
Poetry and wine are liminal things. They live on the borderlands between the wild and the civilized, between reason and irrationality. Their territory is the unplanned, the unexpected, the pathless.
Source: Harry Eyres, Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 48-49
Poetry is a lifelong companion and solace to many. To me it’s a distillation of life – whether in the grand sweep or in its small moments – painted and sculpted in words. At its best, it connects me to other people, places and times, stripping away the ephemera of surface difference to reveal what it is to be human; embracing both the joy and the striving of it.
As Adam Nicolson puts it, ‘a description, through a particular set of lenses, of what it is like to be alive on earth, its griefs, triumphs, sufferings and glories’.
All poetry is memorial. Much of it is elegy.
Source: Adam Nicolson, The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters (London: William Collins, 2015), 50
And paring down to the essence, it is one of the most vital and vibrant channels for capturing and transmitting human experience across distances of time and culture, or as a prism for understanding our own context. Ezra Pound described poets, like artists, as the ‘antennae of the race’, sending us signals from the past, the present and the possible, allowing us to fine-tune our sensibilities and our engagement with the world.
It also reminds us – me, at least – that the path we tread, a seemingly once-only learn-as-you-go time on this earth, has been trodden before. The finest poetry, that which endures, makes visible those footsteps on the sand. It’s a deep reassurance that we are not alone in our fears, hopes, or fragility.
This page brings together poetry-related posts including quotations, ideas and books that have delighted or edified me. Click on the book covers to read my whole-hearted quote-rich reviews.
We hold on to the highest poetry out of desperate need.
Source: Till I End My Song: A gathering of last poems, Harold Bloom (ed), New York: HarperCollins, 2010, xxii
See also Poems for my Family, a growing selection of poems I’ve carried around in my saddlebags for decades.
Poems for my family 007 – Carlos Williams
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
The lovely opening line of this poem by William Carlos Williams creates a...
Poetry as gleaning
A telling comment by Christopher Isherwood on W.H. Auden's approach to revising his poems. It makes one wonder how many...
To be forever on the road
A marvelous metaphor to describe poetry and its relationship to speaking; I like this notion of realising that speaking is...
The original fake news
'Fake news' is nothing but a new term for the age old curses of rumour or propaganda, so it's good...
Speed meets beauty
One of the most vivid and original similes I have come across is Ted Hughes' description of the two dazzling...
Lapping the summits
What an image! The original deluge raising water levels so high that they lap over the summits...
Fire or flood?
How did the Flood of floods come about? According to Hughes' irresistible re-telling of Ovid's tales, Jove quietly considered the...
Thunderbolts are go (ii)
The Arcadian king, Lycaon, doubting that it is Jove who has come to visit, does a stomach-churning test. Note Hughes'...
Thunderbolts are go (I)
The gods learn the price of rebellion against the supreme one. Hughes' re-telling of Ovid's tales has some spectacular thunderbolt...
The age of iron
The Four Ages described in Ted Hughes' muscular re-telling of Ovid's tales, begins with the Golden Age...
The innocent forest
A wonderful image of splendid towering trees innocent in their virgin forests, untouched by axe, unaware of their future forging...
The first golden age
Continuing his retelling of the myth of Creation, Ted Hughes reminds us of a first golden age...
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