Robert Burns' 'A red red Rose'

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

One of the glories of English poetry, or poetry in English, is the short lyric. There are thousands of them, and some of them, like this one, are excellent. A memorable statement of a commonplace idea which is not undermined by the knowledge that the poet probably got bored of the original addressee and tried the poem out on someone else.

When Richard Tottel printed the first anthology of poetry in English, in 1557, he was almost apologetic about publishing short poems. When poetry was conscripted into the university at the beginning of the twentieth century, the professional critic needed something to write about, and it is far easier to write 40.000 words on the implication of water imagery in the waste land than it is to say anything clever about ‘A red red Rose’. So the short lyric tends to be absent in the classroom.

But its strength lies in its ability to state the well-known and familiar in strikingly memorable ways. When done well it is the most immediately pleasurable of poems. The excellent ones sing themselves.

John Betjeman's 'A Subaltern's love Song'

Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)

One of the most popular English language poets of the twentieth century. His collected poems sold over two million copies.

One of the nastier assumptions about modern poetry is that it’s not possible to be popular and good. Great poets have five readers and an academic following. Popular poets have either no talent or have prostituted themselves to find an audience. As an assumption it’s both nasty and dangerous.

Betjeman was popular and good. Some of his poems, like this one, seemed to be set in a world that wasn’t on the same planet as mine. His excellence is technical. No modernist pyrotechnics, just a deft handling of the formal aspects of rhyming verse.

His autobiography, ‘Summoned by Bells’ written in blank verse, is one of the better long poems of the century.

The first line of this poem has been been stuck in my head since I first read it decades ago.

George Gascoigne's 'Gascoigne's Lullabie'

George Gascoigne (1535-1578)

I know very little about George Gascoigne, and looking him up on line hasn’t added much to that. But I do like this poem for its combination of weary resignation and sly humour.

And poems like this are the reason why good anthologies are so valuable. I found this one in Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, edited by John Leonard. A lot can be said against anthologies, but a good one, like Seven Centuries, is a great place to start if you’re curious about poetry written in other times or want to read something by famous poet x without wading through x’s complete poems. And in a good anthology, nestled beside famous poet x’s well known poem, will be a poem by someone you’ve never heard of, which you wouldn’t have otherwise found.

Robert Graves' 'The Persian Version'

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

The ‘Greek Version’, which is the ‘historical version’ is that in 490 BCE, the citizens of Athens and some allies defeated a numerically superior Persian army at Marathon. In doing so they stopped the first Persian attempt to conquer Greece. Marathon became a symbol of small nations fighting for freedom against overwhelming odds.

Graves was having fun imagining the Persian Version of events.

It may not be funny in a world where armies can advance towards the rear, where an American president can talk about ‘a down draw’ in Iraq, or where our political leaders think their version or events is superior to any other, regardless of any inconvenient facts that might prove they are wrong.

Liam Guilar's 'My Grandmother's story'

Liam Guilar

The most frightening stories I’ve ever heard were told around the table by my English Grandmother and my Irish Father. There was no attempt to ‘be frightening. They both believed in the truth of the stories they were telling.

This one scared me most because it didn’t finish. It seemed to be all detail and no story. Years later, when I remembered to ask her what was under the floorboards, the answer was long and involved and didn’t seem to belong to this story.

The poem is taken from ‘Rough Spun to Close Weave’ (Ginninderra press 2012). You can find other samples from the book at www.liamguilar.com.

Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Student: Sir! Is he trying to get her clothes off….?
Me: ….
Student: It’s not gonna work is it?

If it’s not surprising that so many English poems seem to have a speaker, usually male, addressing someone, usually female, and trying to get them to undress, what is remarkable is how many of those speakers are doomed to failure if the poem is all they’ve got.

And this is one of the most famous examples. Was any woman ever seduced by being told; ‘You’ll be dead soon, in the grave, and the worms will be chomping on those body parts I’m currently obsessed by. So get your clothes off’?

Which should make people stop and realise that rather than an imagined speech, this is a rhetorical exercise. It moves very logically in three parts: If… However…Therefore. This is a poet giving a virtuoso performance. Creating brilliant phrases, memorable images, but not creating a speech that could be delivered to a human being to bring about a desired outcome.

However, even as a rhetorical exercise, it’s disturbing. It’s like a clever joke that has gone sour. If you pay attention, not only do the images seem inappropriate or disturbing, the ‘therefore’ seems to have slipped ….the poem begins with : ‘I want you’ as its purpose, but by the end the speaker’s purpose is to cheat time and his mistress is just a means to that end.

Marvell’s biographer could find no evidence for a mistress. Make of that what you will.

Dylan Thomas' 'Do not go gentle into that good night'

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Form became a fetish in some kingdoms of poetry world in the later twentieth century. Creative writing students practised Sestinas and Villanelles, and some of them produced technically proficient examples. Most of them were immediately forgettable, and if you enjoy trivial pursuits a good question is 'Name three great villanelles written in the twentieth century'.

What the festishists ignored, forgot or didn’t know what that form is never the whole story. Simply being formal doesn’t you make your poem any better than sprawling free verse. You can teach an 11 year old to write a technically flawless sonnet but your chances of it being memorable are almost non-existent.

This is a great poem, regardless of Thomas’ choice of form. You can always criticise him for being excessive with the adjectives, and he obviously didn’t care for Bunting’s ‘Cut out every word you dare’. But there are few poets who are so enjoyable to read aloud. Even when sense is slipping out the back door for a quiet pint in the pub while the music rolls on.

