Author: Lucy Crispin

poetry appreciation

… good to know

May 21, 2020 #birds, #birdsong, #corona virus, #Covid 19, #crisis, #free, #freedom, #friend, #friendship, #How to regain your soul, #mindfulness, #observation, #presence, #share, #sharing, #soul, #spring, #Stafford, #tres, #valley, #walking, #William Stafford, #woods by Lucy Crispin

Or rather, remember, that poems can be instruction manuals for us in times of crisis (see Libby Purves, above). As one who usually needs a walk in the morning if I’m to greet the world with anything other than a scowl, snarl or sob, I really relate to ‘How to Regain Your Soul‘ by William Stafford. It feels like a useful entry in the How to: Life guide at the moment. See what you think.

I love the specificity here. ‘[T]hat one place where the valley floor opens out’, as well as inviting us into the poem and, in its intimacy, suggesting that we’re fellow-travellers welcomed by the poet, this tells us how well-known this place is to the speaker. This first stanza is full of precise detail: the poet is steeped in the place, grounded in it, and can evoke it with a vividness possible only when you’ve really allowed yourself to be in a place—have a relationship with it (and it with you). It’s a place to ‘[p]ut down your pack’; a place, then, you might’ve made some effort to get to, but which is worth the trek. A place and time to be savoured.

And time expands in the second stanza, back into the distant and then the unimaginably distant past. There is freedom here—’Above, air sighs’; the dazzle of the ‘white butterflies danc[ing]/ by the thousands in the still sunshine’—and a sense of access into eternity and the “sudden” knowledge that ‘anything/ could happen to you’. A moment of grace, or ephipany: your soul taking its right place in the soul of the world, as part of the world, and then ‘shin[ing] back through the white wings to be you again’. This is a drink of cool well-water on a hot day. This is refreshment. We all need this at the moment.

I can’t say I get my third eye opened every time I shuffle, stride or sometimes scamper (a solo thing, that!) through the woods and up onto the scar behind my house. But there is always something about attention to the place and its small wonders which lifts and frees me, and partly because of my familiarity with it. Yesterday, walking in all that spring-shaggy greenness, I rejoiced in the multilayered birdsong echoing through the damp air. I spotted a jay, a woodpecker, a tree creeper, many squirrels and the rat which lives near that big limestone outcrop (you know, the one by the steps up onto the dancing green where the bench is?). The grass was made beautiful by rain and the orchids poked their magenta up through the silvered green. It was magic. And I regained enough of my soul to function as a reasonably civilised human being again.

Until the following morning, at least.

poetry appreciation

there’s this mood, too

May 14, 2020 #anger, #angry, #corona virus, #Covid 19, #crisis, #despair, #fear, #fearful, #frightened, #future, #grief, #hopeless, #Merwin, #sad, #Separation, #war, #When the War is Over, #WS Merwin, #zeugma by Lucy Crispin

That extra time we’re supposed to be having at the moment, during which we relax, read, knit ourselves cunning new kitchens, all that lot… It hasn’t been like that for me. I seem to have spent a startling amount of time doing I know not what. But one of the things I have managed to achieve, which I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, is get hold of some WS Merwin.

Read More
poetry appreciation

something almost being said

May 7, 2020 #A Grief Observed, #begin, #beginning, #birth, #CS Lewis, #cycle of life, #finiteness, #grief, #In Memoriam, #Larkin, #life cycle, #May spring, #mourning, #Philip Larkin, #quatrains, #renewal, #rhyme, #seasons, #springtime, #Tennyson, #The Trees, #time by Lucy Crispin

A few weeks back I mentioned that we’d get to Larkin’s trees in May. Well, it’s May, and here are ‘The Trees‘. You can hear Larkin reading the poem, and watch an accompanying animation (commissioned by the BBC on the 30th anniversary of Larkin’s death), here.

Read More
poetry appreciation

a blessing

Apr 30, 2020 #A blessing, #blessed, #corona virus, #Covid 19, #encounter, #gift, #God, #hope, #horses, #James Wright, #magic realism, #mindfulness, #mystical, #numinous, #poem, #poetry, #reverence, #sacred, #spiritual, #spring, #springtime by Lucy Crispin

I’ve heard and read in many places these last few weeks a lot of stuff about how “we’re all in a heightened emotional state at the moment”: operating at a higher pitch; a bit more thin-skinned than usual. It’s not surprising. So I don’t know if it’s what’s going on in the macrocosm or in my own microcosm which makes me so susceptible to this poem, ‘A Blessing‘ by James Wright (have it read to you here). But susceptible I am. It moves me greatly. See what you think.

Read More
poetry appreciation

the school in which we learn

Apr 23, 2020 #April, #Calmly We Walk, #death, #Delmore Schwartz, #depression, #despair, #dread, #fear, #grief, #meaning, #mindful, #mindfulness, #mortality, #poem, #poetry, #presence, #present, #Schwartz, #spring, #time, #time is the fire in which we burn, #time is the school in which we learn by Lucy Crispin

I’ve no idea how well known this poem is, but it’s relatively new to me, and its refrains have been pulsing their steady rhythm through me for the last week or so. So here it is: ‘Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day‘ by Delmore Schwartz.

