“To become immortal, and then die” #deathsofthepoets

I’m faced today with writing about another one of those books which has had a profound effect on me, but not really knowing quite where to start. I came across mention of it in a Twitter conversation – I can’t remember who started it, but it was about how poets died, and someone mentioned that there was a book on this topic. Its title, logically enough, was “Deaths of the Poets” and it was by two names familiar to me – Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. The reason I recognised them was because I had read their marvellous 2011 book, “Edgelands”, just before I started blogging; and it’s still on the shelves (and perhaps ripe for a re-read…) I couldn’t ignore these connections, and so sent away for a copy; and it was one of those titles which bypassed Mount TBR and got picked up as soon as I’d finished reading from #ReadIndies. All I can say is that it’s very much had a ‘Night Walking‘ effect on me!!

Published in 2017, the book very much does what it says on the tin! The authors, in their quest to explores the deaths of poets, set out on a series of journeys to visits relevant sites – whether of the aforesaid deaths, or of homes or important locations for the poets in question. Their travels take them all over Britain, Europe and America, and their range of poets is impressive.

The authors’ starting point is Thomas Chatterton, perhaps the most archetypal of doomed poets, dying young and leaving behind a body of work for posterity. The image of his death, painted by Henry Wallis, set the template for public perception of the poetic tendency, and was hugely inspirational; you’re probably all familiar with it, but here it is:

Henry Wallis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The self-induced death is perhaps the biggest cliche when it comes to thinking about the lives and deaths of poets, and the authors do of course explore the ends of names like Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton et al. These are particularly well-known, but of course the danger of a book like this is the extraordinary detail, the delving into obscurer poets I’d never heard of, or names I’d paid fleeting attention to before. John Berryman, for example, who jumped from a bridge; Frank O’Hara, who was struck by a jeep; or Robert Lowell, who had a heart attack in a taxi, on the way to visit his ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick. The authors pay tribute to the work and the struggles of the writers they track down, meeting relatives, contacts and friends along the way.

So why didn’t she just let her anguish pour out on to the page? Why attempt to express such suffering in such a needlessly complex vessel as a villanelle? The reasons are many: because poetry is an act of making rather than simply an expression, because a struggle with form renders impossible subject matter possible, because the unfettered expression of strong feeling on the page almost always results in a dissipation of that feeling, rather than its evocation in the reader.

Of course, not every poet has a dramatic end, or indeed a dramatic life, and the authors are keen to point out that writers like Marianne Moore, for example, had a calm and controlled existence, as I suppose did Emily Dickinson. For every name you can pick out with a short, difficult life, there is another who lived into old age, calmly plying their trade. Well – or did they? And that’s perhaps the whole point of this book.

Whilst it may sound ghoulish or trivial, there *is* serious intent to “Deaths of the Poets”. Underlying the authors’ travels is a desire to work out if the doomed poet really is just a myth, or whether there is something intrinsically troubled about those who write verse. A good example might be David Jones; a war poet, responsible for “In Parenthesis” (and also incidentally an artist), he narrowly escaped death in WW1 and was damaged by it for the rest of his life. A recluse for a good part of his life, he suffered from PTSD and had several breakdowns. He did live to an old age, but his life was a troubled one.

It’s always an odd experience, visiting a place where poems you know and love emerged. Poems have many sources, of course, but we feel the mediating alchemy that was once at work here. The trees are coming into leaf and the leaves are falling in ones and twos. Larkin is simultaneously both more alive and more dead to us than ever.

Then there’s Larkin, who rejected the idea of the doomed scribe, wondering why a poet shouldn’t have a day job. He wrote the most wonderful, if gloomy, poems whilst working as a librarian for most of his life; yet it’s hard not to see an underlying darkness, and wonder if the self-imposed normality was his way of coping with that.

