Tag: hope

poetry appreciation

starting over

Jan 7, 2021 #Aubade, #Dana Gioia, #death, #Gioia, #hope, #human, #Larkin, #mindful, #mindfulness, #mortality, #New Year, #New Year's, #New Year's Eve, #Philip Larkin, #possibility, #potential, #presence, #waste by Lucy Crispin

I’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.

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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

difficult thoughts

Nov 19, 2020 #disenfranchised, #dread, #dream, #dreaming, #fear, #gloom, #hope, #hopelessness, #hopes, #Lindsay, #Louis MacNeice, #Macneice, #passion, #possibility, #powerless, #powerlessness, #protest, #unrespresented, #Vachel Lindsay by Lucy Crispin

When times are hard, is it helpful or appalling to read something and realise that times have been hard in the same way before (and therefore probably will be again)? Mostly, as you’ll know by now, I tend to think it’s helpful to read and know you are not alone; but when today’s poem presented itself for duty in my head, seeming apt for the times, resonant and gloomy, I did initially feel a bit droopier than I already had been. So, see what you think: do you feel droopier when you read ‘The Leaden Eyed‘ by Vachel Lindsay? (Note: in versions I’ve seen in print there is a stanza break between lines 4 and 5, which doesn’t appear in this online version.)

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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

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

postmen, like doctors

Jun 4, 2020 #Allegro, #appreciation, #Aubade, #bad news, #connection, #doctors, #Don Paterson, #everyday, #godparent, #good news, #gratitude, #help, #hope, #joy, #Larkin, #mindful, #mindfulness, #Paterson, #Philip Larkin, #postmen, #Waking with Russell by Lucy Crispin

Larkin’s magnificent, monumental poem ‘Aubade‘ speaks with a terrible, alchemical beauty about death and the fear of death. It closes with the line ‘Postmen like doctors go from house to house’ which, in context, says something very Larkin-y and shiversome about death’s inevitability; we’ll all get those visits from doctors, sooner or later. Would Larkin be horrified, though, if he knew how that line popped into my head with a totally different feel to it, about half an hour ago, when the postman delivered two unexpected letters and, with them, great joy?

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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.

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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.)

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