Roberts, Michael; Donald Hall (ed.);
The Faber Book of Modern Verse, 3d ed.
Faber and Faber 1965, 416 pages
ISBN 0571063489
topics: | poetry | anthology
One of my favourite poetry anthologies - perhaps the reason I like it so much is because before this, most anthologies I had encountered were variants of palgrave or untermeyer. To me, Thomas Gunn and Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin were like a breath of fresh air. And they remain so. At the same time, this was my first exposure to complete meaninglessness in postmodern art (as in cubism). See for example, the undisguised incomprehensibility of one x by e e cummings. The introduction by Roberts talks of the relevance of "symbolism", which is seen both in the visual arts, and here, in poetry. Reading it, I felt that all art is a search for novelty, and the tradeoff with acceptability is determined by the mass of voices going this way or that. So in art, as well as in politics, it is important to have a group that you are working with. So the postmodernist generation, carrying forward the impressionist revolution against the verisimilitude in art, went so far as to become completely meaningless, as in kasimir malevich's famous black square painting But in the long run, much of Roberts' arguments may not be valid. But it clearly speaks of a passion, a passion that is perhaps quite past now, but a passion that dominated western art for many decades. The original selection, by Michael Roberts, was British centered and pre-war; the supplement has more recent voices, and includes more american voices such as william carlos williams. This much-sellotaped edition has its pages yellowed and crumbling, but it's worth a flip-through every now and then. The contents were not available online; more detailed list of poems may come later. For now, this.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves - goes itself; myself it speak and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is - Christ - for Christ play in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces. I like the sound of this poem; like much of the poetry in the book, i am not sure what it speaks to me. If you want to be killed by scholarly analysis, you can see this at gerardmanleyhopkins.org [some unintelligible alphabets simplified, e.g. dráw fláme; Whát; Í say móre; etc .] purists may cringe, but they have cringed many times in history]
death is more than certain a hundred these sounds crowds odours it is in a hurry beyond that any this taxi smile or angle we do not sell and buy things so necessary as is death and unlike shirts neckties trousers we cannot wear it out no sir which is why granted who discovered America ether the movies may claim general importance to me to you nothing is what particaulaly matters hence in a little sunlight and less moonlight ourselves against the worms hate laugh shimmy [while trying to read this poem, one doesn't know how to pause, where to break the line, how to read it. it is like the disembodies heads and breasts and triangles in paintings - a juxtaposition of images, adding up to nothing. the bengali poet jibananda das, whose modernist voice was influenced by eliot, cited this poem as an example of abAntar chAturi (meaningless cleverness) permeating many western poets of the time. it is indeed hard to see anything that touches you in most postmodern art. - jibanAnda dAs, essay: uttar raibik bAnglA kAbya]
I Here is a room with heavy-footed chairs, A glass bell loaded with wax grapes and pears, A polished table, holding down the look Of bracket, mantelpiece, and marbled book. Staying within the cluttered square of fact, I cannot slip the clumsy fond contact: So step into the corridor and start, Directed by the compass of my heart. II Although the narrow corridor appears So short, the journey took me twenty years. Each gesture that my habit taught me fell Down to the boards and made me an obstacle. I paused to watch the fly marks on a shelf, And found the great obstruction of myself. I reached the end but, pacing back and forth, I could not see what reaching it was worth. In corridors the rooms are undefined: I groped to feel a handle in the mind. Testing my faculties I found a stealth Of passive illness lurking in my health. And though I saw the corridor stretch bare, Dusty, and hard, I doubted it was there; Doubted myself, what final evidence Lay in perceptions or in common sense? III My cause lay in the will, that opens straight Upon an act for the most desperate. That simple handle found, I entered in The other room, where I had never been. I found within it heavy-footed chairs, A glass bell loaded with wax grapes and pears. A polished table, holding down the look Of bracket, mantelpiece, and marbled book. Much like the first, this room in which I went, Only my being there is different."
The snail pushes through a green night, for the grass is heavy with water and meets over the bright path he makes, where rain has darkened the earth's dark. He moves in a wood of desire, pale antlers barely stirring as he hunts. I cannot tell what power is at work, drenched there with purpose, knowing nothing. What is a snail's fury? All I think is that if later I parted the blades above the tunnel and saw the thin trail of broken white across litter, I would never have imagined the slow passion to that deliberate progress.
One by one they appear in the darkness: a few friends, and a few with historical names. How late they start to shine! but before they fade they stand perfectly embodied, all the past lapping them like a cloak of chaos. They were men who, I thought, lived only to renew the wasteful force they spent with each hot convulsion. They remind me, distant now. True, they are not at rest yet, but now they are indeed apart, winnowed from failures, they withdraw to an orbit and turn with disinterested hard energy, like the stars.
Introduction (First Ed): Michael Roberts 1 Introduction (Third Ed): Donald Hall 30
Gerard Manley Hopkins 35 W. B. Yeats 55 T. E. Hulme 70 Ezra Pound 72 T. S. Eliot 90 Harold Monro 116 Conrad Aiken 118 H. D. 123 Marianne Moore 126 Wallace Stevens 133 D. H. Lawrence 141 Isaac Rosenberg 149 Wilfred Owen 155 Herbert Read 162 John Crowe Ransom 168 Allen Tate 173 Hart Crane 181 E. E. Cummings 187 Laura Riding 191 Robert Graves 198 Edith Sitwell 207 Richard Eberhart 211 William Empson 213 C. Day Lewis 218 W. H. Auden 227 Louis MacNeice 243 Stephen Spender 253 Charles Madge 261 George Barker 266 Dylan Thomas 273 David Gascoyne 279
William Carlos Williams 283 Edwin Muir 290 Hugh MacDiarmid 297 David Jones 301 Charles Olson 206 Theodore Roethke 310 F. T. Prince 318 R. S. Thomas 320 Michael Roberts 322 Kathleen Raine 324 Anne Ridler 326 Norman MacCaig 328 Vernon Watkins 330 John Berryman 333 Robert Lowell 337 W. S. Graham 345 Howard Nemerov 347 John Heath-Stubbs 349 Richard Wilbur 351 Keith Douglas 357 Donald Davie 361 Philip Larkin 363 Charles Tomlinson 369 James Dickey 372 Louis Simpson 376 Denise Levertov 379 W. D. Snodgrass 381 Christopher Middleton 384 Robert Bly 386 W. S. Merwin 388 James Wright 390 Thom Gunn 392 Ted Hughes 397 Sylvia Plath 403 Geoffrey Hill 405