I'm late to comment and I know very little. But I've read on Wikipedia (ref. one McNeil 1986) that the poems published during Emily Dickinson's lifetime tended to be heavily edited to fit the rules of the day. Perhaps this didn't appeal 🤔
We did one Charlotte Mew for the NY Sun, but I'd be glad to revisit her, and am glad for a particular recommendation (that isn't the poem I wrote about before).
I have probably read that Traherne but don't remember it --- we do have a Traherne poem coming up fairly soon, but again I'm glad to have reader recommendations. It can be overwhelming to look at a poet's body of work, knowing you have to pick *one* to write about.
Not so much to say where to go, but to share these delightful lines form Herbert (Evensong):
I muse, which sows more love,
The day or night: that is the gale, this th' harbor;
That is the walk, and this the arbor;
Or that the garden, this the grove.
Formally, this is about the prayers, but in a larger sense, the active versus the contemplative. It is also hard not to escape Milton's question ("When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"):
You've picked a number from her - Christina Rossetti - already. And the full thing - Goblin Market - is probably too long. But there is a clip starting at "She clipped a precious golden lock" ending with "as she turned home alone" that might be a good excerpt. I don't know what to say about it other than it's an interesting poem that feels unstuck in time in multiple ways.
Whether from fame or infamy, men die who partake of it, but then, so do crows that go off to eat the farmer's corn. Since death is a common malady, why not seek some great work, that whether one finishes it or not, a memento of a time or place will remain, if not its creator.
Have you done poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon? I so love "The Swimmer" and "Podas Okas" -- they're a bit long, though.
Thank you both for doing this for us. Both your commentaries add dimensions to my apprehension of a poem. (And it makes sense, Emily Dickinson had too much infinity -- admitted to herself -- to need a cheap knockoff like fame ...).
Degas once said, "I should like to be famous and unknown." He also said painting belonged to private life, and surprisingly perhaps his work was shown in only a single one-artist show during his life. I like this attitude, and were I to become famous, it's what I'd tell everyone, including people who've never heard of me.
Some ideas for poems to analyze (with a request for leniency if you've already done any of them):
Michael Drayton, "Since there's not help, come let us kiss and part"
Another poem by George Herbert, perhaps "The Collar"
Sir Philip Sidney, "With how sad steps ô Moone thou clim’st the skyes" or pretty much any sonnet or song from "Astrophil and Stella."
A short lyric by George Gascoigne
Something by Swift, perhaps an excerpt from "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," one of my favorite poems. It has a little of the Dunciad, a lot of La Rochefoucauld, with self-deprecation, satire, and reasonably objective self-appraisal.
Edmund Blunden, "Rural Economy 1917," "At Senlis Once," "Report on Experience," or "Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July 1917."
Rupert Brooke, "Fragment"--quite unlike his better-known sonnets
Reading: George Steiner, "Errata" and "Real Presences"; Seth Vikram, "The Golden Gate" (worth reading for the rhymes alone); Joan Barasovska, "Unblessed and Unsung." Since the last open thread, I've finished "Pulp & Prejudice"--one of the few books I've read through that I wished were longer. I've started the memoir, in French, of a soldier in the Wehrmacht, "Le soldat oublié" by Guy Sajer. It's quite good but I'll need some extended quiet times to make headway.
The posts featuring Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel made me wonder about his evolution as a poet. I'm interested in how using a given persona (or personas, thinking of Pessoa's heteronyms), across many poems can affect style and matter. I didn't get very far in my research; it looks as though Marquis started very formal and conventional in diction and meter, but began to experiment with meter and line length. Further reading could alter that impression.
Along the way, I can across a section in his "Poems and Portraits" (1922) of formal sonnets satirically treating various social types. They don't have the interest of the archy poems, but there are some effective, amusing passages, as in this sestet:
When Dade goes up to Heaven—he will; he’s prayerful--
A friend of Thomas Merton once said that Merton wanted to be a hermit — in Times Square with a flashing neon sign over his head that read "Hermit Here!"
I've only been reading this for a couple of months, but it's a delight to see it in my inbox every weekday, and I subscribed after the first week or so. It's so well worth the price. I've shared it with my local poetry group and hopefully one or more of them will subscribe also. Can't wait until Joseph Bottum is at CU where hopefully I can see/hear him in person.
My reading is pretty much what I had planned in an earlier open mic, rereading some big thick books. I have reread Paradise Lost, The Ring and the Book, and The War of the End of the World, and have started Chartreuse de Parme, this time in French. Besides that, I'm reading Richard Evans' three volumes on the Third Reich and Edward Snow's translation of Rilke's selected poetry. After the Evans, I might read Littlejohn's Peril and Promise of Christian Liberty and reread some Wallace Thurman, or I might not.
This grad student is very grateful for your serious work in selecting poems and providing commentary. If I had more of an income and food prices weren’t so high, I would gladly become a paid subscriber and hope to soon after graduation!
I'm new here, but have you done "Terence This is Stupid Stuff" by A.E. Housman or "Ode on Melancholy" by John Keats?
This poem seems to go well with “I’m nobody - who are you”.
I'm late to comment and I know very little. But I've read on Wikipedia (ref. one McNeil 1986) that the poems published during Emily Dickinson's lifetime tended to be heavily edited to fit the rules of the day. Perhaps this didn't appeal 🤔
Because I cannot pass up the opportunity to make a list, here’s a handful of pre-1930 poems that I haven’t heard mentioned very often:
“After Reading Antony and Cleopatra”, and “Escape at Bedtime”, R. L. Stevenson
“In the Fields”, Charlotte Mew
“The Racer”, John Masefield
“Eel Grass” and (I believe) “The Wood Road”, Edna St. Vincent Millay
“The Island”, A. A. Milne
“Barter”, Sara Teasdale
“One foot on Eden” and “The Incarnate One”, Edwin Muir
“Shadows in the Water”, Thomas Traherne
“Pomona”, William Morris
Thanks so much for all the insight, delight, and fun this newsletter provides!:)
The Muir poems are from the 1950s, but otherwise a great pre-1930 list.
We did one Charlotte Mew for the NY Sun, but I'd be glad to revisit her, and am glad for a particular recommendation (that isn't the poem I wrote about before).
I have probably read that Traherne but don't remember it --- we do have a Traherne poem coming up fairly soon, but again I'm glad to have reader recommendations. It can be overwhelming to look at a poet's body of work, knowing you have to pick *one* to write about.
Oh no, you’re right—no idea why I was thinking they were from 1920s!
This is a great list!
Not so much to say where to go, but to share these delightful lines form Herbert (Evensong):
I muse, which sows more love,
The day or night: that is the gale, this th' harbor;
That is the walk, and this the arbor;
Or that the garden, this the grove.
Formally, this is about the prayers, but in a larger sense, the active versus the contemplative. It is also hard not to escape Milton's question ("When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"):
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best...
You've picked a number from her - Christina Rossetti - already. And the full thing - Goblin Market - is probably too long. But there is a clip starting at "She clipped a precious golden lock" ending with "as she turned home alone" that might be a good excerpt. I don't know what to say about it other than it's an interesting poem that feels unstuck in time in multiple ways.
Ha --- we actually have Christina Rossetti coming up (again) quite soon, and though it's not "Goblin Market," I did link to that poem!
Whether from fame or infamy, men die who partake of it, but then, so do crows that go off to eat the farmer's corn. Since death is a common malady, why not seek some great work, that whether one finishes it or not, a memento of a time or place will remain, if not its creator.
Have you done poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon? I so love "The Swimmer" and "Podas Okas" -- they're a bit long, though.
Thank you both for doing this for us. Both your commentaries add dimensions to my apprehension of a poem. (And it makes sense, Emily Dickinson had too much infinity -- admitted to herself -- to need a cheap knockoff like fame ...).
New to me. What do you recommend?
