Sydney Dobell

Here's a great poem to try, especially in summer. It's "Home, Wounded" by the English Sydney Dobell [1824-1874]. Read it all here. It has a spare beauty and a great sense of the medieval and gorgeous without the cluttered language of Shelley's ilk. In a sense it's almost like what Tolkien was going for in the more poetic parts of his work. It's quite lovely, and even the very young could appreciate it.

Here's an excerpt:

And find him singing on the self-same bough
(I know it even now)
Where, since the flit of bat,
In ceaseless voice he sat,
Trying the spring night over, like a tune,
Beneath the vernal moon;
And while I listed long,
Day rose, and still he sang,
And all his stanchless song,
As something falling unaware,
Fell out of the tall trees he sang among,
Fell ringing down the ringing morn, and rang,—
Rang like a golden jewel down a golden stair.

·         ·        ·        ·        ·        ·

My soul lies out like a basking hound,—
A hound that dreams and dozes;
Along my life my length I lay,
I fill to-morrow and yesterday,
I am warm with the suns that have long since set,
I am warm with the summers that are not yet,
And like one who dreams and dozes
Softly afloat on a sunny sea,
Two worlds are whispering over me,
And there blows a wind of roses
From the backward shore to the shore before,

[...]

Peggy Shumaker

One excellent poem we just spotted was Peggy Shumaker's "Calls of Birds We Cannot See" in Ascent, Oct. 2009. It's just a lovely as Ted Hughes's work, with a great Imagist, early Modernist sense to it--as if the work of Hilda Doolittle or Amy Lowell up and moved to South America or Mexico.

Here's an excerpt:

[...]

                                                             Corrugated hailstorms–

                                                             metal roof, earthquake

                                                            of ten-pound iguanas.

Shy thicket bird, ancient

tinamu steps out

among newcomers.

Honor flows both ways.

                                                           Three agouti bow

                                                           to the rushing stream. [...]

Sara Lier

Sara Lier has a great poem in the Summer 2011 issue of OVS Magazine, "The First Time I Cut my Knee". It has a simplicity to it that is rarely combined with grace, which is to her credit. She totally pulls it off. Definite subject matter often limits people, stunting the agility of their words, but this is a great, Wallace Stevens-like piece in tone, here's an excerpt:

It was August.
The yard was full
of crabgrass like cheap jade.

[...]

I knew where to find
loquats and lemon trees.

I was not a runaway. [...]

Alfred Austin

Agatha is a great short poem by Alfred Austin [1835-1913]. He was poet laureate of the U.K. after Tennyson. Here's an excerpt, read the rest here. It has an echo of Shelley but is very close to the timber or tone of Keats and his emotionalism. It's like a bit lighter version of Beethoven:

She wanders in the April woods,
That glisten with the fallen shower;She leans her face against the buds,
She stops, she stoops, she plucks a flower.She feels the ferment of the hour:She broodeth when the ringdove broods;
The sun and flying clouds have powerUpon her cheek and changing moods.
She cannot think she is alone,As over her senses warmly stealFloods of unrest she fears to ownAnd almost dreads to feel.
[...]

Killarney Clary

We need to feature the great piece "Untitled #1" by Killarney Clary in the Summer 2011 issue of OVS Magazine. It has a great mix of post-modern, almost Structuralist-type feeling but with an adult, serious physicality and reality. Here's an excerpt:

A flash of magenta in the dead century bloom defends the nectar source. The
sink drains slowly. No word.

[...] The mean little girl pulls ahead
with her fist of violets.

Sheila Black

One great recent piece is "Bare Ruined Orchards" by Sheila Black in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, vol. 1 2014. It's got a classic sense of Frost and the Beat poets at the same time. The opening is very interesting as well, all misdirection and Dante. Here's an excerpt from later on in the poem:

[...] Keeping up is breathless.
Autumn: the stripped branches,
intoxicating scent of barrel after barrel—
[...]

Christian Barter

We simply have to feature "My Glorious Return" by Christian Barter in Ascent, Oct. 2009. What a great style this poet has, and the opening line is quite interesting--without sacrificing a Shelley-like beauty that's been updated a little for the modern world:

The field is swaying in wet flames

[...]

Later lines continue to evoke a type of Poe-style, almost gothic True Detective air:

[...]

again into their cloisters will sing out

with all the echoing depth of the converted.

[...]