Poets on Poets Blog

Geraldine Monk reads "We do lie beneath the grass" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

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In this installment, Geraldine Monk reads "We do lie beneath the grass" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Monk was born in England in 1952. Her work has appeared in many of the major anthologies including Conductors of Chaos, the Oxford Anthology of 20th Century British & Irish Poetry and the first Ahadada Reader. Noctivagations, her 2001 collection of poetry and other texts was published by West House Books and her Selected Poems from Salt Publications appeared in 2003. Escafeld Hangings her latest collection is due to be published by West House Books in 2005. More information and a personal web page is available here.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death’s Jest Book, "We do lie beneath the grass"

We do lie beneath the grass
In the moonlight, in the shade
Of the yew-tree. They that pass
Hear us not. We are afraid
They would envy our delight,
In our graves by glow-worm night.

Come follow us, and smile as we;
We sail to the rock in the ancient waves,
Where the snows fall by thousands into the sea,
And the drown'd and the shipwreck'd have happy graves.

Authored by (Primary): 

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell

Audio Author: 

Monk, Geraldine

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Poets on Poets

Geraldine Monk reads "If thou wilt ease thine heart" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

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In this installment, Geraldine Monk reads "If thou wilt ease thine heart" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Monk was born in England in 1952. Her work has appeared in many of the major anthologies including Conductors of Chaos, the Oxford Anthology of 20th Century British & Irish Poetry and the first Ahadada Reader. Noctivagations, her 2001 collection of poetry and other texts was published by West House Books and her Selected Poems from Salt Publications appeared in 2003. Escafeld Hangings her latest collection is due to be published by West House Books in 2005. More information and a personal web page is available here.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death's Jest Book, "If thou wilt ease thine heart"

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep;
And not a sorrow
Hang any tear on your eye-lashes;
Lie still and deep,
Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then die, dear, die;
’T is deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye;
And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love’s stars, thou ’lt meet her
In eastern sky.

Authored by (Primary): 

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell

Audio Author: 

Monk, Geraldine

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Poets on Poets

Michael Collier reads "Emmonsail's Health in Winter" by John Clare

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In this installment, Michael Collier reads “Emmonsail’s Health in Winter” by John Clare. Collier is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Middlebury College.

John Clare, "Emmonsail's Heath in Winter"

I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread,
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

Authored by (Primary): 

Clare, John

Audio Author: 

Collier, Michael

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Poets on Poets

Michael Collier reads "The Mouse's Nest" by John Clare

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In this installment, Michael Collier reads “The Mouse’s Nest” by John Clare. Collier is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Middlebury College.

John Clare, "The Mouse's Nest"

I found a ball of grass among the hay
And proged it as I passed and went away
And when I looked I fancied something stirred
And turned again and hoped to catch the bird
When out an old mouse bolted in the wheat
With all her young ones hanging at her teats
She looked so odd and so grotesque to me
I ran and wondered what the thing could be
And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood
When the mouse hurried from the crawling brood
The young ones squeaked and when I went away
She found her nest again among the hay.
The water o’er the pebbles scarce could run
And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun.

Authored by (Primary): 

Clare, John

Audio Author: 

Collier, Michael

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Poets on Poets

Curtis Bauer reads "To Autumn" by John Keats

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In this installment, Curtis Bauer reads “To Autumn” by John Keats. Bauer is the author of Fence Line, winner of the 2003 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry selected by Christopher Buckley.  He is a graduate of Central College and earned the Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. His poetry, non fiction, and translations have appeared in Rivendell, The Cortland Review, Barrow Street, The Iowa Review, Rhino, and numerous other journals. He co-directs the Writing Studio at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.

John Keats, "To Autumn"

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Authored by (Primary): 

Keats, John

Audio Author: 

Bauer, Curtis

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Poets on Poets

Patrick Donnelly reads "This Living Hand" by John Keats

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In this installment, Patrick Donnelly reads “This Living Hand” by John Keats. Donnelly's first collection of poems is The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003), about which Gregory Orr wrote: "Donnelly writes of eros and AIDS, grief and rage—and everything he writes is suffused with tenderness and intelligence, lucidity and courage." His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and he is an associate editor at Four Way Books.

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John Keats, "This Living Hand"

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

Authored by (Primary): 

Keats, John

Audio Author: 

Donnelly, Patrick

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Lisa Lewis reads "To Autumn" by John Keats

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In this installment, Lisa Lewis reads "To Autumn" by John Keats. You can find information about Lisa Lewis here.

John Keats, "To Autumn"

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Authored by (Primary): 

Keats, John

Audio Author: 

Lewis, Lisa

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Lisa Lewis reads "Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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In this installment, Lisa Lewis reads Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight." You can find information about Lisa Lewis here.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight”

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Authored by (Primary): 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Audio Author: 

Lewis, Lisa

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Joel Brouwer reads "This Living Hand" by John Keats

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In this installment, Joel Brouwer reads "This Living Hand" by John Keats. Brouwer is the author of two books of poems: Exactly What Happened (Purdue University Press, 1999) and Centuries (Four Way Books, 2003). He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. His poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, Chelsea, Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review, Paris Review, Parnassus, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Progressive, Southwest Review, and other magazines. He teaches at the University of Alabama.

John Keats, "This Living Hand"

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

Authored by (Primary): 

Keats, John

Audio Author: 

Brouwer, Joel

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

Terry Ehret reads "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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In this installment, Terry Ehret reads "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ehret has published three collections of poetry, including the collaborative volume Suspensions (White Mountain Press, 1990), Lost Body (Copper Canyon Press, 1993), and most recently Translations from the Human Language (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2001).  Literary awards include the National Poetry Series, California Book Award, and Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize.  She is the co-founder of Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry publishing collective, run by and for San Francisco Bay Area poets.  She is currently poet laureate of Sonoma County, where she teaches writing and lives with her husband and daughters.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Authored by (Primary): 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Audio Author: 

Ehret, Terry

Audio Categories: 

Parent Resource: 

Poets on Poets

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