Collected Poems

by John Betjeman

The best-loved British poet of the late 20th century, John Betjeman (1906-1984) was, in the words of Andrew Motion, 'a television celebrity before the term was invented'. This expanded edition of the Collected Works includes Betjeman's verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, and a new Introduction by Andrew Motion.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Humor, British Literature, Religion, Classics, Literature

498 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

Reviews

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost exactly two years ago, in the summer of 2019, my wife and I travelled to Europe. One of our stops was the "booktown" of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, near the English border. We were staying in the Cotswolds and Wales was about 45 minutes away. I have some Welsh heritage (with rumors of some familial connection to Lord Tennyson, though I was never able to pin my mother down about details on this before she died), and I was DEFINITELY interested in buying books while I was over there, as my tastes run to the British and, well, those types of books are obviously more easily available in the UK.

After visiting I-don't-remember-how-many bookstores (there are over 20 of them in that village of under 2000 people!), we stopped in one last little shop, a little out of the way from the rest. I bought a copy of Arthur Rackham: A Life with Illustration that had caught my eye. That was the last book I bought in Hay-on-Wye before we left town for our AirBnB back in the Cotswolds.

But on our way out of that little shop, a book caught my eye for no particular reason other than that it was facing out from one of the shelves I was passing by and I wanted to soak in every tiny detail before I left this slice of heaven on earth, probably for the last time in my life. It was a copy (not the edition I'm reviewing here) of John Betjeman's Collected Poems. I had honestly never heard of the man. Yes, he was the Poet Laureate of United Kingdom until his death in 1984 (one year before I arrived in the country as a teenager for my three-year stay there) and I probably should have heard of him. But back then, I was more interested in Motorhead and marijuana than poetry, so . . .

I read the back cover, flipped through a couple of pages (under the watchful eyes of the shop owner, who was, I think, eager to get the store closed up, but too polite to kick this brash American out of her establishment) and was surprised to find *gasp!* rhyming poetry! I took a mental note of the name and left the shop, later adding the book to my Goodreads To Be Read list.

I don't rightly recall when I ordered the book, but I do recall ordering Major Poems and Selected Prose of Algernon Charles Swinburne at the same time (yes, through Amazon, I must admit, which I usually try to avoid, truth be told, but it was during Covid and it was a weak moment). This will become important later . . .

And not long after it arrived, I began reading. Yes, my memory had served me correctly, the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, against all academic protocol (possibly intentionally, given his tumultuous relation to the academy) wrote in rhyming verse . . . almost exclusively! Only one of the poems, "Before the Lecture," is not written in rhymed stanzas, until one comes to his epic biographical work "Summoned by Bells," which is written in free verse. Both "Before the Lecture" and "Summoned by Bells" cover his relationship with the academy (and his heartache about having to drop out of Oxford, more specifically - this shall also become important in a moment), so perhaps he wanted to speak "their language" so that they could understand exactly how he felt about them? We'll never know.

Despite the "quaintness" of the rhyming, and sometimes because of it, Betjeman shows an incredible breadth, depth, and power in his writings. For example, "Original Sin on the Sussex Coast" is an unsubtle reminder that childhood is not the age of innocence you might think it to me. Betjeman is a poet, but he's not naive. On the contrary, his slices of life sometimes cut deep.

"1940," a gut-wrenching poem about the horrors of war, demonstrates this quite well.

1940

As I lay in the bath the air was filling with bells;
Over the steam of the window, out in the sun,
From the village below came hoarsely the patriot yells
And I knew that the next World War had at last begun.
As I lay in the bath I saw things clear in my head:
Ten to one they'd not bother to bomb us here,
Ten to one that they'd make for the barracks instead -
As I lay in the bath, I certainly saw things clear.
As I started to dry, came a humming of expectation;
Was it the enemy planes or was it young Jack
And the rest of the gang who have passed in their aviation
Setting across to Berlin to make an attack?
As the water gurgled away I put o a shirt,
I put on my trousers, and parted what's left of my hair,
And the humming above increased to a roaring spurt
And a shuddering thud drove all the bells from the air,
And a shuddering thud drove ev'rything else to silence.
There wasn't a sound, there wasn't a soul on the street,
There wasn't a wall to the house, there wasn't a staircase;
There was only the bathroom linoleum under my feet.
I called, as I always do, I called to Penelope,
I called to the strong with the petulant call of the weak;
There lay the head and the brown eyes dizzily open,
And the mouth apart but the tongue unable to speak;
There lay the nut-shaped head that I love for ever,
The thin little neck, the turned-up nose and the charms
Of pouting lips and lashes and circling eyebrows;
But where was the body? and where the legs and arms?
And somewhere about I must seek in the broken building
Somewhere about they'll probably find my son.
Oh bountiful Gods of the air! Oh Science and Progress!
You great big wonderful world! Oh what have you done?