Read More
poetry appreciation

something to hold on to

Apr 16, 2020 #bird, #birds, #birdsong, #change, #corona virus, #Covid 19, #dawn chorus, #forest, #forest bathing, #grief, #Hirshfield, #Jane Hirshfield, #lockdown, #loss, #love, #nature, #The Promise, #trees, #woods by Lucy Crispin

Waking at 5.25 this morning I got straight out of bed and went to the wood behind my house where I walked slowly round, revelling in the full glory of the dawn chorus. I was still in my pyjamas so I’m glad I was there before the first dogwalkers and runners (in these days of lockdown they are infesting the times and places that—did they but know it—are actually MINE. I know; sorry.) But even though I didn’t get caught I was aware that this wasn’t exactly Normal Behaviour. I mean, sure, I walk pretty much every morning. But I usually get dressed first. It just didn’t seem worth it today.

Read More
poetry appreciation

listening to our breathing

Apr 9, 2020 #apocalypse, #corona virus, #Covid 19, #destruction, #Edwin Muir, #end of days, #holocaust, #hope, #Muir, #natural world, #nature, #nuclear war, #redemption, #Revelation, #salvation, #The Horses by Lucy Crispin

There is good stuff in amongst all the strangeness at the moment, as a lot of people are noting. Some are doing so with a vim and perkiness which I find quite annoying—I rarely find Uplift uplifting—but it’s good to hear the quieter, less trumpety tales. And to notice things, too. Driving up to Scotland last week I was moved to see an oystercatcher walking across the M6 in front of me. I’m kinda glad the world is getting a rest from us.

‘The Horses‘ by Edwin Muir is one of the poems which has been echoing round my mind these last few weeks. Though it offers a post-apocalyptic vision it’s not an unmitigatedly doomy one, and I don’t offer it with a gloomy sense of prophecy. Rather, it’s because I’ve been aware of how strange and lovely I am finding the current silence, or relative silence, on my (rare and legitimate, guv’nor) sorties into the outside world. And silence is what Muir’s poem opens with. (Here are a couple of readings of it, too, one much more fruity and declamatory than the other. See what you think.)

Read More
poetry appreciation

..something completely different

Mar 19, 2020 #42 group, #a clean conscience never relaxes, #Charlotte Fortune, #comedy, #comic, #Cope, #Fortune, #humorous, #humour, #laughter, #Nash, #Ogden Nash, #pls stop sendg msg2ths, #poem, #poem on the theme of humour, #poems, #poetry, #reading, #reading together, #recognition, #verse for a birthday card, #we read to know we are not alone, #Wendy Cope by Lucy Crispin

At the 42 group this month (glad we made the most of it as it’s probably going to be a while…) by special request of one of the regulars we had an evening of poetry which makes us smile or laugh. It was just lovely: a different kind of light in the darkness. Wendy Cope featured a lot, as you might imagine, and her ‘Poem on the theme of humour’ reminded us of how po-faced it’s possible to be about Serious Literature and the Function of Art. ((I’d love to give you a link to the poem, but I can only find it on The Telegraph‘s site and I’ll to leave it to you as to whether you want to get involved in those particular strong toils…)

Read More
poetry appreciation

more daffodils

Mar 12, 2020 #Britten, #celebration, #daffodils, #fair daffodils, #gather ye rosebuds, #Herrick, #lament, #Moeran, #mortality, #poem, #poet, #poetry, #Robert Herrick, #spring, #springtime, #to daffodils, #to the virgins to make much of time, #transience, #William Wordsworth, #Wordsworth by Lucy Crispin

Occasionally I get a bit of a painful meta-position on Being A Poet and wonder quite how tiresome we are as companions. Imagine going for a walk with us. I mean, can’t we just enjoy the first flowers of spring, for goodness’ sake? Wordsworth managed some pleasure and gratitude about the daffs (or was it Dorothy…?); Herrick, however, looks on daffs and thinks of death (a bit like Larkin and his trees, but we’ll get to that in May). I have to confess to having a fair dose of inner Herrick. I love his ‘To Daffodils’ a lot more than the Wordsworth; and, now I’ve said that, you can read the poem here while I sit back and wait to be struck down.

Read More
poetry appreciation

the possibility of miracle

Mar 5, 2020 #Clarke, #compassion, #daffodils, #depression, #Gillian Clarke, #healing, #insane, #insanity, #madness, #miracle, #poem, #poetry, #redemption, #Schindler, #spring, #tenderness, #Wordsworth by Lucy Crispin

I’m writing this at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales. It’s St David’s Day in 3 days’ time (it’ll be in the rear view mirror by the time this goes live) and a watery nearly-spring sunshine is lifting the air outside. How fitting, then, to read ‘Miracle on St David’s Day’ by Gillian Clarke, a wonderful Welsh poet, about springs of different sorts and the magic wrought by poetry. Be moved by this lovely poem here.

Read More
error: Content is protected !!