Category Archives: Poetry

A poem to read in the bath… ‘The Road Not Taken’

6 Replies

You may perhaps be aware of this poem by New England poet Robert Frost, for it is often quoted and often misunderstood. But that doesn’t lessen its impact. I read this first as a student, and it has stayed with me since. In our lives we all face a choice at times, a forked path, take the left or the right? And so rightly this poem is thought fondly of at times of indecision, choice and how the uncertainty of the future. It speaks to everyone, I think, to poetry lover and poetry novice.

Robert Frost

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

‘The Road Not Taken’
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
 

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
 

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If you know someone who loves the woods, and nature, and being outside, then buy them an edition of Frost’s verse; it is easily-accessible and full of truths. This edition [below] is my own copy from university.

To listen to The Road Not Taken, read by David Garrison for The Poetry Foundation, click here.

Above is my beautiful Penguin copy of Frost’s Selected Poems, dating from my university days.

Robert Frost

 

‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost [UK: Penguin Classics] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Forgetfulness’ by Hart Crane
‘Poems’ by Ruth Stone
‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1LY via @SandraDanby

SaveSave

SaveSave

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Oxfam’

Leave a reply

I read this glimpse at the detritus of life and I am standing in my local Oxfam shop. Another great offering from Carol Ann Duffy.

[photo: carolannduffy.co.uk]

[photo: carolannduffy.co.uk]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Oxfam’
A silvery, pale-blue satin tie, freshwater in sunlight, 50p.
Charlotte Rhead, hand-painted oval bowl, circa 1930, perfect
for apples , pears, oranges a child’s hand takes without
a second thought, £80. Rows of boots marking time, £4.
Shoes like history lessons, £1.99. That jug, 30p, to fill with milk.”

A reminder that in today’s world of excess, one person’s cast-offs can be another person’s treasure.

For Carol Ann Duffy’s website, click here.
Click here for Sheer Poetry, an online poetry resource, by the poets themselves, for all poetry lovers from general readers to schoolchildren.
Why did Duffy write a poem about a charity shop, click here to read a story from The Mirror explaining why.

Carol Ann Duffy

 

‘The Bees’ by Carol Ann Duffy [UK: Picador] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘On Turning Ten’ by Billy Collins
‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’ by Dennis B Wilson
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Oxfam’ by Carol Ann Duffy http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1gb via @SandraDanby

SaveSave

A Poem-a-Day in April: ‘My Mother the Cow’

Leave a reply

A big thank you to poet Angelique Jamail who has chosen one of my poems for her Poem-a-Day series throughout April. Angelique is celebrating National Poetry Month so please check back again to see the other poems she has selected.

National Poetry Month

[photo: fanpop.com]

My poem ‘My Mother the Cow’ was written quickly when I was musing on fertility, springtime and motherhood. I grew up on a dairy farm and, of course, milk depends on cows and the birth of calves. So, I was surrounded by fertility from an early age, even if I didn’t quite understand the significance. My mother, the farmer’s wife, was the centre of the farm and our family.

To read my poem, click here to visit Angelique’s website ‘Sappho’s Torque’.

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem for #NationalPoetryMonth: ‘My Mother the Cow’ by @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ca

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Sometimes and After’

5 Replies

I am making a point of reading poets I am unfamiliar with, and wanted to share this poem by American poet Hilda Doolittle.

Hilda Doolittle

[photo: Wikipedia]

‘Sometimes and After’
Yet sometimes I would sweep the floor,
I would put daises in a tumbler,
I would have long dreams before, long day-dreams after;

 
there would be no gauntleted knock on the door,
or tap-tap with a riding crop,
no galloping here and back;

 
but the latch would softly lift,
would softly fall,
dusk would come slowly,

 
and even dusk could wait
till night encompassed us;
dawn would come gracious, not too soon,

 
day would come late,
and the next day and the next,
while I found pansies to take the place of daisies,

 
and a spray of apple-blossom after that,
no calendar of fevered hours,
Carthago delenda est and the Tyrian night.

Doolitte died in 1961. I love the transitory passing of time in this poem. And no, I didn’t understand the last line. Google Translate tells me ‘Carthago delenda est’ means ‘Carthage is destroyed’ in Latin, which I didn’t study at school. ‘Tyrian night’ still mystifies me, can anyone else help?

For more about Hilda Doolittle at the Poetry Foundation website, click here.

Hilda Doolittle

 

‘Collected Poems’ by Hilda Doolittle [New Directions] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1yt via @SandraDanby

SaveSave

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Name’

Leave a reply

Today’s poem to read in your bath is another by the wonderful Carol Ann Duffy. I flick through her slim anthologies, looking for poems to select for this feature, and stop again and again: ‘this one, and this one… and this one.’

‘Name’ is about the delights on new love, not necessarily young love, just the feeling when you realize liking is loving.

[photo: wikipedia]

[photo: wikipedia]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library or click the link below to hear Duffy read the poem aloud.

‘Name’
When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?

Its three vowels
like jewels
on the thread of my breath.

Duffy encapsulates that feeling of new love so well it is impossible to read without being drawn back through years of memories.

To read another Carol Ann Duffy poem, ‘Elegy’ in my blog series ‘A poem to read in the bath…’, click here.

To listen to Carol Ann Duffy read ‘Name’ click here for The Poetry Archive website.

In 1989, Carol Ann Duffy spoke to the BBC Programme ‘English File’ about what inspires her to write. Click here to watch it.

