Poetry Revisited: The Thrush by Edward Thomas

The Thrush

(from Last Poems: 1918)

When Winter’s ahead,
What can you read in November
That you read in April
When Winter’s dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know
Than that, even as in April,
So in November,
Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore
Not to call November November,
And April April,
And Winter Winter – no more?

But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that’s ahead and behind.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
British poet, essayist, and novelist

Book Review: The Fig Tree by Françoise Xénakis

Click on the index card to enlarge it!

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The character of a person is never static because it continuously adapts to outside influences and (sometimes uncommon) emotional reactions to them. Such changes of attitude and behaviour use to be gradual and therefore often remain unnoticed by oneself and the immediate surroundings even when they are quite fundamental. Harsh living conditions like during an economic crisis, under a terror regime or in a war can accelerate the process and thus turn closest friends or even lovers into complete strangers if they are separated for a while. This is the experience that the two nameless protagonists of The Fig Tree by Françoise Xénakis make. They were a happy couple full of love for each other, but a highly bureaucratic terror regime tore them from each other and kept them apart for three years. During this time he went through the unspeakable horrors of a brutally run forced labour camp and she had to cope with the humiliating routines of red tape.

Poetry Revisited: Thanksgiving by Kate Seymour MacLean

Thanksgiving

(from Advent Days and Poems of Remembrance: 1902)

The Autumn hills are golden at the top,
     And rounded as a poet's silver rhyme;
The mellow days are ruby ripe, that drop
     One after one into the lap of time.

Dead leaves are reddening in the woodland copse,
     And forest boughs a fading glory wear;
No breath of wind stirs in their hazy tops,
     Silence and peace are brooding everywhere.

The long day of the year is almost done,
     And nature in the sunset musing stands,
Gray-robed, and violet-hooded like a nun,
     Looking abroad o'er yellow harvest lands:

O'er tents of orchard boughs, and purple vines
     With scarlet flecked, flung like broad banners out
Along the field paths where slow-pacing lines
     Of meek-eyed kine obey the herdboy's shout;

Where the tired ploughman his dun oxen turns,
     Unyoked, afield, mid dewy grass to stray,
While over all the village church spire burns–
     A shaft of flame in the last beams of day.

Empty and folded are her busy hands;
     Her corn and wine and oil are safely stored,
As in the twilight of the year she stands,
     And with her gladness seems to thank the Lord.

Thus let us rest awhile from toil and care,
     In the sweet sabbath of this autumn calm,
And lift our hearts to heaven in grateful prayer,
     And sing with nature our thanksgiving psalm.

Kate Seymour MacLean (1829-1916)
US-born Canadian poet and teacher

Book Review: The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Domestic abuse is a sad reality and even in modern western society it’s probably much commoner than we are ready to believe. Today it may be less of a taboo to talk about it than it used to be in former times, but still many victims keep suffering in their own homes without losing a word about their ordeal even to closest friends or family. For someone who has never been in the situation it’s really hard to understand why anyone would put up with being verbally or physically attacked on a regular basis, maybe even daily and sometimes so violently that being killed is an actual possibility. Quite obviously, it’s a very complex matter psychologically. The Irish novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle shows the mixed feelings that Paula Spencer has about her husband who early on in their marriage began to beat her up ferociously and who drove her into alcoholism.

Back Reviews Reel: November 2013

Since there were five Fridays in November 2013, I had the rare pleasure to present five gorgeous reads on my blog. All of them I carefully chose for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge 2013 (»»» see my wrap-up post of January 2014 that includes the complete list of books reviewed for it) as well as in consideration of the melancholy mood of this season of commemoration. None of the books is a murder mystery, and yet, my way through the month was paved with a surprisingly great number of dead people! Three novels – two contemporary and a classical one – focus on the terror regimes in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, notably during World War II, and on the aftermaths or repercussions respectively of the period in people’s lives. The other two are a classical English satire and a contemporary Finnish book, which defies being labelled as novel or short prose collection, dealing among others with questions of old age and impending death.

Poetry Revisited: November. A Sonnet by William Cullen Bryant

November. A Sonnet

(from Poems: 1854)

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
American romantic poet, journalist,
and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post

Book Review: Cassandra by Christa Wolf

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Women in a strictly patriarchal system always used to have a hard time making themselves heard, seen and taken seriously, but everywhere in the world and at all times in history there have been some who managed despite the obstacles that society, notably men put into their way. If they were lucky, they were much respected and adored for their achievements – whichever they were. More often, though, strong and defiant women were looked at with suspicion, even fear by men and women alike. They were branded as anything ranging from madwoman over shrew to witch and they were ridiculed, locked away or even killed. In the novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf the Trojan princess and seeress from Greek legend is depicted as an unusually intelligent woman with an innate yearning for independence, but neither her family nor the people of Troy accept her the way she is and so they don’t believe her prophecies when they should.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: The Jib Door by Marlen Haushofer

When a Woman Loves a Man:
The Jib Door by Marlen Haushofer 

It’s a well-known truth that love has the potential to make blind for anything unpleasant involved and at all times writers gladly took up the theme to dwell on the tangle and the suffering that results from it. In the history of literature there are scores of novels – all-time classics and probably many more forgotten ones – surrounding ill-matched couples whose relationships are doomed from the start however much they try to bridge the factual, emotional, social or psychological divide. The Jib Door by Marlen Haushofer is an impressive, though often overlooked example of an Austrian novel dealing with passionate love leading into a marriage that is based on the desperate longing to escape loneliness in a “normal” life with a husband and self-denial. First published in 1957, the primarily male critics of the time showed all but enthusiasm for the book because they had neither an interest in nor an understanding for what might be called the female condition in a patriarchal society.

read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

Poetry Revisited: Moonlight by Caroline Woolmer Leakey

Moonlight

(from Lyra Australis, or Attempts to Sing in a Strange Land: 1854)

Shine on, thou lovely moon, shine ever!
     While, like a playful child and shy,
Yon restless, struggling, leaping river
     From what it loveth best doth fly;

While are thy brightest beams o'er dancing
     Its fairy flow of molten glass,
It now to meet thee seems advancing,
     Then straightway hideth in the grass.

Faint stars, the chastened pride of even,
     It is such joy to see you blink;
As though ye still in your blue heaven
     Kindly of mortal man did think.

Oh! happy stars, ye seem to tremble,
     As with an unexpressed delight;
Why do ye thus your bliss dissemble?—
     Ye are the very joys of night.

The day may come with sun and flowers,
     With pleasant voices all around,
Like gilded garlands bring her hours,
     All ushered in to tuneful sound,

And beams, as though the orb of glory
     Were beaten into golden bars;—
The day may have a prouder story,
     But Night, she hath her moon and stars!

Caroline Woolmer Leakey (1827-1881)
English poet and novelist

Book Review: Silence by Endō Shūsaku

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Like it or not, in our modern western world we are surrounded by people from many different cultures and almost imperceptibly society changes or rather it adapts to its new composition. Many would gladly stop this cultural globalisation and build insurmountable barriers to keep immigrants out following the successful example of seventeenth-century Japan. Only decades after Western ships first reached the country, Japan closed her borders, drove most foreigners out to smother their influence (and interference) and forbade everything Western including Christian faith. Set against the backdrop of the persecution of Christians in Japan during the seventeenth century, Silence by Endō Shūsaku – that I’m reviewing for Dolce Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge X – shows a Portuguese missionary who is captured and forced to witness the cruel martyr death of his fellows in faith in order to make him apostatise. And along the way he realises that his God is different from theirs because their cultural background is another than his.