I read a review of a “The Folded Clock: 100 Number Poems” that made this poetry collection peculiar enough to be intriguing. I recommend the review as a great introduction. The author is Gerhard Rühm, an author, composer and visual artist; he’s regarded as one of the key figures in the postwar European (neo)avant-garde, and his work crosses boundaries. He…
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…
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…
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:…
Poets: Nosey, Needy, and Daft I can’t speak for other nationalities, but as far as the English go, I hold with George Orwell, who said: “The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker.” And that brings me to poets. Who do they think they are, sticking their beaks where they’re not wanted? What is it…
Modern life is full of complexity, chaos, and contradictions. In our efforts to cope, some succumb to despair, while others take solace in the knowledge that ’twas ever thus. With Spring on the horizon – if not yet in the air or step – everyone is busy preparing for the new season. Squirrels are digging up last Fall’s nuts, pigeons…
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. Julius Caesar Act 1 scene 2. There are those who agree with Cassius that we are in charge of our own destiny And then there are those like T.S.Eliot better grounded in reality who understand that we are all at the mercy of mysteries…
Based on his published letters,1940 was a busy year for T.S.Eliot. He was based in London and working at Faber and Faber as editor and director. I’ve picked out a few (mostly) bookish highlights here. In January he enjoyed an evening with Stephen Spender, and tut-tutted about his domestic tangles commenting: The irregularities of that group of young people are…
Two poets in a muddle. Or rather two poems. John Ashbery’s A Mood of Quiet Beauty (from April Galleons 1987) meets T.S.Eliot’s first Prelude (Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917) You can read the originals at those links. In the spirit of OuLiPo – and just for the playful hell of it – I switched out the nouns in each poem in…
We’re not likely to be flying anywhere anytime soon so here’s the next best thing: A trip back in time – to 1919 and a 24 hour tour of Paris. Our guide is the poet Hope Mirrlees. In Paris she was the friend of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Andre Gide, Paul Valéry and companion/ lover of the Cambridge classicist scholar…
Many people know that the poet T. S. Eliot was very fond of cats and indeed created some wonderful cat characters and wrote poems about them. Many people also know that he loved practical jokes – things like exploding cigars and farting cushions. They may also know that he was a fan of detective fiction and wrote reviews for The…
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this…
One thing always leads to another on the intertubes and this particular ravel started with my friend David Nice. David is a cultural critic and musicologist who maintains a wonderful blog – I’ll Think of Something Later – where he writes about music and travel and culture and all the life in between. In response to my last post he…
If you’ve ever been young and full of dreams …. If you ever headed to the big city with your imagination teeming with the prospect of joining the generations of those who came before you and left their mark … this is a poem for you. Think Paris, New York, London – any great and storied city that has been…
What an intriguing idea: Reversing time to see your younger self moving forward in time as you move backward. What if everything that’s happening here has a reverse reality in an anti-world? Mueller’s poem plays with this idea of opposite motions. What would you need to have on hand to meet that self midway through life? The speaker of this…