bookgazing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bookgazing) wrote2010-10-07 02:35 am
bookgazing) wrote2010-10-07 02:35 am
National Poetry Day 2010
Today is National Poetry Day in the UK and I finally got my act together to do a post on something related to current literary events on the day the events are taking place. Hurray for me! This year’s theme is ‘Home’ (did you know National Poetry Day had a theme each year?) so I thought I’d put up a post about 5 of my favourite poems by home grown authors, complete with poetic excerpts. Don’t expect to find many lesser known gems here, I often like the big names when it comes to the Brits, but maybe that means some of you will recognise poems you like here too:
'The Glory of Women' – Siegfried Sassoon
‘You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,’
‘Dreamers’ is probably Sassoon’s best known work and it is also in my poetry notebook, but I wanted to showcase this short poem which shows a rather different side to the sad, brilliant war poet lots of us learn about it school. Sassoon was angry at women’s response to the war and having led men to die, he was sure he had a right to generalise. He disguised his real disgust for British women by ending this poem as if it is addressed to the ‘German mother’ to make it more palatable for his British audience. Problematic, but for me the fourth line I’ve quoted here is simple, poetic style put to a forceful use and it really does make my stomach drop every time I hear it. I've probably said this before but if you like Sassoon's poetry, you have got to try 'Regeneration' by Pat Barker.
'He Tells Her' – Wendy Cope
‘He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.’
I snuck in a whole poem there, it's only short. I love Wendy Cope. She’s puts forward truths I can recognise in a funny way and balances rhyme and comedy without being twee. This is a real ‘up yours, mate’ type of poem, perfect for reading when your partner has royally pissed you off. It should be followed by 'The Sitter', a poem by Cope about a Nude paiting that makes the subject look 'Depressed and disagreeable and fat'. It's final, vengeful lines 'Admired, well-bred, artistic Mrs Bell/ I hope you're looking hideous in Hell.' are great to spit out when you've met a really unpleasant pretty person ;)
'Centaur' – Srikanth Reddy
‘who knew there would be so much
blood in a horse not the horse
not the horseman ashing
on the mudflap as he counts
three or four reds in the sunset
thinking maybe gradations
could empty one’s head of a horse’
I’m not sure how well known Srikanth Reddy is, but he’s fab. He's a modern poet who published his first and so far, only collection ‘Facts for Visitors’ about six year ago. He writes poems that critics say relate to ancient India, but with my limited knowledge of that area of history I find myself relating them to imagery from ancient Rome. What makes this poem for me is the use of line breaks that create almost a jerky rhythm and draw the reader on, as well as the beauty Reddy injects into a poem which is about the violent death of an animal.
'Dockery and Son' – Philip Larkin
‘ 'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.’
I love, love, love so many poems by Larkin that I could have chosen five favourites just by him. The other four would have been ‘This Be the Verse’, ‘Talking in Bed’, ‘Water’ and ‘Mr Bleaney’. What is it about Larkin that makes his poetry so special to me? There’s an undeniable attraction created by his combination of biting cynicism and downright fondness for everything about his society and England. I wonder if it’s possible to live in the West Midlands without feeling a conflicting sense of deep loyalty, weary disbelief, hatred and pride when something goes right - I can't seem to manage to fix on just one way of looking at our area, or our country. Is it possible to live in England without feeling a similar squeeze of confusion when someone mentions ‘national pride’? Larkin's the poet to remind you that this kind of confusion is only healthy when it comes to a country like England.
In this poem I particularly like the way he weaves a full story, using such a poems short form. His sudden use of mundane details that throw the reader off track, for example the ‘awful pie’ that he mentions eating later, contrasts so sharply with his deep thoughts on having children and being confined by our assumptions that they jolt you and make you concentrate on how depth and everyday life coexist. And there are those stanza end line breaks, which make the reader pay attention and help connect the stanzas at the same time.
'Twelve Things I Don't Want to Hear' - Connie Bensley
'Assemble this is eight straightforward steps.
Start with a fish stock, made the day before.
The driver has arrived but, sadly, drunk.
We'll need some disinfectant for the floor.'
This is the only poem I know by Connie Bensley, but it's a corker. I think it really demonstrates how technical comedic writing is. You have to use so much structure and be so sure of how to use rhyme and punctuation to make someone laugh. Poets who write funny poems are not taking the easy way out.
My favourite line of this first stanza is the third one, which sounds just like an employee of some hotel who isn't personally affected by the driver turning up drunk reporting the news in their best 'keep calm' voice. I imagine it's the driver of a fancy car for a wedding and the person who needs the car first perks up, then hears sadly and finally plummets as they register the word 'drunk. This poem sounds like a normally patient woman counting off all the problems she's faced in a particularly trying month with a mixture of resignation and irritation.
