Tag: despair

poetry appreciation

encouragement

Aug 13, 2020 #courage, #covid 19 coronavirus, #despair, #Galway Kinnell, #hope, #pandemic, #persistence, #wait, #waiting by Lucy Crispin

I reckon lots of us are currently in need of encouragement to keep on keeping on. This poem, ‘Wait‘ by Galway Kinnell’, does it for me. I only discovered it recently but it’s already installed itself in my Emergency Lanterns anthology. Scroll down the linked page a bit to hear the poet reading it himself, and find the text underneath.

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poetry appreciation

triumph and honour

Jul 23, 2020 #decency, #despair, #honour, #If, #Kipling, #politics, #process, #product, #shame, #shamelessness, #solidarity, #The Second Coming, #To A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing, #triumph, #trust, #WB Yeats, #Yeats by Lucy Crispin

I was wondering why ‘To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing‘ swam to the surface this week. Then I sat down and thought about it and wondered no longer. A poem about shamelessness? about the difficulty of honour in a time when Might is Right? Hmm, not so difficult to fathom, perhaps, after all.

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poetry appreciation

bandaged moments

Jun 25, 2020 #despair, #Dickinson, #Emily Dickinson, #freedom, #hope, #horror, #imprisonment, #in this short life, #Pascal, #practical criticism, #religion, #soul, #The soul has bandaged moments by Lucy Crispin

I’m sure I’d read more Emily Dickinson if my Complete wasn’t roughly the size and shape of a large housebrick; tricky to read in the bath, y’know… Anyway, someone brought some ED to an online poetry share the other day, and it inspired me to strap on the wrist supports and spend some time with the housebrick. So many poems I could have brought, but today I choose number 360, which you can read here. (There’s an interesting article about Dickinson here at the Poetry Foundation, too.)

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poetry appreciation

feeding the cats

Jun 11, 2020 #agency, #and yet, #and yettishness, #apathy, #bad, #chaos, #Daffodil Ministry, #despair, #Fanthorpe, #Feeding the Cats, #good, #hope, #horror, #juxtaposition, #Rosie Bailey, #RV Bailey, #Tintern Abbey, #UA Fanthorpe, #Wordsworth, #zeugma by Lucy Crispin

For once I don’t need to send you off somewhere else on the interweb to read this week’s poem. It’s given in full here on the site, by kind permission of its author, R[osie] V Bailey (I’m trying to sound casual about that but really I’m rather proud and thrilled). I’ve been wanting to write about ‘Feeding the Cats’ for a while but it seems particularly right for right now. Here it is:

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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.

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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.

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poetry appreciation

one of those lanterns

Feb 27, 2020 #Berry, #Clive James, #darkness, #dear, #despair, #hope, #hopeful, #light, #optimistic, #to know the dark, #wendell berry by Lucy Crispin

It might seem a bit strange to claim “lantern-hood ” for this poem, which insists on the necessity of experiencing the dark “properly”; that is to say, without light. But it’s true. This short piece by Wendell Berry (like a lot of his stuff) shines a light for me, and helps me carry on walking. Read it here.

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poetry appreciation

a prodigal thing

Feb 20, 2020 #courage, #depression, #despair, #emotions, #feelings, #happiness, #happy, #hope, #Jane Kenyon, #joy, #love, #rejoice by Lucy Crispin

Given the state of the world at the moment, it’s perhaps not surprising that there’s a plethora of books about with titles like The Happiness Project, The Happy Life Formula and Happiness: a Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. Hmmmm. Sounds like it might be a lot of work, even if you do buy into the idea that we can make ourselves feel any given way.

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poetry appreciation

westward, look…

Jan 16, 2020 #Arthur Hugh Clough, #Clough, #despair, #doubt, #faith, #hope, #poem, #poetry, #Say not the struggle nought availeth, #Victorian by Lucy Crispin

I left you last week with the promise of handrails and lifelines. Ta-daa! Here they are: ‘Say not the struggle nought availeth’, another poem straight out of the C19th’s death-throes-of-faith anguish which has, however, long performed the handrail/lifeline functions for me. You can read the poem here and or last week’s reader can read it for you here. Alternatively, Derek Jacobi reads it here; I much prefer his reading but could do without the music. The poem is there to create the mood all by its little self, after all. However… See what you think.

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poetry appreciation

handrails and lifelines and emergency lanterns

Jan 9, 2020 #Arnold, #despair, #doubt, #Dover Beach, #faith, #fear, #hope, #Matthew Arnold, #melancholy, #poem, #poetry, #sadness, #The Buried Life, #trust by Lucy Crispin

In an article in The Times in 2016 Libby Purves wrote of how ‘[p]eople have been through everything before us and some, by great grace, have recorded it with undying power. English-speakers are particularly lucky,’ she continued, ‘since some of the very best have done this in our fabulously hybrid, magpie language… [Poets] have crafted handrails and lifelines and emergency lanterns. They reassure us that others walked this hard trail and lived to express it’.

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