Month: December 2020

poetry appreciation

darkling

Dec 31, 2020 #2020, #2021, #beauty, #bravery, #courage, #dread, #fear, #Hardy, #hope, #New Year, #optimism, #pandemic, #The Darkling Thrush, #The Oxen, #Thomas Hardy by Lucy Crispin

Joy and pain, hope and despair, don’t always seem evenly balanced in Hardy, that’s for sure. Just ask Tess. Or Jude. But for the turn of such a year as this I want to remind myself of the beauty-in-the-midst-of-desolation that we find in Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’. I’m sure it’s familiar to you, but you can re-read (or read) it here.

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poetry appreciation

the unbroken

Dec 24, 2020 #Beisser, #Carl Rogers, #comfort, #gestalt, #grief, #growth, #hope, #hopeful, #loss, #Paradox, #paradoxical, #person-centred, #poem, #poetry, #Rashani, #Rogers, #suffering, #the paradoxical theory of change, #The Unbroken by Lucy Crispin

A couple of years ago the 42 group began a December tradition of making a poetry advent calendar. We choose a topic and each contribute a few of our favourite poems which, with a great deal of sherry and swearing, I grapple into a vaguely consistent format, allotting a poem to each day of advent and emailing out the resulting document. This year our topic has been healing/reassurance/comfort, that sort of thing. The Christmas Eve poem a group member contributed was new to me—so beautiful and so apt for these strange times that, with apologies to group members who are seeing the same poem twice in one day, I share it here too. Delight in ‘The Unbroken‘ by Rashani.

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poetry appreciation

the whole business, lovers to monks

Dec 17, 2020 #2020, #care, #caring, #Carruth, #Christmas, #fantasy, #Hayden Carruth, #love, #loving, #pandemic, #reality, #sentiment, #sentimentality by Lucy Crispin

Ad execs must have had a tough time working out how to sell Christmas in this year of virtual life. (At least, I hope they have.) The Christmas fantasies of merrily-laughing families or snugly-jumpered framilies aren’t going to cut it for 2020. I’d like to offer you this poem as a sort of reality check, or an advert for the only thing which really serves us in times as trying as these. Here’s Hayden Carruth’s ‘An Apology for Using the Word ‘Heart’ in Too Many Poems‘. (If you click the arrow above the poem’s title, Garrison Keillor will read it to you. The poem starts at 1:52 but the rest of Keillor’s gentle ramble around matters cultural is interesting, too.)

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poetry appreciation

the condition of music

Dec 10, 2020 #art, #Auden, #ballad, #content, #experience, #folk tale, #form, #innocence, #lyric, #meaning, #Pater, #Philip Larkin, #reader response, #Walter Pater, #WH Auden by Lucy Crispin

Walter Pater says somewhere or other, I forget where, that “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”. He continues, “For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.” What I take from this is something about the relationship between form and content: how in the best poems the equation is not form plus content = meaning, but form times content = impact/connection/experience. And this week’s poem seems to me to be one which ‘aspires’ successfully. Have a read of ‘As I Walked Out One Evening‘ by Auden, and see what you think.

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poetry appreciation

splendidly silly

Dec 3, 2020 #Ancient Music, #autumn, #Ezra Pound, #grumbling, #humour, #mediaeval, #parody, #Pound, #Sumer is Icumen in, #winter by Lucy Crispin

It’s always good to have something to raise a smile. On a day like today—it’s dreich and the light has never been off, even at noon—this poem has been doing that for me, its repetitions and rhythms forming the soundtrack for my drippy, muddy morning walk. Join me in delighting in Pound’s delicious parody of ‘Sumer is Icumen in’, simply titled ‘Ancient Music‘.

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