www.NeglectedBooks.com: Where forgotten books are remembered
Regular readers of this site know that I am slightly obsessed with bringing the work of Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan back to light (and back to print via the Recovered Books series at Boiler House Press). …
This is a guest post by Ian McMillan Let’s face it, most poets are neglected (or they think they are) and, oddly, even when poets published by small independent presses are out of print, they’re …
Wedlock Flesh binds us, makes us one And yet in each alone I hear the battle of the bone: A thousand ancestors have won. And we, so joined in flesh Are prisoned yet As soul …
Three Stanzas from “New Year’s, 1948” TWO ‘“Well, happy birthday,” Sally Sayward says, Endowing me invisibly with bays, Each leaf to mark a year. “Now, go away,” She tells me, twenty, but, near-man, I stay …
The City Cosmic This morning The lure of the street Entangled my feet And I walked … and walked … and walked … I turned into the narrowest streets, I breathed the smoke of the …
Stepping out in these streets Stepping out in these streets Is like drifting away in the rivers’ sweep. In a shop window, pots of paint on display, But my glance strays past them to former …
Upon her Play being returned to her, stained with Claret Welcome, dear Wanderer, once more! Thrice welcome to thy native Cell! Within this peaceful humble Door Let Thou and I contented dwell! But say, O …
After Reading The Country of the Pointed Firs She was the one who lived up country Half in the woods on a rain-washed road With a well not near and a barn too far And …
The Black Day to the memory of Lawrence Duggan God help that country where informers thrive Where slander flounshes and lies contrive To kill by whispers Where men lie to live! God help that country …
John Quill John Quill was clerk to Robert Shark, a legal man was he, As dull, obscure, and technical as legal man could be; And, perch’d before his legal desk, Quill learnt the legal rules …
The Vote The helmet now an hive for bees becomes, And hilts of swords may serve for spiders’ looms; Sharp pikes may make Teeth for a rake; And the keen blade, th’ arch enemy of …
Zigzagzip Zigzagzip Cat o’nine tails whip The tender night To splintering applause. I never see a stone I never see a stone Without an inward groan And feel again the impact of my race. …
Death at Teatime That afternoon when everything stopped at four o’clock the houses suddenly looked old as fossils cold in the rigid sunlight transfixed from prehistoric time. Sound raved up in spate from College Green, …
Lament My man is a bone ringed with weed. Thus it was on my bridal night, That the sea, risen to a green wall At our window, quenching love’s new delight, Stood curved between me …
In Sleep What do I see in my sleep? A steady seepage of life in dreams that are of no use to a practical body. I awake like you, sapped by a watchful reality, defined …
Spoken Through Glass Here the big stars roll down like tears all down your face; darkness that has no walls, the empty night that fingers grope for and are lost, is nightfall in your face. …
Jerked Heartstrings in Town I have heard echoes and seen visions of you Often of late. Once yawning at a play A sad keen rapture suddenly pierced me through Because one puppet moved and sighed …
To a Poet Yet Unborn Attempt what’s perpendicular. Scale what’s impossible. Try the knife edge between two voids; look into both abysses. Bring back some word of wordlessness if strength enough is in you. Write …
Within the stillness she heard the jingling of hansoms, swinging in morning sunlight along the wide thoroughfares of the West End; saw the wide leisurely shop-fronts displaying in a restrained profusion, comfortably within reach of …
Open Air Concert, Ohio We sit by stone and ivy leaves For flute and oboe’s disquisition; The evening, after heat, receives This gentle Middle West rendition. The foursquare walls of courtyard cup Two funnels at …