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy 16-6-14

 

‘Rapture’ by Carol Ann Duffy [UK: Picador] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Runaways’ by Daniela Nunnari
‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle
‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy http://wp.me/p5gEM4-14G via @SandraDanby

SaveSave

A poem to read in the bath… ‘My Heart Leaps Up’

Leave a reply

This short poem by William Wordsworth says a lot of me about being a child, being an adult, and appreciation of nature. I had a wonderful Wordsworth lecturer at university who truly loved the poet and she brought his poems to life with her enthusiasm, so this poem is dedicated to Mary Wedd who recited Wordsworth’s poems and showed us photographs of the Lake District.

William Wordsworth

[photo: lake-district-guides.co.uk]

‘My Heart Leaps Up’
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.” William WordsworthAbove is my old copy of ‘Selected Poems’, written on the inside cover with my name and college and the date ‘December 1979’ making it one of the first books I bought. I remember the anticipation I felt, never having studied Wordsworth before. My Everyman’s University Library edition was published in the Seventies by JM Dent & Sons. Dent is now an imprint of Orion.

William Wordsworth

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

For the Poetry Foundation’s biography of Wordsworth [above], click here.

William Wordsworth

‘Selected Poems’ by William Wordsworth [UK: Penguin Classics] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘The Dead’ by Billy Collins
‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ by William Wordsworth http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1g1 via @SandraDanby

SaveSave

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Winter Song’

3 Replies

I came first to the war poets when I studied English Literature at university in London. We read them all: Owen, Sassoon, Graves, Brooke. I think it’s fair to say that in my early twenties I didn’t ‘get them’, not really. Wilfred Owen [below] composed his war poems between January 1917 when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918 when he was killed. Only four of his poems were published during his lifetime. He is agreed to be the finest of the English poets writing about the First World War.

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

Instead of his most famous poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, I have chosen ‘Winter Song’. Written in October 1917, it immediately conjures up for me a Paul Nash painting [below] called ‘We are Making a New World’, painted in 1918 and on display in London at the Imperial War Museum. Paul Nash - We are Making a New World 19-6-14‘Winter Song’
The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam again with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

A quick search on Amazon revealed that a new copy of my edition of The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen would cost me £110, a used one £0.01.

For an interesting review by the BBC of the role poetry plays in our view of the First World War, click here.
To read The Poetry Foundation’s biography of Owen, click here.

the collected poems of wilfred owen 19-6-14a

 

‘The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen’ [Chatto & Windus]

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Not Waving but Drowning’

5 Replies

I remember the title of today’s poem from my schooldays but have no strong memory of reading the poem until many years later. But it always made me smile, then feel guilty for smiling.

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Not Waving but Drowning’
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith [1902-1971] was born in Hull, East Yorkshire, and knowing that made a big impression on me: born in East Yorkshire, 1960. The fact that her family moved to London when she was three didn’t stop me seeing her as a Yorkshire role model. Her poetry never seemed to fit a label and she seems to have been rather overlooked. I love her rather dry wit. My copy of Selected Poems was bought in October 1981, I know this as I have written my name and the date on the inside front cover. The green cover design [below] is still a favourite of mine. Selected poems by stevie smith 19-6-14aTo watch a 1950s seaside film as Stevie Smith recites ‘Not Waving But Drowning’, click here.
To read Stevie Smith’s biography at The Poetry Foundation, click here.
Selected poems by stevie smith - new cover 19-6-14

 

‘Selected Poems’ by Stevie Smith [Penguin Classics]

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Cloughton Wyke 1’

2 Replies

John Wedgwood Clarke writes about the edges of North Yorkshire, the forgotten bits, the ugly bits, the hidden bits. He is a new discovery for me. His latest pamphlet, In Between, was written for the York Curiouser Festival, and is inspired by the snickets and alleys of old York.

[photo: valleypressuk.com]

[photo: valleypressuk.com]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Cloughton Wyke 1’
Iron light. Fulmar and kittiwake
laugh in Anglo-Saxon,
ripple quick shadows
over the beach.

It transports me instantly to the North Yorkshire cliffs where I grew up, and the constant presence of seabirds. Cloughton Wyke [below] was one of many destinations for the Danby family explorations on Sundays, sandwiches wrapped in foil, trifle in colour-coded Tupperware bowls, orange squash.

I cannot read this poem enough.

[photo: whitbyseaanglers.co.uk]

[photo: whitbyseaanglers.co.uk]

For John Wedgwood Clarke’s blog, click here.
To find John Wedgwood Clarke’s poems around York as part of the York Curiouser Festival, click here for a map.
To listen to John Wedgwood Clarke read his poem ‘Castle Headland’, click here.
For more poetry published by Valley Press, including In Between, click here.

ghost pot - cover 15-7-14

 

‘Ghost Pot’ by John Wedgwood Clarke [Valley Press]

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Elegy’

Leave a reply

Today’s poem to read in your bath is about timeless love that persists beyond death. ‘Elegy’ by Carol Ann Duffy is from her anthology Rapture, published in 2005, before she was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009. Her poetry is at once instantly accessible, and bears deep consideration.

[photo: Picador]

[photo: Picador]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Elegy’
Who’ll know then, when they walk by the grave
where your bones will be brittle things – this bone here
that swoops away from your throat, and this,
which perfectly fits the scoop of my palm, and these
which I count with my lips, and your skull,
which blooms on the pillow now, and your fingers,
beautiful in their little rings – that love, which wanders history,
singled you out in your time?

The love, the longing, the wistfulness, brings tears to my eyes.

Click here to visit Carol Ann Duffy’s website.
Listen here to Carol Ann Duffy interviewed by The Guardian after her appointment as Poet Laureate.

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy 16-6-14

 

‘Rapture’ by Carol Ann Duffy [Picador]