A Review of “Odes for John Keats” Collection
Before beginning this collection, I did what I could to check my idolatry for the poet of whom these odes are dedicated to. Come not to this collection expecting an ode in the style of Keats, nor imagine that within these pages an inspired stanza that could fit neatly in his Great Odes. Ideas such as these stand in our way of a sincere appreciation, and seem to always produce disappointment. These poems are made by individuals born of different times and cultures, and stand as spiritual realms within themselves.
Ode to a Clothes Peg
By Simon Armitage
The first two stanzas regard the development of the clothes peg. The final lines of the stanzas each have an imaginative rendering of what these pegs resemble, with “a single finger of pine” using its loins to hold up clothing to dry, and the light weight plastic like a “toothless baby croc that bites down” on the washing line.
The transition to the next stanza is abrupt, and is a revealing of the poet’s effort. Right now, in the midst of the daily chores, he is “trying to conjure Keats”. Surprisingly, perhaps at the sight of a large white sheet stained in the rotary dryer, has given him a vision of Keats in his final year in Rome. There he is, above deck, taking a break from punning with the other sickly passenger, offering
His small hands to the salty ropes
Or coughed stipples of blood on the white sail
While the brig’s bowsprit needled for Rome.
In the next stanza we return to the peg bag and, likely inspired from one of Keats’ poems titled to saints, the pegs in the bag become “like the bony relics of women saints” which is a simile that gathers strength when contemplated. Thinking of the generations of women who devote themselves to the care and thriving of the household and its family, cultivating an environment of humility and unconditional love, how many silent deeds of kindness and acts of charity have been left unappreciated! How many day to day tasks of maintenance unassisted? I target those generations of provincially minded men who believed the roles of the household are written in stone, and cannot even lift a finger of support to a certain errand because it is within the woman’s domain. So the next line of the poet guessing that these pegs likely “have never been touched by a man until now” seems an educated estimate.
I do not think “mouthy car-horns” a particularly strong phrase, still thinking what mouthy translates to in experience.
The last stanza seems to me a little weak in concept. Thinking of Keats, the clouds in the April sky resemble “death masks and shrouds”. This is too abrupt in a switch of tone from the previous lines with the lively action of the street. Perhaps there was a desired effect through contrast, but it does not seem to land. The last two lines could serve as the beginning of a poem.
Ode on John Keats
By Adam Foulds
The crux of the poem is “Beauty’s embarrassment” which is supposed to be illustrated with two scenes that struck the poet with significance. It is somewhat unclear how the supposed beauty in the two scenes is embarrassed. Intuitively, I thought of Beauty’s embarrassment to mean that fact of Nature which Ruskin and Emerson have communicated, that she does not everyday wear her finest robes.
The two scenes indicated, though disparate, do illustrate a range in the response towards Nature and Life itself. The first is of a scene I witnessed quite recently, when the sky is clear and the sun makes everything under its all-encompassing beam glow. Nothing seems to be left untouched; even shadows seem to have a warm tint to them. So in these circumstances does the light settle its differences with all objects and “gets to grips with everything.” The awe of the present state of Life and the current progress of technology, which grants us abilities thought previously only reserved for the Gods, is expressed in
…the tiny sliding silver
Of a plane carrying oh hundreds of lives
With ease through the ether…
The choice to use ether in this instance could be a reference to a line in Keats’ “To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent”
E’en like a passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the ether silently.
I am more convinced of this because in the following lines, would not one’s heart melt before a window streaming with rain if it resembled tears, in sympathy of a god whose woe seems without bound?
This line perhaps could be a reference to something Keats had experienced once and written before a window in the rain, but as of now I am unaware.
The lines concerning the world, when it does reveal this Beauty, to be when it
…seems to want
Our attention, to mean something…
Seems a lie, and is characteristic of the Ego, not Nature. Thinking that Nature was revealing itself for attention is an act of vanity, and endows it with a self-consciousness which it does not contain. Nothing in Nature has bitten the “fruit of Knowledge”, and until doomsday exists as in a state of Paradise.
