Continuing in 2017 to work through the Poet’s Corner card deck series.
“She has laughed as softly as she sighed.
She has counted six and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried—
Oh each a worthy lover!
They ‘give her time’; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving:
She will lie to one with her fair red lip–
But love seeks truer loving.”
“A Woman’s Shortcomings” Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth was popular before she met Robert Browning and Edgar Allen Poe dedicated a book of verse to her. He called her “the noblest of your sex” which she seemed to find stupid, responding “Sir, you are the most discerning of yours.” She suffered a spinal injury at 15 and waited through three years of letters before agreeing to meet Robert Browning. This poem is described on the card as sardonic and the poet as before her time.
"Sports and gallantries, the stage,
the arts, the antics of dancers,
The exuberant voices of music,
Have charm for children but lack
nobility; it is bitter earnestness
That makes beauty; the mind
Knows, grown adult."
“Boats in a Fog” by Robinson Jeffers
An American poet who “celebrated strength, self-reliance and other heroic virtues, ” Jeffers lived at Hawk Tower in Carmel, California. Ghost Adventures visited the location a few years ago. I blogged about the episode. The card calls him “completely out of step with his times.” His epic, biblical poetry is “not only difficult to anthology but can also test a reader’s endurance.” He was also full of “antimodern rhetoric" and this poem is about classical arts vs “the vulgarities of contemporary popular culture.” Not too surprisingly, Jeffers became a recluse at the end of his life.
"Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Make weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The card quotes Edmund Gosse to say “ No living poet has ever held England…quite so long under his unbroken sway.” He experienced enormous fame and was Poet Laureate for 40 years, originally designated by Queen Victoria.
Week stats:
1 black American female
6 white American females
5 white American males
1 white Andalusian male
1 white Austrian male
1 Chilean male
6 white English males
2 white English female
1 white French male
1 white Italian male
1 white Scottish male
1 white Welsh male
1 1300s poet
1 1600s poet
1 1700s poet
10 1800s poets
14 1900s poets
