Gerard Manley Hopkins as photographed – public domain image

(11) GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1884-1889)

“The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”

Hopkins would earn special mention for “the sonnets of desolation” alone – a title I think would make a good name for a music band, perhaps as Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Sonnets of Desolation.

You don’t really expect poetry, let alone sonnets of desolation, from a man who was primarily a Jesuit priest – and an English one at that – but there you have it. Mind you, he published very little of his poetry during his life – it was only through a posthumous volume of his poems published in 1918 by his friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges that he “became recognised as one of the leading Victorian poets”.

“That night, that year

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

Not surprisingly for a priest, a focus of his poetry is his celebration of the natural world through the lens of his religious belief –  “his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature”.

Not so much however his sonnets of desolation, which evoke religious doubt or as he described them to Bridges, “the thin gleanings of a long weary while” – hence why I prefer them (as I do the poems of T.S. Eliot that reflect his early doubt rather than his later faith).

According to John Bayley – “All his life Hopkins was haunted by the sense of personal bankruptcy and impotence, the straining of ‘time’s eunuch’ with no more to ‘spend’ …”

We’ve all been there.

As for which sonnet of desolation I’d choose over the others for this special mention, I’d nominate “Carrion Comfort” – the source of my quote of wrestling with (my God!) my God.

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There are photographs of Frost when younger but they just seem right – Robert Frost in 1949, photograph by Walter Albertin, World Telegram staff photographer, Library of Congress, New York World – Telegram & Sun Collection (public domain image)

(10) ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

When I wrote of Walt Whitman, Robert Frost was that one possible exception I proposed for Whitman as the American poet – the Great American Poet, or at least the Great New England poet in Frost’s case.

Robert Frost “was one of the most iconic and influential American poets of the 20th century. He is best known for “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, both of which are commonly taught to US students beginning in elementary school.”

There were two Robert Frosts – the folksy Frost that most people think of from school, “the genial homespun New England rustic”, and the folk horror Frost, who pops up from his poetry like a jump scare, “depicting with chilling starkness the loneliness of an individual in an indifferent universe” (or outright hostile one).

The latter is the dark Frost, the apocalyptic Frost of fire and ice.

The Frost of the poem House Fear from the short series of poems collated as The Hill Wife.

“Always—I tell you this they learned—

Always at night when they returned

To the lonely house from far away

To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,

They learned to rattle the lock and key

To give whatever might chance to be

Warning and time to be off in flight”

Or the Frost of the poem Bereft:

“Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?…

Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly struck at my knee and missed.

Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret must be known:

Word I was in the house alone

Somehow must have gotten abroad,

Word I was in my life alone,

Word I had no one left but God.”

Folk horror Frost may be my tongue in cheek description of the dark(er) Frost – but not by much. I always remember being taught that the central metaphor for Frost was the title of his final collection of poem, In the Clearing – in which “Frost portrays human security as a rather tiny and quite vulnerable opening in a thickly grown forest, a pinpoint of light against which the encroaching trees cast their very real threat of darkness”.

I also always remember being taught that the central characteristic of Frost – the same characteristic that underlays (and arguably resolves) the apparent duality of the folksy Frost and the folk horror Frost – is his ambiguity which undercuts what otherwise appears to be country proverbs with profound doubt.

As for example, my opening quote from his most famous poem where the road less traveled “has made all the difference”…which may be no difference at all.

Or my quote from Bereft. To the devout Puritans who settled his beloved New England, being all alone but for God would be a source of strength or the ultimate reassurance – the God who carries you like in that Christian “Footsteps” poem. But to someone in the twentieth century filled with doubt, being alone but for God may be very alone indeed.

As for which Frost poem I would choose for this special mention, there are so many from which to choose but I’d just have to come back to his Hill Wife poems, particularly the forlorn Impulse with its rural marriage falling apart:

“Sudden and swift and light as that

The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities

Besides the grave.”

