“I am weak from your loveliness” – a helpful poem

I recently bumped into an old poem acquaintance of mine, the bouncy, wistful and sexy “A Subaltern’s Love Song” by John Betjeman. When I first heard it many years ago in a lecture about poetry, I have to admit I didn’t get it – all that skipping, light-footed rhyming made me suspect that there must be something hidden behind the poem.  Now, I don’t think there is – it is just a very good poem about a very every-day love story, told with effervescence, sensuality and a bubbling sense of fun. 

I highly, highly recommend listening to John Betjeman’s own reading of the poem before a live audience. It gives you a sense of the tongue-in-cheek urgency the poem conveys – and the punch-line is just excellent. 

So, you ask, what does any of this have to do with On Chesil Beach? I don’t thing there’s a hidden link (although Ian McEwan was born in Aldershot), but there are several similarities – the young man’s adoration of the physicality of the girl and her mastery of the sport she likes, the games of tennis, the upper-middle-class lifestyle that the young man is impressed enough with to describe its luxury in great detail. It’s a bit like chapter 4 of On Chesil Beach, minus the depressing bits. A bit of the dream Edward was living. 

copyright: John Morrison

To demonstrate that five years of studying literature were worth at least something, I was going to say a few clever things about the name “Joan Hunter Dunn” (Joan of Arc, Artemis and all that, you know), but luckily I googled her before I did and it turns out she was a real person (more here) and only died this year. The picture on the left shows her as a schoolgirl – a former friend sent pictures to the BBC after her death. Stories like these really make me happy. 

Below are some vocabulary notes to the poem. I’m not reproducing it here, as I’m not sure about the copyright; besides, you really need to listen to it.

Unfamiliar colours 7: Crimson

 

Poetry FAQ

Slate magazine has taken it upon itself to answer a number of important questions about poetry, such as

• Isn’t so-called “free verse” just prose chopped into lines?
• How come modern poets don’t write in rhyme?
• How come real poetry—in our great-grandparents’ time or, anyway, some other long-ago time—was easy to understand and great?
• Aren’t a lot of contemporary song lyrics the real poetry of our time?

Now if someone would please answer my many questions about short stories and why I don’t always get them.

Snow Poems

The hoarfrost in my garden is really stunning this morning, but I’m too lazy to pick up the camera, so I’ve filched an image from Flickr. And in the hope that it will eventually snow, here are some snow poems (click “more” for the poems)Perhaps the most famous snow poem in the English language is, of course, Robert Frost’s spooky “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. I like it very much; every time I read it I can feel the snowflakes blowing into my face.Robert Graves’ “She tells her love while half-asleep” – well, what can I say? It is just so beautiful – a nature poem that takes place inside, and a love poem with only one visible person.Finally, there’s Roger McGough wise and funny poem about snowmen, “The Trouble with Snowmen” – you wouldn’t want winter to go on forever, now would you?

Learning poetry by heart

Now that you know you’ll have to learn one poem (14 or more lines) by heart this term, don’t despair. Take your time and look for one that you really like and that means something to you, then regard it as a treat, as John Keats (left) would have done:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases;it will never

Pass into nothingness

I will be posting thematic groups of poems to help you find one you like. Feel free to suggest poems as well.If you want to listen to poetry, Classic Poetry Aloud is a good resource. And if you’d like to talk about poetry, here’s some poetry appreciation vocabulary compiled by Jochen Lüders.

Animal Poems

In the spirit of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, here are three more animal poems. Each of them is famous in its own right and worth learning. Click on “more” for the poems.

Ever since Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, everyone has a clear idea of what the Kraken is. Tales of this horrid sea monster have been circulating for centuries and, in 1830, inspired the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson to the sonnet “The Kraken”.

Earlier, William Blake wondered at the incomprehensible and mysterious power, beauty of “The Tyger” and wondered who could have been amazing enough to come up with the idea of the tiger in the first place. “Eye” and “symmetry” are not supposed to rhyme.

Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” is a nursery favourite, yet at the same time a wonderful example of nonsense poetry and a very romantic love poem. Of the three poems here, it is probably the easiest to learn, at least for the young at heart.