Sappho by Spanish painter Enrique Simonet (1866-1927) – Wikipedia “Sappho” (public domain)

(20) LOVE POETRY

may i feel said he

(i’ll squeal said she

just once said he)

it’s fun said she

It is one of my rules in my top ten lists to throw in a kinky entry amidst my wilder special mentions, usually as my final (twentieth) special mention, at least where the subject matter permits.

And not surprisingly, here it does. Indeed, some might ask that isn’t all poetry er0tic – or, more broadly, love poetry? That is a popular conception of poetry – “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” and all that.

I tend to agree, at least in large part, and also speculate that the origin of poetry, again at least in large part, was by suitors to woo or court their targets – certainly that would seem to be the evo psych explanation. It therefore joins that other large part of the origin of poetry I speculated as war poetry in an earlier special mention – well, that and religious poetry.

While Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey certainly feature love and s€x as central subjects, they tend to be offscreen as it were. Ironically, love poetry in Western literature would not seem so much to originate from Homer, the usual origin of Western literature in general as well as so much in it, but from another poet whose name has become synonymous with the term sapphic – Sappho.

As per Camille Paglia – “Sappho shows that love poetry is how Western personality defines itself.”

From Sappho, it’s pretty much a scenic tour of poets through to the present day for the sheer prevalence, bordering on omnipresence, of er0tic or love poetry. Indeed, it would be an entertaining exercise to do so, perhaps as my nymphomancy of poetry, although to be honest it would be largely a repetition of Camilla Paglia’s “Love Poetry” essay I quoted, in which she does just that.

However, I will just stop in at two places on that scenic tour of love poetry here. The first is Shakespeare, whose poetry and particularly sonnets would have to rank highly on a scenic tour of love poetry.

The Shakespearean sonnets are notoriously love poetry, although of course they have other allusions or themes. I’m no Shakespearean scholar but I understand that there’s quite the volume of Shakespearean studies about whom Shakespeare was wooing or courting in his sonnets – mostly the “Fair Youth” but also the “Dark Lady” as something of a love triangle.

I also understand that Shakespeare used the word will as a multiple pun with double entendre meanings – not least for his own name but including, you know, for his little Will. On that point, Shakespeare and contemporary poets uses the word death as a double entendre for 0rgasm.

The second stopping point is the example of er0tic or love poetry I quoted at the outset – e.e. cummings, aptly enough as the top spot in my Top 10 Poetry and now as finishing point for my special mentions.

(cccome? said he

ummm said she)

you’re divine! said he

(you are Mine said she)

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Originally published in 1990, this is the cover of the 2012 edition by Seagull Books (the edition I own)

(19) MARTIN ROWSON – THE WASTELAND

T.S. Eliot meets Raymond Chandler – the Wasteland as detective noir.

“In Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land, private detective Chris Marlowe is tasked with getting to the bottom of the most impenetrable of all modernist mysteries: namely T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.”

And it’s a hoot.

Highlights include the section of the poem Death by Water as the cue for the archetypal criminal hit by cement shoes or the line “Who is the third who always walks besides you?” (which Eliot borrowed from the Gospels) as the classic ruse – met by the reaction “We’re not falling for that old trick”.

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Odgen Nash at Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles in 1949, Los Angeles Daily News, Wikipedia “Ogden Nash”, licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

(18) HUMOROUS POETRY – OGDEN NASH

Reflections on Ice Breaking

Candy

Is dandy

But liquor

Is quicker

Let there be light verse!

We all love light verse or humorous poetry – “Light poetry or light verse is…usually brief, can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature word play incuding puns, adventurous rhyme, and heavy alliteration”.

“While light poetry is sometimes condemned as doggerel or thought of as poetry composed casually, humor often makes a serious point in a subtle or subversive way. Many of the most renowned “serious” poets, such as Horace, Swift, Pope, and Auden, also excelled at light verse.”

When it comes to light verse or humorous poetry, I usually think of Lewis Carroll and Edmund Lear, the latter popularizing the limerick (although he did not use that term) – but above all, I think of Ogden Nash.

“Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect” – or his “fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist”.

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Wilfred Owen in uniform by Allex Langie – Wikipedia “Wilfred Owen” licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(17) WAR POETRY – WILFRED OWENS

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori”.

War poetry has a long history in literature – indeed, arguably the longest, predating written literature itself, originating at least with Homer’s Iliad. I say at least because I suspect that among the earliest recitals of the origins of poetry itself – around the campfires of our Paleolithic tribal ancestors but faded and forgotten with those tribes by the Neolithic, let alone the Bronze Age – were war chants against tribal enemies.

Even if they weren’t, then I’d certainly propose that among the earliest poems of the Bronze Age were war poems celebrating the feats of kings or warriors, only those didn’t survive as the Iliad did to become the rosy-fingered dawn of Western literature. For that matter, I’d argue much of the Bible, particularly the Psalms, are war poetry – battle hymns of the kingdom, as it were.

We probably must go to the nineteenth century and the Crimean War for the next most famous war poem – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade – although I’d also argue that there’s a rich vein of American war poetry to be mined all the way back to the Revolution.

However, there’s one war that everyone thinks of for war poetry and war poems – which is of course the First World War, primarily as written by British war poets on the Western Front, even if it more evokes the trope of war poetry than prompts recollection of any individual poets, let alone poems.

There is one World War One poet I recall over all other such poets and that is Wilfred Owen, who almost made it through the war but was killed in action at 25 years of age on 4 November 1918, just a week before armistice. He wrote quite a few, dare I call them, bangers – the titles of “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Futility” give away the tone of his poetry – but the one stands out for me is the one I quoted, “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, the title of course coming from the Latin verse written by the Roman poet Horace, translating as “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”.

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

My quoted haiku and picture by Basho – Wikipedia “Haiku” (public domain image)

(16) HAIKU – MATSUO BASHO

“Quietly, quietly,

Yellow mountain roses fall –

Sound of the rapids“

You all know haiku – “a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan” consisting of three phrases composed of 17 syllables in a 5, 7, 5 pattern “that include a kireji, or “cutting word”; and a kigo, or seasonal reference” (or more broadly natural reference).

The classical Japanese poet for haiku was Matsuo Basho, albeit he would sometimes deviate from the traditional pattern.

Upon looking up haiku, I was intrigued to learn that “similar poems that do not adhere to these rules are generally classified as senryu”, that “haiku originated as an opening part of a larger Japanese genre of poetry called renga” (as opening stanzas known as hokku before they came to be written as stand-alone poems), and that “haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century”.

Haiku now are written worldwide, albeit “with different styles and traditions while still incorporating aspects of the traditional haiku form” and “non-Japanese language haiku vary widely on how closely they follow traditional elements”.

Interestingly, Japanese haiku “are traditionally printed as a single line, while haiku in English often appear as three lines”

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Photograph of Bukowski on the cover of this 2018 anthology of his poetry published by Canondale PBS

(15) CHARLES BUKOWSKI (1920-1994)

Also known as Chuck Buk – a quip about his name that I read somewhere and have used ever since.

Charles Bukowski can be summed up by that meme of one of Bender’s best lines from Futurama (from the second episode at that) – I’ll write my own damn poetry, with blackjack and hookers!

Except as the line goes later in the episode – forget about the blackjack. And some might say the poetry.

Charles Bukowski shot poetry (and prose) straight from the hip, as well as the flophouse and the gutter – raw and wriggling to quote another meme (Gollum from The Lord of the Rings film trilogy).

And yet that rawness has a striking sharpness at times – with an undeniable knack for titles of anthologies too.

As for which Bukowski poem to pick for this entry, I’d go with the pack – about the dogs of hell that pursue the poet.

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Bust of A. D. Hope in “Poet’s Corner”, Garema Place, Canberra (one of a group of three, with two other poets) photographed by Doug Butler, Wikipedia “A.D. Hope” – licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(14) A.D. HOPE (1907-2000)

“Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: “we live” but “we survive”,
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.”

If you were to ask the average Australian to name one poem about Australia, I suspect you’d mostly get the answer “My Country” – as in “I love a sunburnt country” – by Dorothea Mackellar.

