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 Well,
I have been a touch dilatory over the last couple of weeks. Actually,
the Editor of the Mediadrome has phrased it otherwise. At great
length. In view of my general principle of "The Search for the Right
Word", I have to say she has done a great job. "Shiftless" "Lazy"
"Good for Nothing Layabout" are among the (reproducible) phrases
she has used.
I would be grateful for any support you can give me.
(Ha! - Ed.)
However, this is a gloomy time. In my home town, winter was depressing
in the extreme. I remember bringing my two young daughters back
to the north of England from the Midwest when they were (about)
eight years old. It was November. About March, they sent a deputation
of two to me. The spokesperson, prodded by her sister, finally said:
"Doesn't the sun ever shine in England?" I realized that over the
last five months it had, in fact, never appeared. I remembered from
my youth that we never had any idea where East was, or West, because
we couldn't see the sun rise or set. Ever, in the winter.
In the north of England, as we were, we were about as far north
as Edmonton, or Novosibirsk. In the winter, the sun rose at about
9:00am (if we could see it!) and set at about 3:30pm.
So, I thought we might have some poems about winter. One of my choices
is Phillip Larkin. Larkin was born in 1922, and grew up in Coventry,
England, where his father was City Treasurer. He went to St. John's
College, Oxford, and subsequently worked in a number of libraries;
in 1955 he became Librarian of the Brynmor Jones Library at the
University of Hull - a post he held until his death in 1985. As
I reported in my earlier article on the British
Poets Laureate, he was invited to follow John Betjeman as Poet
Laureate of England in 1984, but he declined: he died the year after.
The poem I have chosen of his is a sonnet, a form which he liked;
and it dates from 1938: it is called Winter Nocturne.
My second winter poem is by John Keats; and I think it is very interesting.
It, too, is a fourteen-line poem; but it has no rhymes at all; it
depends on the cadence (as we said in our piece on Free
Verse). The title is O Thou Whose Face Hath Felt The Winter's
Wind.
Finally, I looked into the Poetry
of Robert Frost. Of course! And, as usual, the choice was
so difficult. Frost was born in 1874, in San Francisco; and died
in Boston on January 29th, 1963. He moved to New England, and in
1912 he moved to England, where his first collection of poetry,
A Boy's Will, was published in 1913. He returned to the U.S.
on the outbreak of war, and bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire.
His poetry is closely attached to the fields and farms of New England.
As you can imagine, many of his poems refer to the winter; I was
tempted by An Old Man's Winter Night, but I decided to go
with Stopping By
Woods On A Snowy Evening, although you may think it a rather
conventional choice.
But I have always liked it, and I don't care!
Winter
Nocturne
O
Thou Whose Face Hath Felt The Winter's Wind
Stopping
by Woods On A Snowy Evening
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