#1 Poetry Reading Round-Up: Hopkins, Sappho, Catullus, Browning, Donne

I’ve been recording a lot of poetry readings.

It’s my new favourite pastime.

Reading poems aloud energises them (and me), makes meaning clear, and gives me the same feeling as a decent glass of red wine.

I’ll be playing around with long poetry readings with 10-20 poems from disparate poets perhaps grouped by theme, with chat, commentary, gossip, joke-making, and analysis in between. If you want to hear my thoughts and opinions on the current climate in 2020, those poetry readings (along with the podcast) will likely be the best place to do so. But it’s mostly about the poetry.

Poems are powerful. They’re an antidote to entropy, illness, and hysteria. To read a great poem with concentration and power is to experience love – love eternal, and love of a higher power.

This week, I read:

‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day’ by John Donne
‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins
‘Bean Counters’ by Catullus, translated by James Methven
‘Leave Crete’ by Sappho, translated by Aaron Poochigian

I also:

Analysed William Blake’s ‘London’, plus psychological and social commentary, putting it into today’s terms
Expounded upon why I read, and why I started Hardcore Literature
Read aloud the first chapter of Great Expectations
Released podcasts on Nietzsche and Seneca

‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day’ by John Donne

This is the poem that made me fall in love with poetry.

Powerful though Donne’s poetry is, I personally believe he was an even more powerful preacher. His religious sermons contain the best extended metaphors and imagery I’ve ever encounter.

Read Donne’s sermons to become a more persuasive writer.

I’m sure I’ll read his sermons aloud at some point in the near future.

‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I went on a bit of a Hopkins reading binge of late. So expect many more readings to appear as soon as I’ve compressed the files and edited them a little.

Here’s my reading of one of my favourites, ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’:

Hopkins presents quite a challenge to even the seasoned reader of poetry. He was very much doing his own thing, and wrote extensively on his theory of prosody, which he referred to as sprung rhythm. This is why you’ll see many of Hopkins’ poems covered in diacritical marks, so you know exactly where the stress should fall.

And, talking of stress, few poets compress as much power as Hopkins does in every line – every word heavy, dripping with the beauty of God.

If you’re interested, here’s a line of Hopkins with diacritical sprung rhythm marks:

I cáught this mórning mórning’s mínion, kíng-

dom of dáylight’s dáuphin, dapple-dáwen-drawn Fálcon’

‘Bean Counters’ by Catullus, translated by James Methven

James was my first year tutor at Oxford University. He’s a thoroughly lovely man with a passion for all things Gothic in literature.

This translation comes from his volume ‘Precious Asses’, which won the Purple Moose Poetry Prize.

‘Leave Crete’ by Sappho, translated by Aaron Poochigian

Another translation beautifully rendered.

Aaron’s one of my favourite contemporary poets, and we’ve spoken a bit on Twitter. I was very happy with his appraisal of my reading. I believe the words ‘ravishing’ and ‘sexy’ were used. Though Aaron himself has a wonderful voice, which he displays in the audiobook of his noir-classic-mythological-pulp mashup novel Mr. Either/Or.

Expect plenty more poetry readings to come.

I must say that the work I was most proud of this week was the analysis of Blake’s ‘London’.

‘London’ by William Blake – Poem Analysis

I strove deliberately after a certain effect, trying to achieve a very specific style of criticism that I don’t see anywhere in the literary world. Perhaps it’s a literary criticism technique that I pioneered? If that’s the case, we can call it a McEvoy critique.

Basically involves making the poetic practical. We’re reading William Blake, but we’re also becoming better humans on a practical and achievable level.