Betjeman is not limited to the tragic, however, his work spans the full gamut of human emotion and experience. It's as if no corner of life goes unexplored, whether happy or sad, dark or light, private or public. I cannot fully explain the full breadth of the man's mind. Betjeman, as they say, contains multitudes.

While in the midst of discovering Betjeman and marveling at his ability to work within the strictures of rhyme while teasing out some of the most evocative, emotive series of words I've read, I listened to my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, when they aired episode 103: On the Tower, the Sixteenth Card of the Tarot. As part of that discussion, JF Martel and Phil Ford talk about the "miracle" that poetry is, that enobling meaning can come from such an intentionally-constrained exercise as writing a rhyming poem. This miracle is plainly evident in Betjeman's poetry. I would say that it is Magic.

About Magic: say what you will about chance, but when a number of seeming "coincidences" line up in a row in strange, but seemingly intentional ways, you might see an interesting stochastic structure, but I see Magic.

Magic, for some reason I cannot define, often happens in "threes". This is how it manifested when I read the last section of this book, "Summoned by Bells," Betjeman's free-verse biographical sketch.

Now, I admit to feeling a bit of a kinship with the man, simply by connections - connections that only I know, but he does not (that I know of): We were both failed academics who had to drop out of school (this is why I have an MA and not a PhD, though I count my lucky stars that I never did become a professor, which sounds like Hell-on-Earth the more I learn about it). We were literary-minded and shared the same disposition when it came to school, sports, and being bullied as children. We both balked at our respective father's vocation while young, and in fact, a little older, rebelled against the person himself rather openly and brashly, until, later in life, we saw the honor of our fathers' careers and, I believe, the honor in our fathers.

I say this to make it clear that I don't come at this from an unbiased position. But I can't characterize the experience of reading this last section as anything less than Magic, or I would be a liar to myself.

"Summoned by Bells" is a chronological (I think - correct me if I'm wrong) recounting of Betjeman's life from early childhood in London, through a stay in Cornwall, school at Oxford, and time spent in the Cotswolds to the west.

The account isn't always flattering. In fact, it often shows Betjeman's weakest points of character. I love that in a couple of his biographical sketches Betjrman effectively says "Look what I got away with. I'm not proud of it, but I'm a clever coward." His candor is endearing. He was a brave man to share these experiences. I dont know that I'm as brave. A tip of the hat to a vulnerable trickster; deceptive, but self-effacing.

And yet, at times, serious. Maybe too serious. He recounts:

The smell of trodden leaves beside the Kennet,
On Sunday walks, with Swinburne in my brain

And it struck me: The Swinburne Connection. I was reading Swinburne and Betjeman at the same time. I had earlier noted the strong affinity between the two in their form of expression (though one was far more atavistic than the other). Here, I saw the connection explicit, direct.

You may call it self-suggestion, or perhaps my brain making the subliminal connection between the two in my subconscious until I saw the name "Swinburne" in the Betjeman book with my conscious mind and made a neurological connection.

I still call it Magic.

One of the reasons I so wanted to go to Hay-0n-Wye is because I am a fan of Arthur Machen, the Welsh author of The Great God Pan, among other works. In fact, I picked up a copy of The Hill of Dreams while there. In every bookshop we stopped in, the name I looked for was "Machen". I had hoped, nay, lusted to buy a Machen book while in Wales. Thankfully, and oddly enough in a town with over 20 bookstores, I eventually found this volume in a little horror bookstore, almost tucked behind the counter on a small round table quite hidden unless you moved a certain way around the counter. It was a quest halfway across the world to find this hidden book!

So, imagine my surprise when Betjeman mentions Machen's Secret Glory and it's obvious that it had a powerful impact on him. I liked this man even more. I was sad to know we would never meet. And, yet, through this Magic, we kind of do.

The day before my wife and I would leave the UK, flying for Germany and Austria, we took a long hike, twelve miles, through the English countryside, crawling the Monarch Trail through the Cotswolds. You can read about that whole "adventure" here. Little did I know, two years ago, that I was setting the world in motion for the next Magic connection between Betjeman and myself.

