Selected Poems: In Five Sets

by Laura Riding, Laura (Riding) Jackson (Preface)

Selected In Five Sets includes sixty-one poems personally selected and arranged by the author in 1970. Drawn from her Collected Poems of 1938, this is a remarkable distillation of Laura Riding’s poetic achievement. The extraordinary preface is perhaps Laura (Riding) Jackson’s most succinct explanation of her renunciation of the writing of poetry, and is a provocative commentary on the contemporary poetry scene.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Laura (Riding) Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.

1923-1926 as Laura Riding Gottschalk
1927-1939 as Laura Riding
1963-1991 as Laura (Riding) Jackson

She also published under the pseudonym Madeleine Vara.

Reviews

[Tracy Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laura Riding stopped writing poetry in 1938, nor would she allow her work to appear in anthologies. In the preface to this selection, she explains why. As she unapologetically puts it: ‘no poet before me has gone to the very breaking point.’ It seems like a bold claim but one must read her work to know the truth of it. To continue writing would have raised the question of consistency. If I understand correctly, in Riding’s view, one may be a poet who writes with formal consistency on temporal subjects such as place, conflict, family, identity, growing up, growing old and so on. Then there is what Riding calls 'creed' or the ability of poetry to express 'nothing less complex than the truth.' What she sought to do was test the possibilities of both. The fact that Riding achieves formal consistency, as well as bending language into ‘a way of speaking beyond the ordinary’ is what makes her an extraordinary poet.

If ever I had the inclination to do a PhD, it would be on Riding’s work. Sometimes, it is like wandering through a labyrinth, or unpacking a riddle. Sequences of ideas are often built up through peculiar syntax and grammatical inversions that introduce concepts (like the Monoton in 'The Quids'), giving words new meaning and emphasis. The reader must focus, follow what often seems like a strange, humorous and hopeless logic in order to obtain the reward. Riding plays with perspective; it is not unusual to find first and third person in the same poem, an eye within a larger eye looking simultaneously inwards and outwards. With unerring religiosity, Riding brings each poem to a sublime point.

I do not read prefaces until I have reached the end of the book. I therefore experienced Riding’s work without any preconception of her theories. An experience is the best way to put it. I am not sure exactly where or how the connection happens. It is like an initiation, a ritual, a kind of bringing into awareness for which the writer and reader must work together. There is the feeling of brushing against the unknowable, of coming into contact with something that is ourselves and not ourselves. Through the medium of language, Riding unveils a brief glimpse of a larger metaphysical truth. How she does this is testament to her mastery as a poet, her skill as a magician.

Like many, I found her poems difficult at first. Perhaps one reaches a place in life where you become receptive, but once you get it, you get it! In this collection, certain themes stand out. The tension between silence and expression, for example, in 'The Rugged Black of Anger', 'By Crude Rotation', and 'from Disclaimer of Person'. For the most part, she veers away from historical, personal or literary references, with the exceptions of 'from Memories of Mortalities' about her father and childhood, and 'from In Nineteen-Twenty-Seven' with its oblique reference to her relationship with Robert Graves (the infamous jumping out the window incident). I am not one for being able to recite extracts, but certain lines have lodged in my mind: ‘I am beset with reasonableness, / swallow much that I know to be grass,’ and ‘And what there is to do / Let me do somewhat crookedly, / Lest I speak too plain and everlasting / For a weather-vane of understanding.’ One senses in Riding a woman who knows her power, and also the burden of not having had it met. Other highlights for me were the opening poem ‘The Troubles of a Book’ and her excellent prose poem ‘Poet: A Lying Word’ with its rhythmic repetitive phrases: ‘It is a false wall, a poet: it is a lying word. It is a wall that closes and does not.’ Riding invents characters, as in comic creation myth ‘The Quids’ and in ‘Lucrece and Nara’ with its haunting idea of stayness, of yearning to recognise the other beyond time (I hesitate to use the word, afterlife). This poem made me cry when I first read it.

Some of her lines read like axioms: ‘Reason’s loud with nonsense / And nonsense soft with truth’ (from Memories of Mortalities) and ‘What is not clear is what is clear’ (Cure of Ignorance) and the humorous ‘Let the birds with the birds chirp of birds that chirp’ (from The Talking World), and ‘If there are heroes anywhere / Unarm them quickly and give them / Medals and fine burials / And history to look back on / As weathermen point with pride to rain' (from Echoes). I love her use of weathermen and weathervanes as a sort of deaf masculinity.