Though there is something about Nature that seems
…about to speak
Unimaginable consoling words…
Which perhaps can only be carried and felt through its music, not expressible within the limits of language. There is something reminiscent of a line from Keats in the rhythm of the second half of the final line, and in the phrase “fever-bright”.
Ode to a Blackbird
By Gillian Clarke
Describing the blackbird’s call as a song in “Latin” is effective and true, as Latin, likely a foreign language to the reader, though incomprehensible can be appreciated simply for its sound. Likewise a bird call on the literal level means nothing to us, though its melody can be appreciated and cherished.
The two stanzas could be compressed or combined, as there is not much progression from the first to the second. The third stanza describes the beech tree’s branches as “open hands” that “caress the sky” and loosen the “airy strands of cirrus cloud on blue”. That last line regarding the clouds falls somewhat flat, as it cannot be tied to any observable fact. It is already a stretch of the imagination for the tree branches to be touching the sky; beyond this it almost seems forced, and loses the reality of experience.
The lines,
We sing to hold our ground in the shadowy woodlands of the mind…
we rhyme to mark our place in time
offer something for contemplation. To hold our ground in the “shadowy woodlands” line may mean a prolonging of sensation or a spiritual experience.
Coming to Poetry: An Ode
Liz Lochhead
This is an endearing remembrance to the poet’s first encounter with John Keats. She recollects the major world events and youthful urging for love.
The poem however seems to ramble a bit to me. Many poems do this. The wings never seem to lift and fly; no truth is realized, or even sought; no heightened and unknown experiences are translated for us to enjoy. The language she delivers the recollection in does not seem to deeply express its very truth. I mean, it never becomes reality, it always seems to remain somewhat hazed.
The last lines are sincere and demand our empathy. “The birds still sing. Sometimes.” is heavier than the surface admits.
On Matter
Michael Symmons Roberts
Perhaps there is a connection between the breaks of the lines and the subject that reinforces the theme, but currently it is lost on me.
Some of the lines in this poem read as though they were chosen for their sound primarily, and then for their meaning. I assume the grouped lines are examples of, or different aspects of matter. But the poem remains somewhat incomprehensible to me.
Ode to Psyche After John Keats
By Annelisa Alleva; Translation by Valeria Melchioretto
This is one of the more original poems in the collection. It begins with the poet posing as a journalist for an online magazine. This is a worthy attempt of inducing the contemporary reader into fascination with the Greek Gods by paralleling their myths with celebrity rumors. No doubt there is some overlap. Unfortunately the nobility and the ancient beauty is lost as the ideal is brought down to the everyday.
Most of the poem is a summary of the myths surrounding Psyche. The strongest lines are Psyche’s response to the question: Why did Eros want you?
Because I was soul, breath,
I too had wings, I too could fly.
And at the same time I was mortal.
I was something that flees from the body…”
Again, the poem does not seem to reach any sort of climax. There is a gentle moment at the end when Cupid taps his wings against the window.
A Tailor bird Nest for John Keats
By Pascale Petit
I assume the form of the broken lines coming together and splitting apart is to mimic the action of the tailor bird in the process of making its nest. Describing it as a green purse is accurate, and playing on the double meaning of leaves in the last line is clever. Unfortunately the poem does not really seem to go anywhere. The constant repetition of broken lines makes it tedious to read.
Earthenware
By Fiona Simpson
The poet investigates an earthenware pot, contemplates its uses, spins it under sunlight, and then catches sight of a greater light that fades slowly behind damp rose bushes. I believe there is a reference to Keats’ Ode on Indolence when the poet speaks of the effect of turning round the pottery. To see the empty space contained in a pot as a place to “practice loving motherhood” is a tender thought, and to see the morning “still hazy with the memory of rain” is a genuine imaginative insight.
