Poets'n'them

Looking a little further into Marie Howe, the poet who wrote "The Star Market," posted here yesterday, I found a useful link right here. Enjoy!

Speaking of poetry, one of the high points of the last couple of weeks for me was reading the January 11th issue of the Times Literary Supplement, a lifeline -- it's very pricey but it's lightweight, so I can fold it up small and read it in bed and if I fall asleep and drop it on my face, it's unlikely to hurt me...these are considerations! This issue included a short essay by Vikram Seth, and three of six poems he wrote "after the manner of" George Herbert, since moving into Herbert's former Rectory at Bemerton, near Salisbury. I knew 'of' Seth only as a contemporary South Asian writer of Very Fat Novels (not in-bed reading, i.e.), but not at all as a poet. As it's largely owing to exposure to George Herbert et al., when I was 19, that I'm an Anglican...anything about his poetry interests me. And Seth's poems are the most reverent and proficient imitations I've read in a very long time. Apparently they've also been set to music, all six, as a song cycle. I don't have access to the music. Not yet!

NB: you can look at these poems right here if you like!

After a quiet day yesterday (recuperating from the AGM on Sunday), I went to the Roman Catholic basilica for a service of "Consecration to the Ordo Virginum"--the "consecrated" being a young professor of Biblical studies. Most interesting service, and the church was jammed to the rafters. The congregation included more elderly women religious than one would have believed were still extant.

And so, like Pepys, home and to bed.