Tag: time

hallowe’en

Well, 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.

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autumn beauty

This was one of the three poems that changed the course of my life. That sounds rather dramatic, but it’s true. We “Did” Yeats for A-level and I was blessed with one of those teachers whose capacity to inspire you feel at the time without really realising what’s going on. Without Stevie I don’t know if I would have “got” literature and followed it as student, teacher, writer, throughout my life. So this is a very important poem for me. Here it is: ‘The Wild Swans at Coole‘ by Yeats.*

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begin in delight…

End in wisdom. Yup, that’ll do. Here’s a delightful morsel which I trust will bring a smile to your lips: ‘Hymn to the Comb-Over‘ by Wesley McNair’. Doesn’t the very title brighten your day?

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something almost being said

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.

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the school in which we learn

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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