_l...
Women... Butts.... Alcohol.... There's a Daily Mail headline in there somewhere.
Pip wrote: "This one is less forgettable and more fun, even if you don't agree with the politics."By all accounts I'm aware of, Richard was considered a courageous and wise king.
Not by all accounts. There is still a great deal of controversy about him, especially about the Princes in the Tower. I don't care either way and accept that Tudor propaganda would have been biased. Victors get to write history:'Tudor historian Dr David Starkey said: “I think there is a very good reason why Richard found himself in a car park in Leicester. He was a disastrous monarch who destroyed his own royal house, the House of York.
“Unless Westminster Abbey opens a villains’ corner where we can put him, I think Leicester is quite appropriate. Frankly, he doesn’t make the grade.”
Historian Simon Schama said the question of where to bury the king was a matter for the church, adding: “He has to be put somewhere of course, but kings end up in strange places. Aren’t car parks the temples of our time?”
He described Richard III as “a repellent man. Just because the Tudors were capable of venomous propaganda doesn’t mean all aspects of their propaganda was necessarily inaccurate.”'
MadgeUK wrote: "Not by all accounts. There is still a great deal of controversy about him, especially about the Princes in the Tower. I don't care either way and accept that Tudor propaganda would have been biased..."Tough to be the king in those days...you actually had to go onto the field of battle and fight. Try getting any of our leaders to put an oar in these days. I think even the poorest of these men must have had great qualities of leadership to get men to put life and fortune on the line for them. Here's to Richard, maligned through time (just or not). RIP somewhere better than a parking lot.
MadgeUK wrote: "Victors get to write history:"And particularly so in an era where dissenting from the propaganda the victors put out is a good way to have your head severed from your body.
I should have said the predominant objective accounts. It's no surprise that a Tudor historian would be sucked into the Tudor propaganda position.
Sara wrote: "Tough to be the king in those days...you actually had to go onto the field of battle and fight. "And according to the Oxford Companion to British History, he "distinguish[ed] himself on the field of Barnet" in 1471, and in the battle in which he lost his life he "fought courageously," but was overwhelmed.
MadgeUK wrote: "Victors get to write history:..."What sort of view would people 600 years from now have of Obama's presidency if the only records of his time were those written by Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh?
Everyman wrote: "MadgeUK wrote: "Victors get to write history:..."What sort of view would people 600 years from now have of Obama's presidency if the only records of his time were those written by Karl Rove, Ann ..."
Or of Bush's if the only historians were Pelosi and Arianna Huffington. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't think his courage on the field of battle is disputed as that is recounted elsewhere than Bosworth but other aspects of his character are in dispute between well qualified historians and I suspect that will ever be so. There have always been disputes between Yorkists and Lancastrians.We should perhaps be having this conversation in Croissants!
Not a poem for April but a favourite lyric and a film clip. Sing along!http://www.songlyrics.com/deanna-durb...
MadgeUK wrote: "Not a poem for April but a favourite lyric and a film clip. Sing along!http://www.songlyrics.com/deanna-durb..."
I had forgotten about Deanna Durbin. Lovely clip.
"Cut Grass" by Philip LarkinCut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer’s pace.
Taken from The Complete Poems © Estate of Philip Larkin.
Mmm, lovely. I walked some of those “lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace” when I was in southern Cornwall a few weeks ago, so the imagery is very vivid for me.
January, 1795
BY MARY ROBINSON
Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,
Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;
Titled gluttons dainties carving,
Genius in a garret starving.
Lofty mansions, warm and spacious;
Courtiers cringing and voracious;
Misers scarce the wretched heeding;
Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.
Wives who laugh at passive spouses;
Theatres, and meeting-houses;
Balls, where simp’ring misses languish;
Hospitals, and groans of anguish.
Arts and sciences bewailing;
Commerce drooping, credit failing;
Placemen mocking subjects loyal;
Separations, weddings royal.
Authors who can’t earn a dinner;
Many a subtle rogue a winner;
Fugitives for shelter seeking;
Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.
Taste and talents quite deserted;
All the laws of truth perverted;
Arrogance o’er merit soaring;
Merit silently deploring.
Ladies gambling night and morning;
Fools the works of genius scorning;
Ancient dames for girls mistaken,
Youthful damsels quite forsaken.
Some in luxury delighting;
More in talking than in fighting;
Lovers old, and beaux decrepid;
Lordlings empty and insipid.
Poets, painters, and musicians;
Lawyers, doctors, politicians:
Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes,
Seeking fame by diff’rent roads.
Gallant souls with empty purses;
Gen’rals only fit for nurses;
School-boys, smit with martial spirit,
Taking place of vet’ran merit.
Honest men who can’t get places,
Knaves who shew unblushing faces;
Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded;
Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.