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Portrait of Swinburne in watercolor and chalk by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1861 (public domain image used as feature image in the Wikipedia article for Swinburne)

(9) ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837-1909)

“What ailed us, O gods, to desert you,

For creeds that refuse and restrain?

Come down and redeem us from virtue,

Our Lady of Pain”

A deliciously decadent and pagan poet, as well as one that was distinctly kinky – that Lady of Pain wasn’t just some turn of the phrase but a glimpse into the sadomasochistic dungeon in the basement of his mind.

He was best known for his debut poetry collection Poems and Ballads, which was something of his personal pagan manifesto and featured the poem Dolores that I quoted at the outset.

“The poem demonstrates most of the controversial themes for which Swinburne became notorious. It conflates the cruel yet libidinous pagan goddess figure of Dolores, the Lady of Pain with Mary, Mother of Jesus and associates the poem itself, through its parenthetical titular text (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs, i.e., “Our Lady of Seven Sorrows” with the Seven Dolours of the Virgin.”

Camille Paglia observed how much the poem resembles prayer, particularly in rhythm and recurring phrases – presumably amidst sacraments of flagellation and spanking. I’d go to that church!

That pretty much sums up Swinburne. As for which Swinburne poem to select for this entry, there’s so many from which to choose. I’ll go with Dolores – Our Lady of Pain – but it was a close call with the temptation of Faustine, which resembles Dolores in prayer-like quality.

“What coiled obscene

Small serpents with soft-stretching throats

Caressed Faustine?”

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He even looked like Uncle Sam. Photograph of Walt Whitman by George C. Cox in 1887 in New York – public domain image

(8) WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”

Who hasn’t wanted to sound a barbaric yawp at one time or another?

Also the poet everyone knows from Dead Poet’s Society, since he wrote the poem being quoted and indeed titled as “O Captain! My Captain!”

By the way, that poem was written for the death of President Lincoln in 1865. It was also not the only Whitman reference in the film or the book on which it was based – both were obviously influenced by Whitman fandom, but then so is much of American poetry and literary culture, which brings me to my next point.

With the possible exception of another special mention, Walt Whitman is the American poet. The Great American Poet as it were, in the same vein as those books touted as the Great American Novel. Although I don’t know why there’s debate on the contenders for the Great American Novel when it’s obviously Catch-22. Search your feelings – you know it to be true.

Yes – I hear your query. Wait a minute Stark After Dark – don’t you rank American poets over than Whitman in your top ten, including e.e. cummings in your top spot? Not to mention William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, and Ishmael Reed in eighth, ninth, and tenth place respectively. For that matter, you can claim T.S. Eliot as American poet, since he was born and raised in the United States, only moving to England at the age of 25 (in 1914). And there’s a few more American poets in special mentions to come.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes”

And yes – while I’m tempted to argue for e.e.cummings as the American poet or the Great American Poet, I have to admit that Whitman is more lyrical, and more fundamentally, embodies the United States in so much of his verse.

What better image of the United States than a nation sounding its barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world?

As per art historian Mary Berenson – “You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman”.

And Ezra Pound was even more blunt, calling Whitman “America’s poet… He is America.”

As for which Whitman poem to select for this entry, one is spoilt for choice. There’s the collection of poetry for which he is famed – Leaves of Grass. (To quote Homer Simpson when he finds out the grave that he thought was his mother’s was instead that of Walt Whitman – “leaves of grass, my ass!”.

There’s the most famous poem from that collection – Song of Myself, from which both that barbaric yawp and containing multitudes quotes come from – and so many others, including of course O Captain My Captain. However, I have to go with When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, another elegy written for the death of Lincoln.

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Hot damn, those are some fine muttonchops! Matthew Arnold by Elliott & Fry 1883, National Portrait Gallery, London

(7) MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

“But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.”

A passage I’m fond of quoting from Arnold’s finest and best known poem, Dover Beach, for desperate last stands or holding one defensive line after another – I did it for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire because of course I did. All roads lead to Rome.