Toward the end of "Summoned by Bells," Betjeman mentions, quite out of the blue, I thought, and goes on at length about, Sezincote, a wonderful piece of architecture that my wife and I stumbled across on our grueling hike in the Cotswolds in 2019 (I even have a photo of Sezincote in my Cotswolds post).

And soon he mentions Bourton-on-the-Hill, which is the village where we stopped for lunch at a pub that we fell in love with. And he mentions Longborough. And Moreton-in-Marsh - the EXACT route of our widdershins trek through the Cotswolds. Again, so-called "coincidences" occurring one after another is, in my eyes, Magic. Reading this book of poetry is, for me, weaving a powerful spell! The more I learned about Betjeman, the more I felt like I had been unknowingly summoning his ghost my entire life.

I should like to one day meet John Betjeman in some kind of afterlife. We would have a lot in common, we would share similar stories with differing details, I would likely find him affable, likeable, perhaps even brotherly.

And yet, I shall never, ever be able to write as well as the man.

He is infinitely approachable and yet eternally untouchable.

[brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

betjeman's great poem, "slough" is surely the inspiration for one of the great songs of the 20th century, dontcha think? check the excerpts:

slough

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned bright canteens.
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.


read the full poem here:

http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/intuition...


everyday is like sunday

Trudging slowly over wet sand
Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
Armageddon - come Armageddon!
Come, Armageddon! Come!

Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Hide on the promenade
Etch a postcard :
"How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here"
In the seaside town
That they forgot to bomb
Come, come, come - nuclear bomb!

and watch this. immediately!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmPKVv...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betjeman's verse is refreshing even unto this day. It has a liveliness that is rare among poets, especially American ones with their false anguish and downhome-country-music-feeling-sorry- for-themselves verse. No tortured conscience for Sir John, no siree. He gets down to business with laughing at the "swells" of urbane London and the misguided aristocrats from English public schools (US private schools same-same). You don't know exactly how but you walk away after reading his poetry feeling wiser.

[Diane Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful discovery John Betjeman's poetry is! The intro promised that Betjeman is the type or poet that you want to have at your bedside and I find that to be true. Very accessible, yet somehow more profound than most poetry I've encountered, however fancy the language. There were times I'd ask my husband if he'd like to hear a poem, and I'd read aloud the next one, and we'd both sit there gut-punched afterwards. I am confident that as I continue to live this life and experience my experiences, his words will appeal to me in new ways, too.

[Simon Goldenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This almost made me miss England

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction

Mount Zion (1932)
--Death in Leamington
--Hymn
--The 'Varsity Students' Rag
--The City
--An Eighteenth-Century Calvinistic Hymn
--For Nineteenth-Century Burials
--Camberley
--Croydon
--Westgate-on-Sea
--The Wykehamist
--The Sandemanian meeting-house in Highbury Quadrant

Continual Dew (1937)
--The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel
--Distant View of a Provincial Town
--Slough
--Clash went the Billiard Balls
--Love in a Valley
--An Impoverished Irish Peer
--Our Padre
--Exchange of Livings
--Undenominational
--City
--A Hike on the Downs
--Dorset
--Calvinistic Evensong
--Exeter
--Death of King George V
--The Heart of Thomas Hardy
--Suicide on Junction Road Station after Abstention from Evening Communion in North London
--The Flight from Bootle
--Public House Drunk

Old Lights for New Chancels (1940)
--Cheltenham
--A Shropshire Lad
--Upper Lambourne
--Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden
--Holy Trinity, Sloane Street
--On Seeing an Old Poet in the Café Royal
--An Incident in the Early Life of Ebenezer Jones, Poet, 1828
--Trebetherick
--Oxford: Sudden Illness at the Bus-stop
--Group Life: Letchworth
--Bristol and Clifton
--Sir John Piers
--Myfanwy
--Myfanwy at Oxford
--Lake District
--In Westminster Abbey
--Senex
--Olney Hymns
--On a Portrait of a Deaf Man
--Saint Cadoc
--Blackfriars

