Margaret Cavendish

by Margaret Cavendish, Michael Robbins (Editor)

An eclectic collection of poetry by one of 17th century England’s boldest, smartest, and independent women.

Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a groundbreaking writer—a utopian visionary, a scientist, a science-fiction pioneer. She moved in philosophical circles that included Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes, and she produced startlingly modern poems unlike anything published in the seventeenth century or since, at once scientific and visionary, full of feminist passion and deep sympathy with the nonhuman world. In recent years, Cavendish has found many new admirers, and this selection of her verse by Michael Robbins is an ideal introduction to her singular poetic world.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

Published April 16, 2019

About the author

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was the youngest child of a wealthy Essex family. At the age of 20 she became Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria and traveled with her into Persian exile in 1644. There she married William Cavendish, Marquis (later Duke) of Newcastle.

Between 1653 and 1668 she published many books on a wide variety of subjects, including many stories that are now regarded as some of the earliest examples of science fiction.

Reviews

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between 2.5 and 3 stars.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of Fishes

Who knows, but Fishes which swim in the Sea,
Can give a Reason, why so Salt it be?
And how it Ebbs and Flows, perchance they can
Give Reasons, for which never yet could Man.

Nature's Cook

Death is the cook of Nature; and we find
Meat dressèd several ways to please her mind.
Some meats she roasts with fevers, burning hot,
And some she boils with dropsies in a pot.
Some for jelly consuming by degrees,
And some with ulcers, gravy out to squeeze.
Some flesh as sage she stuffs with gouts, and pains,
Others for tender meat hangs up in chains.
Some in the sea she pickles up to keep,
Others, as brawn is soused, those in wine steep.
Some with the pox, chops flesh, and bones so small,
Of which she makes a French fricasse withal.
Some on gridirons of calentures is broiled,
And some is trodden on, and so quite spoiled.
But those are baked, when smothered they do die,
By hectic fevers some meat she doth fry.
In sweat sometimes she stews with savoury smell,
A hodge-podge of diseases tasteth well.
Brains dressed with apoplexy to Nature's wish,
Or swims with sauce of megrims in a dish.
And tongues she dries with smoke from stomachs ill,
Which as the second course she sends up still.
Then Death cuts throats, for blood-puddings to make,
And puts them in the guts, which colics rack.
Some hunted are by Death, for deer that's red.
Or stall-fed oxen, knockèd on the head.
Some for bacon by Death are singed, or scalt,
Then powdered up with phlegm, and rheum that's salt.

A World in an Earring

An earring round may well a zodiac be,
Wherein a sun goes round, which we don’t see;
And planets seven about that sun may move,
And he stand still, as learnèd men would prove;
And fixed stars like twinkling diamonds, placed
About this earring, which a world is, vast.
That same which doth the earring hold, the hole,
Is that we call the North and Southern Pole;
There nipping frosts may be, and winters cold,
Yet never on the lady’s ear take hold.
And lightning, thunder, and great winds may blow
Within this earring, yet the ear not know.
Fish there may swim in seas, which ebb and flow,
And islands be, wherein do spices grow;
There crystal rocks hang dangling at each ear,
And golden mines as jewels may they wear.
There earthquakes be, which mountains vast down fling,
And yet ne’er stir the lady’s ear, nor ring.
There meadows be, and pastures fresh and green,
And cattle feed, and yet be never seen,
And gardens fresh, and birds which sweetly sing,
Although we hear them not in an earring.
There night and day, and heat and cold, and so
May life and death, and young and old still grow.
Thus youth may spring, and several ages die;
Great plagues may be, and no infections nigh.
There cities be, and stately houses built,
Their inside gay, and finely may be gilt.
There churches be, wherein priests teach and sing,
And steeples too, yet hear the bells not ring.
From thence may pious tears to Heaven run,
And yet the ear not know which way they’re gone.
There markets be, where things are bought and sold,
Though th’ear knows not the price their markets hold.
There governors do rule, and kings do reign,
And battles fought, where many may be slain.
And all within the compass of this ring,
Whence they no tidings to the wearer bring.
Within the ring, wise counsellors may sit,
And yet the ear not one wise word may get.
There may be dancing all night at a ball,
And yet the ear be not disturbed at all.
There rivals duels fight, where some are slain;
There lovers mourn, yet hear them not complain.
And Death may dig a lover’s grave: thus were
A lover dead in a fair lady’s ear.
But when the ring is broke, the world is done;
Then lovers they into Elysium run.