In short, Laura Riding’s poems are not conventional or easy, but they are well worth the effort. I can say without reservation that I have found my favourite poet.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

Laura's very difficult to talk about since there's this baggage of loudly quitting writing in the thirties & not allowing the reprinting of her work thereafter. She claimed she'd reached the edge, that she'd achieved the limits of the poetic & that poetry wasn't a worthwhile pursuit when Truth is flagged up. I think this is a bit silly - I think she believes it & TRUTH is there in this aletheia-worshipvision.. It doesn't hold any water to me. I also think you should try something else if you're writing poetry because you've the idea it'll somehow land you on TRUTH. You need a big platonist bonk on the head. Not to diagnose too hard, but I think Laura's noticed one of the moreorless core things that poets noticed in the 20thc, only she's thrown up her hands. To me the most interesting! work is poems that have already accepted this & work into it. I don't know it's a WHOLE baggage baggage

the poems?! she recognises weaker poems from her earlier work. Which they are, a lot of those are cluttered & GIVE early work, but they shape up quickly and she writes brilliantly by halfway through this. There's a kind of wisdomlit to this, pre-TSE 4Qs. Also Marianne Moore is huge here & I really like that .... NOTHING SO FAR is an incred poem. Poet: A Lying Word is very good but I feel ? a little polemic by then. HM . ANWYAY a fascinating! person what a life & one to remember,,,, I'm keeping these

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite poems from the First Set...

I took another day,
I moved to another city,
I opened a new door to me.
Then again a last night came.
My bed said: 'To sleep and back again?'
I said: 'This time go forward.'

Arriving, arriving, not yet, not yet,
Yet yet arriving, till I am met.
For what would be her disappointment
Coming late ('She did not wait').
I wait. And meet my mother.
Such is accident.
She smiles: long afterwards.
I sulk: long before.
I grow to six.
At six little girls in love with fathers.
He lifts me up.
See. Is this Me?
In all the different ways till twenty.
At twenty I say She.
Her face is like a flower.
In a city we have no flower-names, forgive me.
But flower-names not necessary
To diary of identity.
- Postponement of Self, pg. 20


Do not deny,
Do not deny, thing out of thing.
Do not deny in the new vanity
The old, original dust.

From what grave, what past of flesh and bone
Dreaming, dreaming I lie
Under the fortunate curse,
Bewitched, alive, forgetting the first stuff . . .
Death does not give a moment to remember in

Lest, like a statue's too transmuted stone,
I grain by grain recall the original dust
And, looking down a stair of memory, keep saying:
This was never I.
- Incarnations, pg. 22


Since learning all in such a tremble last night -
Not with my eyes adroit in the dark,
But with my fingers hard with fright,
A stretch to touch a phantom, closing on myself -
I have been smiling.
*
It was the beginning of time
When self hood first stood up in the slime.
It was the beginning of pain
When an angel spoke and was quiet again.
*
If there are heroes anywhere
Unarm them quickly and give them
Medals and fine burials
And history to look back on
As weathermen point with pride to rain.
*
Intelligence in ladies and gentlemen
And their children
Draws a broad square of knowledge
With their house walls.
But four corners to contain a square
Yield to an utmost circle -
The garden of the perpendicular is a sphere.
*
'I shall mend it,' I say,
Whenever something breaks,
'By tying the beginning to the end.'
Then with my hands washed clean
And fingers piano-playing
And arms bare to go elbow-in,
I come to an empty table always.
The broken pieces do not wait
On rolling up of sleeves.
I come in late always
Saying, 'I shall mend it.'
*
Gently down the incline of the mind
Speeds the flower, the leaf, the time -
All but the fierce name of the plant,
Imperishable matronymic of a species.
*
The poppy edifices of sleep,
The monotonous musings of night-breath,
The liquid featureless interior faces,
The shallow terrors, waking never far.
*
Love at a sickbed is a long way
And an untastable thing.
It hangs like a sickroom picture
And wears like another's ring.
Then the guarded yawn of pain snaps,
The immeasurable areas of distress
. . . . . . collapse . . .
*
. . . cheated history -
Which stealing now has only then
And stealing us has only them.
*
'Worthy of a jewel,' they say of beauty,
Uncertain what is beauty
And what the precious thing.
*
When a dog lying on the flagstones
Gazes into the sea of spring,
The surface of instruction
Does not ripple once:
He watches it too well.
*
Love is very everything, like fire:
Many things burning,
But only one combustion.
*
Let us seem to speak
Or they will think us dead, revive us.
Nod brightly, Hour.
Rescue us from rescue.
*
What a tattle-tattle we.
And what a rattle-rattle me.
What a rattle-tattle-tattle-rattle we-me.
What a rattle-tattle.
What a tattle-rattle.
What a we.
What a me.
What a what a
What a
What
- from Echoes, pg. 29-31