Anyway, Matthew Arnold “was an English poet, essayist, and critic from the Victorian era” – “considered one of the great Victorian poets…and one of the Victorian sages”, the latter for his essays on literary criticism and other topics.

Famously melancholic and pessimistic, particularly with respect to the decline of religious faith – that recurring source of angst and despair for Victorian poets or writers. Indeed, that melancholy, long, withdrawing roar retreating in Dover Beach is the tide going out for “the sea of faith” – that “was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shore”.

Arguably the most melancholic Victorian poet – although Alfred Lord Tennyson would give him a run for his money with Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Shortly after his death, Robert Louis Stevenson quipped about his bleak melancholy – “Poor Matt. He’s gone to heaven, no doubt – but he won’t like God”.

“Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

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Portrait of Lord Byron by English painter Thomas Phillips 1813 (public domain image)

(6) LORD BYRON (1788-1824)

Mad, bad and dangerous to know (according to Lady Caroline Lamb, who had an affair with him)

If Blake was a pioneer of the modern literary mythos, Byron was a pioneer of the modern literary hero or anti-hero – also the self-insert character, modelled on himself and thereafter named as the Byronic Hero, charismatic but deeply flawed.

“I awoke one morning and found myself famous”.

The original Byronic hero was the titular character of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – the same epic poem that made that fame and paid for his vices. Although as his longer narrative poems go, I prefer his Don Juan, in which he recast the infamous womanizing Spanish folk legend of Don Juan as more a male ingenue tossed between impulse and circumstance.

Perhaps the best example of a poet who truly lived (and died) their art – the Romantic poet and revolutionary who died fighting for the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence. And by died fighting I mean sadly from the medicine of the day being bled to death from fever rather than, you know, in combat or the more dashing death he might have expected, albeit he still died young.

And yes – he was an actual Lord, “who gave two memorable speeches in the House of Lords”, one for Catholic emancipation.

“She walks in beauty like the night”.

While he made his fame from his longer poems, his short lyric poems appeal to me more to represent him here for this entry – and what else but She Walks in Beauty?

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The Great Red Dragon and The Woman Clothed in the Sun painting by Blake (and featured in Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon). And yes – the Great Red Dragon does squats and doesn’t skip leg day

(5) WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wildflower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour”

Romantic mystic poet – “everything possible to be believ’d is an image of truth”.

Inspired The Doors through Aldous Huxley – “if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”.

Also one of the first comics or multimedia creators, since he was also a painter and printmaker who designed his visual art around his poetry and vice versa.

Poetry or mythology, that is, as Blake was one of the pioneers for creating his own literary mythos or Verse (heh) in the parlance of modern popular culture (and TV Tropes). The Blake Poetry & Visual Art Universe, as it were, in the style of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only trippier – “I must create a system or be enslav’d by another man’s”.

“Tyger tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night”

Blake excelled in poetic phrases and aphorisms but if I were to pick one of his whole poems for this entry it would be The Tyger, even if does have the same rhythm as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was one of His Songs of Experience, in which each poem corresponded to one of his poems in his Songs of Innocence as a matched pair. The counterpart of The Tyger was The Lamb, but whereas latter invokes images of God knitting the lamb, the former is a fiery image of God literally forging the tiger.

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Yes – I couldn’t resist this pun from Rocky & Bulwinkle for the Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam. And yes – the metafictional canned audience groaned too

(4) RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM

Not bad for a Persian poet getting pissed – which is what the Rubaiyat is when you boil it down.

Of course, there’s more to it than that, given the religious prohibition on alcohol in Islam – which lends itself as the springboard for existential ennui or philosophical musings on religion and life itself.

The Rubaiyat is “the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubaiyat) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed the Astronomer-Poet of Persia”.

Translation that is in the very loosest sense – indeed, FitzGerald himself apparently referred to it as a ‘transmogrification’.