I am however, on the whole, somewhat lost on the general theme of the poem, and so the lines lack a potentially greater effect.
Owed
By Imtiaz Dharker
Another poem that does not reach for any great height or particular insight. I feel these lines to be common, everyday thoughts wrapped in smooth and interesting language. There was a flash of truth in “You fill the station cafe with your call,” illustrating how sounds echo in the interior of a wide, high-ceiling train station.
Ode to Greta
By Will Kemp
Nothing particularly new is said on the subject matter, no insightful perspective or deeper grasp for truth. Perhaps that is a characteristic of the theme itself. There is strong climate change imagery in the beginning, staying close to the facts to avoid a targeted sentimentality. In addition, there is very little of what we can call “doomsday preaching” or Final Judgement Scare, of calls for the End of the World As We Know It, which, even in its seriousness, comes off as weak, almost unmanly, and in opposition to the documented record of human ingenuity.
The lines,
Tinder-dry ferns glittering like seams of lava flow
Is a fine example of how connotation can disrupt impactful imagery. Even if the tinder-dry ferns do appear as “glittering”, there is a delicateness and sometimes a sound associated with the word that opposes it, at an intuitive level, to the vision of uncontrollable flames. In addition, there is a movement to the sparkles in glittering that does not match observable experience of lava flow.
Symbolizing her as a “Joan of Arc” is a fair, though in some facets a bit extreme, comparison. The “logic of the archipelago” is a fine phrase.
Lunar
By Blake Morrison
About three-fourths of this poem is about the moon spying, or in his words “stalking”, the poet. I was waiting for it to be revealed what event initiated this feeling, or if his suspicion towards the moon was misplaced and reserved for a person.
There is that kind of lover’s logic at the end of the poem. After complaining about the stalking and suspicious movement of the moon, they confess that they will be jealous after the time has passed, and the moon will spy on other creatures. The poem could have been stronger if the poet dedicated lines to investigating the moon’s effect on them. A few lines of conjecture would have done much.
John Keats, Seen From Outside
By Paolo Febbraro; Translation by Adam Elgar
Great poetry is nearly untranslatable; the musical strain of the original is always jumbled up somehow, and the intuitive truths are lost in words that substitute for definition, but lack connotation.
There are a couple memorable moments in these lines, though again, with many of these poems the sequence of thoughts do not make sense logically, nor seem natural.
There is a good moment where the words and the structure of the lines play and reinforce their overall effect:
Outdoing that lopsided Baron
Byron…
I confess I’ve not read much of any of Byron’s poetry, but I estimate the lopsided effect is due to his indulgence in excess sentiments.
What I was referencing is the lopsidedness of the words “Baron” and “Byron”, the latter particularly, whose first syllable length of sound is closer to the average length of two syllables than one syllable. The line is also an enjambment, and you nearly run out of breath pronouncing the phrase “Baron Byron”.
The play on words with “home in” instead of the typical “hone in” is at first amusing, though whatever additional meaning that arises with the replacement does not seem much. Does the poet mean they make their intellectual home in this line, repeating the phrase like a chant of a ritual or the motto of a political ideology?
I do rather like the line,
Where the sky has hurried to gentle itself,
Though do not ask me what exactly it means, there is a mystery to it that I find appealing.
There is an accurate insight about the Grecian Urn as something we have “not believed in”, which can go a couple of ways, likely it is that we do not comprehend or enter into the spirit of the age that saw it as a genuine symbol of a lived experience.
Powerful imagery of the sea follows, as something that is “eating up beaches” and “promising seaweed to palaces”.
Ode to Contentment
By Anthony Gardner
This is the strongest poem in the collection, and can stand near the front on the simple fact that it fulfills the title’s promise. Poems lately lose so much in overall effectiveness from a lack of focus, going off on incomprehensible and figurative side-tangents. The movement of the poem, the trend of discussion and contemplation, are more characteristic of Keats’ odes.