From the Second Set...

What is to start?
It is to have feet to start with.
What is to end?
It is to have nothing to start again with,
And not to wish.

What is to see?
It is to know in part.
What is to speak?
It is to add part to part
And make a whole
Of much or little.
What is to whisper?
It is to make soft
The greed of speaking faster
Than is substance for.
What is to cry out?
It is to make gigantic
Where speaking cannot last long.
What is to be?
It is to bear a name.
What is to die?
It is to be name only.
And what is to be born?
It is to choose the enemy self
To learn impossibility from.
And what is to have hope?
Is it to choose a god weaker than self,
And pray for compliments?

What is to ask?
It is to find an answer.
What is to answer?
Is it to find a question?
- As Many Questions as Answers, pg. 34-35


Meeting on the way to the same there,
The tired ones talk and make a here,
And further is then where, and where?
*
Of such mixed intent
Places in time spring up,
And truth is anybody's argument
Who can use words untruthfully enough
To build eternity inside his own short mouth.
*
Great manyness there is
Before all becomes an all.
Uncertainty and criticism
Oppose to the unified eventual
A world of disagreement
In which every contradictory opinion
Is for to-day an 'I' wearing a crown
Of weeds plucked from the tip of the tongue.
*
And talk in talk like time in time vanishes.
Ringing changes on dumb supposition,
Conversation succeeds conversation,
Until there's nothing left to talk about
Except truth, the perennial monologue,
And no talker to dispute it but itself.
*
Let there be talk and let there be no talk.
Let the birds with the birds chirp of birds that chirp.
Let the wearers of coats with the wearers of coats
Speak the wisdom of coats with the wearer of coats
Speak the wisdom of coats, and with the coatmakers.
Let he uses of words prevail over words.
Let there be many ways of not lying
And no ways of truth-telling.
Let there be no wrong because no right.
*
And more of talk I cannot talk,
Except I talk, speak mingled.
And you would then attend,
Nor complain that I speak solitary.
But complain no more.
Look, I am gone from you,
From your immunity to death and listening.
May you for ever not know nor weather cease
Wherein to die in your own colours,
With other banners flying than the black.
May you not lose the sun too soon -
Blindness and noise by which you stand
Between yourselves and yourselves.
May you not know how never more to were
Than such and such mistalking,
O talking world that says and forgets.
- from The Talking World, pg. 40-41

From the Third Set...

Pain is impossible to describe
Pain is the impossibility of describing
Describing what is impossible to describe
Which must be a thing beyond description
Beyond description not to be known
Beyond knowing but not mystery
Not mystery bu pain now plain but pain
But pain beyond but here beyond
- Beyond, pg. 49


Whole is by breaking and by mending.
The body is a day of ruin,
The mind, a moment of repair.
A day is not a day of mind
Until all lifetime is repaired despair.

To break, to day-long die,
To be not yet nor yet
Until dreaming is of having been,
Until dreaming is of having dreamed -

How in those days - how fast -
How fast we seemed to dream -
How fast we talked - how lost -
How lost the words until -
Until the pen ran down
To this awakened not forgetting.

But in those days always
How forgotten - and to say over -
To say now and now -
Or in a letter to say over soon -

Do you remember now, John,
Our suburban conversation once of bees?
Nearly at breakfast we of bees,
A retired talk or walk
Among the outskirts of profundity?
Slowly of honeycombs and swarms
And angry queens we?

