A Poem for Every Day of the Year - 7th-9th January

My poem for the 7^th is 'Dawn', by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, which essentially casts night and day as lovers who work opposite shifts. It begins by explaining how Day's happiest moments are at dawn, and ends with Night expiring for love of him. It's a fine metaphor as far as it goes, but creepy AF if taken just a hair too literally. Day, apparently, is a dick.

'Life' is one of the few verse works by the novelist Charlotte Bronte, a robust little number that thumbs the nose at adversity, reminding the reader that bad days lead to good things, and of the importance of not allowing life to get one down.

"Yet hope again elastic springs,

Unconquered, though she fell;

Still buoyant are her golden wings,

Still strong to bear us well."

It's a timely message, and probably always will be.

The last in this batch - I will make more of an effort to get on to daily posting once the Christmas backlog is cleared - is 'The Pulley', by the 17^th Century poet and priest, George Herbert. This one is a devotional verse, explaining that God gave to man all the gifts in his possession except rest, because apparently God is a meanie and doesn't want to miss out on the credit. It's an overtly religious piece, the first one in the book, and its thesis - that weariness is something that humanity needs in order to thank God for their gifts instead of taking all for granted - isn't one that holds much water with me.

A Poem for Every Day of the Year - January 1st-6th

One of my Christmas presents was a copy of a book called A Poem for Every Day of the Year, edited by Allie Esiri. I've decided I will read a poem a day - two on Friday, two on Monday, since the book is living in the office - and comment on them here.

The first three poems are New Year themed. 'Promise', by the Scots Makar(1) Jackie Kay, is a toast to new year promises, whether kept or forgotten, likening the season to a blank sheet of paper or fresh fall of snow. 'Infant Joy' is William Blake's celebration of new life, probably only associated with new year by its current context. 'Poem for a New Year' by Matt Goodfellow, on the other hand, is obviously intended for this season, described through rural imagery of things revealed. These are three very different takes on the new year: One might call them respectively cynical, optimistic and awestruck at the possibilities of the unwritten future.

Far less anticipatory is 'Lines Written by a Bear of Very Little Brain'. Drawn from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, this rambling digression is a meditation on language, or else a nonsense verse with nothing so obvious as nonsense words. This was my birthday poem; make of that what you will.

Next is the end credits theme from William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, aka 'the one about the wind and the rain.' It's described as a lively song, although since seeing it performed by the RSC a few years back I have looked on it as a rather dour and downbeat number. I suppose it depends what sort of mood you consider Feste to be in at the end of the play, but where we began the year with a series of beginnings, by the fifth we're talking about endings.

Finally, we come to 'The Three Kings', by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which is not a poem about George Clooney finding gold in the Second Gulf War, but a recounting of the story of the three Magi for epiphany. It’s a narrative poem, not long, but longer than the rest of this batch combined.

Back on Monday for the poems for the seventh and eighth.

(1) A sort of Scottish Poet Laureate, so if nothing else I've learned that.