The authors’ travels are fascinating to read, and they present them in a non-linear fashion; so chapters will focus on a particular aspect of poetics and contain their journeys to various locations, such as Auden’s home in Germany, and William Carlos Williams’ in Rutherford, New Jersey. In some places, the original buildings have gone, or the landscape changed completely, and they’re left trying to come to terms with Chatterton’s place of birth in Bristol which is now in the middle of a roundabout… Their encounters with relatives and friends of the poets were enlightening and often moving; and I did feel I learned a lot about so many authors, old and new.

Farley and Symmons Roberts do acknowledge the sometimes uncomfortable nature of what they’re doing, and there is a running theme of the relics they encounter – at one point they wryly comment:

Would Auden have been horrified or flattered to see his chattels laid out under glass? A winding tower of the poet’s books, a Cinzano bottle, an ashtray and a pair of battered carpet slippers form a display (by now, we’ve gathered enough material for a small companion volume to this one: Footwear of the Poets).

They make several visits to archives held in universities and the like, and sometimes draw back, feeling that the death of the poet is too recent for them to feel comfortable rummaging through personal papers. The whole ethics of what a writer leaves behind can be difficult (Kafka comes to mind, with the fact that we can only read him because his friend Max Brod ignored the instructions to destroy all Kafka’s writings on his death). Yet many authors nowadays donate their papers to an institution before they die – which I suppose does give them more control over what happens to their writing posthumously.

I could say a lot more about this book, but I will note that both of the authors are poets themselves, and that added an interesting element for me. I’ve not read their poetic works, but I wonder which category of poet they would put themselves into? In the end, they come to no hard and fast conclusion about whether you have to be damaged to be a poet; after all, you could argue that that kind of thing applies to all artists, and also that most people in this world are damaged in one way or another. But their book is a fine tribute to poets and their work, a compelling and sometimes amusing read, and of course one which has had me creating another massive list of books I want to explore. I’ve only really touched on the fascination of this book, exploring as it does an art form which nowadays is not over-read; and indeed the authors do consider the longevity of poetry in our modern world. “Deaths of the Poets” was a most absorbing read, and now I need to go and check out all the names on my very long list… 😳

#ReadIndies – what a month that was!!!

Well, where did February go??? Yes, I know it’s a shorter month, but even so, we did have an extra day this year and I still didn’t fit in all the reading I wanted to for #ReadIndies… However, it was another really good reading month, and here are the books I enjoyed!!

It was another great month, and apart from translation troubles with the Radiguet, I had some great reading. If you’re a regular visitor here, you’ll have seen reviews of many of the titles in the pile, but there are posts to come on “The Spies”, “Deaths of the Poets” and “Sarn Helen”. The book on the top of the pile, “The Singularity”, doesn’t come out until May I think, so will appear here later in the year!

I really enjoyed co-hosting #ReadIndies once more, and thanks so much to my lovely co-host, Lizzy! Keep an eye on her blog, as she’s putting together an index of all the fascinating reviews people have shared over the month – it promises to be a wonderful resource full of great ideas for what indies to read next.

After the flurry of reading and writing about indies, I will still try to keep reading them – and that won’t be hard, as there are so many I didn’t get to which were on my pile of possibles that I could probably manage a whole year of indies if I put my mind to it! However, for March I shall go back to following my reading muse wherever it takes make and pick up what I fancy. Are there piles of possibles? Of course…

This first stack is inspired by the truly marvellous book, “Deaths of the Poets“. I picked this up last month following a mention on Twitter/X and read it very soon after receiving it. It’s one of those dangerous works which has you making a big list, in this case of all the poets whose work I want to explore; and in fact books and authors in general as there are so many notes and references. I read part of the book whilst travelling on trains during February, and made the aforementioned big list, then realised that I actually already own many of the titles or authors I’d written down. Cue a dig in the stacks, and the pile above. So many possibilities, and these are just the ones I could find readily on the TBR; there are lots more names which are new to me. From the top down we have Pound, Clare, Lowell, Sexton, Frost, Auden, Dickinson, Bunting and Moore. All terribly tempting.

