Song of a Reformed Headhunter

TLS December 19 & 26 2008 Karl Miller reviews Dennis O'Driscoll's Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney : God is no longer dead, at all events, as Heaney may have been moved, with his generation, to wonder in the 1960s. The poet sees ghosts, and his poetry, when it began in him, was experienced as a "redemptive grace". There is, if not an afterlife, an "afterimage of life". * [Heaney:] "The dark matter of the news headlines needed to get into Field Work , but the light I was hoping for is the kind that derives from clarity of expression, from plainer speaking . . . ". *** Neil Forsyth reviews Nigel Smith's Is Milton better than Shakespeare? The "gums of gluttonous heat" that make the Lady stick to her chair in Comus Smith describes as "frankly, spermatic", which is taken to be a sign of Milton's inability to confront sexual issues directly. But Smith soon follows this up with the interesting fact that Milto...

Poets-Free-For-All comes through for me yet again! Kind souls there point me to many poems on reading other poems. I will be posting them on my blog a few at a time. Here are two on Shakespeare, one by Milton, the other by Arnold. On Shakespear What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones, The labour of an age in piled Stones, Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thy self a live-long Monument. For whilst toth' shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book, Those Delphick lines with deep impression took Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving, Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving; And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie, That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die. -- John Milton * ...