New Bats in Old Belfries (1945)
--Henley-on-Thames
--Parliament Hill Fields
--A Subaltern's Love Song
--Bristol
--On an Old-Fashioned Water-Colour of Oxford
--A Lincolnshire Tale
--St. Barnabas, Oxford
--An Archaeological Picnic
--May-Day Song for North Oxford
--Before Invasion, 1940
--Ireland with Emily
--Margate, 1940
--Invasion Exercise on the Poultry Farm
--The Planster's Vision
--In a Bath Teashop
--Before the Anaesthetic, or A Real Fright
--On Hearing the Full Peal of Ten Bells from Christ Church, Swindon, Wilts.
--Youth and Age on Beaulieu River, Hants
--East Anglian Bathe
--Sunday Afternoon Service in St. Enodoc Church, Cornwall
--The Irish Unionist's Farewell to Greta Hellstrom in 1922
--In Memory of Basil, Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
--South London Sketch, 1944
--South London Sketch, 1844

Selected Poems (1948)
--Indoor Games near Newbury
--St. Saviour's, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, London, N.
--Beside the Seaside
--North Coast Recollections
--A Lincolnshire Church
--The Town Clerk's Views

A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954)
--Harrow-on-the-Hill
--Verses Turned
--Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge
--Christmas
--The Licorice Fields at Pontefract
--Church of England thoughts
--Essex
--Huxley Hall
--House of Rest
--Middlesex
--Seaside Golf
--I. M. Walter Ramsden, ob. March 26, 1947, Pembroke College, Oxford
--Norfolk
--The Metropolitan Railway
--Late-Flowering Lust
--Sun and Fun
--Original Sin on the Sussex Coast
--Devonshire Street W.1
--The Cottage Hospital
--A Child Ill
--Business Girls
--Remorse
--The Old Liberals
--Greenaway
--The Olympic Girl
--The Dear Old Village
--The Village Inn
--Station Syren
--Hunter Trials
--A Literary Discovery
--How to Get On in Society
--Variations on a Theme by T. W. Rolleston

Poems in the Porch (1954)
--Diary of a Church Mouse

Poems Written After 1954
--Wantage Bells
--Winthrop Mackworth Redivivus
--False Security
--Eunice
--Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station
--Thoughts on The Diary of a Nobody
--Longfellow's Visit to Venice
--Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order
--Pershore Station, or A Liverish Journey First Class
--Hertfordshire
--Lord Cozens Hardy
--Variation on a Theme by Newbolt
--Inevitable
--N.W.5 & N.6
--From the Great Western
--In the Public Gardens

High and Low (1966)
--Preface to High and Low
--Cornish Cliffs
--Tregardock
--By the Ninth Green, St. Enodoc
--Winter Seascape
--Old Friends
--A Bay in Anglesey
--A Lament for Moira McCavendish
--The Small Towns of Ireland
--Ireland's Own
--Great Central Railway
--Matlock Bath
--An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield
--Lines Written to Martyn Skinner
--Uffington
--Anglo-Catholic Congresses
--In Willesden Churchyard
--The Commander
--Autumn 1964
--The Hon. Sec.
--Monody on the Death of a Platonist Bank Clerk
--Good-bye
--Five o'Clock Shadow
--A Russell Flint
--Perp. Revival i' the North
--Agricultural Caress
--Narcissus
--The Cockney Amorist
--Harvest Hymn
--Meditation on the A30
--Inexpensive Progress
--Mortality
--Reproof Deserved
--Caprice
--Cricket Master

A Nip in the Air (1974)
--On Leaving Wantage 1972
--On a Painting by Julius Olsson R.A.
--Beaumaris, December 21, 1963
--Hearts Together
--Aldershot Crematorium
--The Newest Bath Guide
--In Memory of George Whitby, Architect
--Delectable Duchy
--The Costa Blanca
--Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican
--Executive
--Meditation on a Constable Picture
--A Wembley Lad
--County
--Greek Orthodox
--Dilton Marsh Halt
--Loneliness
--Back from Australia
--The Manor House, Hale, near Liverpool
--Shattered Image
--A Ballad of the Investiture 1969
--14 November, 1973
--A Mind's Journey to Diss
--Fruit
--Inland Waterway
--For Patrick, aetat: LXX
--The Last Laugh

Uncollected Poems (1982)
--1940
--Interior Decorator (London Magazine 1964)
--The Lift Man
--Archibald
--The Retired Postal Clerk
--Cheshire
--Advertising Pays
--Dumbleton Hall
--Thoughts on a Train
--Shetland 1973
--To the Crazy Gang
--Kegans
--Henley Regatta 1902
--1930 Commercial Style
--Guilt
--A Romance
--Advent 1955
--The Old Land Dog
--Before the Lecture
--The Parochial Church Council
--The Shires
--An Ecumenical Invitation
--The Conversion of St Paul (The Listener 1955)
--St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street Hill
--Woman Driver
--The Ballad of George R. Sims (New Statesman 1968)
--Civilized Woman
--To Stuart Piggot, 1975
--Chelsea 1977