The second stack is a collection of prose lurking on Mount TBR, and I was either pointed at them by “Deaths…” or for some reason reminded that these were waiting to be read. We have Larkin’s prose, Polidori, Artaud (yes, there are two copies…), Hazlitt and Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Dearie me, I wish I had more time to read.

There have been quite a few new books coming into the Ramblings, and they’ll be the subject of a separate post next week. However, there are plenty already on the stacks which are calling to me, and here are just a few:

The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that one of these is a library book and indeed I have read another library book recently (as you will see from the first image in this post!). This may be considered reckless behaviour when one’s TBR is so huge, but it *did* stop me actually buying copies of both of these works! I shall try to get to this one during March as I don’t want fines or nagging reminders coming my way – but we shall see!!!

But really, March is going to be a very busy month for me at work, so I’m simply going to read what my heart wants me to – April will be a busy one too, with the #1937Club coming up, so for the time being I’ll go with the flow! What about you? Was your February a good reading month, and what are you planning for March? Oh, and in case you wondered, here’s what I’m currently reading:

Polyreading two very different essayists, in the form of Clive James and Montaigne, is very satisfying!

“Let foaming sea absorb the chaos” #waytothewest

In the picture of my monthly reads via my end of June round-up, I gave prominence to a beautiful book of poetry and art which I read as the month was drawing to a close. “Way to the West” by Andy & Vally Miller had arrived as part of my Renard Press subscription, and I was very keen to explore it as it looked a little different from their usual releases. Renard, as a matter of course, produce books which are always beautiful things in their own right; and they also regularly promote new poets by releasing fascinating collections of verse. However, this book seemed particularly special…

“Way to the West” is subtitled “A Celebration of Cornwall in Verse and Art” and is a landscape format book, falling in size somewhere between A5 and A5 size (about 9.5 x 7.25 inches in old money). Twenty five poems by Andy are presented on the left hand page, with gorgeous watercolours by Vally opposite; and together these artworks build up a vivid and fascinating picture of the history and landscape of Cornwall.

The extreme West of England is an atmospheric place; I’ve only been down there a few times in my life (including a memorable holiday in Newquay in my teens) but I recall the big skies, the beaches and the wild seas. However, I suspect that what I know of Cornwall is more from reading about it than from my visits, so these poems and paintings, which explore its past so evocatively, are certainly captivating.

The poems are wonderful; very immediate, beautifully written, they explore the violence of the seas, the quiet of the country areas, the mining past and the present which is so often dominated by tourism. There’s often an underlying sense of loss, with a cottage which was once a home now being rented out to visitors, and the conflicted feeling of residents, dependent on tourism, but all the same resenting it. Other verses explore the remants of the old industries, now being reclaimed by nature; and Andy reflects of the ancient nature of Cornwall, pondering on how many people will pass over the land and the stones in future.

At the edge of the estuary,
The perimeter of history,
The pulse of salt persists.

As for Vally’s paintings, they’re absolutely gorgeous. Having made feeble attempts at watercolours myself in the past, I can attest to how difficult the medium is and therefore how good these are. Sometimes appearing deceptively simple, they capture the Cornish landscape in all its glory; from the crashing waves to the overgrown greener areas, from standing stones to glorious sunsets, they’re a joy to behold. Vally’s painterly eye moves from wide open skies and beaches to darker, dramatic scenes, proving just how versatile she is with her medium. The lightness and beauty of some of the watercolours occasionally belies the darker subject matter sometimes on show; ‘Above Us the Waves’, for example, is a poem about mining under the sea-bed which left me shaken.

My snap doesn’t do this justice, but hopefully this will give you an idea of how lovely the watercolours are!

As is fairly obvious, I absolutely loved “Way to the West”; Renard have done a marvellous job in producing it, with the book printed on thick, quality paper which really does justice to the paintings. The Millers are obviously a hugely talented pair of creatives, with both having had long careers in their particular metier; and the combination of their two arts works wonderfully here. “Way…” is a book to be read and treasured and revisited regularly; it’s a wonderful, beautiful book and will have pride of place on my Renard shelf!

