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I’ve read The Bell Jar, https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2018/09/03/sylvia-plaths-the-bell-jar-to-the-person-in-the-bell-jar-blank-and-stopped-as-a-dead-baby-the-world-itself-is-the-bad-dream/ and I admire the poetry of Silvia Plath (1932-63). But I haven’t read all of Ariel, and a series of radio programmes has introduced me to poems that I didn’t know, including Lady Lazarus. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002zghg The radio series concentrates on her writing. Those who made the series worry that…
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Brian Bilston is known as “the Twitter poet.” He’s shared his poems on Twitter and probably on other social media and attracted a large audience. His poems have been gathered together into a book. I’ve come across him not through Twitter but because a literary friend of my wife’s sent her a copy of his…
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T S Eliot, according to Clive James, called Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) “the most gifted and technically perfect poet of his age.” But he seems to be remembered for only two poems and three phrases: Gone with the wind; Days of wine and roses; and I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion (in…
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I’m now reading my way through The Many Days: Selected Poems by Norman MacCaig (1910-1996) and enjoying greatly the directness, simplicity, and thoughtful depth of his poems. This morning I read this poem he wrote on a train from London to Edinburgh. That’s a journey I have done many times but still enjoy. The first…
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I had never heard of Wendell Berry (1934–), the American farmer poet, until recently, but now he’s one of my favourite poets. You can see him enjoying himself in this poem. We all have a contrarian tendency (or at least I do), and I’m not sure whether Berry is exploring his tendency or saying that…
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I have never seen Henry VIII, which William Shakespeare (1564-1616) cowrote with John Fletcher (1579-1626). It is rarely performed, but I encountered some of this speech delivered by Ralph Fiennes playing the great 19th century actor Henry Irving in Grace Pervades, a play by David Hare. https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2026/07/14/an-enjoyable-play-that-centres-on-the-great-theatre-that-came-from-the-contrast-between-henry-irving-and-ellen-terry/ The speech is made by Cardinal Wolsey, Henry…
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William Harvey (1578–1657), the first person to describe the circulation of blood, would not think of himself as a poet, but he was a writer, a philosopher (a follower of Aristotle), and a performer, conducting public dissections. But I think that I have found a poem in Harvey’s great work, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis…
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This poem by John Dryden (1631-1700), which I know and probably you do as well, came to me by a peculiar route. I had posted a blog about having a good time visiting Sotheby’s, the auctioneers of art and other collectibles, https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/how-to-see-great-art-and-feel-rich-for-an-hour/ and a friend commented on Facebook that she had just visited as well.…
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If you search the internet for a Shelley poem on the moon then you always find this poem: To the Moon I Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, — And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds…
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I encountered this poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) this morning for the first time—and in Italian. I am reading The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani, and a young Ferrarese woman has translated the poem into Italian and sent it to a man who is in love with her. I don’t speak Italian, but…
A Cairn of Poems 