Cats and Their Poets An Anthology

by Craig, Maurice

• ISBN13: 9781843510055
• ISBN10: 1843510057
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-12-03
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press

Summary

Cats are universally revered, worshiped and feared, evoking love and fascination in their hosts and companions. This delightful anthology of poems about cats, from the eighth-century Pangur Ban to the present, encompasses both the arcane and the familiar, the simple and the satisfyingly subtle. Cats and their Poets contains work by seventy-five writers, from Philip Sidney, Christopher Smart, Cowper, Keats, Rosetti, Dickinson and browning, through to Yeats, Don Marquis, Strachey, Sackville-West, Graves, MacNeice, Stevie Smith, Gavin Ewart, Hughes, Gunn, Silkin, Longley, Mahon, Ni Chuilleanain, Thomas Lynch and Vikram Seth. There are translations from Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, Valery and Apollinaire. These wonderful poems, selected and introduced by one of Ireland’s most respected men of letters, say as much about their enigmatic creators as they do of their mysterious muses. They will surprise, illuminate and comfort the reader in equal measure.

Author Biography

Maurice Craig, architectural historian, poet, and biographer, is the author of Mausolea Hibernica, The Elephant and the Polish Question, Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size and Dublin 1660-1860, among other books, and editor of W.S. Landor: One Hundred Poems.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Pangur Ban	p. 3
The Nature of the Creature	p. 5
The Rat's Strong Foe	p. 6
An Appeal to Cats in the Business of Love	p. 7
Epitaphium Felis	p. 8
The Poet's Lamentation for the Loss of his Cat, which he us'd to call his Muse	p. 9
Lisy's Parting with her Cat	p. 11
On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes	p. 13
from 'Rejoice in the Lamb ('Jubilate Agno')	p. 15
The Colubriad	p. 19
An Old Cat's Dying Soliloquy	p. 21
from The Kitten	p. 23
To his young son Carlino in Italy, from England	p. 25
To a Cat	p. 26
Mein Kind, wir waren Kinder	p. 27
Lines on the Death of a College Cat	p. 28
Cats	p. 30
Cats	p. 31
The Cat	p. 32
Cat	p. 33
On the Death of a Cat, a Friend of Mine aged Ten Years and a Half	p. 34
Sad Memories	p. 36
Last Words to a Dumb Friend	p. 38
Cat and Lady	p. 40
Connoisseurs	p. 41
The Cat and the Moon	p. 42
A Cat's Example	p. 43
White Cats	p. 44
Double Dutch	p. 45
Five Eyes	p. 45
Lost Kitten	p. 46
The Tom-Cat	p. 48
The Song of Mehitabel	p. 49
The Old Trouper	p. 52
A Cat	p. 57
Milk for the Cat	p. 58
The Cat	p. 60
'Je Souhaite dans ma Maison'	p. 62
On a Cat Aging	p. 63
On Maou Dying at the Age of Six Months	p. 64
from The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock	p. 65
On the Death of a Much-Loved Kitten named Sam Perkins	p. 66
Ballade of the Cats of Bygone Time	p. 67
The Greater Cats	p. 68
War Cat	p. 69
Cat-Goddesses	p. 73
Quorum Porum	p. 74
Cruel Clever Cat	p. 75
The Lost Cat	p. 75
'She Cannot Read'	p. 76
'A Sleeping Shape lies on the Bed'	p. 76
The Singing Cat	p. 77
Monsieur Pussy-Cat, Blackmailer	p. 78
My Cat Major	p. 79
Diamond Cut Diamond	p. 80
Cat	p. 81
Cats	p. 82
The Death of a Cat	p. 83
Black Cat in a Morning	p. 88
Old Cats	p. 89
My Old Cat	p. 89
The Family Cat	p. 90
In Memory of my Cat Domino: 1951-1966	p. 91
from Lady Feeding the Cats	p. 92
Sonnet: Cat Logic	p. 93
A 14-year old Convalescent Cat in the Winter	p. 93
'Jubilate Matteo'	p. 95
In San Remo	p. 97
'Jeoffrey'	p. 98
Problem	p. 99
Lines on the Death of a Cat	p. 100
High on a Ridge of Tiles	p. 101
Three Cat Poems	p. 102
from 'Other'	p. 103
London Tom-Cat	p. 104
Odysseus' Cat	p. 105
Apartment Cats	p. 107
Esther's Tomcat	p. 108
Of Cats	p. 109
His Cat	p. 110
My Cat and I	p. 112
Tam	p. 113
Autumn Blues	p. 114
Cypher	p. 115
Grimalkin	p. 116
The Stray Cat	p. 118
A Cat's Conscience	p. 119
Index	p. 121
Acknowledgments	p. 124
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