[AB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best thing to come out of uni so far - Margaret Cavendish.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But when the Ring is broke, the World is done, / Then Lovers they into Elysium run.” I’ve loved Margaret Cavendish for years, ever since I read ‘A World in an Earring’ in one of my university interviews over eight (!) years ago, and this selection of her poems, edited by Michael Robbins for The New York Review of Books, and derived from Cavendish’s bold, historic Poems and Fancies, first published in 1653, when Cavendish was in exile, provides an ideal range of her poetic work. While I’d read her proto-sci-fi-novel The Blazing World, some of her dramatic writings, and the 2017 novel Margaret The First, by Danielle Dutton, I’d never yet gone back to read more of her poetry. Her work is predictable yet strange — with John Donne in ‘Of Light and Sound’, the water cycle in ‘The Motion of the Blood’, Sir Francis Drake’s travels, the works of Virgil and Homer, animal suffering in ‘The Hunting of the Hare’ + ‘The Hunting of the Stag’. Across dialogues philosophical/metaphysical, poems about atom, titles like ‘The Circle of the Brain Cannot Be Squared’, Cavendish displays the fanatical scientific interest that made her seem so mad and mysterious, in particular to her male contemporaries. Though her poems are structurally formulaic, she knows this, and hopes her ideas might win out: “Most of our Modern Writers nowadays, / Consider not the Fancy, but the Phrase”, she writes in the one poem not solely formed of rhyming couplets.

[Oakley C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely, positively unbearable but somewhat redeeming due to sheer novelty. First, the end rhyme is so explicit and totalitarian that every single line is in some way predictable and Cavendish cannot once being herself to engage in even the modest blank verse. Additionally, the absurd mispronunciations one must utilize so that EVERY FINAL WORD CAN RHYME is risible but not very charming. Two, there is absolutely no imagery or sense of TRUE linguistic play. Every word is chosen for throughly didactic or Cartesian reasons. The work is also blandly “enlightened” to the point that the volume begins with a sort of “demiurgic ode” and concludes with the most cloying elegy imaginable. Nature is yet isn’t a deity, man is yet isn’t evil, everything is made up of atoms yet everything still has purpose, blah blah blah. Three, the novelty of the volume centers around the biography of the author and the monomaniacal thematic and stylistic concerns. But the writing in no way transcends its time. Read William Blake instead.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm weird this way, but didactic, allegorical poetry devoted to explaining and wondering about the sciences holds little appeal for me, despite the biographical information that makes Cavendish an interesting person to know about. If the label "mid-17th-century proto-science fiction poetry" catches your fancy, be warned that the execution of such poetry quickly (and repeatedly) makes its point, followed by narcolepsy. I've never been a fan of poetry along the lines of "dialogue of the X and the Y," and this book is rife with samples—it's a stilted artifice I can't get over the way I can the stilted artifices of other art forms.

[Michael Landes]

Some of these were really good, especially the hunting poems I would say. But overall not a lot jumped out at me about this selection. The editor seemed a bit hostile to her and her work in the introduction, pointing out bad lines, which was really odd. And because it’s selections from a book she compiled, there are clear editorial choices she made that are kind of lost. Last I thought it was weird that they kept the italics as in the original. In my understanding that’s not really the practice, and it makes the poems read more staid and dated. I would have rather not had them.