Month: September 2018

“A Lonely Place” by Edward Shanks

A Lonely Place

The leafless trees, the untidy stack
Last rainy summer raised in haste,
Watch the sky turn from fair to black
And watch the river fill and waste;

But never a footstep comes to trouble
The sea-gulls in the new-sown corn,
Or pigeons rising from late stubble
And flashing lighter as they turn.

Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine
Sharp on the road or soft on grass:
Silence divides along my line
And shuts behind me as I pass.

[...]

Edward Shanks' poem "A Lonely Place" was published in the Georgian Poetry 1920-1922. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

 

“The Return” by Ezra Pound

The Return

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind
                               and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
               Inviolable.

[...]

Ezra Pound's poem "The Return" was published in Des Imagistes (1914), the first of the imagist anthologies. The anthology was first published as an issue of the little magazine The Glebe. To read this poem in digitized versions of Des Imagistes, follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Blue Mountain Project (The Glebe)

The Modernist Journals Project (The Glebe)

The Modernist Journals Project (Publisher: Albert and Charles Boni, NY)

The Modernist Journals Project (Publisher: The Poetry Bookshop, London)

“Hard of Hearing” by Alan Porter

Hard of Hearing

Once in April ways
I heard the cuckoo call.
Among more withering days
Haulms twitched and clicked with heat.
I heard the bumping fall
Of yellow plums. My feet
Drew bickerings from the grass
Like thunder-rain on roofs,
Or clattered arms of brass.
Horses' battering hoofs
Ring no louder now
Than once a distant stream.
The grasshopper's old-hussif row
Dies to remembered dream.

[...]

Alan Porter's poem "Hard of Hearing" was published in the 1920 Wheels anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, click the following links:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

“The Whip of the Unborn” by Alfred Kreymborg

The Whip of the Unborn

It is not she who rends me so -
no, it is not she.
These eyes are not hers that hate me so -
no, they are not hers.
Nor this her breath that flaunts me,
nor these her arms that strangle -
no, these are not hers.

[...]

Alfred Kreymborg's poem "The Whip of the Unborn" was published in the 1916 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below: 

Archive.org