“Many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to his source material at all…To a large extent, the Rubaiyat can be considered original poetry by FitzGerald loosely based on Omar’s quatrains rather than a translation in the narrow sense.”

For that matter, “the authenticity of the poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam is highly uncertain” – he was famed as an astronomer and mathematician, with the earliest references to his poetry being substantially after his death and “the extant manuscripts containing collections attributed to Omar are dated much too late to enable a reconstruction of a body of authentic verses”. There is an implausibly large number of quatrains attributed to him – varying from 1,200 to more than 2,000 – and “sceptical scholars point out that the entire tradition may be pseudigraphic”.

Fortunately, FitzGerald didn’t ‘translate’ or write that many quatrains. His original 1859 edition was a much more modest 75 quatrains, expanded in subsequent editions to the final edition of 101 quatrains – or a mere 404 lines.

Although “commercially unsuccessful at first”, the Rubaiyat subsequently became both highly popular and influential, albeit peaking in the 1880s – “the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous Omar Khayyam clubs were formed and there was a fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat”.

Of course, it helps that the quatrains are so eminently quotable.

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Collage of Jim Morrison from one of his most iconic photographs (left) and Jimi Hendrix from an album cover for Electric Ladyland (right)

(3) JIM MORRISON & JIMI HENDRIX

Mr Mojo Risin’ and the Voodoo Child.

And here we are at the apex of mojo.

The Doors with their “dark, theatrical blues-influenced psychedelic rock”, led by the poetic lyrics, deep silky voice and charismatic persona of Jim Morrison “aka Mr. Mojo Risin’ aka The Lizard King”. And Jimi Hendrix – “one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century” and “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music”.

But hold on Stark After Dark, I hear you say – aren’t they your apex of mojo…in music?

Well, yes they are – which is why I’m giving them special mention here, similarly at god-tier ranking, for their lyrical content.

Of the two of them, Morrison leads for his lyrical content. Obviously I like Hendrix but his lyrical content – and for that matter his vocal performance – was eclipsed by his virtuosity of performance on electric guitar.

As the vocalist of The Doors, Morrison was all about lyrical content, vocal performance and onstage theater – the latter showcased by the sprawling trippy Oedipal epic performance of The End, not unlike the Greek drama that inspired it.

As for lyrical content, at the suggestion of Morrison their very name came from the title of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, itself taken from William Blake – “When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite” (from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell).

And I stand by L.A. Woman – both album and its titular single – as one of the great lyrical poems of the twentieth century. The title track song has so much mojo that it famously features the refrain of Mr. Mojo Risin’, an anagram of Jim Morrison no less, in the song’s break with its rising crescendo of unmistakably sexual rhythm (and a figure I’ve adopted into my own pagan mythology – I believe in L.A. Woman and Mr. Mojo Risin’).

Mr Mojo’ Risin’, Mr Mojo Risin! Whoa yeah!

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Norton Anthology of Poetry – 6th edition 2018 cover

(2) NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY

This may seem as a bit of a cheat, particularly ranked as my top special mention and in god tier to boot, given that it is an anthology – that is, a collection of poetry from different poets in contrast to the individual poets of my Top 10 Poetry (and most of the balance of special mentions).

Indeed, it is the most comprehensive collection of poetry, both in poems and in poets, from the very earliest poems in English to the present day, that I know – my favorite single volume anthology or collection of poetry.

And that essentially gives away the method to my madness behind it as my top special mention. In short, the Norton Anthology of Poetry is the means by which I encountered most of my favorite poems or poets, including those in my top ten or these special mentions.

It is one of a series of Norton Anthologies which tend to be favorite volumes for schools, colleges or universities. Two other Norton Anthologies come close to it in my education – the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Norton Anthology of American Literature – and one other comes close to it in my personal reading – the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.

But no other anthology, Norton or otherwise, has ever matched the Norton Anthology of Poetry for my discovery and enjoyment of poems and poets – and I still discover or rediscover poems and poets within its pages to this day.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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