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Collected Poems 1975
Robert Graves was one of the greatest and most prolific British writers of the 20th century, the author of numerous volumes of poetry, as well as countless essays, historical novels (including the well-known I, Claudius and Claudius the God ), and the marvelous nonfiction work The White
Goddess .
A writer of striking originality, he spoke with a highly individual yet ordered voice in which lucidity and intensity combine to a remarkable degree. His love poetry, some of his best-known and most distinctive work, is at once cynical and passionate, romantic and erotic, personal and universal. He
wanted his poetry to act as a "spiritual cathartic" to the poet and the reader. His work has been described as "romanticism boiled dry," a striving for the pure, the unpretentious, the essential, the vigorous, and the "non-literary."
This volume represents Graves' final thoughts on his prodigious body of work, containing those poems which he most wanted to see survive. Long out of print, it is being reissued to honor his death in early 1986.
Goddess .
A writer of striking originality, he spoke with a highly individual yet ordered voice in which lucidity and intensity combine to a remarkable degree. His love poetry, some of his best-known and most distinctive work, is at once cynical and passionate, romantic and erotic, personal and universal. He
wanted his poetry to act as a "spiritual cathartic" to the poet and the reader. His work has been described as "romanticism boiled dry," a striving for the pure, the unpretentious, the essential, the vigorous, and the "non-literary."
This volume represents Graves' final thoughts on his prodigious body of work, containing those poems which he most wanted to see survive. Long out of print, it is being reissued to honor his death in early 1986.
- GenresPoetryLiterature
624 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
About the author
Robert Graves
664 books2,179 followersRobert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. Born in Wimbledon, he received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G.H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 2, 2008
This is a guilty pleasure. I know he's totally a throwback, and not innovating anything really. I know he's considered about as minor as it gets (as a poet, I mean). It's just that so many of the poems are truly rending and perfectly realized. The one about "love without hope." That image of the boy doing the hat sweep for his would-be love! That never fails to get me. That's a novel in a handful of words. Some of his poems have that pagan touch I adore.
And poems like this one (to give just one of many examples) really get me...
WARNING TO CHILDREN
Children, if you are to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness,
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to unite the string,
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and cut the rind off:
In the center you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel--
Children, leave the string untied!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
But the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives -- he then unties the string.
And poems like this one (to give just one of many examples) really get me...
WARNING TO CHILDREN
Children, if you are to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness,
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to unite the string,
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and cut the rind off:
In the center you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel--
Children, leave the string untied!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
But the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives -- he then unties the string.
May 8, 2009
Loved these poems. While Graves isn't my favorite poet, he did write my all-time favorite poem - The Foreboding. Below, a sample...
Would it be tomorrow, would it be next year?
For the vision was not false, this much I knew;
And I turned angrily from the open window
Aghast at you.
Why never a warning, either by speech or look,
That the love you cruelly gave me could not last?
Already it was too late: the bait swallowed,
The hook fast.
I guess I love this poem so much, because it speaks to a very personal experience of mine.
Would it be tomorrow, would it be next year?
For the vision was not false, this much I knew;
And I turned angrily from the open window
Aghast at you.
Why never a warning, either by speech or look,
That the love you cruelly gave me could not last?
Already it was too late: the bait swallowed,
The hook fast.
I guess I love this poem so much, because it speaks to a very personal experience of mine.
September 17, 2017
I got up to page 300 before I finally decided to put this book to one side. It's going to be beside my bed, and I'll read the rest when (frankly) I can be bothered, or in the mood to read a quick few line poem.
This is not because I think this book is bad, honestly I don't. But I don't think it's good. So let's just get this out of the way: is this book worth reading? YES! Is Robert Graves a good poet? NO! Honestly, I think if I read this book when I was in highschool, Graves would have been my favourite poet. But I'm not a teenager anymore, I need something more than this. Or at least, something different to this. A lot of Grave's poems in here focus on themes that a typical teenager will obsess over, and written in a way that a teenager would fine really profound.
I think there are a lot of poems in here with some really good ideas, and there are some poems in here I really really like, but to be honest Graves seems like such a throwback to gentle, cleanly-read, Edwardian poetry ... or the poetry of the Fireside Poets like Longfellow. When people who don't like poetry think about poetry, Graves is probably the sort of poet they have in mind. A lot of these poems seem curiously weak, with lines added apparently to fit a rhyme, or words repeated - or just placed in the poem to make the meter fit, regardless of how pretentious or artificial it sounds. At his worst, Graves is both. At his best, yeah, I'd say he's pretty good.
While reading this book I've been reading up about Grave's career as a poet. This edition of his 'Collected Poems' (which you would assume is complete, as 'collected poems' often pretty much means) does not have many of the poems readers of Graves' poetry love or think is his best, most synonymous work. Seriously, look up the reason why, and the effect Laura Riding had on Graves' conception of himself as a poet - some guys would do anything for love I guess.
This book made me think about the difference between a good poet and a great poet. I think, generally speaking, a great poet has a philosophical worldview every poem they write has in some form - and will touch on eternal themes. A good poet doesn't.
This is not because I think this book is bad, honestly I don't. But I don't think it's good. So let's just get this out of the way: is this book worth reading? YES! Is Robert Graves a good poet? NO! Honestly, I think if I read this book when I was in highschool, Graves would have been my favourite poet. But I'm not a teenager anymore, I need something more than this. Or at least, something different to this. A lot of Grave's poems in here focus on themes that a typical teenager will obsess over, and written in a way that a teenager would fine really profound.