#1976Club – time from a little poetry from a prose master! #borges

I’ve written quite a bit about Borges lately, exploring books by and about him; and for the 1944 Club club I was able to read his “Ficciones”, which was a great joy. So when we decided on 1976 I had a look to see if there were any works by the great man from that year, and although there was no fiction I could find, he did publish a poetry collection called “The Iron Coin”. Now, I’ve read plenty of Borges’ prose but none of his poetry as far as I can recall, so this seemed an ideal book to explore for the club. Unfortunately, I don’t have the full collection, but I do have a book of his “Selected Poems” which does feature some from “Iron…” so I figured I would take a look at these to see what Borges poetry is actually like.

The anthology I own is a dual language one, and it contains eleven poems from “The Iron Coin”, plus Borges’ prologue; this in itself is fascinating reading with any number of provoking comments jumping out at the reader:

The steely music of the Saxon language is no less agreeable than the delicate musings of the Symbolists. Each subject, however, occasional or thin, imposes on us its own aesthetic. Each word, though weighed down by the centuries, opens up a blank page and posits the future.

The actual verses themselves are rendered by a variety of translators (indicated by initials) and range over history, authors, composers and Borges’ father, amongst other, and are short but beautifully written. I guess these were all dictated to one of his various amanuensi, and there are some really affecting lines in the works. A few quotes might give you a flavour of what I’m talking about:

The sea was always his. By the time his eyes
First took in the great waters of the high seas
He had already longed for and possessed it
On that other ocean, which is Writing.
(from “Herman Melville”)

I have committed the worst sin of all
That a man can commit. I have not been
Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion
Drag me and mercilessly let me fall.
(from “Remorse”)

“You are Not the Others” is also a powerful piece of work but you need to read the whole poem so I encourage you to search it out! 😀

Via Wikimedia Commons

Borges’ poetry is the kind I respond well to, with an immediacy and also with beautiful imagery and wordplay. Having read this selection from “The Iron Coin” I’m now not only keen to dip into more of my selected volume, but also wonder if the individual collections are available in full. Certainly Borges was an amazing wordsmith who could turn his talents to all forms of writing and reading these poems has been one of the pleasures of the #1976Club! 😀

A brief poetry interlude…. @SaltPublishing

As I mentioned in my post on “White Lines” earlier in the week, I ordered my copy of the book directly from Salt Publishing; I like to support indies, and as I’m also a fan of their various poetry releases, I took the opportunity to also pick up one of their slim ‘Modern Voices’ poetry pamphlets. I have several of these already, and the new title is “Low-Tide Lottery” by Claire Trévien. She’s another poet new to me, and I’m always pleased to explore the work of a writer I haven’t read before.

Trévien hails from Brittany and her work straddles the two cultures of France and England; the collection was released in 2011 and I believe was her first published work. The 25 pages it contains bring together some fascinating and innovative verses which very much draw on her joint heritage, and in particular the ever-present sea.

I am the underlined blank in your sentences;
my eyes are blue and yours are getting browner.
(from ‘Homecoming’)

I enjoyed reading Trévien’s poetry very much; there’s that immediacy that I love, and as someone who feels a strong connection to the sea, I obviously related to the verse here. Trévien often employs striking imagery and although the meanings are not always obvious, the words are suggestive. Certainly, it’s poetry that lingers in the mind, and “Low-Tide Lottery” is a welcome addition to my small Salt poetry collection:

Trévien continues to write and publish poetry, as well as pursuing an academic career; and interestingly has written and published on aspects of the French Revolution. On the basis of this pamphlet, her poetry is definitely worth reading if you get a chance; another winner from Salt 😀

“Prose invents – poetry discloses.” #jackspicer #afterlorca @NYRBpoets @NYRB_Imprints

Poetry is a form which makes infrequent appearances on the Ramblings, mainly when I return to my ongoing project of reading through the Penguin Modern Poets collections. I do love to read poetry, but don’t always get to it enough; however, I’ve recently started to take notice of the NYRB Poets imprint. The publisher was kind enough to send me a copy of “Magnetic Fields” by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault, which I absolutely loved; and a recent arrival from them, in the form of “After Lorca” by Jack Spicer, sounded fascinating. Spicer is a new name to me; working in the middle of the last century, he was part of the San Francisco Renaissance and despite his short life made a lasting impression with his poetry and has also been described as “a quiet, unsung hero of the LGBTQ+ art movement”, producing six short books of work during that brief life.

“After Lorca” was published in 1957 and it’s an intriguing collection of writings; as is hinted at in the title, it takes its inspiration from the great Spanish poet Lorca; and claims that the poems are translations. The book comes with a foreword from beyond the grave by Lorca himself(!), and the poems are interspersed with letters from Spicer to Lorca. It’s not clear which poems really *are* translations from Lorca, and which have been written by Spicer himself; or indeed how accurate any translations may be. What is clear, however, is what wonderful poetry this is…

At ten o’clock in the morning
The young man could not remember.

His heart was stuffed with dead wings
And linen flowers.

(Suicide)

I always find that I prefer poetry to which I can respond instantly; whether I feel I understand it, or whether I’m just hit by the sound of the words, I want to have that connection with the work and the poet straight away. That was certainly the case with Jack Spicer; his verse is beautiful, often allusive and very atmospheric. The poems speak of life, love, death and suicide – I guess often the major topics of verse! – and writing is vivid and wonderful. “He Died at Sunrise”, for example, is particularly stunning, with its repeated phrases and beautiful imagery.

At that time I’ll imagine
The song
Which I shall never sing.

A song full of lips
And far-off washes

A song fill of lost
Hours in the shadow…

(Verlaine)

The letters too are fascinating; it’s as if Spicer considered Lorca as a kind of spiritual mentor, the two poets in dialogue; and he uses these prose pieces to discuss the whole art of poetics. The poems appear to take place over a summer, with the final letter realising that the year is starting to draw to an end and the link between master and pupil is over. It’s a moving end to the work which seems to have a strong thread of melancholy running through it.

We want to transfer the immediate object, the immediate emotion to the poem – and yet the immediate always has hundreds of its own words clinging to it, short-lived and tenacious as barnacles. (Extract from one of the letters)

Spicer was of course writing at a time when the San Francisco beat poets (such as Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Snyder) were making a name for themselves; yet from what I’ve read about him, he stood apart from them, refusing to copyright his poems, criticising the City Lights bookshop and at one point declining to publish his work outside California. However, I sensed in some of the poems a kind of kinship with Ginsberg, a common influence from Whitman, and I personally feel that his writing needs to be seen in the context of the time.

Anyway, “After Lorca” turned out to be a fascinating read. I was probably aided by the fact that I’ve read little Lorca, and what I have was a very long time ago! So to be honest, I wasn’t looking to see what belonged to which author, because in the end I think these poems and letters are just Spicer – and wonderful they are. I’ve included extracts from some favourite poems/letters, and I highly recommend this collection. It was a marvellous and unexpected delight, and evidence (if it were needed) that the NYRB Poets imprint is definitely worth exploring! 😀

(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher, for which many thanks!)

“…you’ve made the world…” @sublunaryeds #rilke

I have to confess to having been in a little bit of a reading slump recently; I read very intensely the wonderful book “Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me”, which I’ll be covering for Shiny New Books, and it left me with such a book hangover that I’ve struggled to know what else to pick up. “Adolphe” was a pleasant distraction, and after that I decided to let my grasshopper mind settle for a little while on some poetry – a slim and fascinating collection by that wonderful versifier, Rainer Maria Rilke.

Here I need to add another confession; although I’ve read Rilke’s fiction and letters as well as a book about his time in Paris, I’m not sure I’ve ever sat down with his poetic works… Which is a bit shocking, really.  So “The Voice and Other Poems”, translated by Kistofor Minta and part of my subscription to Sublunary Editions, was just right to pick up at the moment and rectify this.

This dual language collection brings together what the translator describes works which contrast with Rilke’s “thing-poems”; I’m of course not well-versed (hah!) enough to comment, but what I can say is that the works here were very beautiful and memorable. Most are drawn from the collection “The Voices”, where the poet speaks in the voice of others, such as the beggar, the blind man, the orphan, the leper and so on. Particularly striking was “The Song of the Suicide”:

They hold out the spoon to me,
The spoon of life;
No, I want and I want no more,
Let me spew myself up.

Other works are drawn from “The Book of Images” and “New Poems (1907-19080”; all somehow suggest people struggling and suffering yet somehow surviving; and all linger in the mind. “The Prisoner” was another standout, with its opening lines:

My hand has only one
gesture – I frighten them off with it;
Onto ancient stones,
drops fall from dank rocks above.

A work like “Girl’s Lament” demonstrates that very little changes in the world, as children quarrel and pick sides in their games; and “The Song of the Widow” was heartbreaking:

…we both had nothing but patience;
but Death has none.
I saw him coming (how wickedly he came),
and I watched as he took and took:
there was nothing that belonged to me.

I often find poetry very hard to write about, and I couldn’t honestly say I understand the meaning behind all of these verses. However, I did love reading them, once again wallowing in the beautiful sound of words. “The Voices…” has really whetted my appetite for Rilke’s poetry and I think instead of reading round the edges of his writings, I need to dive in and explore much more of his verse. This was the perfect read for an unsettled brain!

“…a liquid chorus…” @saltpublishing @HaslerPoet @RebTamas #ReadIndies

In contrast to my recent post on a fascinating novel in translation from Verso, today I want to focus on an independent publisher closer to home – Salt Publishing, who hail from the East of England. They’re an imprint I wanted to feature during #ReadIndies month as I’m a great fan of their poetry releases, and that’s what I’ll be posting about here.

I’ve previously reviewed a couple of Salt books here on the Ramblings – Marina Warner’s excellent collection of short stories, “Fly Away Home“, and an unexpectedly wonderful book of poetry, “Appearances in the Bentinck Hotel” by Tim Cockburn. I loved both of these, and today’s offerings were equally impressive. Both slim collections were issued in the Salt Modern Voices range (as, I think, was the Cockburn) and they made excellent reading.

“natural histories” by Emily Hasler

Hasler’s volume was first released in 2011, so I guess any biographical information might not be up to date. However, it seems she’s also indiginous to the East of England, and has published her poetry widely as well as winning prizes for it. Since releasing NH, she seems to have issued another collection and on the strength of the Salt volume I’d be very keen on exploring this.

The poetry featured here is very much rooted in nature; but using nature as a jumping off point to explore life and emotions more deeply. There’s an immediacy to this verse which I loved, and many of the poems resonated with me. I was particularly taken with a sequence entitled “The Safe Harbour” which explored the life of Flora McDonald, known of course for her connection with Bonnie Prince Charlie; a very moving series of verses.

She blows out the stars clumps at a time
as though a dandelion clock.

Another poem which struck home was “Snow”, focusing the mind on the changes that weather condition brings, in just a few lines. Nature and the land runs through the words, and interestingly, Hasler uses a quote from Basil Bunting’s great “Briggflatts” as the epigraph to her collection. An impressive and thoughtful book of poetry and worth picking up from Salt if they still have copies.

“The Ophelia Letters” by Rebecca Tamás

Another older release from Salt, Tamás’ collection was issued in 2013 and at that point she was also publishing in journals as well as receiving the Grierson Verse Prize. Like Hasler she’s also released another collection since this one, again sounding most interesting.

As with Hasler’s collection, in Tamas’ work nature and landscape is often to the fore, although she explores more visceral territory – this is nature red in tooth and claw as they say. Meaning is not always obvious, but there is still an immediacy about the writing and some startling, vivid imagery.

There is no road to run down,
no tunnel that leads in or out.

Central to the collection (well, actually at the end of the book, and making up most of the page count!) is the long title poem; and this is a particularly powerful piece of work. Made up of nineteen sections, the verses explore a possible life of Shakespeare’s Ophelia – or possibly an amalgam of Ophelia and the poet herself. Obsession, frozen weather, sex in the snow and dark landscapes appear, while the narrator declares “Clarity, that’s what I keep looking for”. As rain and water begin to appear as motifs towards the end of the work, it’s impossible not to think that this may be prefiguring Ophelia’s eventual fate.

Tamás is another poet whose work I’d love to explore further, and indeed both of these writers have such strong individual voices that it’s not hard to see why Salt published them. Slightly annoyingly, I notice that both poets’ more recent books are rather lazily labelled by the Internet as their debut collections. That’s obvs not the case as these Salt volumes were around long before…

But that’s by the by. Both of these poetry collections were wonderful reads, full of beautifully composed words and vivid imagery. Salt Publishing are definitely one of the indies I’d recommend trying out if you can – they publish a wonderful array of titles and for poetry alone are definitely worth your time and money! 😀

 

“…I am not quite ready/for them to disappear.” #wendycope #anecdotalevidence @FaberBooks

Anedcotal Evidence by Wendy Cope

Sometimes, often when you least expect it, a book you pick up on a whim turns out to be one of those which whacks you in the emotions and has a profound effect on you; at least, that’s happened to me in the past, and did so recently when I yielded to an impulse purchase and sent off for Wendy Cope’s most recent collection of poetry, “Anecdotal Evidence”. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me reacting to it…

Cope is a poet I first encountered when her debut collection, “Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis” appeared in 1986. It was an instant hit at the time, and I absolutely loved it; but I confess that I had drifted out of contact with her poetry since then, though I *had* gathered some unread volumes which are sitting on the TBR at the moment. I can’t recall now what impelled me to send off for this in May – perhaps a glimpse of one of the poems somewhere – but I’m really glad I did.

Cope’s poetry is very immediate, but that doesn’t make it trivial or light. Personally, I feel her work communicates brilliantly, perhaps in the same way that Larkin’s does; and maybe your response to it depends on who you are and when you read it. And that might be why I reacted so strongly to “Anecdotal Evidence”. This is her fifth collection of adult poetry, released in 2018, and trumpeted as her first since 2011. It contains the mature work of a mature woman (and I speak as one myself) and the poems are evocative, elegiac and often very moving.

The subjects Cope writes about are often seemingly simple, everyday concerns: the point of poetry; memories of old friends; reminiscences of visits to Shakepeare plays; going to boarding school for the first time; dreams; and nature. Yet these are filtered through a poetic sensibility that renders the event or memory or musing deeply moving and deeply profound. Cope is older than me, at a point of life where she’s looking back at her life and memories, her friends no longer here, her parents and her Nanna, the passions of her youth; and also reflecting on the love she has for her husband and what their future holds. This resonates strongly, as I think it will with anyone experiencing growing older and having more of your life behind you than in front of you; and many of the poems hit me powerfully, almost like a blow to the stomach. I was so moved at times, as I tweeted, that I had to stop between poems to recover.

I realise I’m not going into specifics, so I’ll mention a few favourites from the collection. “A Wreath for George Herbert” is a wonderfully clever tribute to a fellow poet; “An Afternoon” remembers Cope’s parents most movingly at a time of sadness; “Christmas Cards” takes a poignant look at the annual ritual of sending cards that may no longer be delivered; “A Little Tribute to John Cage” very cleverly captures that composer’s experimental nature; and “Que Sera” contains the wonderful lines:

….Always keen to organise
the future, though the enterprise
is sculpting water.

And I couldn’t write about this collection without mentioning “A Statue”, a moving meditation on one of my comedy heroes, Eric Morecambe – just wonderful.

