The Fire of Joy: Roughly Eighty Poems to Get By Heart and Say Aloud

by Clive James

Essentially, this is Clive James' desert island a selection of his favourite verse and a personal commentary on each.

The Fire of Joy was the final book Clive James completed before his death in 2019. It takes its title from the French expression Feu de Joie, which refers to a military celebration when all the riflemen of a regiment fire one shot after another in a wave of continuous it is a reminder that the regiment’s collective power relies on the individual, and vice versa.

In this book, James has chosen a succession of English poems, exploding in sequence from Chaucer to the present day; they tell the story of someone writing something wonderful, and someone else coming along, reading it, and feeling impelled to write something even more wonderful. After a lifetime, these are the poems James found so good that he remembered them despite himself. In offering them to you, the main purpose of this book is to provide ammunition that will satisfy your urge to discover, learn and declaim verse.

As well as his selection of poems, James offers a commentary on whether this is a biographical, historical or critical introduction to the poem, or a more personal anecdote about the role a particular poem has played in James’s life, these mini essays provide the joy of James’s enthusiasm and the benefit of his knowledge. Full of the flashing fires of poems you will not be able to forget, this book will ignite your passion and leave you with a contagious crackle rattling in your ears.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literature, Anthologies, Essays

Paperback

First published October 1, 2020

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

An expatriate Australian broadcast personality and author of cultural criticism, memoir, fiction, travelogue and poetry. Translator of Dante.

Reviews

[Alex Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this - more for Clive James commentary on each poem than for the poems themselves. I enjoyed no more than 5 of the 80 poems on offer. Most seem like pretentious twaddle if I am honest. Think this is my problem - I read this to try and 'get' poetry. It looks like a lost cause. But at least I tried and it was fun doing so.

[Malvina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a Clive James fan for years, first being introduced through the first of his autobiographies 'Unreliable Memoirs' via a book club (for which I've forever been thankful). His body of work is immense, his intellect and insights unstoppable, his humour a delight. It is a gift to read this book, his last before he died 11 months ago at the age of 80 years. To celebrate his age, the book showcases eighty of his favourite poems, plus a few others just because he can, and doesn't want them forgotten. From his cracking introduction (where he explains the significance of the title) you know you're in for a treat. Even reading his 'Rules On Reading Aloud' is rather marvellous. And then the poems begin...

They're mostly printed in entirety, apart from some excerpts from very lengthy poems. They are listed chronologically, from an 'Anonymous' poem from ??, and 'They Flee From Me' by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1535), to the final 'The Red Sea' by Stephen Edgar (2008) - and a few riotous others in the Postcript. Each poem is followed by a short commentary, and that is the utter delight of the book.

Clive James has the gift of cutting through language and potential inaccessibility (or not) in poetry, and making it all a thing of joy - 'the fire of joy', in actuality, as his title proclaims.

I think my four favourite comments were as follows:

1. On Christina Rosetti's poem 'Remember': 'The line "Yet if you should forget me for a while" really means "forget me and my ghost will return to make a shambles of your sock drawer"...'
2. On Emily Dickinson: 'Her collected works are a bowl of beads...Shadows still hold their breath when she speaks.'
3. On Galway Kinnell (who I confess I've never heard of) and his poem 'The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World': 'All of his word pictures, throughout the poem, flare with that magnesium intensity.'
4. On Seamus Heaney and his poem 'Shore Woman': 'The only possible answer to the question "How did he think of that?" was "Because he's him."'

This is a book to keep on the shelf and dip into again and again. It will continually bring you that fire of joy.
Many thanks to Beauty & Lace Book Club and Pan McMillan Australia for the fabulous opportunity to read this review copy. It was a privilege and delight.

[Rohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great random find at a library, encouraging me to read poetry aloud (that's how you appreciate the rhythm)

And it's so good to read poems and not have to "analyse" them, just enjoy them for what they are. I recommend it!

