John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book One

December 30, 2019 Liam Guilar

John Milton (1608-1674)

This is the first of three readings from ‘Paradise Lost’.

This is from Book One, lines 242-270

The story begins with the fallen angels in Hell. In this brief excerpt Satan has emerged from the lake of fire into which he was cast down. He steps on to dry land, and surveying hell, his prison and the proof of his defeat, rebrands it as his kingdom: ‘What matter where, if I be still the same?’.

There are so many ways in which you could write a history of English poetry. You could study left handed poets throughout history, which would make your selection of poems easy as it wouldn’t matter if they were good poems as long as their authors were left handed*.

Or you could study it as the history of a practice, with significant practitioners and products. You’d have to consider why some were highly praised, and some forgotten, you’d have to look at who decided what was good, but in such a history Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ is an essential work of English Poetry.

You may find his God repellent and very tedious and you may object to Milton’s theology or his views on marriage. You will struggle at times with his diction and his syntax. You might agree with Samuel Johnson that “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is’. But I think Johnson was wrong when he continued: ‘Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure’.

It is a magnificent work. Milton’s Satan is one of the great characters in English Literature and the poem Is veined with great and memorable passages. if you read it aloud, you can not only hear Shakespeare in the background, but you can also hear Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’. A history of poetry as practice would consider poets reading poets, poems responding to poems. The way a sound is taken up and passed on.

*replace ‘left handed poets’ with any group of your choice.

T.S. Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi'

December 25, 2019 Liam Guilar

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

A poem in three movements. In the first, Eliot catches the grumbling voice of a man unaccustomed to hard travelling, remembering the uncomfortable details of a preposterous journey. In the second, the Magi find what they thought they were looking for ‘and it was (you may say) satisfactory’. And in the third, the speaker admits to the ambiguity of that experience which marked the end of ‘the old dispensation’ and left him stranded between a death and a birth.

From Caedmon to the beginning of the Twentieth century, a poet writing in English could assume a shared Christian background with 99 percent of potential readers. I stopped using this poem in class a few decades ago. It wasn’t that the white horse, three crosses and dicing men were too obscure, or even that the word Magi was unfamiliar. The event at the centre of the poem, which the speaker assumes is well-known and therefore doesn’t need to be described in any detail, had to be explained.

This poem is taken from T.S.Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays.

Christina Rossetti's 'A Christmas Carol'

December 23, 2019 Liam Guilar

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

An obvious choice for the season.

Perhaps better known as the Carol, ‘In the Bleak Mid Winter’. It’s interesting attempting to read this while trying to ignore the familiar cadence of the sung version.

This is taken from the Penguin Classics ‘Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems’.

Peeping Tom Speaks from 'Lady Godiva and Me'

December 19, 2019 Liam Guilar

‘Lady Godiva and Me’ is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry.

My idea was that anyone who stood on a street corner in the city could imagine the swirling voices of all the people who had lived there since the city was first founded.

In the first section, ‘History to Legend’, the voices of Leofric, Godgifu/Godiva and Peeping Tom can be heard. Here’s Peeping Tom, unapologetic, speaking for himself.

You can read more samples on www.liamguilar.com

A revised second edition of the book is now available from Amazon, the Book Depository, or from the shop on www.liamguilar.com

from 'Lady Godiva and me' The Modern City

December 19, 2019 Liam Guilar

‘Lady Godiva and Me’ is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry.

My idea was that anyone who stood on a street corner in the city, could imagine the swirling voices of all the people who had lived there since the city was first founded.

The second part of the sequence, called ‘The Modern City’ suggests the voices of the migrant communities that made the city after the second world war. This is a small sample from that section.

You can read more samples on www.liamguilar.com

A revised second edition of the book is now available from Amazon, the Book Depository, or from the shop on www.liamguilar.com

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.