Additional Poems
--The Friends of the Cathedral (from Poems in the Porch, 1954)
--The Empty Pew (1948)

Summoned By Bells
--I Before MCMXIV
--II The Dawn of Guilt
--III Highgate
--IV Cornwall in Childhood
--V Private School
--VI London
--VII Marlborough
--VIII Cornwall in Adolescence
--IX The Opening World

Index of First Lines
Index of Places

[Russio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my dad's book and a strange shelf-fellow it made with the rest of his reading, centring as it did upon histories of recent conflict (by which I mean WWII and Napoleon). The best-selling nature perhaps goes some way to explain its presence but not fully; it was/is simply an enigma. This meant for a reading on two levels for me: firstly, as a person reasonably well-versed in poetry (pun intended), it appealed on a personal level; secondly it enabled me to play detective for my father's sensibilities which, I must add, seem no further illuminated by the reading.

Betjeman seems to me one who started with a great flourish, the likes of Slough and Death in Leamington grabbing the public attention - and what masterpieces they are too, with lines such as "swarm over death!" and the closing of the latter revealing an acid incisiveness that could creep in under the radar and provoke strong reactions in readers. This he did not lose, although in his middle years fewer obvious examples spring to my mind.

Notable also among his earlier work is The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, a poem revealing a sympathy between artists that transcended the homophobic mentality of the country in the Victorian and post-Victorian era. I remember Neil Tennant making an excellent reading of this on TV as part of a poetry series of some sort about 20 years ago and it really is a wonderful piece of writing.

Betjeman then seemed to go "on tour," writing snapshots of experience and repose within most of the boroughs of England (including forays across some of our borders). His England is a familiar one from our media but one that a child of the 70s can just about glimpse speeding out of sight into history: well-attended churches, nuclear families, tea on the lawn, etc. It smacks a little of an earnest and nostalgic Larkin much of the time (I do appreciate that this cannot have been intentional!). The approval of Merrie England must have made him a shoe-in for the laureate role when it came up and a good fit he was too.

In these middle years there are some stand out works, such as his poem about poor Ebeneezer Jones as a child, his stealthy "Lake District" and his witty "Seaside Golf." It is in these years that the notable Diary of a Church Mouse presents a vicious ambush upon part-time Christians and reminds you that beneath the landscapes and pastorals lies a line of barbarity in his writing that can cut to the quick of his subject.

For me, his best work comes in the segment at the end of the collection from High and Low, as he recounts the death-bed thoughts of dying men or their attendant families in dramatic monologue, and opens up a rather odd fascination with car crashes - in particular the fatal effects of loss of concentration in modern motor cars. In these the use of the killer last line (in both senses of the word) illuminates his maudlin subject and a jaunty rhythm gives the lie to his very serious messages.

At the last his poems show the sad elegaic sensibility behind Slough, the loss of a time of idyll and its replacement with facile and unwanted "progress." His characters exist in ruined towns, villages and countrysides, or die alone and undermourned in hospitals or on arterial roads - the natural world mauled beyond recognition and the sense that we barely register what we lose everyday. Betjeman was the cataloguer of these losses. To put it in his succinct way:

"Dr Ramsden cannot read the obituaries today/He's dead,"

-a sentiment that could be applied to so many of his subjects.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

As part of my annual book challenge I had to read a book of poetry - not my normal reading fare! So I picked John Betjeman as we'd read some of his poems at High School. What I didn't expect was how those few poems we did at school stood out from the rest and brought back such memories. In fact the poems were so memorable I could almost quote them word for word as I read them again for the first time in 35 years. Poems such as 'Death in Leamington' , Upper Lambourne', 'Christmas' and 'Youth and Age on Beaulieu River, Hants'. Other than these the poems were very English; lamenting the loss of the English countryside, the different classes of English society, religion and showing a fascination with churches, graveyards and death.

[W.B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Early in life, he was T.S. Eliot's pupil. He became one of the United Kingdom's best-loved poets, both in terms of accolades and sales. This volume sold 100,000 copies when it debuted in 1958.

