[David Callin]

Originally Posted by Rob Wright

I love Thomas' poetry.

Me too. Not a great enthusiast for Frost, though.

Thanks for the reference to the lrb article, Cameron.

David

[David Callin]

Originally Posted by Sarah-Jane Crowson

The Dymock poets are what they are, but personally I like it best when they overspill into different worlds, or where they are allowed critically to stray.

Is Thomas really a Dymock poet, though, Sarah-Jane? I know he tends to get lumped in with them, but I think he's far greater than that.

Perhaps I'll know better when I've finished the book. But he makes quite a few appearances in The Rattle Bag, which is more than be said (even wildly) about, say, Gibson, Abercrombie and Drinkwater, who seem ineffably minor by comparison.

But them's just my thoughts.

David

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

David, I think that's fair. The Dymock poets (or the people articulating the Dymock poets) will claim him, but how far that claim is justified is another question entirely.

Sarah-Jane

(edited quickly to say that I think the Gloucester Uni people are starting to be interested in the Dymock poets, which possibly will be a result of place-making/marketing (she says cynically) and I will keep, as far as I have time, an eye on what their articulation of him might be)

[Tim McGrath]

I ordered the book, David Callen. I think I'll like it a lot.

[David Callin]

I hope you do, Tim.

And I found this the other night, just by chance - a Thomas-influenced poem by Alun Lewis (1915 - 1944). Poignantly, he was born the same year as my father. My dad made it way past 1944.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/bo...-by-alun-lewis

[Clive Watkins]

Alun Lewis’s “All day It Has Rained” is a fine and attractive poem, and it was good to see it picked out by Carol Rumens back 2015. She has sensible things to say about it.

One sentence, however, gave me pause. She writes that “Lewis had visited Thomas’s grave at Steep in 1940.” As I understand it, Thomas is buried in Agny Military Cemetery in France (Plot 1, Row C, Grave 43: see the following link and image: https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/thomas_e.htm). I have not visited it myself, though a close friend of mine has. I cannot account for Carol Rumens's statement. Perhaps others can.

In this country, Edward Thomas is commemorated in Westminster Abbey, in All Saints Church in Steep, and by a sarsen stone erected in 1937 not far away on Shoulder of Mutton Hill. Some may find the following page of interest: https://www.edwardthomaspoetryplaces.com.

Clive Watkins

[Tim McGrath]

I, too, liked 'All Day It Has Rained." Its irregularities would normally have irked my ire, but that didn't happen here. The poem is limber but not loose. Lewis maintains such tight control over his material that the tone is unwavering.

I like the poetry of WW I, which is suffused with so much sadness. Many years ago, Brad Leithauser wrote an essay for the New Criterion called 'A Footnote for Housman.' Near the end of his paper, Leithauser said he had winnowed the poems down to his 12 favorites, including this four-line masterpiece, which will stay with you forever. "On the first couple of readings," he wrote, "I thought it lovely, but now I feel it's something better than lovely."

Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

[John Isbell]

Yes, what a quatrain.

Cheers,
John

[Tim McGrath]

Since David gave the year of his death as 1944, it's natural to assume that Alun Lewis died in WW II. And he did die in the war, but he died by his own hand. Lewis was stationed in Burma, where he fought against the Japanese. During a lull in the fighting, he shot himself in the head. I couldn't begin to fathom a motive, but I wouldn't be quick to blame the war. They say that the seeds of suicide are planted early.

[David Callin]

Those links are really good, Clive - especially the Edward Thomas Poetry Places. Thanks for them. (Coincidentally, the Poets' Graves' Forum - now defunct, sadly - was the first where I partook of online poetry. There are a few other old PG-ers around here too, I think.)

Tim, thanks for that quatrain too. It is very good. But I think that suicide is not necessarily certain in Lewis's case (although very possible). The Army said he was "accidentally wounded by a pistol shot". How very equivocal. How very Army.