Status Updates From Poem For the Day Two

At Lord's

Francis Thompson
(December 18th 1859 — November 13th 1907)

Dick Barlow was a superb bowler and played for Lancashire for 20 years. Near the end of his life he said: "I don't think any cricket has enjoyed his cricketing career better than I have done, and if I had my time to come over again I should certainly be what I have been all my life — a professional cricketer." Barlow died on this day in 1919.

Siegfried Sassoon's wilful defiance of military action was raised in the House of Commons, July 30th 1917.

An Old-Fashioned Song

John Hollander
(October 298th 1929 — )

...Since then, Hollander has published over 20 further collections, including Tesserae, from which this poem comes, and his Selected Poems, which are released simultaneously in 1993. He is also well-known as a literary critic and editor, and has been a professor and lecturer at many of America's most prestigious universities.

To Know A Poem By Heart

...

a poem at your side
through the valley and the shadows
in the day, in the night
a polymorphic, polygamous,, orgiastic
communion of poetry

Nicholas Albery
(July 28th 1948 — June 3rd 2001)

Poet and journalist Thomas Campbell born in Glasgow July 27th 1777.

Tha Garret

Ezra Pound
(October 30th 1885 — November 1st 1972)

..."Any poet born in this century or in the last ten years of the preceding century who can honestly say that he ha not been influenced by the work of Ezra Pound deserves to be pitied rather than rebuked...the best of Pound's writing — and it is The Cantos — will last as long as there is any literature."

Avenue A

Frank O'Hara
(June 27th 1926 — July 25thh 1966)

Frank O'Hara is best known for his realistic "I do this, I do that" poems, which chronicle his life as a busy art critic, curator and poet on the move in New York. Written during the intervals at ballets, at parties, on the backs of menus, or during his lunchtime strolls, and filled with everyday objects, and friends, O'Hara's poems ...

Robert Graves born July 24th 1895. His successful novels, such as I, Claudius, financed his first love, poetry. "Prose books are the show dogs I breed to support my cat."

Birth of a Child in Wartime

Elizabeth Smart
(December 27th 1913 — March 4th 1986)

...The story of their meeting and passionate affair was immortalized in her classic debut novel By Grand Central Statin I Sat Down and Wept.

The Moon Sail Out

Federico García Lora
(June 5th 1898 — August 19th 1936)

translated by Robert Bly


... In August 1921 he wrote in a letter to friend: "A few days ago a purple-green moon came out over the blueish mist of the Sierra Nevada and in front of my door a woman
sang a berceuse that was like a golden streamer entangling the whole countryside.

Burns died on July 21st 1796, his body was conveyed to the burial ground as his wife Jean gave birth to their son.

The Footsteps

Paul Valéry
(October 30th 1871 — July 20th 1945)

translated by Alistair Elliot

...In 1912 Gide finally cajoled him into collecting and revising his earlier poems. Valéry's second published collection, Charmes, which included 'Les Pas' (The Footsteps') appeared in 1922.

Black Monday Lovesong

A.S.J. Tessimond
(July 19th 1902 — May 13th 1962)

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond was perhaps the quintessential British bachelor, with a self-confessed penchant for kippers, marmalade, Pimms No. 1 and Gentleman's relish. He was "tolerably well known" as a poet but fell swiftly into obscurity following his death.
Tessimond worked as a copywriter until the outbreak of the Second World War.

You Are Great in Love

Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(July 18th 1932 — )

translated by Albert C. Todd

... He was Russias most popular poet of the 1960s, attracting thousands to his readings, and has written over 40 books of poetry. He divides his time between his homeland and the US, and has travelled widely in what he calls "the biggest country of all, the one called Humanity."

Time Passing, Beloved

Donald Davie
(July 17th 1922 — September 18th 1995)

...Hie is renowned for his many critical works, including books on Hardy, Pound and Whitman, for translating Pasternak and Mandelstam, and also for his interest in the purity of English language and syntax.

Mary Evans, author of the poetry collections I Am a Black Woman and Nightstar, born in Ohio July 16th 1932

Maybe I

...

All around us are the glittering sidewalks
of a marvellous night
and the steps
of brave new human beings
singing brave new songs.
Nǎzim Hikmet
(November 20th 1902 — June 3rd 1963)

translated by Richard McKane, Ruth Christie and Talât Sait Habman

The Door

Miroslav Holub
(September 23rd 1923 —‚ July 14th 1998)

translated by Ian Milner and George Theiner
...
Following the Soviet invasion of 1968, the government's Stalinist cultural policy declared Holub officially a 'non-person', and his poems were banned in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) until 1982. He continued to work as a writer and scientist up until his death in 1998.

A Hindu to His Body

A. K. Ramanujan
(March 16th 1929 —July 13th 1993)

... She saw that a student had taped a copy of the poem, 'A Hindu to His Body' to the flagpole. At that instant, three minds were one: two poets and and an ideal reader

Philosopher, poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, born the son of a pencil manufacturer, July 12th 1817.

Thomas Hardy articled to John Hicks, Dorchester architect, July 11th 1836.

In a celebrated speech at the election of Lord Mayor of Dublin, July 10th 1790, Philpot Curran proclaimed: "The condition upon which God had given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

Some Trees

John Ashbery
(July 28th 1927 — )

Ashbery is the author of 20 books. His 1975 collection, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award and the title poem has been hailed as one of the finest long poems in contemporary poetry. He presently divides his time between New York City and Hudson, New York, and teaches at Bard College.

One word is too often profaned

Percy Bysshe Shelley
(August 4th 1792 — July 8th 1822)

... In England, Shelley was hardly mourned; one obituary even declared triumphantly: "Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or no."
His ashes were eventually interred in the protestant cemetery in Rome, where Keats was buried in 1820

Robert Burns wrote to a friend on July 7th 1796: "You actually would not know me if you saw me — Pale, emaciated & so feeble ... my spirits fled! fled!"

From Song of Mysel in Leaves of Grass)

Walt Whitman
(May 31st 1819 — March 20h 1892)

...His brother, George, was entirely dismissive of the book and only a handful were sold thoughout the country.

From Prayer Before Birth

...

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

Louis MacNeice
(September 12th 1907 — September 3rd 1963)

On July 4th 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved to his cabin by Walden Pond to "ive deliberately, to front one the essential facts of life, and ... learn what it had to teach."

In Those Years

Adrienne Rich
(May 16th 1929 — )

Now a lesbian feminist, she is one of America's most political writers. She wrote this poem in 1991 about the 1960's 'there personal is political' movement in feminism, of which she has said: "That statement was necessary because in other political movements of that decade the power relation of men to women...had been dismissed — often contemptuously...