Carol Rumens has managed it yet again at her wonderful Poem of the Week feature in The Graun. She's picked an absolute belter from the peasant poet, and for some reason I can't figure out the poem in question, which I'll title The Old Pond, though it hasn't really got a title, is entirely unfamiliar to me despite the fact that some of the comments BTL suggest it's well-known. Mind you, it being unfamiliar is quite wonderful in its way since it meant that on Tuesday I could genuinely experience that full-on utterly enchanted and blown away feeling I plugged into so regularly as a teenager.
But here comes the problem, which I seem to remember outlining in a previous post centred on another gem from Clare. I now really, really, really want to get stuck into the closest thing I've got to a Clare Collected, but am committed to reading my Henry Vaughan: The Complete Poems. And that's chugging along nicely, but it's not exactly inspiring since I'm diligently working my way through the early derivative stuff and work in translation which is good in an average sort of way as opposed to the wonderful 'metaphysical' religious poems which are, as stated, wonderful.
Isn't it extraordinary to have so much to wonder at? But, in its way, not such a bad thing to delay gratification and settle for enjoying something craftily put together? Yep, I'll stick with HV for now. I think.
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