The Tenth Muse

by Astbury, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9781857548365
• ISBN10: 1857548361
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-01
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
• More Book Details

Summary

"There are nine muses in Greek mythology: this anthology celebrates the tenth muse, the figure in a poet's life who inspires, criticises, interprets and supports. First published as pamphlets by Anthony Astbury's Greville Press, each selection here has been made by a partner, son or daughter of the poet. Each selector brings to the role a unique insight into the work of the poet whose life he or she has shared; each selection honours a loving and challenging relationship. Diverse, sometimes unexpected, enriched by photographs and personal memoirs, The Tenth Muse offers an illuminating selection of work by some great modern poets."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Antony Astbury is the editor of the Greville Press.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Poems
Foreword	p. 3
Allegory of the Adolescent and the Adult	p. 5
Battersea Park	p. 6
To My Mother	p. 8
Summer Song I	p. 8
'Turn on your side and bear the day to me'	p. 9
Galway Bay	p. 10
On a Friend's Escape from Drowning off the Norfolk Coast	p. 11
Roman Poem III	p. 12
At Thurgarton Church	p. 13
Morning in Norfolk	p. 17
from Villa Stellar	p. 20
A Version of Animula Vagula Blandula	p. 21
'For a Child': Poems
When	p. 25
Exorcism of Ghosts	p. 25
Prayer for the Unborn Children	p. 26
Last Night	p. 26
The Unpredictable	p. 27
An Aftermath	p. 28
The Drummer	p. 29
A Smell of Burning	p. 30
Oedipus	p. 31
By the Water	p. 32
In the Fire	p. 33
Hospital for Defectives	p. 34
For a Child	p. 35
Mercy	p. 36
The Sediment	p. 36
Mental Ward	p. 37
Kinder Scout	p. 38
Trewarmett	p. 39
Laudate	p. 41
Morituri	p. 41
An Epitaph	p. 42
'Too Far to Hear the Singing': Poems
Foreword	p. 45
Highwayman	p. 47
from Cities, Plains and People	p. 47
Song for Zarathustra	p. 49
Sarajevo	p. 50
The Octagon Room	p. 51
Eleusis	p. 52
The Ikons	p. 53
The Outer Limits	p. 54
Feria: Nimes	p. 54
Le cercle referme	p. 55
Poems
Foreword	p. 59
September Sun: 1947	p. 61
The Goose-Girl	p. 61
Oxford: A Spring Day	p. 62
Rex Mundi	p. 62
Sentimental Colloquy	p. 63
November in Devon	p. 64
Half-an-Hour	p. 66
from Three Venetian Nocturnes	p. 66
Lines	p. 67
Apologia	p. 67
Odeur de Pensee	p. 68
A Tough Generation	p. 69
The Sacred Hearth	p. 70
from Miserere	p. 71
Prelude to a New Fin-de-Siecle	p. 73
A Sarum Sestina	p. 75
Poems
To ND	p. 79
O Gentle Queen of the Afternoon	p. 79
Here Next the Chair I Was When Winter Went	p. 80
Shian Bay	p. 80
Gigha	p. 81
from The Nightfishing	p. 81
Letter VI	p. 82
I Leave This at Your Ear	p. 83
from The Dark Dialogues	p. 83
O Why Am I So Bright	p. 86
A Walk to the Gulvas	p. 86
Loch Thom	p. 88
from Implements in their Places	p. 90
To My Wife at Midnight	p. 90
'Yesterday Only' and other poems: Poems
Foreword	p. 97
Two Fusiliers	p. 99
I Am the Star of Morning	p. 99
Full Moon	p. 100
The North Window	p. 101
A History	p. 102
The Presence	p. 102
From an Upper Window	p. 103
Return Fare	p. 104
Saint	p. 105
The Felloe'd Year	p. 107
Recalling War	p. 107
A Love Story	p. 109
Despite and Still	p. 110
Theseus and Ariadne	p. 110
To Juan at the Winter Solstice	p. 111
Nuns and Fish	p. 112
The Last Day of Leave (1916)	p. 113
Counting the Beats	p. 114
The Devil at Berry Pomeroy	p. 115