And don’t be fooled by the music of it. This is very clever in a subtle and unobtrusive way. As someone said, there is no true repetition in poetry….Good night is both a night that is a good, a euphemism for death, and a parting statement. You can exhort someone to rage, or they can rage.

This is taken from a very tatty, yellowing Aldine Paperback ‘Collected Poems 1934-1952’ which I bought in a bookshop in Bala in April 1976

Robert Service's 'The Cremation of Sam McGee'

Robert Service (1874-1958)

You could turn your nose up at Robert Service and his poems. He called them verse, poetry was something other people wrote. He pads his lines, he isn’t afraid to use a cliche when it fits, and the rhythm often seems to be only on nodding terms with the sense. He’s old fashioned. Out of date. etc etc.

And this poem is haunted by the ghost of a much greater one.

But turning your nose up at Service is just silly. His poems were written to be recited, and reading them aloud is a very real pleasure.

Like ‘The Shooting of Dan Mcgrew’, the Cremation is a tightly written short story. The narrative keeps to the trajectory of folklore anecdote it’s meant to be. We’re promised a tale about something strange and unusual. A man makes a dying wish, his friend promises to grant it. He struggles to keep his promise but does. And then the tale twists, famously, at the end to keep the story teller’s initial promise.

This is taken from The Complete Poems of Robert Service, though it first appeared in ‘Songs of a Sourdough’.

Louis MacNeice's 'The Introduction'

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

One of the underrated poets of the twentieth century. A fine critic, an entertaining writer of prose and a fine poet, (unfairly I think) overshadowed in the history books by his friend W.H. Auden.

Perhaps his reputation also suffers because although Irish, he lived most of his life in England. So he misses out on the club value of ‘Irish Poet’ while remaining outside the charmed circle of “English Poets’.

This is not one of the poems I’d offer as proof of his excellence, but it’s one I like. The cosmic indifference of the universe: he was too early, she was too late.

This is taken from Peter MacDonald’s Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice, revised for Faber in 2007 for the centenary of his birth. This poem also appears in Michael Longley’s selection of MacNeice’s verse in Faber’s poet to poet series.

Basil Bunting's 'What the Chairman Told Tom'.

Basil Bunting (1900-1985)

Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it's unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.

They're Reds, addicts, 
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.

You can enjoy this poem as a joke, or as a caricature of a very common attitude towards poetry. It’s not work in the way being a bus conductor is work, and if the ten year old son can do it and rhyme, and the school teacher thinks that the poetry isn’t good, after all, school teachers know about this stuff, what claim does the poet have to any type of excellence, let alone any financial reward.

But beyond the grim humour is something else. The issue of public funding for the arts, and poetry especially. The Chairman, for all his bluster, has a point, or a series of points. And if instead of dismissing him as an uneducated and unsympathetic whatever, you try and refute or answer his points, you might find the exercise not as straight forward as it seems.

I’ve always assumed the Tom In Question is Tom Pickard, but I have no evidence to support that.

This is taken from the excellent Bloodaxe edition of Bunting’s Complete Poems.

Andy Brown's 'Casket' from part V 'The High Barrow'

Andy Brown

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This is taken from Brown’s sequence ‘Casket’ (Shearman 2019). The casket in question is the Franks Casket, an 8th century Whale bone box currently in the British Museum. What the picture below doesn’t do is show how small the thing is, or how intricate the carving.

The Anglo-Saxons were blessed with superb craftsmen. If you get the chance, go see the box in the British Museum, or some of the finds from the ‘Staffordshire Hoard’ and while you’re standing there remind yourself: no strong artificial light, no magnifying lens, no glasses.

Brown’s sequence consists of five parts, one for each side panel and one for the lid. Each part is broken into unnumbered sections, and the reading here is of parts one, four and five of the final section. The /I/ speaking at the beginning is the craftsmen, but his voice blurs into the voice of the box. The speaking object is a familiar device in Old English Poetry.

You can read more about ‘Casket’ here: http://www.liamguilar.com/enthusiasms/2019/6/17/casket-by-andy-brown

John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book 12, Adam and Eve leave Paradise

John Milton (1608-1674)

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

This is from Book Twelve,  line 624 ff. It’s the end of the poem.

Although Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise, they turn towards their future and the world is, literally, ‘all before them’. Although this is their punishment, it doesn’t sound like it. True they are banned from Paradise, but the poem escapes the theology and it sounds more like the start of a magnificent shred adventure, or the early days of a marriage.

And that’s enough Miton for a while.

John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book Nine, Satan sees Eve.

John Milton (1608-1674)

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

This is from Book Nine,  line 421 ff

Satan has escaped from Hell and found Adam and Eve. In this extract he finds Eve alone in the Garden. The extract includes one of my favourite moments in English Poetry (I have many favourite moments) when Satan is made ‘Stupidly good’ by the sight of Eve.

It also contains some fine examples of the unusual way in which Milton dealt with English Syntax. Here’s one sentence:

He sought them both, but wished his hap might find
Eve Separate: he wished, but not with hope
Of what so seldom chanced, when to his wish
Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,
Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood
Half Spied, so thick the roses bushing round
About her glowed, oft stooping to support
Each flow’r of slender stalk, whose head though gay
Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold,
Hung drooping unsustained: them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while,
Herself, though fairest unsupported flow’r
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.’

If you’re reading Paradise Lost, for the first time you need to be patient. The syntax does become familiar and the poem is worth the effort it requires.

John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book One

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'

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.

Peeping Tom Speaks from 'Lady Godiva and Me'

‘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

‘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'

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'

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.