A poetry reading for every day of lockdown.
And here’s the first week.
Thank you to those who recommended their favourite poems.
I said I’d read your favourite poems, and here they are. So keep them coming!
It was a great first week, with poetry from Thomas Nashe, Wallace Stevens, William Shakespeare, Ernest Dowson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Eavan Boland, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, and William Wordsworth.
My personal favourites were Boland’s ‘The Achill Woman’, Steven’s ‘The Snowman’, and Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’.
‘The Achill Woman’ by Eavan Boland
I particularly enjoyed these inevitable, delicious, deeply poetic turns of phrase: ‘zinc-music’, ‘and then, stars’, ‘cold rosiness of her hands’, ‘the grass changed from lavender to black’, and ‘the harmonies of servitude’.
‘The Snowman’ by Wallace Stevens
‘Ulysses’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
This is the poem I most long to possess by memory.
This is the kind of poem that can keep you company throughout your entire life, especially into old age.
Sonnet 121 by William Shakespeare
This sonnet exemplifies Shakespeare’s ability to transcend time and pierce the heart of human nature.