remember those emergency lanterns?
The ones Libby Purves referred to when she spoke of how poetry could function? Well, for me this poem, ‘testify‘ by Eve L Ewing, is a great emergency lantern. Does it shine a light for you?
Read MoreThe ones Libby Purves referred to when she spoke of how poetry could function? Well, for me this poem, ‘testify‘ by Eve L Ewing, is a great emergency lantern. Does it shine a light for you?
Read MoreI realise it’s a bit late to offer you a poem called ‘Early October Snow‘, but it turned up in my inbox right at the end of last month and I can’t bear to wait another year before sharing it! I think Robert Haight’s poem is quietly beautiful in its imagery, and powerful in an understated way; so I hope that, thinking so too, you’ll forgive my tardiness.
Read MoreWell, if Strictly can have a Hallowe’en special, why can’t this column? I do like Annie Finch’s take on the Celtic Feast of the Dead, ‘Samhain‘. I don’t know that I understand it all intellectually but, as ever with me, that matters less than the feeling with which it leaves me. There’s a shiver, not of fear but something more like awe, of apprehending the vastness of time and our place in a continuum. See how the poem leaves you.
Read MoreSomeone brought ‘Child waking’ by Edith Scovell to the 42 group last week. The poet’s name was vaguely familiar but I had no sense of her work. I loved ‘Child waking’, though, so since then I’ve been scuttling about the interweb looking for Scovell’s work. And I give you: ‘Deaths of Flowers‘.
Read MoreThere’s nothing new under the sun, as this week’s poem reminds us: here’s ‘Quarantine, 1918‘ by Faith Shearin. Garrison Keillor will read it to you, too, if you like; the poem begins at about 2.34.
Read MoreI’m half Scottish but I’m also half Sassenach, and I’ve never really “got” the whole Hogmanay frenzy. New Year’s Eve has often felt tainted with melancholy for me, in a sub-Larkin ‘Death [is] a whole year nearer now‘ sort of a way. This year, though, when surely most of us are hoping for better things to come, I feel really drawn to this poem, the beautiful ‘New Year’s‘ by Dana Gioia. See what you make of it.
Read MoreI’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