Month: October 2020

poetry appreciation

autumn beauty

Oct 29, 2020 #ageing, #autumn, #beauty, #inspire, #melancholy, #poems, #poetry, #school, #swans, #teacher, #The Wild Swans at Coole, #time, #trees, #WB Yeats, #woods, #Yeats by Lucy Crispin

This was one of the three poems that changed the course of my life. That sounds rather dramatic, but it’s true. We “Did” Yeats for A-level and I was blessed with one of those teachers whose capacity to inspire you feel at the time without really realising what’s going on. Without Stevie I don’t know if I would have “got” literature and followed it as student, teacher, writer, throughout my life. So this is a very important poem for me. Here it is: ‘The Wild Swans at Coole‘ by Yeats.*

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poetry appreciation

thank you

Oct 22, 2020 #anger, #appreciate, #appreciation, #fear, #Gay, #gratitude, #mindful, #mindfulness, #miracle, #mortality, #ode to the west wind, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #poem, #poetry, #presence, #present, #Ross Gay, #Shelley, #sorrow, #Thank you by Lucy Crispin

At the moment, the world is offering us lots of reminders that life is short and time’s winged chariot is always hurrying near. It’s easy to get sucked into fear, anger or sorrow about this. They’re all around us (as well as inside us). So I was particularly delighted to discover this poem which suggests a different and beautiful response to intimations of mortality. Here it is: ‘Thank you‘ by Ross Gay. Read it and be refreshed. (You can also hear him read a couple of bits from a recent book here.)

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poetry appreciation

now, what was that thing…?

Oct 15, 2020 #ageing, #Billy Collins, #Collins, #comedy, #comic muse, #forget, #forgetfulness, #forgetting, #Larkin, #magic eye, #Philip Larkin, #remember, #remembering, #sad steps, #thalia by Lucy Crispin

Do you remember those Magic Eye pictures? I thought they were a craze in the 80s but according to their website it was the 90s (I seem to have mislaid a decade somewhere or other). The pictures came to mind this morning when I was trying to remember a name I’d forgotten: something about the way I had to stop striving to see the 3D image in order to be able to do so made me think of what it can be like these days trying to retrieve something from long-term mental storage. And that made me think of ‘Forgetfulness‘ by Billy Collins. If you can bear not to read it straight away, do click the red arrow by the title to hear the author reading it. It’s a great way to meet the poem.

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poetry appreciation

strangeness making sense

Oct 8, 2020 #alone, #aloneness, #belonging, #comfort, #home, #isolation, #Larkin, #loneliness, #lonely, #Philip Larkin, #poem, #poetry, #relationship, #society, #solitude, #The importance of Elsewhere, #Vers de Societe by Lucy Crispin

The other poem in my head while I was on holiday was one I almost always hear in there when I’m away from home: Larkin’s ‘The Importance of Elsewhere‘. The experience of being where no-one knows your name (apologies for the echo of the Cheers theme tune which may have just drifted across your mind) can feel safe or frightening, liberating or paralysing, and I’ve always loved Larkin’s exploration of these facts in this poem.

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poetry appreciation

the winged life

Oct 1, 2020 #attention, #Berry, #Blake, #Eternity, #holiday, #mindfulness, #presence, #social media, #The Vacation, #wendell berry, #William Blake by Lucy Crispin

Everything there is to be said about the toxic potential of social media has already have been said somewhere else (probably on social media) so I won’t rehearse it here. And it’s true that the splicing together of commercials for our lives (rather then inhabiting them) isn’t quite what Wendell Berry’s splendid ‘The Vacation‘ is about; but it feels related, somehow. Besides, this was the poem which came to mind while I was away on my holiday. Here it is.

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