National Poetry Day : Your Picks
Happy National Poetry Day one and all!
Haiku, free verse, limerick or sonnet? Something, something, something, bonnet. OK, so you’ll be glad to know I’m not here with my own poems. Keep that sigh of relief politely stifled if you please. We asked the wonderful worlds of Twitter and Facebook to name some of their favourite poems; here are some of the suggestions…
Philip Larkin was straight in with The Whitsun Weddings (a beautiful train journey through ‘the tall heat that slept’) and This Be The Verse (with that opening line). I remember sitting in a school assembly, shocked into silence as the lovely knitwear-clad English teacher said, “They fuck you up your mum and dad”. Swearing isn’t big and it’s not clever, but it did introduce me to Philip Larkin. More schooldays nostalgia comes in the war poetry of Wilfred Owen and John Keats’ great ode to classical Greek art and virtues. Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est captured the horrific imagery of World War I more effectively than any history text book could, and his condemnation of “The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est” (‘It is sweet and right’) is still oft-quoted today. At 15, I was overwhelmed by the romance and aestheticism of John Keats’ work and our suggested poem for today is Ode on a Grecian Urn and its declaration that “beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.”
We had a flurry of lunchtime suggestions (National Poetry Day: keeping the workforce creative juices flowing since 2000) including the wonderful Everything Is Going to be Alright by Derek Mahon, The Hunt by Don Paterson, When You Go by Edwin Morgan and a sneaky entry from one Mr John Lennon with I Sat Belonely.
Two very different reflections on fatherhood and paternal influence were suggested: Dylan Thomas‘ villanelle, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night is a poignant, profoundly moving plea to his dying father, a man who had shared his library and love of language and literature with his son. Sylvia Plath‘s Daddy, controversial for her use of the Holocaust as a metaphor, tackles a complex relationship with a dominating and controlling male figure (her father and, later, her husband).
Heaven, Hell, Creation and The Creator, the existence of evil… as themes go, they don’t get much bigger, and the big guns come out in the fearful symmetry of William Blake’s The Tiger, from the Songs of Experience collection (1794).
And to end, some exquisite, nonsensical wordplay from Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Callooh! Callay! We chortled in our joy.
Thanks to everyone who got in touch with suggestions. What have we missed? Tell us what your favourite poems are in the comments section!
Post by Alex Herod
John Donne!!!!!!! The sun rising is the most beautiful and perfect love poem there has ever been! ‘She is all states and all princes I, nothing else is’. Bliss!
I hate John Donne. With a passion. But probably mainly because he was massacred on a daily basis by an A Level teacher I hated. But still, I’ve never quite recovered from it. I love that Larkin and Thomas were all shown some love in this – two of my favourites! I love almost everything by Anne Sexton too. And Patti Smith’s poems. Does it count if they’re not from this nation? Or are we just celebrating poetry from all over as a nation?
An ex of mine was obsessed with John Donne – that poem in particular – but I must say i’ve never really given him much of a look though. Jane – all nations I think – and yes to Anne Sexton and Patti, we need more women on the list!
You see I am very sad and fell in love with him whilst studying him for my a-levels in some sort of pathetic teenage crush way. Haven’t really got over that, I know that he’s dead and all. Know her mate off 10 things I hate about you that is involved with Shakespeare? That’ll be me…
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