[Sam I · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clive James was a brilliant man primarily in love with his own brilliance. Initially I enjoyed his sharp witty insights into each poem, but then I began to tire of his all-pervasive ego, clamouring for attention in the light emitted by others.
I also began to tire of his old-fashioned white male perspective on poems by a mostly British white male bunch of poets. No wonder the world is in currently love with Amanda Gorman.

[Tom Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I wish I’d read as a kid. Because it’s the best way into poetry that I’ve ever come across.

As always, Clive James is insightful and entertaining in this, his last book. And as always, he delights in sharing his enthusiasms.

Loved it. Tried to stick to just one poem a night, to stretch it out for as long as possible. Brilliant.

[Richard Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poems gave me great pleasure. It's becpme the book I give to others.

My blog:

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

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should be regarded along with the slim book on Philip Larkin as James’s farewell to the love of his life.

No, not his ego - poetry.

The comments are witty and often shrewd. Ted Hughes had a ‘Merlin-type magic’ for transformation, but was marinated in mysticism: ‘voodoo and necromancy became far too natural for a man whose business should have been clarity.’ Derek Walcott is praised for a style as lush as his surroundings, but lamented for only rarely delivering ‘the lightning strike of his talent without taking an hour out of your life.’

There are some well known choices here: ‘An Arundel Tomb’, ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘La Figlia Che Piange.’ Also welcome are less well-known talents. I hope more people are encouraged to read Stephen Edgar after absorbing his superb poem ‘The Red Sea’, which closes the anthology. Life ends but beauty endures. So does poetry. So will this book.

[John Merrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 36 of 2020:
Oh how I wish I’d read a book like this while struggling with poetry in school.
I’ll never learn poems by heart - although some of these have stuck in the mind - but it’s great to have an expert bring things to your attention and give unpretentious commentary.
Clive James’ last book, and no less vital than what came before, despite his obvious difficulties in compiling it.

[Oscar Fugelsnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice and peaceful read through the history of poems. The author shows us the poems that is most important to him and explains why. It felt a bit like being back in school with that teacher that is really inspiring and loves litterature. I think I will revisit this book many times.

[Mab · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think if I'd already known and loved Clive James this would have been a treat. It's clearly a labour of love as well as a way of facing up to mortality, and I don't want to denigrate that too much. But I found it ultimately a little wearisome: many of the poems are glorious but James' thoughts seem to hem them in rather than illuminate them, and I didn't find his choices interesting (or inclusive, but again, labour of love of a dying 80-something: it's not ideal that it's almost entirely white men, but it's understandable).

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminded me why i love poetry, reminded me of my degree and introduced me to poets I'd never heard of. All with the joyousness of James' writing and the total acceptance of his life almost being over. What a read :)

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed reading a couple of poems before bed each night from this anthology, Clive James also adds some notes about each poem, discussing why he likes it, etc. Perfect bedtime reading.

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure when I had my first introduction was to Clive James’ work....but maybe it was with “Unreliable memoires”.....loved it. Probably because it resurrected so many common memories that I had of the same (more or less) era. He writes beautifully. He even reads poetry tolerably well but in his Postcards from various places or in his commentary for various TV programs....especially documentaries....his narration is so wooden. Basically, he reads his own scripts. And they are great to read. Full of clever quips ,and memorable phrases. Just not great to listen to. The writing just doesn’t lend itself to being read in Clive’s monotone with the Australian accent. (nothing wrong with the accent). But it totally lacks spontenaity. Amazing then, that even with all of this, he became such an international star....or as one of his poetry peers said .....”I’ve been watching your comet crossing the sky”......Despite my despair with his reading aloud, I love his writing and I really liked this book. Enjoyed it. Especially the bits that resonated with me...and lots did: We both went to “selective” technical high schools in Sydney. We both shone in English at high school. Not sure about Clive but I sat for the honours exam in English..and was frustrated in missing honours by two marks. I blame “caravanserai”. “What is it?” was one of the questions.....and I didn’t have a clue.....so wrote as though it was a four poster bed! Alas. Not so. (Maybe it was the lines from the Rubaiyat)..... But even then I was writing some poetry for the school magazine. As befitting those who went to technical high schools....and thus studied, woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing, Clive aspired to become an aeronautical engineer. I too had aspirations to be an engineer, or scientist. But the science stream won out when I noticed there were no women doing engineering but there were, at least a few, doing Agricultural Science. So that’s where I ended up....like Clive, At Sydney University. Clive mentions his love of second hand bookshops. Maybe we crossed paths as I frequented Tyrell’s and the other bookshops on George Street near the Quay... about the same time he was Editor of Honi Soit.
In the following extracts, I’ve tried to capture a little of Clive Jame’s, apparently, effortless erudition and his amusing turns of phrase. Especially his reminisces of youth in Sydney which brings back memories for me too.

“I decided to become a poet, although there was nothing bold about this decision, as it was already clear, even to me, that I was useless for anything else. The poet, in my view, is the kind of time-waster who thinks he is doing something crucial with the time he wastes: steering it towards eternity perhaps, or getting an Early Mark.......Anyone can be destructive, but the capacity to build something will go on being the great human surprise. The flashing fires of the poems we can’t help remembering are clear proof of that.

On His Blindness • John Milton 1652–5
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;

I started to memorise this little poem of Milton’s in order to postpone the moment when I would have to start memorising Paradise Lost........ (My favourite of those [Long poems] is Samson Agonistes: ‘Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves’–what a line! And Paradise Regained has lines of such enchanting simplicity that they prove he was never complicated except at will. And . . . Come on, the man was a genius.)

Kubla Khan • Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1797
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

The first two lines of the poem could be said to be written in common speech, except that they go backwards......Only slightly further on, the River Alph presented fewer difficulties at the time, of course, than it does now, but one would have thought that the diction throughout had a hieratic emphasis, bordering on the absurd. Coleridge was an early victim of the notion that the juice of the poppy could make the labours of artistic creation more productive.
When we were students at Sydney University, one of my fellow students was a young gentleman–three-piece tweed suit, suede brogues, the works–who wrote a poem that squeezed this one into a nutshell:

‘Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes in holy dread:
For he on buttermilk hath fed,
From New South Wales Fresh Food and Ice.’

I laughed at that for a long time. The parodist had caught the mental rhythm of his target, simultaneously fantastic and preposterous.

A fragment of The Prelude, Book One • William Wordsworth 1798–1850
We hiss’d along the polish’d ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chace
And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The Pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din,

In Book Eleven, the spectacular word picture where people are ice-skating on the river is not just one of the great things in his poem, but one of the great things in all English
Poetry

Ode on Melancholy • John Keats 1819
The ‘salt sand-wave’ is an arresting example of how he could compact the rhythm and release it in order to provide a rhythm beyond the rhythm: he wasn’t just lyrically fluent, he could be fluent even with his hesitations.
Whenever I was in Rome, in my younger days, I would pause on the Spanish Steps, below Keats’s window, and imagine him languishing there dramatically. .......When told that it wasn’t stout Cortez, but the possibly less stout Balboa, who was silent upon a peak in Darien, Keats merely gave the shrug that means you win a few, you lose a few.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Translated by Edward Fitzgerald 1859
XII
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness–
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
XVII
Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
LXXI
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Even in the days when it was a standard recital piece in every genteel English household, few dreamed of performing the whole thing. They wanted to provide a suggestion of its eternal elements. Everyone had their favourite bits. These are some of mine, and by no coincidence I inherited them from my mother

The Dalliance of the Eagles • Walt Whitman 1880
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

This is a rare example of poetry by Walt Whitman that actually sounds like poetry. He also wrote the longest poem in the world that doesn’t really sound like poetry even for thirty seconds, yet somehow it is: a great mystery. Most of Leaves of Grass is not only arrhythmic but anti-rhythmic; so unlike poetry that it isn’t like prose either. You can break your jaw trying to recite it.

Spring • Gerard Manley Hopkins 1877
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring–
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

This quirkily compulsive masterpiece by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the phrase ‘little low heavens’ is the true start of the poem. Until then it’s all warm-up, and even sounds standard, not to say staid. But the little low heavens are beyond metaphorical......The very occasional poet like Hopkins seems out to remind us that poetry isn’t just words: it’s visions.
And the question is, often, visions of where? Well, heaven. It’s in the poem. He looks at the bird’s eggs and sees paradise on Earth. The rest of us might look at them and see lunch, but Hopkins is on a different plane.......In my time there were still prominent critics who couldn’t abide his quirks, but the long run did its work and nowadays it takes a dolt to question his achievement. The flaring moments are too brilliant to be blinked away. ‘The racing lambs have fair their fling.’

Cargoes • John Masefield 1903
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

He was famous for this poem, which a whole generation of suffering schoolchildren were compelled to learn by heart. Most of them didn’t get any further than the first word, which probably needs to be looked up even now.
It’s a brilliant idea–progression through declension–but it would have been much less interesting if Masefield had not been such a master of verbal music. He knew how to set the syllables chiming as if they were the silver leaves of a vibraharp. ‘With a cargo of diamonds, / Emeralds, amethysts’: he gets music into the turning of a line,
I still find it rollickingly speakable. There is the hint of a debt to Swinburne–Swinburne when he is being rhythmically over-ripe, and too lushly poetic

In Death Divided • Thomas Hardy1950s, I would appoint myself guardian of the radiogram at parties, and make sure I was the one who chose the next track on the Caedmon album of recited poems. My most favoured reciter was Dylan Thomas, and among his recitals the one I was most thrilled by was his rendition of this poem by Hardy.
His voice was wonderful, totally making you forget that in real life he looked like a spiteful potato whose chief aim was to borrow your money (no, wait a second: his chief aim was not to pay it back).
I still shiver to the way Thomas made the last line of Hardy’s poem soar away into the distance like a bird of prey taking off into the dawn.

In a Station of the Metro • Ezra Pound. 1913
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Permissible jokes about Ezra Pound may often turn on the fact that he translated a lot of Chinese verse without being able to read Chinese

The Soldier • Rupert Brooke. 1914
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

The Brookean ideal persisted for a long time after his death, notably in those British movies that featured a gorgeous public schoolboy draping himself languidly over the inherited furniture.

Anthem for Doomed Youth • Wilfred Owen. 1917
Only the stuttering rifle’s rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,–
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

But if you couldn’t get Owen’s poem from the Oxford book, you could get it from The Albatross Book of Living Verse, which was one of my first-year text-books at Sydney University in the late 1950s. Owen’s poem knocked me sideways, and especially with the finale. ‘The pallor of girls’ brows’ is a pretty generous image from someone who was probably more interested in the pallid brows of boys

La Figlia Che Piange • T.S. Eliot. 1917
Everyone at Sydney University with literary pretensions in the late 1950s was still busy being bowled over by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land when his Four Quartets, after the long trip from England, snuck up on them and knocked them flat. My friend Robert Hughes–gone now, alas–could recite the whole of Four Quartets from memory.

Canoe • Keith Douglas. 1940
Well, I am thinking this may be my last
summer, but cannot lose even a part
of pleasure in the old-fashioned art
of idleness. I cannot stand aghast

at whatever doom hovers in the background:

My father went away to the war; he, too, was fated never to return; and my mother continued her voyage alone. This great poem could have been written about them, and therefore about me.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner • Randall Jarrell. 1945
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

The last line is one of the most famous lines in the library of Second World War poetry, and it was written by a man who was never shot at; a reminder that the imagination is the most powerful thing in reality. In modern times, Jarrell was probably America’s best critic of poetry.

A Bookshop Idyll • Kingsley Amis 1953
I write as one for whom browsing in a second-hand bookshop has always been one of life’s greatest pleasures. I still own a copy of that Nonesuch Donne, bought in identical circumstances. Kingsley Amis often said that poets shouldn’t write poems about the arts, but this poem about a bookshop breaks his own rule, because if it’s not about literature, what is it about?

Japan • Anthony Hecht
At one time in my life I spent several years studying the Japanese language and found that the mental effort required had a lot in common with trying to get toothpaste back into the tube. And the cost of taking your mind off the task, even for a month, is that you forget everything in a tearing hurry. The Japanese language is designed to be learned by children and used by adults. An adult learning it is asking for trouble. Hecht does a very good job of getting the essential tension into his poem: this is a culture that will always be out of reach.

A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra • Richard Wilbur. 1955
Imagine also a candy-coloured jacket and the neat chinos of an Amherst Phi Beta Kappa star student on vacation in Europe, and you’ve got some of the rest of it. He was tall, handsome and dauntingly cultivated. In the crowded auditorium male sighs competed with female sighs in a quiet storm of approbation and envy......But the impression he made with the way he looked was a mere nothing compared to the impression he made when he spoke. And the poems he read were all his own, and it made you wonder why anyone else in the world was bothering to write anything.

Poor Old Horse • David Holbrook 1961
But today I sit here alone—with my daughter rather,
Who critically watches the child skipping jump on the waterfall quay
And we after go back to the car. I am dumb, and silent. She.
I see the spring love on the bridge for her: for me decay.
Or at most the wry pretension, 'Well, we have had our day!'

I do not want to have had my day: I do not accept my jade,
Any more than the grey old horse we meet in the street,
His shaggy stiff dragged aside for a smart sports blade
And his smart sports car: yet that's no doubt my fate
As the water flows by here each year, April to April,
With a soft-footed child skipping jump on the quay at the Mill

........The above poem was in one of the early Penguin Modern Poets collections and it knocked me out. Decades later it still lifts my spirits, especially now that my once-tiny granddaughter has become that very girl jumping soft-footed at the Mill.

Pike • Ted Hughes 1969
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin They dance on the surface among the flies.

We might guess, when we read his famous early poem about the jaguar, that he had spent time in exotic jungles, but in fact he had spent time at the zoo

Shore Woman • Seamus Heaney 1969
I have crossed the dunes with their whistling bent
Where dry loose sand was riddling round the air
And I'm walking the firm margin. White pocks
Of cockle, blanched roofs of clam and oyster
Hoard the moonlight, woven and unwoven
Off the bay. At the far rocks A pale sud comes and goes.

.....the porpoises, 'cartwheeling like the flywheels of the tide', counted as a vision....... I was present at one of his latter-day readings in London and I wondered if there had ever been quite so charming a poetic voice........ Modesty demands that I should not be strident in asserting my claim that I was first to call him Seamus Feamus. Historical veracity, on the other hand, insists that I assert my proprietary rights to the term.

Basho in Ireland • Billy Collins 2016
I am like the Japanese poet
who longed to be in Kyoto
even though he was already in Kyoto.

Basho was the seventeenth-century Japanese poet who took, in his resonant phrase, the narrow road to the deep north. His journey became world-famous. [You can still sign up for a multi day hike ..retracing some of his journey]

The Red Sea • Stephen Edgar 2008
And sunset's dye begins to spread In flood across it to the sand

Postscript: Growing up in poetical Australia
After citing the poem by Stephen Edgar it is time for me to bow out, and it might be useful to bring the book full circle by paying tribute to my homeland, which somehow managed to inject into us, apparently against all the odds, an awareness of poetry, a feeling for it. Australia spreads out indefinitely while only rarely piling up....... The place is huge: as big as America. But you have to search hard to find anything going on. There is a terrific urge to get not much done. Yet the Man from Snowy River still rides.
......... That's only the first stanza, and its first line shows that Banjo Paterson had the true measure of the land he lived in. 'There was movement at the station' instead of what you might ordinarily expect: somnolence......... Within earshot of the crashing surf, and within sight of the sparkling water, we heard about Paterson's 'The Man from Snowy River'.

Some of them are gone by now - Les Murray went in early 2019.
More than sixty years before, I had been literary editor of the student newspaper honi soit and busily engaged in accepting and printing my own stuff, when a poem by Murray arrived on my desk.......... Immediately I realised that Murray would do great things. But hey, we all would. We were very young, and our energy was limitless. Few of us are quite that young any more, but those are the breaks.
Overall, Loved the book...especially his commentary. Five stars fro me.

[Simon Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything about this is great, all the way through to the very final acknowledgments and the pictures in the fold of the dust jacket.

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
“Anyone can be destructive, but the capacity to build something will go on being the great human surprise.”

I had not expected this to cover so many different eras of poetry! I enjoy poetry books for flow and easy to digest temporary distraction, but this was a hard read as the themes and author types jumped around and was more of an education. With it in terms of walking through approaches, descriptions and breakdowns on meaning though - I had no idea that James was such an English scholar! Poetry really is a mad and magic land...

“Shadows still hold their breath when she speaks” (Emily Dickinson)

[Joshua Whitehead · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling, hilarious, and highly personal collection of poems, each accompanied by notes on context, technical analysis, and biography. A wonderful introduction to poetry for new learners (like me). A beautiful valediction by one of the world's greatest critics. RIP Clive James

[Cal Stothard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clive’s choice of poetry and his commentary - it was a joy. And I defy you not to read the poems as if you’re hearing his marvellous voice do just that. Three stars because I found some of the poetry obscure. But I’m not an Oxford scholar!

[G.G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of English poetry, from the anonymous "Western Wind" (Western wind when wilt thou blow/that the small rain down can rain./Christ, if my love were in my arms/and I in my bed again.) through "The Red Sea" by Stephen Edgar (b. 1951). James includes old favorites like Donne's "The Sun Rising", Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee?", and Arnold's "Dover Beach", but the majority of his choices were unfamiliar to me. What pleasure to discover John Clare's "All Nature Has a Feeling" (1845), Seamus Heaney's "Shore Woman" (c.1969), U. A. Fanthorpe's "Not My Best Side" (1978), and many others.

James' commentary is often as interesting as the poems. On Dylan Thomas, he writes:

On the Caedmon LP record, which we played to pieces back there at the Sydney house parties in the late 1950s, he performs [In My Craft or Sullen Art] like a tenor who has escaped from the nearest opera house, condemned never to hear an orchestra again, so he must supply his own music from the weight and balance of the words (p.199)

On Philip Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb":

[T]he poet knows only or cares only that [the earl and the countess] are still together, traveling further into time even as he gazes upon 'their supine stationary voyage'. It's one of the great registrations in all his poetry of the difference between the personal and the eternal (p.230)

On Sylvia Plath's "Cut":

I read this poem the month it was published in London magazine, during the bad winter of 1962, and I thought: if she can do this, she can do anything. [...] Plath's poem had a world war in it. She continued to think on a world scale while Hughes occupied himself with voles and weasels. (p.251)

James' concluding essay, "Growing up in poetical Australia", recalls with affection the poets he knew when he was a student at Sydney University in the 1950s. Despite his forays into fiction, memoir, and television, we can surely agree with him when he writes that he "chose the right profession--poetry--and followed it to the end." (p.297)

[OllieReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Straightforward, right? NOPE, and here's why:

The poem collection isn't very diverse, and James' commentary can come off as pretentious twaddle that doesn't provide further insight into the texts. I enjoyed maybe 5 poems. This collection of poems and James' witty commentary does not necessarily spark joy in readers, nor do they demand to be learnt by heart and read aloud.

The thing is, I don't think this was ever the intention of this book.

I think the title is misleading for the reader, leading to people feeling disappointed in the text.

What I find absolutely fascinating and ultimately enjoyable about this work is how I, as a reader, have a posthumous, intimate insight into James' mind and heart sitting on my bookshelf.

These (roughly) 80 poems cannot possibly provide a range that every single reader will find appealing. Poetry is an art that connects with readers on a personal level - there is no way that James was going to be able to create a collection that has something that speaks to EVERYONE.

And he didn't need to.

Instead, knowing his life was coming to an end, James lovingly gathered poems that sparked joy for HIM. That HE learnt by heart and said aloud as the final chapter of his life neared completion.

This book is a personal adeiu to the poetry that spoke to James, paired with commentary woven with nostalgia - and, yes, a bit of pretentious twaddle - as he reminisces about what drew him to these pieces in the first place.

This book reminds me of my students doing show and tell - how excited and eager they are to present a little trinket to the class that means so much to them; how much they want others to join in their excitement. James has gathered these poems that have spoken to him, presenting them to the reader and gushing about how they make his heart sing. The reader gets the privilege of coming along for the ride.

And THAT is why I am giving this book 4/5 stars.

[Melissa Trevelion · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fire of Joy was the final book Clive James wrote before his death in 2019. His vision impaired and unable to write Clive remembered his favourite English poems by heart.
His love of poetry and vast collection captured in his mind he wanted to expand and ignite the minds of individuals to explore the most significant poems from the sixteenth century to the present day.

There are over 80 poems in the book; each James has offered commentary which is critical, positive or technical and what impact the poem has played in his life.

I feel generations of today have lost the meaning of poetry and how much it plays a part in history and our lives, The journey may be filled with dead ends and suffering or endless joy and happiness, with poetry you read, you listen, and you feel.

This a book you can read at your own pace or in a full sit, I recommend reading a few poems at a time so you can feel the emotion of the poem.

Thank you Beauty & Lace and Pan Macmillan AU for the opportunity to read and review.

[David Campton · Rating 5 out of 5]

80 poems (plus), some well known to me but most not, pulled together to mark Clive James' 80th and last birthday with the final chapter and postscript written between that date and his death a month later. This anthology is supposedly aimed at encouraging readers to memorize poems and say them aloud, clearly a formative experience for James in his early days in Australia and London. But this is a feat that has consistently eluded me despite the fact that I have a flypaper memory for useless facts and once earned a living as an actor. But I never retained lines longer than I needed to. My brain needed to make space for important things like the speed of Concorde. But I do remember the timbre and rhythm of James' voice and it spoke loud in these pages with his trademark wit, perception and warmth. It also reminded me that my poetic endeavours both as a reader and writer are mere paddling in the shallows, like the image evoked in the final poem.

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought and read today (12.02.24) in one sitting (Kindle version). I miss Clive James. Very sad that he won't be writing or saying anything new again - but I suppose on the other hand there is still plenty of his work that I haven't read yet.

It seems this is poetry month for me, or something... This was a far far better collection than the so-called funny poems I read just over a week ago. Maybe just because it wasn't trying to be funny, or maybe because it was so splendid to have each poem discussed by Clive James (who I am also more interested in listening to than Griff Rhys Jones).

I am still waiting for a paper copy of James' Divine Comedy translation to arrive (the first one I ordered went missing), but I also have that on kindle now as well. Am very much looking forward to that treat.

[John]

I recently watched one of James' TV series ‘Travels with…’ dating from the late 70s. Typical of the time but still more so typical of James’ TV journalism is his pervasive ‘entertaining’ cutting sarcasm and superior attitude to the ‘locals’, clever one-liners but he’d get on anyone's wick at a long dinner party. And in this last book so appears his sarcastic voice, a book supposedly inciting the reader to read good poetry whilst at the same time dismissive of some poets. Thus he says that Lowell was at times ‘mad as a hatter’. Besides being cliched, this reduces a very complex man and great poet – James’ cackling prose detracts from the poetry of the man – it gets in the way. And, lets be honest here, can anyone argue that James’ own poetry will last?

[Peter Langston · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful apocalypse of poems Mr James chose for his final commentary. A favourite of mine since his earliest writing on leaving his homeland and becoming an Australian in England, it was first his commentaries of great poetry and his choice of immortal works which drew me in further and then his own sublime verse. Here we have his final selection - the “80 or so” he still remembered when his eyes failed and he approached the leaving. He has done so with expected alacrity and engaging wit, whilst providing insight into form, style and the character of the poets featured. What a joyous way to say goodbye.

[Adam Wainwright · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few bright patches in here but I found it a bit of a slog. My overriding view of James is that he was a randy old goat. I did pick out a few interesting poems in there - Carol Ann Duffy (Mrs Midas) and even though he was an execrable human being the minimalist Ezra Pound.

As with all poetry however, it is like an art I think which needs time to bed down and dwell in your head. I can't see that happening with many here, as I got undercurrents of 'randy old goat' and as a gay bloke I don't have the common experience to connect fully I guess. I will, however, re-read nearly immediately but take one poem a day and try to absorb.

[Stephen Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clive James’s final book is a poetry anthology with a difference. Well, two differences, actually. The first is that the poems were chosen to be read aloud. The second is that each comes with a pithy Clive James afterword. If you like Clive James’s writing, you’ll be delighted. If you hate Clive James’s writing, you’ll be annoyed. Either way, you’ll have an interesting poetry anthology to keep you company, so you can’t really lose. Me, I (with slight reservations) like Clive James’s writing, so enjoyed it a lot – even more so because this was his final book, written in the shadow of impending death (even more that the previous three were).

[Anna Mullick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply moving and changed my view on poetry. The joy in this book has changed how I feel about myself, aging and dying. I love how uncynical he is and how unpretentious the book reads. Truly an incredible introduction to poetry and made me a bit weepy at times. It felt almost sacred or haunting reading a book by a dying man (who died shortly after he wrote the book) whilst I feel at the beginning of my life. It is a pleasure to take the lessons he learnt at the end of his life and hopefully apply them to mine. SMASHING. Fave poems - Mrs midas, last meeting (Gwen hardwood) and any Sylvia Plath but the cut

[Jenny Esots · Rating 4 out of 5]

An introduction to classic poets through the eyes of Clive.
This is a collection that needs to be slowly savoured.
Poems are particularly poignant and powerful when read aloud and I feel this is the way Clive intended them to be read.
There is also a delight in hearing someone else read them, so if you are lucky enough to find a person to do this for you (or collective of people), the door is open to the full experience of poetry.
My taste in poems doesn't align with Clive, but I love his perky and literate introductions, memories and descriptions.

[Robin Hargreaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find myself turning more and more to poetry. This book is a gem if you like the idea but find some work hard to penetrate. James’ brief analysis/critique/poignant reflection after each work is marvelous. I would read the poem (aloud) which is definitely the way to get the rhythm. Then read the short segment afterwards then re read always with a much better understanding.
James’ occasional references to to the fact that the end of his poetic and physical life was fast approaching is heart warmingly frank and never maudlin.
I loved this book. What a marvelous teacher he would have been.

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I liked the idea of a poetry collection that also provides some commentary on the poems. However, the author is unfortunately very opinionated and I do wish it was more of a general comment on the poems, their authors and the context of their creation rather than the author's personal judgment of these things.
When it comes to the poems themselves, I did like a few of them but not as many as I would have hoped, considering it's such a curated collection.