No Time for Poetry?: Louis MacNeice

Friday, November 25, 2016

Bagpipe Music

Today is so-called "black friday" -- perhaps no more fitting time on so many levels can be found for this week's poem. It is both a kind of warped satirical nursery rhyme for adults and a treatise of social criticism. MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" dates from 1937.

Bagpipes, like some politicians, are full of hot air. And so this re-make of MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" appropriately refers to Ronnie, presumably Ronald Reagan. The song was part of their album The Janngling Man (1990).

Find out more:

Text of MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" at Poetry By Heart
http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/bagpipe-music

With the Poetry Foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/louis-macneice

French translations of some of MacNeice's poems at Esprits Nomades
http://www.espritsnomades.com/sitelitterature/macneice/macneice.html

Hear Louis MacNeice in his own voice.
The dates that follow poems are those given in MacNeice's Collected Poems edited by Peter McDonald.

"Snow" (January, 1935) (recorded 1949)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07xhr5y

"Bagpipe Music" (July, 1937) (he mentions "all the bad feminine rhymes")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n72XebBaMeI

"Meeting Point" (April, 1939)
i-tunes https://itunes.apple.com/ke/author/louis-macneice/id254124879?mt=11

"Conversation" (March, 1940)
i-tunes https://itunes.apple.com/ke/author/louis-macneice/id254124879?mt=11

"Prayer before Birth" (1944)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmkvys_louis-macneice-prayer-before-birth_creation
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/louis-macneice

Other Voices read MacNeice
"Bagpipe Music" (July 1937) by David W Solomons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyVVZW76hMA

"Autumn Journal" (1938) excerpts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbmzEBiH0EM

"Meeting Point" (April, 1939) read by Donall Dempsey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGkttjvF834

"Prayer Before Birth" (1944) recited by Mark Rylance
http://tugashow.com/video/x18h4dd

Other Resources
"No Go (For Louis MacNeice)" by The Cleaners from Venus
https://thecleanersfromvenus.bandcamp.com/track/no-go-for-louis-macneice
i-tunes https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/number-thirteen/id877662356

2016 documentary on MacNeice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmmqi2Taiqc

Richard Elman introduces MacNeice
http://richardelman.org/node/159

Poetry Anthologies

Astley, Neil (ed), Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2002.
Bloom, Harold, The Best Poems of the English Language, From Chaucer through Frost, New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Brooks, Cleanth & Warren, Robert Penn, Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students, 1950.
Constantine, David J., Lee, Hermione, and O'Donaghue, Bernard (eds), Oxford Poets 2002: An Anthology, Manchester: Carcanet, 2002.
Feinstein, Sascha & Komunyakaa, Yusef (eds), The Second Set, The Jazz Poetry Anthology, volume 2, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Feinstein, Sascha and Komunyakaa, Yusef (eds), The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
France, Linda (ed), Sixty Women Poets, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 1993.
Longley, Edna (ed), The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2000.
Parisi, Joseph (ed), Poets in Person, A Listener’s Guide, Second Edition, Chicago: Poetry Press, 1997.
Paschen, Elise, and Presson Mosby, Rebekah (eds), Poetry Speaks, Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2001.
Pinsky, Robert and Dietz, Maggie (eds), An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology, New York: Norton, 2004.
Rampersad, Arnold (ed), The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, Oxford: OUP, 2006.
Rees-Jones, Deryn (ed), Modern Women Poets, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2005.
Ricks, Christopher (ed), The Oxford Book of English Verse, Oxford: OUP, 1999.
Rogrow, Zack (ed), The Face of Poetry, Berkeley: U. California Press, 2005.
Rosenthal, M.L. (ed), Poetry in English: An Anthology, Oxford: OUP, 1988.
Vendler, Helen (ed), The Faber Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1985), London: Faber, 1990.
Wu, Duncan (ed), Romanticism, An Anthology, Third Edition, London: Blackwell, 2006.

Poetry's Rhythms & Forms

Wolosky, Shira, The Art of Poetry: How To Read A Poem, Oxford: OUP, 2001.
Wainwright, Jeffrey, Poetry, The Basics, London: Routledge, 2004.
Turco, Lewis, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (1968), 3rd edition, 2000.
Strand, Mark and Boland, Eavan, The Making of a Poem, A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
Oliver, Mary, A Poetry Handbook, Harcourt, 1995.
Lennard, John, The Poetry Handbook, Second Edition, Oxford: OUP, 2006.
Kowit, Steve, In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop, Tilbury House Publishers, 1995.
Kinzie, Mary, A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hollander, John, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse, 3rd edition, Yale University Press, 2001.
Hall, Donald, To Read A Poem, Second Edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1992.
Fussell, Paul, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Attridge, Derek, The Rhythms of English Poetry, London: Longman, 1982.

Criticism & Commentary

Brown, Clare and Paterson, Don (eds), Don’t Ask Me What I Mean: Poets in Their Own Words, London: Picador, 2003.
Corcoran, Neil (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry, Cambridge: CUP, 2007.
Edwards, Michael, Le Génie de la poésie anglaise, Paris: Livre de Poche, 2006.
Gioia, Dana, Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1999), Tenth Edition, Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 2002.
McDonald, Peter, Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill, Second edition, Oxford: OUP, 2007.
Padell, Ruth, 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, A Poem for Every Week of the Year (2002), London: Vintage, 2004.
Parini, Jay, Why Poetry Matters, Yale University Press, 2008.
Paulin, Tom, The Secret Life of Poems: A Poetry Primer, London: Faber, 2008.

Perloff, Marjorie, Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Rich, Adrienne, What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993), New York: W.W.Norton & Co, 2003.
Robinson, Peter, Poetry, Poets, Readers: Making Things Happen, Oxford: OUP, 2002.

Sacks, Peter, The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats, John Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Warren, Rosanna, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, New York: Norton, 2008.

Poetries of the English Language: comparative studies UK & USA

Auden, W.H., "American Poetry," in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1962).

Bromwich, David, Skeptical Music, Essays on Modern Poetry, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2001.

Collins, Billy, "What's American About American Poetry?" undated, posted on U.S. Info State Gov page.

Falck, Colin, American and British Verse in the Twentieth Century: The Poetry That Matters, Aldershot, Hampxhire and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003.

Finch, Peter, "British Poetry Since 1945," The Continuum Encyclopaedia of British Literature (2003).
Homberger, Eric, The Art of the Real: Poetry in England and America since 1939, London: Dent, 1977.
Hooker, Jeremy, The Presence of the Past: Essays on Modern British and American Poetry, MidGlamorgan: Poetry Wales Press, 1987.

Poetry Society, "What's American Q & A Index," at www.poetrysociety.org.
Quinn, Justin, American Errancy, Empire, Sublimity & Modern Poetry, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2005.
Williams, Oscar (ed.), A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, English & American, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946.

No Time for Poetry?

Friday, November 25, 2016

Bagpipe Music

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Listening to Louis MacNeice

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