Yet it feels so terribly dated to this reader, a moribund verse tradition that's long outlived its welcome. Betjeman was poet laureate of England from 1972 until his death in 1984. I think the U.S. has adopted a much more sensible approach with the very limited tenure of our laureates. Considering the fact that most poets do not sustain their initial level of inspiration for too many years (doesn't Linda Pastan gauge it at "15 years" in one poem?) does a nation really want to get saddled with a fading seer-turned-bloviator? And then the culture grows and changes (if it's healthy!) and you might end up with a fossil "representing" the nation. But Betjeman seemed to remain a beloved fossil over there, across that Drink, until the end. I suppose they had to endure much longer tenures if one looks into the history of the office.

Maybe you should have to be English or English-born or English-born well back into that last century to review this book. Maybe it's unfair to look at it from a culture whose wildly-divergent poetics is so far afield the Official Verse Culture of that kingdom, in that time.

I assume many readers enjoy the bathos Betjeman substitutes for pathos, the sense that he's not-so-secretly lampooning the Official Verse Culture I mentioned above. He writes light verse quite often. He doesn't mind lampooning the poetic penchant for pathos, but at the same time he gets squirrelly and wants to employ that pathos sometimes. He wants to throw the cake in the face of poetry, but then eat it sensuously off her lips. He's alternately clown and sexton. Flip and grave, flip and grave, on and on, throughout the pages. You either like that or you don't, that binary tone.

"And when the match is over, I
would flop beside you, hear you sigh;
And then, with what supreme caress,
You'ld tuck me up into my press.
Fair tigress of the tennis courts,
So short in sleeve and strong in shorts,
Little, alas, to you I mean,
For I am old and bald and green."

These lines, from "The Olympic Girl," are rather typical of the tone Betjeman adopts. I don't think it would be draconian to call those lines doggerel.

The thing is that Betjeman memorializes so many English places in the vernacular familiar and dear to their denizens, that he earns a certain love for that alone. On this fact, his poetry skates. He becomes The Ethnographic Poet Laureate. One can see how this would serve a state function. And it probably didn't hurt that he was, essentially, a reactionary, a man who was in no way threatening to the social order. His poetry, whatever its charms, didn't express outrage at social injustice to any noticeable degree. It was a poetry about looking backward more than forward. Betjeman's poetry certainly wasn't interested in bending the moral arc of the universe. Perhaps it is not accidental that he was a preservationist interested in protecting Victorian architecture. He seems also to have wanted to preserve the Victorian architecture of erstwhile British poetry. Was it his fondest and not-so-secret desire to have been born A.E. Housman instead of John Betjeman? One smells a smoldering envy. A lifelong boy crush.

There are times that he approaches the fey lyricism of, say, James Schuyler in his finical attention to the loveliness of words serried to a proper and musical exactitude:

"Up the ash-try climbs the ivy,
Up the ivy climbs the sun,
With a twenty-thousand pattering
Has a valley breeze begun,
Feathery ash, neglected alder,
Shift the shade and make it run--"

(from "Upper Lambourne")

But the sing-song meters he favors and the elegaic or mock-elegaic tone that dominates the collection seem to situate the poems more in the nineteenth century than the period in which they were written. Literary Modernism didn't really penetrate Betjeman. The skin of his poetry was apparently impervious to th0se cosmic rays beaming at every writer in that period. I think this is what marks him a minor poet. Facture and drear. Parochialism. But this is, ironically, what makes him best-loved to some. Probably a dwindling "some," but still.

Maybe it's wrong to admit it's fun to hunt for cringeworthy lines in this collection, but it is a bit. Betjeman's defenders might say those were all intended effects, and to lambaste him for them is to miss his entire raison d'etre. Maybe.

Does the inveterate rhymer catch the feel of what it was like to live in that bygone (felicitously transformed) culture? Yes, I would warrant he does. So it is a bit of a time machine, this collection. Maybe it's a form of hubris to demand that art always reflect us. A narcissism. Maybe we should come to art on its own terms sometimes. Surrender.

"And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves
Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand
As they have done for centuries, as they will
For centuries to come, when not a soul
Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks,
When England is not England, when mankind
Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea,
Consolingly disastrous, will return
While the strange starfish, hugely magnified,
Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool."

(from "Beside the Seaside")

(Even with these lines and some word choices I want to argue. But I'll pat his ghost on the hand for "consolingly disastrous" and the idea of the starfish suddenly "hugely magnified" by humankind's extinction.)