Well, that is, if you got any answer at all, or one that wasn’t “Waltzing Matilda”, the country’s unofficial national anthem (aptly enough about a criminal swagman who prefers death to arrest and whose ghost haunts a billabong thereafter) by Banjo Paterson – the latter also probably the answer you’d get if you asked the average Australian to name one Australian poet and not without reason as Australia’s bush balladeer bard and poet laureate.

Or perhaps the official national anthem, “Advance Australian Fair”, for which everyone forgets there’s more than one verse – and only remembers the first because of its use of the word girt, because who puts girt in a national anthem?

And then there’s that other unofficial Australian anthem and greatest lyrical genius of Australia or by any Australian ever – “Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!”. There’s actually more lines of this but you get the point.

If I were to name one poem about Australia, however, I’d name the poem I quoted at the outset, aptly and simply titled “Australia”, by Alec Derwent Hope- who would also be the one Australian poet I would name.

Also aptly enough for a poem about Australia by an Australian, it’s taking the p!ss out of patriotic poetic platitudes, presenting Australia as a nation clinging timidly to its coasts while draining its desert continent like a “vast parasite robber-state”.

Mind you, it’s not that much more complimentary to the European civilization of which Australia is a second-hand offshoot – “the learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes which is called civilization over there”.

That pretty much sums up the “savagely satirical” style of A.D. Hope. I was delighted to learn that his highly er0tic verse and “frequent allusions to s€xuality” caused him to be dubbed “Phallic Alec” (in a letter to Norman Lindsay, an Australian also known for his er0ticism).

His style also harked back to eighteenth century poetry, leading an American journal to quip about him as “the greatest eighteenth century poet in the twentieth century”.

“When once asked what poets could do for Australia, Hope replied “oh not much, merely justify its existence”.

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Auden in 1939 photographed by Carl Van Vechten – Wikipedia “W.H. Auden” (public domain)

(13) W.H. AUDEN (1907-1973)

“A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned”

An adage that I have used ever since at work to illustrate that there comes a cut-off point – or where you have to get to the point – for attention to detail, although it was actually Auden paraphrasing the French poet Valery.

Like T.S. Eliot, a poet claimed by both Britain and the United States except in reverse – where T.S. Eliot was an American-British poet who moved from the United States to Britain, Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet who moved from Britain to the United States. Although to be honest, I tend to think of both as British.

Also one of the holy trinity of modern poets along with Eliot and Yeats – although he ranges from being seen as a lesser figure (as I suppose I do since I rank the other two in my top ten and Auden in these special mentions) to ranking him above them. I would agree that Auden was the most consummate poetic stylist of the three – Auden could pretty much compose a poem to any style or technical form on tap.

“Auden’s poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content.”

“Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles

Who would not live long.”

As for which Auden poem to choose for this special mention, there are so many from which to choose but I’ll go with the forlorn title poem of his collection of poetry, The Shield of Achilles.

“The mass and majesty of this world, all

That carries weight and always weighs the same

Lay in the hands of others; they were small

And could not hope for help and no help came”

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Passport photograph of D. H. Lawrence on 22 February 2029, enclosed in a letter to Bernard Falk, Wikipedia “D.H. Lawrence” (public domain)

(12) D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930)

Memorably described by popular historian Paul Johnson as a “strange and intuitive Englishman”, D.H. Lawrence is perhaps best remembered for novels that were the subject of censorship trials – although he should be remembered for his best novel based on title alone, Kangaroo, because what else are you to call a novel set in Australia?

However, he was also a poet – and I prefer his poetry to his novels.

“His best-known poems are probably those dealing with nature such as those in the collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers, including the Tortoise poems, and “Snake”, one of his most frequently anthologised, displays some of his most frequent concerns: those of man’s modern distance from nature and subtle hints at religious themes.”

I was tempted to nominate his poem “The English are so Nice” – a poem that among quite a few others of his were “often wry attacks on the moral climate of England” – for this special mention entry, if for no other reason than my English ex-wife who embodied it.

“The English are so nice

So awfully nice

They are the nicest people in the world

And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice

About your being nice as well!

If you’re not nice, they soon make you feel it”

However, I chose one of his posthumously published poems, aptly enough about death and one of his most famous – The Ship of Death.

“Have you built your ship of death, O have you?

O build your ship of death, for you will need it.”

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)