In this installment, Oliver de la Paz reads “O Solitude!” by John Keats. Paz teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. He is a recipient of a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He has worked with Kundiman as faculty/staff since 2004, and he currently serves on their Advisory Board. Oliver’s poems have appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, Cream City Review, Third Coast, North American Review, and elsewhere. Names Above Houses, a book of his prose and verse, was a winner of the 2000 Crab Orchard Award Series and was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2001. His second collection of poems, Furious Lullaby, will be published in 2007 by SIU Press.

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John Keats, “O Solitude!”

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

admin Uncategorized john keats, o solitude!, oliver de la paz

In this installment, Don Paterson reads “To Shakespeare” by Hartley Coleridge. Paterson is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Nil Nil (1993), which was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, God’s Gift to Women (1997), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and Landing Light (2003), which won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award. He has also been awarded an Eric Gregory Award, a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award, and his poem ‘A Private Bottling’ won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. Other published volumes include adaptations of poems by Machado and Rilke, contemporary plays, and several collected anthologies. He is poetry editor for Picador (London). His recitation of Hartley Coleridge’s poem was recorded live at the International Coleridge Conference in Cannington, UK.

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Hartley Coleridge, “To Shakespeare”

THE SOUL of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathom’d centre. Like that Ark
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O’er the drown’d hills, the human family,
And stock reserv’d of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds. Great Poet, ’t was thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate’er love, hate, ambition, destiny,
Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart,
Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

admin Uncategorized don paterson, hartley coleridge, to shakespeare

In this installment, Don Paterson reads “Let me not deem that I was made in vain” by Hartley Coleridge. Paterson is the author is numerous volumes of poetry, including Nil Nil (1993), which was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, God’s Gift to Women (1997), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and Landing Light (2003), which won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award. He has also been awarded an Eric Gregory Award, a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award, and his poem ‘A Private Bottling’ won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. Other published volumes include adaptations of poems by Machado and Rilke, contemporary plays, and several collected anthologies. He is poetry editor for Picador (London). His recitation of Hartley Coleridge’s poem was recorded live at the International Coleridge Conference in Cannington, UK.

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Hartley Coleridge, “Let me not deem that I was made in vain”

LET me not deem that I was made in vain,
Or that my being was an accident
Which Fate, in working its sublime intent,
Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign.
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain
Hath its own mission, and is duly sent
To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent
‘Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main.
The very shadow of an insect’s wing,
For which the violet cared not while it stayed,
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing,
Proved that the sun was shining by its shade.
Then can a drop of the eternal spring,
Shadow of living lights, in vain be made?

admin Uncategorized don paterson, hartley coleridge, let me not deem that i was made in vain

In this installment, Steve Orlen reads “The Instinct of Hope” by John Clare. Orlen is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Permission to Speak (1978), A Place at the Table (1981), The Bridge of Sighs (1992), Kisses (1997), and This Particular Eternity (2001). His work had been honored with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He teaches at the University of Arizona and in the low-residency MFA at Warren Wilson College.

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John Clare, “The Instinct of Hope”

Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
‘Tis nature’s prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.
E’en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?

admin Uncategorized john clare, steve orlen, the instinct of hope

In this installment, Peter Riley reads “A Winter Hymn to the Snow” by Ebenezer Jones. Jones is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Love-Strife Machine (1968), The Linear Journal (1973), Lines on the Liver (1981), Tracks and Mineshafts (1983), Sea Watches (1991), Alstonefield and Distant Points (1995), Noon Province (1996), Snow has Settled . . . Bury Me Here (1997), The Dance at Mociu (2003), and Excavations (2004). The recent special issue of The Gig/Poetry (4:5, 2000) was dedicated to the discussion of his verse and his contribution to British poetry.

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Ebenezer Jones, “A Winter Hymn to the Snow”

Come o’er the hills, and pass unto the wold,
And all things, as thou passest, in rest upfold,
Nor all night long thy ministrations cease;
Thou succourer of young corn, and of each seed
In plough’d land sown, or lost on rooted mead,
And bringer everywhere of exceeding peace!

Beneath the long interminable frost
Earth’s landscapes all their excellent force have lost,
And stripp’d and abject each alike appears;
Not now to adore can they exalt the soul,—
Panic, or anger, or unrest control,—
Or aid the loosening of Affliction’s tears.

No more doth Desolateness lovely sit
Lone on the moor; no more around her flit
From far high-travelling heaven the sailing shades;
The shrunk grass shivers feebly; reed and sedge,
By frozen marsh, by rivulet’s iron edge,
Bow, blent into the ice, mix’d stems and blades.

The mountains soar not, holding high in heaven
Their mighty kingdoms, but all downward driven
Seem shrunken haggard ridges running low;
And all about stand drear upon the leas,
Like giant thorns, the frozen skeleton trees,
Dead to the winds that ruining through them go.

The woodland rattles in the sudden gusts;
Frozen through frozen brakes the river thrusts
His arm forth stiffly, like one slain and cold;
The glory from the horizon-line has fled;
One sullen formless gloom the skies are spread,
And black the waters of the lakes are roll’d.

Come! Daughter fair of Sire the sternest, come,
And bring the world relief! to rivers numb
Give garments, cover broadly the broad land;
All trees with thy resistless gentleness
Assume, and in thine own white vesture dress,
And hush all nooks with thy persistings bland.

Come! making rugged gorge and rocky height
Even more than fur of ermine soft and white,
And cover up and silence roads and lanes;
And, while the ravish’d wind sleeps hush’d and still,
Wreaths, little infancy with glee to fill,
Upheap at doorways and at casement-panes.

Fancy’s most potent pandar! gentlest too:
Man, rising on the morn, the scene will view
Thus, all transform’d, with no less sweet surprise
Than stirreth him to whose half-doubting sight
Sudden appears beloved friend, masqued bright
In not less fair than unexpected guise.

And some will think the earth, in white robes drest,
Seems sinking fast in a great trance of rest,
Beyond all further reach of wintry ill;
And some will say it seems as though a ghost
Appear’d; and thus, on fancy’s seas far toss’d,
With doubtful shadowy joys their spirits fill.

Thy task complete, if to the amazing scene
With Night should come, full-orb’d, Night’s radiant Queen,
How the whole race from out their homes will gaze!
Hard hearts will restless grow, and mean men sigh,
And wish they could be holier, and on high
Some, whispering words of heaven, meek thanks will raise.

I, sweet celestial kisser! from croft home-crown’d,
From ancient mead by stateliest trees girt round,
From wilds where thou the earth lovest all alone,
Shall watch thee shower thy kisses, and all the hours
Rapt worship solemnize, and bless the Powers
That let thy loveliness to my soul be known!

admin Uncategorized a winter hymn to the snow, ebenezer jones, peter riley