I think there are a lot of poems in here with some really good ideas, and there are some poems in here I really really like, but to be honest Graves seems like such a throwback to gentle, cleanly-read, Edwardian poetry ... or the poetry of the Fireside Poets like Longfellow. When people who don't like poetry think about poetry, Graves is probably the sort of poet they have in mind. A lot of these poems seem curiously weak, with lines added apparently to fit a rhyme, or words repeated - or just placed in the poem to make the meter fit, regardless of how pretentious or artificial it sounds. At his worst, Graves is both. At his best, yeah, I'd say he's pretty good.
While reading this book I've been reading up about Grave's career as a poet. This edition of his 'Collected Poems' (which you would assume is complete, as 'collected poems' often pretty much means) does not have many of the poems readers of Graves' poetry love or think is his best, most synonymous work. Seriously, look up the reason why, and the effect Laura Riding had on Graves' conception of himself as a poet - some guys would do anything for love I guess.
This book made me think about the difference between a good poet and a great poet. I think, generally speaking, a great poet has a philosophical worldview every poem they write has in some form - and will touch on eternal themes. A good poet doesn't.
August 21, 2009
OK, I admit it: I really like these poems. Some of them are about Love, while others, I guess, are more about Lurve, but I have a hard time saying which are which. What do you think? Here are three to start you off.
The Wreath
A bitter year it was. What woman ever
Cared for me so, yet so ill-used me,
Came in so close and drew so far away,
So much promised and performed so little,
So murderously her own love dared betray?
Since I can never be clear out of your debt,
Queen of ingratitude, to my dying day,
You shall be punished with a deathless crown
For your dark head, resist it how you may.
Untitled
Twined together and, as is customary,
For words of rapture groping, they
'Never such love,' swore, 'ever before was!'
Contrast with all loves that had failed or staled
Registered their own as love indeed.
And was this not to blab idly
The heart's fated inconstancy?
Better in love to seal the love-sure lips,
For truly love was before words were,
And no word given, no word broken.
When the name 'love' is uttered
(Love, the near-honourable malady
With which in greed and haste they
Each other do infect and curse)
Or, worse, is written down...
Wise after the event, by love withered,
A 'never more!' most frantically
Sorrow and shame would proclaim
Such as, they'd swear, never before were:
True lovers even in this.
Counting the beats
You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.
Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?
Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
The Wreath
A bitter year it was. What woman ever
Cared for me so, yet so ill-used me,
Came in so close and drew so far away,
So much promised and performed so little,
So murderously her own love dared betray?
Since I can never be clear out of your debt,
Queen of ingratitude, to my dying day,
You shall be punished with a deathless crown
For your dark head, resist it how you may.
Untitled
Twined together and, as is customary,
For words of rapture groping, they
'Never such love,' swore, 'ever before was!'
Contrast with all loves that had failed or staled
Registered their own as love indeed.
And was this not to blab idly
The heart's fated inconstancy?
Better in love to seal the love-sure lips,
For truly love was before words were,
And no word given, no word broken.
When the name 'love' is uttered
(Love, the near-honourable malady
With which in greed and haste they
Each other do infect and curse)
Or, worse, is written down...
Wise after the event, by love withered,
A 'never more!' most frantically
Sorrow and shame would proclaim
Such as, they'd swear, never before were:
True lovers even in this.
Counting the beats
You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.
Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?
Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
August 5, 2009
I picked this up in my used bookstore of choice. I adored 'The White Goddess' in college so I wondered about Grave’s own poetry. It seems quite formal and antiquated (well, why wouldn’t it considering the themes of his life’s work). They are readable and charming in a non-profound way. I think the poems have reminded me it is time to re-read ‘I Claudius.’ I can’t explain this, but it is the kind of poetry I might take camping. Go figure.
“I knew an old man at a Fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To clamber on a cider cask
And cry to all the yokels there:—
“Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
“Whistle, and Love will come to you,
Hiss, and he fades without a word,
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
Speak, he retells what he has heard.
“Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.”
The old man’s voice was sweet yet loud
And this shows what a man was he,
He’d scatter apples to the crowd
And give great draughts of cider, free.”
“I knew an old man at a Fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To clamber on a cider cask
And cry to all the yokels there:—
“Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
“Whistle, and Love will come to you,
Hiss, and he fades without a word,
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
Speak, he retells what he has heard.
“Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.”
The old man’s voice was sweet yet loud
And this shows what a man was he,
He’d scatter apples to the crowd
And give great draughts of cider, free.”
April 6, 2009
The date of reading is an approximation of "some time around college.") I'm not much one for sitting down and reading poems silently, much preferring oral recitation, preferably with other. Consequently, I like the classic style, the poetry that scans with rhymed meter, poetry along the lines of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Yeats, etc.
Being such a Graves fan, I had to pick this up and I did read it . . . silently but for an occasional private mouthing of particularly good lines. None of it was memorable like the aforementioned Greats are, but all of it was competent, "good poetry" by my narrow definition.
Being such a Graves fan, I had to pick this up and I did read it . . . silently but for an occasional private mouthing of particularly good lines. None of it was memorable like the aforementioned Greats are, but all of it was competent, "good poetry" by my narrow definition.
April 2, 2008
My favorite poet of all time; I am always surprised when no one knows of him.
November 29, 2008
sentimental favorite! Graves did so like women, he sees them like no one else.
December 5, 2008
Weird, obstinate, romantic, colourful, wise. With unexpected peaks.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews