Status Updates From Poem For the Day Two

You, Andrew Marvell

...

And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
to feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...

Archibald MacLeish
(May 7th 1892 — April 20th 1982)

Byron died of a malarial fever in Greece April 19th 1824. Tennyson described it as a day "when the whole world seemed to be darkened for me."

Dick Davis, poet and translator from the Persian, born April 18th 1945.

Peace

Henry Vaughan
(c. April 17th 1622 — April 234d 1695)

...In 1647 Henry wrote a Latin poem asserting that he had not fought in the war; that "there was a voice in a brother's blood, which could cry to Heaven against the shedder of it."
Thomas Vaughan's wife, Rebecca, died on this da in 1658.

Tristan Tzara, French poet and founder of the Dadaist Movement, born in Moinesti, Romania, April 16th, 1896.

William Oldys, poet and bibliographer, died April 15th 1761

Night Thoughts

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(August 28th 1749 — March 22n 18932)

translated by Christopher Middleton

'Night Thioughts' ('Die Nacht') was first published in a songbook published by Bernard Breitkopf in 1796, which contained a number of Goethes early lyrics set to music. Goethe's name appeared nowhere in the book, despite this being the first time his work had been published in any form.

Lightness

Meg Bateman
(April 13th 1959 — )
translated from the Gaelic by the poet


... Many of her poems deal with the experiences of women, always with great delicacy and frankness. She featured in the seminal Dream State: The New Scottish Poets; her second full-length collection of Gaelic poems, Aotromachd ages gain mile (Lightness and other poems), has facing English translations.

Alone

Edgar Allan Poe
(January 19th 18909 — October 7th 1849)

...Poe instead entered West Point cadet school, but could not reconcile his literary ambitions with a military career. His failure to make a decent living and his repeated appeals for money eventually resulted in a complete breakdown in their relations.
Poe sent him a final letter on this day in 1833, imploring "Pity me and save me from destruction."

On His Mistress Drown'd

Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Rochester()c. 1635 — May 20th 1713)

... He became Dean of Westminster in 1683 and oversaw Sir Christopher Wren's restoration of the Abbey. As a member of James II's ecclesiastical commission, Spratt opposed the motion of 1689 declaring the throne vacant, but nonetheless assisted at the coronation of William of Orange and his wife Mary, on this day in 1689.

Coleridge was discharged from the army as 'insane' and returned to Cambridge April 10th 1794.

Lights Out

Edward Thomas
(March 3rd 1878 — April 9th 1917)

Thomas was killed by an unexploding shell on Easter Monday 1917, the first day of the Battle of Arras. His body showed no outward sign of injury, but his watch was stopped and his pocket diary buckled by the force of the blast.

Drinking

Abraham Cowley
(c. 1618 July 28th 1667)

...Cowley was buried in Westminster Abbey next to Chaucer and Spenser, an indication of the high regard in which he was held at the time, and also the degree to which his reputation has waned over the intervening years.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free

William Wordsworth
(April 7th 1770n — April 234d 1850)

...This episode, during which Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution, wrought a power influence on the young poet's sensibilities and poetry. Indeed, it was in France that Wordsworth developed the sympathetic interest in the speech and troubles of the "common man" which came to characterise his work.

William Wordsworth appointed Poet Laureate April 6th 1843

The Pilot

Edwin Arlington Robinson
(December 22nd 1869 — April 6th 1935)

'The Pilot' is Robinson's tribute to Dean. Robinson moved to New York where he languished in poverty until assisted, much to his surprise, by President Roosevelt. Impressed by his earl work,

Celia Celia

Adrian Mitchell
(October 24th 1932 — )

PPS Celia and I are happy married and ar still together after 40 years, so the poem worked."
Adrian Mitchell was educated at Greenways School, Dauntsey's School, and Christ Church, Oxford. He worked as a theatre reviewer and freelance journalist on a wide range of newspapers including the Sun (pre-tabloid), the Sunday Times and New Statesman.

Come And Be My Baby

Maya Angelou
(May 4th 1928 — )

Angelou became mute after she was raped by her mother's boyfriend as a child. She is best known for her autobiographical writings, especially her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), the title of which was taken from a poem, 'Sympathy', by the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

From The Flower

George Herbert
(April 3rd 1593 — March 3rd 1633)

... and tell him that he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom; desire him to read it, and then, ...

The Gateway

A.D. Hope
July 21st 1907 July 13 2000)

Though viewed at times in his career as elitist and even anti-Australian, Hope is now widely regarded as one of Australias foremost 20th century poets. Like Robert Graves and W. B Yeats, he believed in the serious, almost sacred, role of the poet, a belief which infuses much of his writing.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, born April 1st 1647

A Hymn to God the Father

John Donne
(c. June 1572 — March 31st 1631)

...that Harmony, added to this Hymn has raised the Affections of my heart, and quickened my graces of zeal and gratitude; and I observe, that I always return from paying this public duty of Prayer and Praise to God, with an inexpressible tranquillity of mind, and a willingness to leave the world,"

To My Wife

J. V. Cunningham
(August 23rd 1911 — March 30th 1985)J.

... He remained at university as a teacher and critic until retirement and taught amongst others, the poet Alan Shapiro. In his first class, the chainsmpoking and notoriously mordant poet read the young Shapiro's poem aloud and declared "Nothing more than spilt ink."

Night Sky

R. S. Thomas
(March 29th 1913 — September 25th 2000)

...For the most part, though, he remained out of the public eye, preferring to live quietly in the countryside of North Wales where he felt "more able to be religious and to worship".

William Wycherley, playwright whose verses Alexander Pope revised, born in Clive near Shrewsbury March 28th 1641.

O Ancient Prisons

Miklos Radnóti
(May 5th 1909 — c. November 8th 1944)

translated by Frederick Turner and Zsuzsanna Ozsvath

As the Nazis evacuated the Balkans, Radnóti was one of a number of prisoners force-marched from a camp in Western Serbia towards Germany. Somewhere between November 6th and the 9th 1944, Radnóti was shot along with 21 others, and buried in a mass grave near Abda in Western Hungary.

From A Shropshire Lad
XL

A. E. Housman
(March 26th 1859 — April 30th 1936)

The homosexual references went undetected when A Shropshire Lad was published in the aftermath of Wilde's trial. Infused with thwarted longing and nostalgia, the poems are an expression of Houseman's unrequited and "disastrous love" for Moses Jackson, whom he had met at Oxford.

From Epicoene

Ben Jonson
(June 11th 1572 — August 6th 1637)

Jonson had earlier referred to 'epicene fury' in a bitter and damning poem to one of his lovers; 'Epitaph to Cecilia Bulstrode' was inspired by Bulstrode's supposed infidelity and lasciviousness, and was so hurtful that she apparently died of "morbid hysteria" a few months after it appearance. Jonson was far from loyal himself.

Northern Lights

Jo Shapcott
(March 24th 1958 — )

... A collection of selected poems, Her Book, was published by Faber in 1999, and Tender Taxes, her versions of Rile's poems in French, in 2001.

From The Ancient Mariner
Part IV, lines 272-287

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(October 21st 1772 — July 25th 1834)

... Wordsworth had been reading Shelvoche's voyages, which described the presence of albatrosses near Cape Horn, but he swiftly realized the subject matter was more Coleridge's metier than his own.