There is a famous passage in the writings of the physicist Richard Feynman in which he takes issue with poets for their perceived lack of engagement with the realities of science: ‘Poets say science takes away from the beauty of … Continue reading →| David Sutton
‘The Other’ is one of Edward Thomas’s earliest poems, written towards the end of 1914, and also one of his longest, about his sense of there always being a doppelganger or alter ego somewhere ahead of him that he can … Continue reading →| David Sutton
This week what I consider to be one of the most beautiful of English folksongs, and which I was prompted to feature by the news of the death of the actor Terence Stamp: many will remember how in th…| David Sutton
Like much of Yeats, this little poem slips into the memory fairly effortlessly, and the play on the word ‘form’, used here as the correct precise term for a hare’s nest as well in the general sense, is nice. But I do have problems with it, in that the image of the hare’s form, though … … Continue reading →| David Sutton
This week an affecting expression of the kind of regret that seems sadly common to poets as they age, a regret for, as T.S.Eliot puts it, ‘things ill done or done to others’ harm’, or in Philip Lar…| David Sutton
This is a neat little poem, and the astronomical facts are certainly accurate, but I find it hard to pin down Elizabeth Jennings’s exact thought processes here. Is she thinking of poetic fame, which may take years to arrive, and … Continue reading →| David Sutton
This is a rather strange poem, and really it just won’t do. Chesterton’s idea of a hero is apparently a psychopathic loner who carries off women by force and can relate to his fellow men only when …| David Sutton
This week another rather bleak piece by the strikingly original Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892-1938; see also week 566). It was written at a time of personal crisis, involving the death of his mother, relationship problems, economic hardship and in … Continue reading →| David Sutton
This week’s offer is two poems that are strikingly similar in concept, both using the unrest of birds as a trope for marital disharmony, but widely different in style, Ransom’s ornate patrician gravity contrasting with Frost’s plain-spoken simplicity. I like … Continue reading →| David Sutton
It is easy to take this little poem of Robert Frost’s, justly celebrated for its laconic deftness, as no more than a pithy generalised reflection on human nature and overlook the fact that it is al…| David Sutton