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommend the later edition, which includes the uncollected poems and Summoned by Bells.

It surprises some how much I like Betjeman; Larkin was onto something when he said that talking about him was the quickest route to a literary punch-up. Some still dislike (though not, please note, detest) him for his image and the squibs that cater to it - the Tory grandee cycling through the shires and gurning at everything ‘north of Trent’; the kind of man who thinks ‘cad’ is the highest insult.

His poems matter because they don’t outlaw feeling. They are clear and they are precise, right down to postcodes. This probably the only collected poems that includes an index of place names as well as first lines.

The poems are also funny (‘How to Get on in Society’), and cutting (‘Five O’Clock Shadow’). Camp poems about beefy hockey girls sit next to poems about religious doubt at a friend’s cremation.

Rather a lot of the poems are about illness and death - ‘Inevitable’, ‘Mortality’ (where the ‘first-class brains of a senior civil servant / Are sweetbread on the road today), ‘The Retired Postal Clerk’, which captures the triteness of grief perfectly. The best example in this vein is also, for me, Betjeman’s best poem - ‘Devonshire Street W1.’

[Wayne]

"A DELIGHTFUL SERIOUS POET"...now THAT grabs me!!!
It insinuates that Both Sides of the Coin are being acknowledged.

Also brings to mind a birthday card my Mum's older sister,Rosie, once sent me which carried the line: "He Who Laughs, Lasts."

In the introduction penned by the Earl of Birkenhead,
he writes of "the abysmal depression sometimes apparent in"
...his verse "and his avowed terror of death."
The use of humour might signify an avoidance of a reality, or a refusal to avoid reality. Dorothy Parker's crisp last lines come to mind.
Sentimental War Poems of horrendous deaths and slaughters make me suspicious of the poet.Or people who think the Holocaust need only concern the Jews(the Victims); or only says something negative about the German perpetrators. To ask whether it might be saying something about the nature of every Human Being, that we all might be capable given certain conditions, extends rather than closes the evidence.

My only worry is that 292 pages of such poetry might wear thin.
I will have to get an Anthology of varied topics and poets to ward off an over-exposure of what could very well be an excessive talent !!?
to be continued...

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read A Subaltern's Love Song in The Guardian the a few weeks ago, and thought it was pretty funny. It got me interested in learning more about Betjeman and reading more of his poetry. I hadn't really intended to read this whole collection, but ended up enjoying many of the poems so much that I did read the book cover to cover. He has some brilliant poems. I like how he writes about big and sporty women, his teddy bear, parts of London I know and he beautifully describes Cornwall and its coast. I also really like his poems about religion. Summoned By Bells, the long poem at the end of the book, is a truly great autobiography.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

lovely poems but i can see why betjeman is not much discussed outside the uk. he captures a particular time, place, class, gender of english experience in compelling and daredevil fashion. but much of his particulars depend upon understanding already the code of a man's upper-middle class 20th c. english life. well worth the effort, but for the rest of the world, betjeman requires some effort to crack. beneath the trappings is a poet warmly attuned to the joys and shames of modern life.

[R.J. Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betjeman is looked down on by some as a versifier; in fact he was an accomplished poet with a sharp eye and something to say that needed to be said. I think his problem, in Britain at any rate, is that very British idea that high culture is for the elite and a poet who was so popular can't be any good.

[Wendy Laird · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Slough" is one of my all-time favorite poems, and earned the fourth star. Some say Betjeman is an unsung British poet. I think he is just-enough-sung.

[Ben Roberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few of the poems, like “Slough”, were enjoyable to read, but I felt nothing from a lot of them. To me, this is more a relic of a bygone era, of an England that doesn’t really exist anymore. Betjeman’s work seems out of place in 2021.

[Gavin Lightfoot · Rating 5 out of 5]

He certainly was the peoples poet, Betjeman's poems are very accessible but still beautifully written. I tend to favour blank verse but the rhyming in his poetry never feels forced, he has such a range of vocabulary.

[Finton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real mix, as to be expected from a collection of all his poems. Very British, at times very comfortable but nothing radically new. Enjoyable easy reading.

[Joseph Oddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of short poems. Not read them all. Fairly similar vibe to most of them. A little dated and out of touch.

[Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of Betjeman's writing took a nostalgic look at a Britain that was disappearing or had been already replaced at the time of writing. I was born over 80 years after Betjeman, however, so while his poetry harked backwards to times within living memory for much of his readership, that era was gone long before my time.