But slowly bees is briefest dozing.
Between the country and the city,
Between sound sleep and waking,
More gives to pause and buzz than bees
A book about - and by -
Nor need tastes differ bu to pause.

Do you remember now, John,
Do you remember my friend John
Who had a lordly not-to-hurry eye,
A very previous eye
In an advanced socket?

Yes, I remember.
And I remember my friend Norman,
Though by frugality of will
He shall arrive punctually to-morrow
When even the cinematograph of time
Has ceased to advertise to-day -
Though I remember.

Yes, she remembers all that seemed,
All that was like enough to now
To make a then as actual as then,
To make a now that succeeds only
By a more close resemblance to itself.
- Autobiography of the Present, pg. 57-59

From the Fourth Set...

The dogs still bark,
And something is not clear.
From ignorance dogs barked always.

How to enlighten them?
There are no dogs now -
They do but bark.

What is not clear is what is clear.
Dogs have the scent,
Yet nothing runs like prey.

Shall we seem to disappear
Until the dogs stop barking?
There is no other way to explain.
- Cure of Ignorance, pg. 62


With the face goes a mirror
As with the mind a world.
Likeness tells the doubting eye
That strangeness is not strange.
At an early hour and knowledge
Identity not yet familiar
Looks back upon itself from later,
And seems itself.

To-day sees now.
With reality-to-be goes time.
With the mind goes a world.
With the heart goes a weather.
With the face goes a mirror.
As with the body a fear.
Young self goes staring to the wall
Where dumb futurity speaks calm,
And between then and then
Forebeing grows of age.

The mirror mixes with the eye.
Soon will it be the very eye.
Soon will the eye that was
The very mirror be.
Death, the final image, will shine
Transparently not otherwise
Than as the dark sun described
With such faint brightness.
- With the Face, pg. 70

From the Fifth Set...

What may be born of the anxious union
Between perplexed man and irresolute woman
Is only, by this fertile speculation,
The either animal whose destiny
Differs from hers or his
By only the so many forepledged years
Of advance in irresolution or perplexity.

Yet the new girl more shines with herself,
And the latest boy has a light in his head.
Not unlikely they will speak to each other
In a peculiar way and forget nature,
Then to fall quiet like a house no more haunted.
And in such silence may enough centuries fade
For all the loud births to be eloquently unmade.
- On a New Generation, pg. 78


The mystery wherein we
Accustomed grew as to the dark
Has now been seen enough -
I have seen, you have seen.
*
It seems not now distressful
Or yet too much delighted in.
It was a mystery endured
Until a fuller sense befall.
*
The fuller sense and cause became
That old and older mystery
As you more unremembered
That older sense you never knew.
*
We have now seen, already seen,
Through folded clouds and folded meaning
The blindness and the evilness
That so have we been wrapped.
*
You have pretended to be seeing.
I have pretended that you saw.
So came we by such eyes -
And within mystery to have language.

The cause was that a way lacked.
It seemed a wayless world like no world.
You made a way and a world
Which no way was, nor any world.
*
There was no sight to see.
That which is to be seen is no sight.
You made it a sight to see.
It is no sight, and this was the cause.

Now, having seen, let our eyes close
And a dark blessing pass among us -
A quick-slow blessing to have seen
And said and done no worse or better.

And slowly wait - slowly it happened
A way and a world to be made,
And to seem the way and the world
Which must be so if aught is.
*
We shall be wholly joined.
We were then bu a patched crowd.
We stood outside us then
Like friendship in vague streets.

And I stood with you,
Against that, soon or sooner,
A blessing and a parting must
Send home from home.

Against this parting so to meet
I stood with you, and did, and said.
Here wholly shall we love and meet
And be now, and I least.

A blessing on us all, on our last folly,
That we part and give blessing.
Yet a folly to be done
A greater one to spare.
*
For in no wise shall it be
As it is, as it has been.
A blessing on us all,
That we shall in no wise be as we were.
- from Benedictory, pg. 84-86

[leni swagger · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I took another day,
I moved to another city,
I opened a new door to me.
Then again a last night came.
My bed said: "To sleep and back again?"
I said: 'This time go forward.'”

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars