W.B.Yeats' 'The Second Coming'

December 17, 2019 Liam Guilar

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

‘The best lack all conviction’: It’s not always true, but there are times, like the present, when it does seem accurate. And though Yeats wrote this after the First World War, the poem seems to rediscover its own topicality as each generation faces the baffling reality of its own political system.

I wrote on a previous podcast that Yeats is the unavoidable English language poet. He was so very good at what he did. He wrote better lines, better images, better stanzas and better short poems than almost anyone else, and he did it more often.

Try replacing ‘slouching’ in the final line with a different verb and watch what happens, to both the sound and sense.

If you're interested in Yeats the man, he is the subject of a superb two volume biography by Roy Foster: 'W.B. Yeats a life'. Vol I: The Apprentice Mage, Vol 2 The Archpoet.

Thom Gunn's 'Expression'

December 12, 2019 Liam Guilar

Thom Gunn (1929-2004)

‘I have been reading my contemporaries’

This is the first year since I started school when I have not been obliged to read anything.

So I have been catching up on what is considered admirable in Contemporary poetry. I have read award winning books, and books by famous poets, and that odd thing, the popular poetry book.

And while some of it is excellent, this poem has been running through my head.

Gerard Manley Hopkins' 'Pied Beauty'

December 10, 2019 Liam Guilar

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1884-1889)

There was a time Hopkins featured on school lIterature syllabi. He may still do. He was often the first shocked encounter students had with a poet who was ‘difficult’. Generations floundered attempting to write something intelligent about something they found incomprehensible.

They could of course get technical and try reading about ’sprung rhythm’, though that may have left them even more confused than before. They could delve into the biography and consider how Hopkins’ spirituality affected the poems. Either way they were moving further away from the object they were supposed to be considering.

I think it’s better to wander through his poems, looking for ones that catch your attention. Rereading them allows you to tune into others. This does not mean you’ll soon be reading ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ and enjoying the experience, but it will allow you to enjoy some of his poems.

‘Pied Beauty’ celebrates the glorious multiplicity of creation. What is there to not understand?

This is taken from the Folio Society’s beautiful Selected poetry and Prose of Gerald Manley Hopkins. .

Hugo William's 'Fall Zone'

December 5, 2019 Liam Guilar

Hugo Williams (1942-)

I have admired William’s poetry since I discovered that the author of “No Particular Place to Go'“ wrote poems. My copy of that strange excursion into America has 1983 written inside the cover as its date of purchase. This poem is taken from his most recent collection, ‘Lines Off’ (Faber 2019).

Most discussions of Williams’ poetry will sooner or later discuss the art of artlessness. In a world of pyrotechnics and syntaxtic acrobatics, written by earnest survivors of unimaginable horrors, domestic or national, on a first reading, the Williams poem can seem little more than rhythmically organised speech. The fact the speaker is so often unimpressed with itself can encourage the illusion. How nice you think, and pass on in search of something more substantial.

And that’s your mistake.

A simple test of excellence is to watch what happens when you reread the poem. As with this one, so much more is happening than appears on that first, swift reading.

James Laughlin's 'O Best of All Nights, Return and Return Again"

December 3, 2019 Liam Guilar

James Laughlin (1914-1997)

I knew very little about Laughlin except that he founded New Directions Publishing after Pound had told him ‘to do something useful’. I think this poem is a ‘version’ of a Latin poem by Propertius rather than a strict translation.

I’ve taken it from ‘World Poetry’ edited by Washburn and Major where the poem’s title is followed by:

(After the Pervigilium Veneris and Propertius’s ‘Nox Mihi Candida’.)

Centuries after the originals were created, I suspect most people might recognise the sentiment.

T.S.Eliot from 'East Coker'

November 28, 2019 Liam Guilar

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

‘For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business’.

Eliot’s disenchanted view of writing poetry probably sounds familiar to anyone who is serious about practising the craft. It’s full of quotable phrases. Writing poetry as a ‘raid on the inarticulate’ is perhaps the best description of the process that I know.

This is only an extract. I would like to admire Four Quartets as a whole but I think it’s very uneven. It contains beautiful lines and images, profound thoughts, and then it clunks into bad prose or obscurity.

I suspect you can split Eliot devotees into those who admire everything, and those who prefer the early work.

Even in this extract ‘For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business’ sounds magnificent but won’t sustain any prolonged consideration. Eliot was Banker, Critic, publisher and editor. He did a lot more than try to write poetry, and today the poet who thinks he or she can avoid all the trappings of ‘poeting’ and get by simply trying to write better poems is probably deluded.

This is taken from 'The complete poems and plays 1909-1950'.

Sir Walter Ralegh's 'The Lie'

November 26, 2019 Liam Guilar

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)

One of those poems that doesn’t date, that stays relevant?

Ralegh or Raleigh, take your pick. The ultimate hyphenated man of the Elizabethan Renaissance. And nowhere does the gap between what the poems claim and what the poet did in his day job seem greater.: this was the man who took part in the massacre at Smerwick. Who set off in tiny ships to sail to America: Flamboyant Courtier, Royal Favourite, Brutal soldier, Poet, Scholar, Patron of poets, falling out of Royal favour with James, and despite his failure to find El Dorado, sailing home knowing home meant execution. Even his death seems emblematic of the end of an age.

‘The Lie’, also called ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s farewell’, ‘The Soul’s errand’ and ‘Satyra volans’ is dated to the 1590s, and circulated in manuscript. Apparently there are replies to it. It’s not the poem Sir Walter wrote in the tower, waiting to have his head removed from his shoulders.

This version is taken from the excellent ‘The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse’ 1509-1659: selected and introduced by David Norbrook and edited by H.R. Woudhuysen (2005) For anyone with any interest in the poetry of this period, the preface and introduction are an education and the selection goes far beyond the usual suspects.

John Dryden's 'MacFlecknoe'

November 21, 2019 Liam Guilar

John Dryden (1631-1700)

Dryden’s poetry sits uncomfortably between the ease of the Renaissance and the familiarity of the Romantics. Like Pope he was a superb poet, a master of the heroic couplet, like Pope and Swift a master of the devestating put down, and like Pope brevity was not his strong point.

But here he is laying into Thomas Shadwell, crowning him the King of Dullness. You have to go along for the ride. Some of the names will be unfamilair, some of the references will be lost, but the overall drive of the satire should be obvious adn enjoyable.

It’s a long piece to read. And though I’ve tried to do it justice I’m not sure I have. The best Dryden I’ve heard is in the film ‘England My England’ where whoever plays him does a superb job of reading the poems.

There is also a minor technical problem. All the versions of the Poem I have seen name Dryden’s victim Sh-. I tried reading it like this but it didn’t work so Shadwell is named.

This is taken from ‘Selected Poetry and Prose of John Dryden’ edited by Earl Milner.

Carol Ann Duffy's 'Anne Hathaway'

November 19, 2019 Liam Guilar

Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )

Rewriting stories was a popular strategy to challenge an overtly masculine version of history. But few writers did it so well as Duffy in ‘The World’s Wife’, a book of poems where the wives of the famous were allowed to speak.

They are mostly long suffering and unimpressed. There was Mrs. Daedalus watching her husband fall to earth, Mrs. Midas equally disgusted, terrified and saddened by her husband’s new skills, Little Red Riding Hood taking the wolf for all he’d got, Mrs. Faust getting the last laugh on the Devil and so on….

This sonnet is unusual in the collection. Unlike the other wives, Anne Hathaway remmembers her husband with affection. Instead of taking the opportunity for a bit of Bard Bashing over that notorious bequest, Duffy produces a love poem. And unlike some of Will’s sonnets, this one needs no explanations.

This is taken from The World’s Wife, Picador 1999

Robert Graves' 'In Broken Images'

November 13, 2019 Liam Guilar

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

I’ve been wondering which of Graves’ vast output I should read after ‘Flying Crooked’ and the problem was solved when this one was requested.

‘In Broken Images’ juxtaposes two ways of thinking and celebrates the value of starting any thought process from a position of honest confusion or ignorance, and working towards a better understanding of the issue without falling into the trap of thinking the process is from doubt to certainity. Rather it’s from honest doubt to informed honest doubt.

There are too many hes and not enough Is in the world at present. And the education system has a tendency to reward the hes.

The Irony of this poem is that Graves went on to become the most didactic of English critics. However, Graves the younger man wrote marvelous books of criticism. He later disowned them. But his essay on what is bad poetry, which begins ‘Poetic Unreason’ , is a mini masterpiece of the art of taking doubt seriously and following it to its logical conclusions. And then, having arrived a conclusion, having to start again.

This is taken from Carcanet’s ‘The complete poems in one volume’ edited by Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward. There’s a fine shorter selected edited by Michael Longley.

Poetic Unreason is only avilable on the second hand book market.

Rudyard Kipling's 'Gunga Din'.

November 13, 2019 Liam Guilar

Rudyard Kipling (I865-1936)

‘You’re a better man than I am Gunga Din’.

I heard this phrase so often when I was growing up, it was years before I found out that it was part of a poem. Even then, the repetition of the phrase obscured the correct pronunciation and I was slow to realise the name was pronounced Deen not Din.

Perhaps like ‘Lead on MacDuff’, or ‘Him who asks no questions isn’t told no lies’ the phrase had come untethered from its context and was being used by people who didn’t know where it came from.

‘Though I’ve belted you and flayed you
By the living God that made you
You’re a better man than I am Gunga Din’

It’s hard to imagine words locked more securely into a poem’s rhythm.

And if you think Kipling’s Tommy is a racist, I think you’re missing the point of the story.

I've been rereading poems that were common knowledge when I was growing up. This is the last of that group.

Alfred Noyes' 'The Highwayman'.

November 6, 2019 Liam Guilar

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

File under poems that are enjoyable to read aloud?

I wonder how many children have had this poem inflicted on them by English teachers who have used it to teach ‘similes and metaphors’. Now, draw the moon as a ghostly galleon…Now find a simile and draw that..

Stripped down to its narrative bones it has the lack of sentiment of a traditional ballad. The Jealous Lover gets rid of his rival and in so doing causes the death of the woman he desires. Bess kills herself to save the Highwayman, but he dies anyway. Everybody loses. And like the central character in a good ghost story, the Highwayman keeps his promise, even though he’s dead.

It lacks the stripped down austerity of a genuine ballad, and the long vowel sounds ring false. Moon is repeated so often it begins to sound like a herd of cows in a paddock.

It's been set to music many times and if you’ve never heard it sung, Andy Irvine does a good version.

This is taken from ‘Poems and Ballads’ (1927).

Rudyard Kipling's 'A Smuggler's Song'

November 4, 2019 Liam Guilar

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

‘Them that ask no questions, isn’t told a lie’.

I associate this poem with the run up to Christmas, because that line was often quoted, or more often misquoted, at me round about this time of year.

Like so much of Kipling’s poetry, it’s a pleasure to read aloud, although it does strange things to my accent.

It originally appeared in ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’, but this is taken from Rudyard Kipling ‘Complete verse’ Anchor books 1940.

Christopher Logue's 'Caption for a photograph of four organized criminals'

October 30, 2019 Liam Guilar

Christopher Logue (1926-2011)

Logue’s reputation rests securely on his version of Homer. ‘War Music’ may be one of the best narrative poems of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

But his ‘Selected poems’ show he was equally skilled with shorter, non-narrative forms.

The Selected contains two versions of well known poems by Franciose Villon (?1431-?1463). They are very much versions rather than strict translations. The French original for this one goes by different names: Ballade des pendus, Epitaphe Villon or Frères humains. The most arresting images in Logue’s poem are not in the original, nor is the ‘argument’ the poem offers.

If you’re interested in seeing what Logue did with that original, the French text and a literal translation can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballade_des_pendus

This poem is taken from Christopher Logue, Selected Poems Faber 2019.

Anon (1160 B.C.): The Harper's song for Inherkhawy

October 29, 2019 Liam Guilar

This is Annoymous, Egyptian, from 1160 BC, and it’s translated by John L. Foster.

‘Let your heart be drunk on the gift of Day,
until that day comes when you anchor’.

Good advice really.

It’s taken from the magnificent ‘World Poetry. An anthology of verse from Antiquity to the our time’ edited by Washburn and Major.

Philip Larkin's 'Church going'.

October 22, 2019 Liam Guilar

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

There’s not a lot needs saying. He was also born in Coventry, though his upbringing and mine couldn’t be more different and if ‘I remember I remember’ is anything to go by, he didn’t much like the place.

It’s easy to see him as the Eyeore of English poetry, but that would miss both the art and the performance of a character. The Chief Librarian of a Large University Library cannot be serious when he writes ‘books are a load of crap’.

Perhaps his star is currently fading as the personna attracts more attention than the poetry, more time spent on the letters than the poems, but Larkin was never going to be academically viable. You don’t need someone telling you what his poems ‘mean’. His work is both a reaction to ‘Modernism’ and a continuation of a much older tradition and can be enjoyed without commentary.

This is taken from his Collected Poems. (1988)

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's 'Swineherd'

October 18, 2019 Liam Guilar

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (1942- )

The Swineherd? What exactly are his or her ‘special skills’? Why is there a Portguese lay sister in the kitchen, and how does cream crawl to the top of the jug? Where does it get dark early in summer?

All I know is that the first four lines have rattled in my head on so many occasions.

Who ever or wherever the swineherd is, he or she has my sympathy.

(I apologise, but I do not know how to pronounce this writer’s name, and I do not wish to insult her by mangling it.)

This is taken from ‘The Second Voyage’ (Revised ed, 1986)

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's 'Swineherd'

October 16, 2019 Liam Guilar

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (1942- )

All I know is that the first four lines have rattled in my head on so many occasions.

Who ever or wherever the swineherd is, he or she has my sympathy.

(I apologise, but I do not know how to pronounce this writer’s name, and I do not wish to insult her by mangling it.)

This is taken from ‘The Second Voyage’ (Revised ed, 1986)

W.B.Yeats' 'The Wandering of Aengus'

October 15, 2019 Liam Guilar

W.B. Yeats (1885-1939)

“The Unavoidable Poet’ again.

This is early Yeats. It's not an infallible test, since he never lost the art of it, but you can often tell by those long vowel sounds that set up the melodic line and make the poem sing itself. It’s not surprising this poem this has been set to music and sung.

Aengus Og, in Irish Mythology, is the god associated with youth. In one version of his story, Aengus is cursed to follow his lover, who is changed from one thing to another. Yeats has taken the story, but this is now as much persistence as it is the impossibility of his love for Maud Gonne.

Anyone who claims Aengus is stalking the girl is not paying close attention to the verbs.

Zbigniew Herbert's 'Mr. Cogito on Virtue'

October 9, 2019 Liam Guilar

Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998)

Mr. Cogito again. This time contemplating Virtue and her failure to seduce ‘real men’.

This is taken from ‘The Collected Poems’ (Atlantic books 2008) a magnificent and dangerous book.