I’d never read any of Thomas Hardy’s poetry … it was enough to be forced through an entire novel (FFTMC) during GCSE English, and the bits of prose I’ve dipped into since convinced me to keep my distance.  Thoroughly gloomtastic is our Mr Hardy. But, given the opportunity to actually LOOK at his poetry, I… Read more »

Ah, lovely Gertrude Stein! From Bartleby.com: By departing from conventional meaning, grammar and syntax, she attempted to capture “moments of consciousness,” independent of time and memory. Or to put it another way, in Stein’s own words: A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and… Read more »

I’ve been eying the first for ages, though it tastes a little of “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens”, it’s also got some lovely phrasing. The second I stumbled across as I was looking for the first — and despite a rather fierce rhyme in places, I like it muchly. The Great Lover by… Read more »

A Baby Running Barefoot, by D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930). [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/short_poetry_031/baby_running_barefoot_lawrence_cs_64kb.mp3][mp3@64kbps] – (1.1MB) E-text There was a Child went Forth, by Walt Whitman (1819–1892). [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/short_poetry_031/there_was_child_went_forth_whitman_cs_64kb.mp3] [mp3@64kbps] – (4.6MB) E-text