Dialogue on the Headland	p. 116
Ouzo Unclouded	p. 117
The Hearth	p. 118
The Narrow Sea	p. 118
Song: Fig Tree in Leaf	p. 119
What We Did Next	p. 119
Song: Yesterday Only	p. 120
Song: Olive Tree	p. 120
A Dream of Frances Speedwell	p. 121
The Moon's Last Quarter	p. 122
The Green Woods of Unrest	p. 122
At the Gate	p. 123
The Unpenned Poem	p. 123
Poems
Foreword	p. 127
Paris	p. 129
Later	p. 129
I know the place	p. 130
Message	p. 130
Denmark Hill	p. 131
Joseph Brearley 1909-1977	p. 131
Poem (The lights glow.)	p. 132
Ghost	p. 133
Before They Fall	p. 134
Cricket at Night	p. 135
Death	p. 136
Cancer Cells	p. 137
It Is Here	p. 138
Poems
Foreword	p. 141
Cold in March	p. 143
Bunhill Fields	p. 143
Kirkwall 1942	p. 144
At Parting	p. 145
For a Child Expected	p. 145
Bathing in the Windrush	p. 147
Expectans Expectavi	p. 148
To Mark Time	p. 148
Bach's B Minor Mass	p. 149
Piero della Francesca	p. 150
Venetian Scene	p. 151
'I who am here dissembled'	p. 151
On a Picture by Michele da Verona	p. 152
A Matter of Life and Death	p. 153
Choosing a Name	p. 157
The Surprise	p. 158
A Triolet for Christmas	p. 159
Diamond Wedding	p. 159
Poems
In the Hills	p. 163
In Kent	p. 163
A Duckling	p. 164
At the Airport	p. 164
Cranmer	p. 165
Ellick Farm	p. 165
The Temple	p. 166
Thomas de Quincey	p. 166
On My Fifty-First Birthday	p. 167
For Patrick Swift	p. 168
The Garden	p. 168
Drought	p. 169
The Red Admiral	p. 169
For the Queen's Jubilee	p. 170
Blackdown	p. 171
The Pleasers	p. 172
from Ode for St George's Day	p. 174
from On the Departure	p. 175
The Question	p. 176
The Best Thing to Say	p. 176
Address to Whom It May Concern	p. 177
Poems
There's Nobody Here But Us Chickens	p. 183
A Warning	p. 184
A Bonus	p. 185
Trying to Write	p. 186
The Muse: His & Hers	p. 187
What is Art? Said Doubting Tim	p. 190
Slightly Rhyming Verses for Jeff Bernard's Fiftieth Birthday	p. 191
To David Gascoyne, On His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Some Blue Himalayan Poppies, First Found On The Roof of the World By An Intrepid Hunter, And These Inadequate Verses From His Friend Elizabeth	p. 195
Rose Died	p. 197
Poems
Foreword	p. 201
And Death Shall Have No Dominion	p. 203
The Hand That Signed the Paper	p. 204
The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower	p. 204
After the Funeral	p. 205
A Letter to My Aunt Discussing the Correct Approach to Modern Poetry	p. 206
The Hunchback in the Park	p. 208
This Side of the Truth	p. 210
The Conversation of Prayer	p. 211
In My Craft or Sullen Art	p. 212
Fern Hill	p. 213
Lament	p. 214
Over Sir John's Hill	p. 216
Poems
Foreword	p. 221
Words	p. 223
Merfyn	p. 224
Bronwen	p. 225
Helen	p. 226
March the 3rd	p. 226
Old Man	p. 227
The Brook	p. 228
Swedes	p. 229
Fifty Faggots	p. 230
from Roads	p. 230
The Owl	p. 231
As the team's head brass	p. 231
The Cherry Trees	p. 232
A Private	p. 233
In Memoriam (Easter 1915)	p. 233
Lights Out	p. 233
Out in the dark	p. 234
The Lofty Sky	p. 235
Poems
A South African Album	p. 239
Monologue of a Deaf Man	p. 239
A Fish Out of Water	p. 241
Making Verses	p. 243
Rhapsody of a Middle-Aged Man	p. 244
Juxtapositions	p. 246
For George Barker at Seventy	p. 246
In Memoriam David Archer	p. 247
Meetings	p. 248
Letter to C.H. Sisson	p. 249
E.P. at Westminster	p. 251
Those Walks We Took	p. 252
The Tomb of Virgil	p. 253
A Funeral Oration	p. 253
Notes on the poets and selectors	p. 255
Acknowledgements	p. 259
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