Much of this book being grounded in a time and place I have no experience of, I frequently felt myself unable to really appreciate many of these poems.

Anyone considering reading this book, especially those of a younger generation like myself, should be aware of this before making the purchase.

I really enjoyed some of the poems in this book, mostly the ones that were less grounded in the past. (Many of the poems included in the Kindle sample were in this category - sneaky! - which gave me a surprise when I handed over my money only to find much of the rest of the material far less accessible.)

[A gin and orange, a lemon squash, and a scotch and water, please! · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many people have written about JB's poetry, what can I add? You either love it or hate it; that's up to you, for yourself your opinion is more valid than anyone elses.
No one can argue against the range and scope of his poetry, albeit limited within the confines of his own experience. His style, though, is purely his own: quirky and idiosyncratic and formal and traditional, it's all there.
There are poets I prefer; there are poets with arguably better technical ability; but for me, listening to someone read a Betjeman piece is like listening to... um... I was going to say like listening to churchbells through the mist of a Sunday morning, but that's too obviously derivative. It's like hearing sudden laughter. It's like - oh bugger it, I can't be bothered analysing it, that's not what it's there for.
It's there to enjoy and that's what it's all about.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Former Poet Laureate of Great Britain John has/had both, in life and death, mixed responses to his poetry. It was only in reading these poems in conjunction with his biography (A.N. Wilson's: Betjeman) that I fully appreciated the majority of them. His struggles with love interests (male and female), his friendships and loyalty with the Mitford sisters and others, his faith; High Anglicanism, his interaction with Catholicism, (interaction with Evelyn Waugh), love of trains and Classic Architecture. Read "Death in Leamington" and not be moved?

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the titles of Betjeman's poems more than the poems themselves. If this was a book solely of his poem titles I'd have given it five stars. Here are a few of my favourite titles:

"Distant View of a Provincial Town"
"Suicide on Junction Road Station after Abstention from Evening Communion in North London"
"On Seeing an Old Poet in the Café Royal"
"Oxford: Sudden Illness at the Bus-stop"
"On a Portrait of a Deaf Man"
"Original Sin on the Sussex Coast"
"Monody on the Death of a Platonist Bank Clerk"
"Meditation on the A30"

[Simon Cowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book amused me, made me think, even inspired me to write again after a very dry period in my own poems. Definitely a poet I'll be reading more of. Another accessible poet whose work evoked so many emotions.

[Oz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any collection, some are brilliant, some boring. The opening poem about an old woman’s death was highly moving, and some of the tennis poems were hilarious. Poems about assorted English towns are probably more enjoyable for locals.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betjeman writes the poems that I could only ever dream of writing... his work is sublime - this selection is superb.

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thoughts...

I was not in the right headspace for this collection. I found it stuffy and a little puerile in places. I had this impression of him as a really solid poet... maybe when you throw the kitchen sink at someone, they'll get a bit put off by the rusting taps and ignore the skillful tiling. What I mean is, this seems like a lot of poems that are perhaps distracting me from the good ones.

In the end, I didn't get to the end of this. I read some good. Some bad. Then skimmed a few. Then put this book down and didn't pick it back up again. Maybe I'll pick it up at some point in the future, when I'm ready for it. Until then... a very rare occurrence for me... DNF

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

He did like to write about churches and the natural world a lot but if I had to read a British poet I'd much rather read one of Betjeman's than Larkin and the like.

He's genuinely a master of metre and rhyme and managed some gems - the famous Slough and Westminster Abbey come immediately to mind, as I much preferred the poems that were primarily about people than to those primarily about place.

However it did take me a few months to get through this, a life's work doesn't have the same impact in just a few sittings.

[Andrew Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had this book for some time and have read and re-read poems from it on a relatively regular basis. This time, I read the whole book from start to finish. Some of the poems - particularly the humorous ones - are very well known. Some, I cannot read without hearing in my mind the excellent music from Jim Parker on a vinyl LP - lovely stuff and lovely memories. Of course, Betjeman’s oeuvre is much more than humorous verse and playful rhymes - as this large collection amply illustrates. Highly recommended. And I will keep dipping back in whenever the urge is upon me.

[Paul Fitz-George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved some of the old favourites in the book and the evocation of times long gone. Some works introduced that I wasn’t familiar with and good to be introduced to.

A book to pick up and muse through, on warm summer days in the summer house, with a gin and tonic some home-made fruit cake by your side.