The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine

by Kathleen Raine

In compiling her Collected Poems, Kathleen Raine was uniquely placed to look back on more than six decades of her poetry and to decide the canon by which she wished to be judged and remembered. From its first appearance her poetry has been recognised as possessing a rare imaginative integrity, remaining faithful to a formal purity of voice, as well as to an imagery whose resonances are at once her own voice yet speak as if from the heart of the human condition itself. These are poems of wonder, of distillation and, ultimately, of affirmation.

This definitive collection demonstrates a lifetime's commitment to the learning of the imagination, and, since original publication in 2000, has confirmed Raine's reputation as a poet who has unfailingly given voice to a vision of life in which the temporal, in all its modes and places, is imbued with the numinous and the eternal.

Genres: Poetry

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Kathleen Jessie Raine CBE was an English poet, critic and scholar, writing in particular on William Blake, W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy.

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had the pleasure of doling these poems out to myself as though they were exquisite truffles. Raine's spiritually infused personal yet transcendent poetry is a delight. Following the poet on her life's journey both invites reflection on one's own spiritual journey and meditation and offers glimpses across the distance at Kathleen Raine. A marvelous collection to dip into repeatedly, this one will go on my reread shelf at home.

[Richard Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathleen Raine wrote on William Blake and W B Yeats, married two men, had two children, and held to her death an unrequited passion for the homosexual Gavin Maxwell. Perhaps through frustration she cursed him, lost his pet otter, and, she believed, caused him to die of cancer. She grew up in Northumberland, but lived mostly in Cambridge, London, and the Lake District, despite writing: "In Northumberland I knew myself in my own place; and I never 'adjusted' myself to any other or forgot what I had so briefly but clearly seen and understood and experienced."

I knew none of this when I read her Collected Poems. Indeed, I had never heard of her until I read two poems by her that spoke very directly to me in Philip Larkin’s Oxford Book of English 20th Century Verse. Neither of the two poems I read in Larkin’s collection was included by Raine in her Collected Poems, and perhaps she (like most people) was not the best judge of her own work.

Those two poems were enough to prompt me to track down a copy of her Collected Poems (which is not in print), and I’m glad I did. I’ve read it right through, and some of the poems struck right to my heart. Others I could barely follow. She’s a poet in the lyrical tradition of Shelley and Yeats, and many of her poems reminded me of those of Dylan Thomas, a near contemporary.

I learnt all that is in the first paragraph of this note from Wikipedia after reading her poems, but now I realise that I saw her life in her poems. What else could she write about?

When I have a moment I will copy out the many lines that appealed to me and place them on my blog.

[Eden Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, austere, and vatic, but at the same time full of sadness and unrequited love, Kathleen Raine's poetry is unlike anything else I've ever read. In the introduction to this book Raine says that all her poems are really different versions of the same poem. I think this is because all her poems aim to use verse and language as a catalyst for a kind of mystical awakening, to show you a vision of the world of ideals, to give you an intimation of what it might be like to die. This kind of poetry is certainly not for everyone. If you dislike thinking about death, or if you have no feeling for mysticism and occultism, I doubt you'll get much out of this book (The second of these ideas cuts both ways - I wouldn't recommend Raine's collected poems to anyone who devoutly follows a single religion, just as I wouldn't recommend them to a rigid secularist). In an autobiographical essay Raine said she has tried to speak "from solitude to solitude." I have never felt at home here, always felt lost, and Raine's poetry is precious to me because it shows me a way to dream of another world.

I want to try and clarify the point about the aim of these poems, and I think the best way to do that is by giving a sketch of Raine's aesthetic philosophy. The philosophy underneath these poems can crudely be described as a mix between Plato's theory of forms and William Blake's deification of imagination. Like Plato, Raine believed that the sensible world is a dim shadow of a divine world of pure ideas. But unlike Plato, whose method for accessing the divine involved discursive argument and rational intellectual contemplation, Raine follows Blake in identifying imagination as the mystical faculty. In dreams, visions, and mental images, echoes of the other perfect world resound. Hence the role of poetry as a catalyst of mystical experience.

Fans of Kathleen Raine may be interested to know that there are many poems that didn't make it into the Collected Poems, and that many others are substantially different in the Collected Poems from their first publication. It seems like Raine consciously tried to banish Christian symbolism from her poems, and I am not sure if this makes them better. I hope Raine draws some more scholarly attention so that these issues can be examined in a systematic way. La Recherche de l'Absolu, maybe her most impetuous, violent, and formally experimental poem, is unfortunately missing from the Collected Poems. Here is an excerpt from it (Full poem is available on Poetry foundation):

Here it whines and in long streams tears the sky
Here rushing roaring deafening approaches passes recedes
Here in thud thud thud of unlife batters
Destroy destroy long past killing, past that end
Past past that dear frail life
That has a voice to howl, whose scream is anguish,
Whose roar is pain is terror is rage
Is grief, and under the battering blows is dead
Heart-beat, for oh the sacred heart is stopped.
The Word's last shattering sound before the nothing
Means nothing, tells nothing.

[Ameythist Moreland · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Do I Imagine Reality
Or does the real imagine me?
Unimaginable imaginer
What part does the imagined play?”

[Gabriel Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The earlier poems are lyrical, joyous marvels. The 50s and 60s are drier, rooted in metaphysics and dogma (though constantly ceding centre stage to the natural world and immanent forces behind it). But the crown is a long, deeply felt, tragic sequence of 130 short poems where she works through the death of Gavin Maxwell and her unrequited life-long passion for him. Heartbreaking and beautiful.

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I noticed that my copy had been signed at some point by the author, who would by then have been over 90. Favourites: "Spell of Creation", and "Message from Home".

[malo]

pas ouf

[Dug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elle aime pas trop les gens. Les coquillages c'est fascinant.

[Richard Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may have read and enjoyed the same book that I read two years ago and completely forgotten. A sign? Anyway, a blog:

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...

[Jo]

some of these are pure magic

[Autumn Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical and thought provoking.