Cornflower Books

Tread softly

    One of this week's new arrivals is Sue Eckstein's novel The Cloths of Heaven. I shall give it a proper introduction later, but for now it provides an excuse for a poem as its title is from W. B. Yeats' He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light, 

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

                     ~~~~~~~~

(The picture is not of Yeats' Ireland but the island of Lewis).

Good lines: on being precipitate - or not

"She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress, And we stayed, because of the pelting storm, Within the hansom's dry recess, Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless We sat on, snug and warm.

Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp, sad pain, And the glass that had screened our forms before Flew up and out she sprang to her door: I should have kissed her if the rain had lasted a minute more."

A Thunderstorm in Town by Thomas Hardy.

Poetry posting

     Poetry Live for Haiti  (full details there) will take place in London on Saturday 30th. January.

                                                ~~~~~

    A poet, only the fourth ever, has won this year's Costa Book Award. The overall prize goes to Christopher Reid for A Scattering.

    (Pipped at the post is Cólm Toibín, tipped to win for Brooklyn, and memorably described in this article as having "an extraordinary head. It looks as if it was sculpted by someone with enormous powers of expression but fairly rudimentary chisel skills."!).

Good lines: written on a postcard

     "The pooled ponded rosed goldfished arboured lizarded swinghung towelled winetabled Aeronshrill garden leads into our own (dear God) olives and vines climbing to a mutes' conventicle, Niobe's eisteddfod, of cypresses."

Dylan Thomas writing to a friend from an Italian villa.

Quoted by Aeronwy Thomas in My Father's Places.

Keats and Kipling

     In Keatsian mode due to seeing that wonderful film, thanks to Lindsay I've just read this marvellous Kipling short story with Keats content (notes on it here). Pity we've missed the relevant lecture!

     Kipling's stories were a real find for me last year, by the way. 

Lull

   There has been a bit of a dearth of books around here lately, and that's because I seem to be having a much-needed, though unintended, reading pause. I suppose it's rather like having eaten a lot of rich food, you have to give your system a rest and feed it something small and plain and palate-cleansing. So as there's a lull on the book front, let's look at the word 'lull' which I think is a good one, soft of sound and cadence, largely pleasant of meaning.

     I say largely pleasant because a lull is a whaling term, being a tube to convey blubber into the hold of the ship (not a lot of people know that - and nor did I until I looked it up just now!), but we know it rather as a verb meaning "to soothe with sounds or caresses; to induce to sleep or to pleasing quiescence" (I'm drifting off even as I type...).

     There's a lull in a storm, of course, which perhaps lulls those caught up in it into a false sense of security; Matthew Arnold talks of "a lull in the hot race" in the last stanza of his soulful poem The Buried Life, and Paul Robeson famously sings "lulla lulla lulla lulla bye bye" in this old song!

A glass half full

Today's is a guest post by Mr. Cornflower:

One hundred and eighty nine years ago, Keats published his ode 'To Autumn'. It is a poem of contentment and satisfaction, suffused with the rich glow of ripe apples and honey-dripping hives. Keats did not start writing poetry until he was eighteen; by the age of twenty-five he was dead.

 

Forty eight years ago, on this very day in 1961, Larkin wrote a much terser and bleaker poem on the same topic, 'And now the leaves suddenly lose strength'. This poem sees autumn as a symbol of mortality, the herald of winter (and therefore of death) which gives us all pause for thought: "All silent, watching the winter coming on."

 Larkin's austere beauty commands respect if not affection, but on the whole I'm with Keats and happiness. And you, Cornflower readers: when you think of autumn, do you reflect on well-stocked granaries, or do you shiver and put another log on the fire? 

Cornflower Book Group - A Shropshire Lad

  

     "This magical and poignant evocation of coming of age in the countryside describes lovers in secluded lanes, cricket and church bells, cherry trees hung with snow and woods full of bluebells. Yet in A Shropshire Lad the fields and hills are also places of loss and sorrow, where men die young or are sent far away to fight in foreign wars. Aching with longing for a vanished world, these exquisite verses are a meditation on the fleeting nature of love, youth and happiness."

That is the blurb on the back of my edition of Housman's collection, and it's accurate up to a point, but oh, what a melancholy book this is! Its themes are the shortness of life and the endless sleep of death, love's longings and heartbreaks, death again, comradeship and shared humanity, live while you may as you'll soon be dead, dying for your country, or just dead - full stop. Alright, I exaggerate, but the relentlessness of the message coupled with the very similar metre throughout meant that there was a monotony which rarely broke.

     That said, there are wonderful passages, so it might be better to cherry-pick than read the whole, but what I found interesting about this exercise was that the very act of reading poetry over (in my case) an hour or so did require of me a different type of attention, a stillness, a proper 'look', not just the fleeting glance which the narrative push of so many novels engenders. To that end this was a useful and very positive experience and I'm glad of it. 

    But what of the beauty of the piece? Perhaps you'll let us know your favourite lines, whether it's the poignancy of "the land of lost content", the storm-scene of  "On Wenlock Edge", or something less well known, and if you're not in the habit of reading poetry, has picking up this volume reminded you of its pleasures?

Edited to add: In his comment below, Thomas rightly mentions the Vaughan Williams settings of the poems. Here is an interesting clip of Ian Bostridge performing and talking about them.

In my craft or sullen art

     I recently knitted a letter of a mystery poem, and now for National Poetry Day the finished work has been revealed!

It is Dylan Thomas' beautiful In my craft or sullen art (and somewhere in its midst is my 'O').

Cornflower Book Group 2009: Volume 10

    

     As the Book Group's first departure from the novel or short stories, here is some poetry.

     When I suggested we might read A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, there was a gentle susurration of approval, so I've gone for it. The edition I've got is from Penguin's English Journeys series (there are many other little books on that list I'd like, too - wouldn't you?) but there's no need for any particular copy, just get whatever is available either at the library or a shop (and if you live abroad and you want the Penguin, The Book Depository can supply it post-free).

First published in 1896, "this magical and poignant evocation of coming of age in the countryside describes lovers in secluded lanes, cricket and church bells, cherry trees hung with 'snow' and woods full of bluebells. Yet ... the fields and hills are also places of loss and sorrow, where men die young or are sent away to fight in foreign wars. Aching with longing for a vanished world, these exquisite verses are a meditation on the fleeting nature of love, youth and happiness."

     I wonder just how many famous lines we're going to find in this pocket-sized book - from the "blue-remembered hills" to "on Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble...", many of them familiar as references in other works (scroll down on this page to discover them).

     Despite its apparent richness, it's a short collection so shouldn't be too taxing to read over the next few weeks. We're doing Elizabeth Jenkins' The Tortoise and the Hare (the introductory post is here) on September 26th., so let's come back to talk about A Shropshire Lad on 24th. October, and as always, everyone is welcome to join in.

    

Who loves the rain

    Friday poems are Lindsay's thing, and I don't mean to encroach, but this - by Frances Shaw - is lovely, (and as I write, it's pouring!):

Who loves the rain
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes,
Him will I follow through the storm;
And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
Who loves the rain,
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes

 

     I do love the rain, so that resonates with me, but as long as you have "The Right Attitude to Rain", you'll be fine! Any other 'rainy' books or poems ? Here's one to be going on with.

The Makings of Marmalade

   

     I enjoyed Dovegrey's post on her marmalade-making exploits this morning, and it led me to this poem on the subject by Gillian Allnutt - it is very much worth a look.
     (It appears to be published in the collection Lintel which has one of my favourite Winifred Nicholson paintings on the cover).