"The Swimmer" got curtailed to be the lyrics for one of Elgar's "Sea Pictures" -- sung here by Dame Janet Baker: https://archive.org/details/lp_elgar-sea-pictures-mahler-five-songs-from_janet-baker-sir-john-barbirolli-the-london/disc1/01.05.+Sea+Pictures%2C+Op.+37%3A+The+Swimmer+(Poem+By+Adam+Lindsay+Gordon)+Band+5.mp3
It might be a short enough excerpt to work with?
("Hushed are all the Myrmidons" is one of my favorite randomly mentally recurring lines, somehow -- from "Podas Okas".)
“Is there an alphabetical list somewhere of poems you’ve already done?”
No, but there might be some way to arrange it. Substack doesn't make it easy.
Degas once said, "I should like to be famous and unknown." He also said painting belonged to private life, and surprisingly perhaps his work was shown in only a single one-artist show during his life. I like this attitude, and were I to become famous, it's what I'd tell everyone, including people who've never heard of me.
Some ideas for poems to analyze (with a request for leniency if you've already done any of them):
Michael Drayton, "Since there's not help, come let us kiss and part"
Another poem by George Herbert, perhaps "The Collar"
Sir Philip Sidney, "With how sad steps ô Moone thou clim’st the skyes" or pretty much any sonnet or song from "Astrophil and Stella."
A short lyric by George Gascoigne
Something by Swift, perhaps an excerpt from "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," one of my favorite poems. It has a little of the Dunciad, a lot of La Rochefoucauld, with self-deprecation, satire, and reasonably objective self-appraisal.
Edmund Blunden, "Rural Economy 1917," "At Senlis Once," "Report on Experience," or "Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July 1917."
Rupert Brooke, "Fragment"--quite unlike his better-known sonnets
Reading: George Steiner, "Errata" and "Real Presences"; Seth Vikram, "The Golden Gate" (worth reading for the rhymes alone); Joan Barasovska, "Unblessed and Unsung." Since the last open thread, I've finished "Pulp & Prejudice"--one of the few books I've read through that I wished were longer. I've started the memoir, in French, of a soldier in the Wehrmacht, "Le soldat oublié" by Guy Sajer. It's quite good but I'll need some extended quiet times to make headway.
The posts featuring Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel made me wonder about his evolution as a poet. I'm interested in how using a given persona (or personas, thinking of Pessoa's heteronyms), across many poems can affect style and matter. I didn't get very far in my research; it looks as though Marquis started very formal and conventional in diction and meter, but began to experiment with meter and line length. Further reading could alter that impression.
Along the way, I can across a section in his "Poems and Portraits" (1922) of formal sonnets satirically treating various social types. They don't have the interest of the archy poems, but there are some effective, amusing passages, as in this sestet:
When Dade goes up to Heaven—he will; he’s prayerful--
I trust no cruder saint will jolly him;
I trust the Lord will say: “Be very careful,
And don’t shock Dade, you rough-necked Cherubim!”
Lay him away in cotton wool, O God!
Eternally, as something rare and odd.
A friend of Thomas Merton once said that Merton wanted to be a hermit — in Times Square with a flashing neon sign over his head that read "Hermit Here!"
My first good laugh of the day--thanks!
I've only been reading this for a couple of months, but it's a delight to see it in my inbox every weekday, and I subscribed after the first week or so. It's so well worth the price. I've shared it with my local poetry group and hopefully one or more of them will subscribe also. Can't wait until Joseph Bottum is at CU where hopefully I can see/hear him in person.
Thanks. Do suggest some pre-1930 poems for us, from your reading.
My reading is pretty much what I had planned in an earlier open mic, rereading some big thick books. I have reread Paradise Lost, The Ring and the Book, and The War of the End of the World, and have started Chartreuse de Parme, this time in French. Besides that, I'm reading Richard Evans' three volumes on the Third Reich and Edward Snow's translation of Rilke's selected poetry. After the Evans, I might read Littlejohn's Peril and Promise of Christian Liberty and reread some Wallace Thurman, or I might not.
This grad student is very grateful for your serious work in selecting poems and providing commentary. If I had more of an income and food prices weren’t so high, I would gladly become a paid subscriber and hope to soon after graduation!
Do suggest some pre-1930 poems for us, from your reading.