Don't forget if you're in the UK, you can watch 'The Song of Lunch' tomorrow, which is a drammatisation of a poem by Christopher Reid and will star Emma Thompson (imagine me having a massive girlcrush swoon right here, she is just amazing) and Alan Rickman (I hope these two are friends in real life).
'The Glory of Women' – Siegfried Sassoon
‘You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,’
‘Dreamers’ is probably Sassoon’s best known work and it is also in my poetry notebook, but I wanted to showcase this short poem which shows a rather different side to the sad, brilliant war poet lots of us learn about it school. Sassoon was angry at women’s response to the war and having led men to die, he was sure he had a right to generalise. He disguised his real disgust for British women by ending this poem as if it is addressed to the ‘German mother’ to make it more palatable for his British audience. Problematic, but for me the fourth line I’ve quoted here is simple, poetic style put to a forceful use and it really does make my stomach drop every time I hear it. I've probably said this before but if you like Sassoon's poetry, you have got to try 'Regeneration' by Pat Barker.
'He Tells Her' – Wendy Cope
‘He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.’
I snuck in a whole poem there, it's only short. I love Wendy Cope. She’s puts forward truths I can recognise in a funny way and balances rhyme and comedy without being twee. This is a real ‘up yours, mate’ type of poem, perfect for reading when your partner has royally pissed you off. It should be followed by 'The Sitter', a poem by Cope about a Nude paiting that makes the subject look 'Depressed and disagreeable and fat'. It's final, vengeful lines 'Admired, well-bred, artistic Mrs Bell/ I hope you're looking hideous in Hell.' are great to spit out when you've met a really unpleasant pretty person ;)
'Centaur' – Srikanth Reddy
‘who knew there would be so much
blood in a horse not the horse
not the horseman ashing
on the mudflap as he counts
three or four reds in the sunset
thinking maybe gradations
could empty one’s head of a horse’
I’m not sure how well known Srikanth Reddy is, but he’s fab. He's a modern poet who published his first and so far, only collection ‘Facts for Visitors’ about six year ago. He writes poems that critics say relate to ancient India, but with my limited knowledge of that area of history I find myself relating them to imagery from ancient Rome. What makes this poem for me is the use of line breaks that create almost a jerky rhythm and draw the reader on, as well as the beauty Reddy injects into a poem which is about the violent death of an animal.
'Dockery and Son' – Philip Larkin
‘ 'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.’
I love, love, love so many poems by Larkin that I could have chosen five favourites just by him. The other four would have been ‘This Be the Verse’, ‘Talking in Bed’, ‘Water’ and ‘Mr Bleaney’. What is it about Larkin that makes his poetry so special to me? There’s an undeniable attraction created by his combination of biting cynicism and downright fondness for everything about his society and England. I wonder if it’s possible to live in the West Midlands without feeling a conflicting sense of deep loyalty, weary disbelief, hatred and pride when something goes right - I can't seem to manage to fix on just one way of looking at our area, or our country. Is it possible to live in England without feeling a similar squeeze of confusion when someone mentions ‘national pride’? Larkin's the poet to remind you that this kind of confusion is only healthy when it comes to a country like England.
In this poem I particularly like the way he weaves a full story, using such a poems short form. His sudden use of mundane details that throw the reader off track, for example the ‘awful pie’ that he mentions eating later, contrasts so sharply with his deep thoughts on having children and being confined by our assumptions that they jolt you and make you concentrate on how depth and everyday life coexist. And there are those stanza end line breaks, which make the reader pay attention and help connect the stanzas at the same time.
'Twelve Things I Don't Want to Hear' - Connie Bensley
'Assemble this is eight straightforward steps.
Start with a fish stock, made the day before.
The driver has arrived but, sadly, drunk.
We'll need some disinfectant for the floor.'
This is the only poem I know by Connie Bensley, but it's a corker. I think it really demonstrates how technical comedic writing is. You have to use so much structure and be so sure of how to use rhyme and punctuation to make someone laugh. Poets who write funny poems are not taking the easy way out.
My favourite line of this first stanza is the third one, which sounds just like an employee of some hotel who isn't personally affected by the driver turning up drunk reporting the news in their best 'keep calm' voice. I imagine it's the driver of a fancy car for a wedding and the person who needs the car first perks up, then hears sadly and finally plummets as they register the word 'drunk. This poem sounds like a normally patient woman counting off all the problems she's faced in a particularly trying month with a mixture of resignation and irritation.
Don't forget if you're in the UK, you can watch 'The Song of Lunch' tomorrow, which is a drammatisation of a poem by Christopher Reid and will star Emma Thompson (imagine me having a massive girlcrush swoon right here, she is just amazing) and Alan Rickman (I hope these two are friends in real life).