It’s obviously quite impossible for me to do a sensible review of this book; instead, you’ll have to make do with a very personal response! All I can say, really, is that I found these to be beautiful, powerful and affecting works which looked at all manner of life’s vagaries and what it is to be human. The forms vary from free verse to very structured and clever works with repeating patterns (if I was cleverer, I’d know the name for these); it’s an eminently readable collection, yet one with hidden power. Basically, I was moved, and I still am, thinking back to the experience of reading it.

My Wendy Cope collection

Poetry does, I think, have the power to move in ways that prose sometimes doesn’t, and that was certainly the case here. I don’t know that I can really say anything more, or more sensible, about this collection except that it had me in tears in places (easier, I think, in these strange times, but nevertheless not a state I always get into over poetry). Whoever or whatever made me pick this up right now, thank you – I think Wendy Cope is an amazingly wonderful poet and I do recommend you read her if you can.

Reading challenges and me….

It’s probably fairly clear to anyone who reads my ramblings regularly that I’m an utter failure when it comes to reading challenges – either joining in with those run by others, or with the self-imposed ones I set myself in a flurry of enthusiasm and then allow to fall by the wayside… In fact, the only reading event I usually manage to stick to is the bi-annual reading clubs I co-host with Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book; and that’s with a lot of organisation and forward planning… And I was reminded recently that I devised (back in 2015!!) the project of reading all 27 books in the Penguin Modern Poets series, released between 1962 and 1979. In fact, I even have a page on the blog for it…

My Penguin Modern Poets collection!

However, if you have a look you will see I stalled early, at book no. 6, which was back in 2016 – which is pretty feeble. However, despite that utter failure, I am still fighting the urge to approach another reading project; it was this which reminded me of the Poets, and it came about when I saw (on Twitter, I think) that Penguin are releasing set 6 of their Penguin Great Ideas series in September – and it includes Perec and Calvino and Camus amongst many other rather wonderful authors!

My Great Ideas…

A quick hop onto Wikipedia revealed details of the 5 earlier sets, and I hadn’t quite realised how many there were; but I knew I had the whole first set and assorted volumes from the later ones. So of course I had to make a list, which is fatal for any book addict; because immediately you want to start collecting the whole lot, ticking them off merrily as you acquire them (well, I do, anyway…)  Looking down the checklist, there is a fantastic range of titles, all of which I’d be happy to read. And a lightbulb ping moment in my head said “You could read them as a project, you know…” Of course, we know how badly I do with these things, and so it really *isn’t* a great idea (ha!). Still. I’m tempted – and trying to fight against it. You can see from the image above that although I have all the first set, I only have a few of the later ones, so that would be a lot of purchasing and a lot more shelf space needed. No, it really isn’t a good idea…

Penguin Moderns box set and Little Black Classics pile

This also reminded me, of course, that I still have the Penguin Moderns box to make my way through, and I had been doing quite well, getting up to book 26 a year ago; and then I stalled… I *have* been galvanised to pick these up again, and have some reviews coming up next month of later volumes. However, as you can see from the picture, there are also the Penguin Little Black Classics, and I haven’t read all of them either. Yikes!

Anyway, I am going to try to take up the Poets Project again, and so I dug them out on Sunday to see what I had, where I was and generally take stock. This kind of necessitated a shuffle of the general poetry shelves which were slightly in disarray, and looked even worse when I started moving things about:

Poetry mid-shuffle

It was a useful exercise though; after having a bit of a crisis, I decided to shelve them alphabetically and put anthologies at the beginning, and after removing the Russians they fitted in quite nicely. Here’s the back row:

And here’s the front row:

This is, of course, not all the poetry in the house. The Russians are mostly on the shelf below; Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are upstairs; and there are various Bloodaxe/Morden Tower anthologies lurking on other shelves. And probably others if I looked properly. Anyway, this is the next Penguin Modern Poets volume in the series:

Watch this space to see if I finish it! As for the Penguin Great Ideas – I think I’m going to be battling the concept of a project for a while; I’ve already sent off for one of the ones I don’t have, and will definitely be investing in more in September. Oh dear, oh dear….