The poem starts with a genuinely beautiful nature scene that occurs at the end of day. The light of early evening, onwards to twilight, is preferred by landscape painters. These first few lines are not overwritten; they stay close to the natural phenomenon as it unfolds before the poet. The flowers, with petals open in the shade, are “still wistful for the sun”. The description of tulips as “fragile candelabras” is strong, complimentary imagery.
The organization of the poem is true to the experience stated. Once the word “contentment” is mentioned, the very feeling scurries away, and we return to our habitual state. So in the poem, the poet, once conscious of what he is experiencing, that feeling itself flies away:
You’re here, and in an instant — gone!
The poet acknowledges that this return to consciousness is followed by the return of the Ego, that “soft, deceiving flower of self-absorption”. All the accompanying thoughts and vices they stir, such as greed, envy, and ambition, all serve as merely,
A scrawl in the margin of our lives.
So much of our life, our finite, lived experience, falls under this category. It seems in the transitions between our different states of being, that which we feel when we move into a new home, launch a new career path, or find ourselves in a relationship, once completed, are distinguished from the present by a handful of memories.
The poet recognizes that a conscious effort to prolong the spiritual experience of contentment is useless, for,
It’s profitless to speculate.
Left to the mercy of the world, all he can do is beg that a similar experience occurs.
It is strange how, though we are constantly witnessing change itself, and operate in a continual present, of future fading into present, how rigid our thinking can become. At worst our minds are like adult elephants tied to a peg, fated to walk the same stomping ground, the same stream of thoughts, and bent towards remaining ignorant of our true power. The only solution I have found for this is spontaneity, which I have learned in part from Zen. But to form a concept of Zen, to create a preconceived notion, diametrically opposes you to the truth of Zen.
The last stanza contains imagery of moderation, or of light and dark; so the rose with thorns, a creed with moderation, painting a picture not overdone. The poet gifts us a charm of his invention in the phrase “star-fresh” to describe a nightingale’s song, playing to the newness of its effect and the ancient history of its existence.
Another, even more pleasant piece of imagery is the nightingale that is sitting “deep in the midnight of the trees”. This hints to the unseen position of the bird both in terms of location on the tree and within the shades of the leafed branches. I realize explicating the imagery pops the fantasy, or is like looking behind the curtain of the stage to see members of the cast out of character, but I hope it serves as an effective piece of instruction when weighing the merits of imagery in the near future.
The poem ends with “an algorithm for paradise under the rising moon”. For me, considering what preceded this line, I felt this line was somewhat disappointing in its effect. Perhaps it comes from prejudice, but any computer terms I cannot readily associate with pastoral or natural scenes. It is a clash of the illogical with the logical. Trying to capture the impression of the scene as an “algorithm for paradise” is inviting reason, that same action which made contentment flee in the first place.
Ode Essay: On The Odes of John Keats
By Sean Bordale
The imagery is original, the passion is sincere, but it is unfocused, and the stanza to stanza, and sometimes line to line, comprehensibility breaks down. From the one or two poems of Dylan Thomas that I have heard recited, they have a similar style. Imagery that strikes as outrageous and true, until lost to incomprehensibility in the next line. Reading this was like scanning a painting or a scene with a pair of unfocused binoculars: the definite outlines of great objectives were observed, but any focus into what I was looking at (to discover the meaning) was lost. The last few lines come back down to the realm of the usual spoken word.
Nightingale
By Deryn-Reese Jones
I believe this is another popular form of poetry, to list nouns and short phrases line after line into a long run-on sentence. I do not know who we are to blame for this form. Perhaps we should blame Whitman. I have never been impressed in a positive way by it. At its worst, it feels like a scattering of random though slightly relevant items across a bedroom floor, like a picture from the giant I Spy books. At its best it is a vain display of the poet’s toy box of invention.
