A recent post had the Rev. J. Alfred Prufrock at East Coker, dressed in plimsolls and meeting a merry band of assorted poets in East Coker. He commented on the season ( a cruel April) and suggested some stout to go with their lunch sandwiches. It seems a good time to give the T.S. Eliot comedy files an airing. Eliot…
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” – Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice Nicola Sturgeon, the divisive former First Minister of Scotland, has published her memoir Frankly. Far from a triumph, it has been met with scathing reviews from critics who see her legacy as one of…
Poetry and the landscape are changing – and the poets are on the move. On a train leaving Paddington, to be precise, on a Sunday in April c.1943, in a special carriage stuffed with them. Joseph Gurnard’s Poets’ Excursion is an extended metaphor of the shifting tide of British poetry and of the changing face of the landscape poets wrote…
What if the man you’re rooting for in a wartime darkly comic thriller is also a serial killer? In Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943), Donald Henderson gives us just that: a shabby, lonely public-school man with a bleak past, a murderer burdened by a morbid wish to be caught. (You can read the novel here.) One aspect of the…
My book arrived – hurray! Now I can get to work figuring out just whose noses Joseph Gurnard was tweaking in this delightful little burlesque from 1943, which pokes fun at the poets of the day and the shifting fashions of poetry. First, let’s be clear: this is no Roy Campbell-style slash-and-maim, burn-their-crops, ransack-their-houses takedown. It’s a good-natured piece of…
Refugees They have no need of our help So do not tell me These haggard faces could belong to you or I Should life have dealt a different hand We need to see them for who they really are Chancers and scroungers Layabouts and loungers With bombs up their sleeves Cut-throats and thieves They are not Welcome here We should…
So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets,…
Another daily poem from The Paris Review – this time an early piece by Adrienne Rich. Recorders in Italy It was amusing on that antique grass, Seated halfway between the green and blue, To waken music gentle and extinct. Under the old walls where the daisies grew Sprinkled in cinquecento style, as though Archangels might have stepped there yesterday. But…
“I’ve got a couple friends who are members of the internet. They are complete fiends on that thing. Personally, I have no interest.” Ten years ago – in April 2015 – our friend Barbara Asch was launched into the cyber stratosphere. Humans of New York featured her on their Instagram and Facebook pages. The post was picked up by Tumblr…
All this week The Daily Poem from The Paris Review has featured work by Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. In other words, it is featuring the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935). See the sidebar below for the explanation from the Review. On Tuesday, there were three sonnets by Álvaro de Campos. Here’s one of them:…
You know how it is when a line of a song or chunk of a poem gets stuck in you head. It’s there when you wake up and still buzzing at you days later. This post is an exorcism of sorts although this particular harmless novelty song is not an evil spirit – just an amusing annoyance whose time is…
This is the door to the ladies close to the art gallery (visit recommended) within Norwich Castle – an oasis of functional design that we had all to ourselves. There was a nice sliding lock on the stall and a proper chain to pull to empty the overhead tank with a satisfying clank. This of course sent me off on…
In a recent post, I wrote about the old railway workers known as wheeltappers – those men with long-handled hammers who walked beside trains, listening for flaws. That search led me on a delightful detour into the world of vintage railway films. These tappers show up again and again. Night Mail (1936) tells the story of the mail train and…
The Hammer Test: What Happens When a Poem Rings Hollow? “I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.” That’s a saying often attributed to John Ashbery. He never actually said it except when quoting the poet Robert Duncan, who offered the words in praise of Ashbery’s poem Spring Day: “I have…
Molly (Mary W.) Allen 1930-2025 Featured image: https://www.farmersalmanac.com/forget-me-not-blue-flowers