Selected Poems

by john-betjeman, Hugo Williams (Editor)

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.

Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) was born in Highgate, the son of a manufacturer of Dutch descent. After university he joined the staff of the Architectural Review, thereafter working as a journalist and, during the Second World War, for various government departments. His first book of poems was Mount Zion (1931), followed by numerous collections, notably A Few Late Chrysanthemeumns (1954). His poetry enjoyed immense popularity, as did his personality, and his knighthood in 1969 and appointment as Poet Laureate in 1972 were almost universally welcomed.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Klara Van Vlaenderen]

Dit was mijn bundel voor als ik niet kon slapen, en dan werd ik meteen vertederd door de vrolijk lachende John op de kaft (waarom altijd serieuze foto's van auteurs?!?!)

na al die jaren op spotify te hebben geluisterd (jazeker sommige gedichten las hij voor op muziek!) en een selfie te hebben met zijn standbeeld nu dus ook eens gelezen!! tip: business girls

[Lucy]

Just wonderful. He's sometimes thought of as a twinkly old man, a sort of Paddington Bear of a poet, but that's to miss the profound melancholy under the bouncing rhythms. This is a short selection of his work, with an excellently perceptive introduction.

[Nile]

I remember reading last year a preface to a collection of Persian poetry where the English compiler implied the English language is in all senses two-thousand years behind the Iranians when it comes to poetry and while that might seem a little bombastic I've yet to read an English poet who doesn't prove the rule.

This collection has a few moments but it was on the whole the epitome of the sort of dullness the English reclassify as comfortable and homely. Homely perhaps being the best term given to some it means a rustic idyll and to others a plain nothing.

Betjeman writes a passable love poem I will give him that, but it is more than counterbalanced by an overwhelming streak of a snob and a (hypocritical) prig elsewhere.

[Rachel]

I did the same thing for Betjeman as I did for Byron: picked a small, pretty volume to try out before committing to the mammoth collected works. I liked Betjeman (In a Bath Teashop is still a - if not the - favourite poem of mine) and especially enjoyed what Hugo Williams defined as “a poet who routinely put our needs before his own, an unfashionable priority in the aftermath of modernism.” By which I mean he's interested in form and using form and not just vomiting up all the feelings he ever had on to one messy page. But in the finish I feel he reads like cut-price Auden, and none of the subject matter is compelling enough for me to read 500 more pages of it.

Margate, 1940

And I think, as the fairy-lit sights I recall,
It is those we are fighting for, foremost of all.


Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order

With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown

Pershore Station, or a Liverish Journey First Class

They were ringing them down for Evensong in the lighted abbey near,
Sounds which had poured through apple boughs for seven centuries here.

Inevitable

His final generosity when almost insurmountable
The barriers and mountains he has crossed again must be.


The Cockney Amorist

I love you, oh my darling,
And what I can’t make out
Is why since you have left me
I’m somehow still about.



Aldershot Crematorium

“I am the Resurrection and the Life”:
Strong, deep and painful, doubt inserts the knife.



Favs: The Wykehamist; An Impoverished Irish Peer; A Shropshire Lad; Myfanwy (she sounds awesome); A Subaltern’s Love-Song; In a Bath Teashop; Late-Flowering Lust (ouch); Original Sin on the Sussex Coast (a good description of bullying); Winthrop Mackworth Redivivus; Reproof Deserved, or After the Lecture; Executive OUCH

[Stuart Goodwin]

Not a major poet but a Great Man.

[Steph De Mel]

Having come across, and enjoyed, a few of Betjeman’s poems in various anthologies, I was curious to read more of his work, and this lovely little collection provides a good introduction.

While I enjoyed several of these poems, and I admire his skill as a poet, Betjeman is never going to become one of my favourites, simply because I’ll always prefer anguish and aesthetics to his witty, satirical style. He focuses often on London scenes, which I appreciate, but his fixation on Highgate becomes slightly repetitive, as does (echoing the complaint of a critic) the frequent (dare I say “lazy”?) use of church-bells to evoke a certain kind of mood and atmosphere.

I must note, however, that Betjeman has an impressive eye for dynamic visual detail: some of his poems feel almost like filmstrips in miniature. My favourite poems among this selection remain the ones that initially piqued my interest in Betjeman, namely “A Subaltern’s Love Song”, “In a Bath Teashop” and “Death in Leamington”. I suppose they’re famous for good reason!

[Paul Wilson]

Great poems
Wykehamist
Portrait of a deaf man
Ireland with Emily
Licorice field at Pontefract
Norfolk


Great quotes
‘But not for him these autumn days / he shuts them out with heavy baize / he gives his ovaltine a stir / and nibbles at a petit-beurre’

‘He liked the rain-washed Cornish air’

‘Bells are booming down the bohreens / white the mist along the grass / Now the Julia’s, Maeves and Maureens move between the fields to mass’

‘Time bring back / the rapturous ignorance of long ago / the peace, before the dreadful daylight starts, of unkept promises and broken hearts’

[Amberly]

Started and finished date - 23.10.24 to 24.10.24.
My rating - two stars
This book was fine and I found poetry bit simple also writing was okay. The paced of plot was fine and the cover of book was fine.

[Phoebe Meikle]

Favourites: Late-Flowering Lust, Eunice, The Cockney Amorist, and 1940.

[Matt Taylor]

So quaint you may miss the melancholy. Deserves 4 stars just for the most devastating take down of Slough ever uttered.

[Deniz Lindenbergh]

3.5 The one that stuck with me most was 1940.