A few links and a poem for the week:
While the eclipse won’t affect or be visible in Alaska, a couple of eclipse-related links: an effort that documents soundscapes during solar eclipses—because crickets, frogs, and other nocturnal beings tend to start rousing during an eclipse as if it is suddenly night.
And did you know that clouds vanish during a solar eclipse?
I’ve loved several of Eliot Weinberger’s previous books—so I was intrigued to read this review of his first poetry collection.
I recently discovered this website of historical recipes and have since threatened my family with medieval hedgehog cakes for their next birthday.
An antiquarian book by Madeleine de Souvré, Marquise de Sablé, a woman Pascal would go on to plagiarize.
How embroidery and written letters were avenues for medieval women’s expression.
A favorite poet of mine is Edward Thomas, who died in WWI only two months in France, on Easter 1917. I tend to think of him this time of year. This article explains how significant the friendship between Robert Frost and Edward Thomas was to their work. And yet it was Frost’s most famous poem, ‘Road not taken,’ that offended Thomas deeply, and which is consistently read wrong—something Thomas and later Frost recognized. It’s fascinating to see how identities build up lines of poems into the opposite of the writer’s original intent.
And a favorite poem of Edward Thomas:
Adlestrop Yes. I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Thanks for this! Don't think that I had ever encountered this poem before, and it's lovely. The Guardian article too — so interesting. I knew Edward Thomas's name from David Orr's charming small book of criticism “The Road Not Taken,” from 2015, but I don't remember much detail about Thomas (it might be there that I've forgotten), or ever seeing his poetry. Will look for more now.
Thank you Freya, I’d not come across Adlestrop but yes, its a transporting poem. Oh to be in England... You reminded me that I saw a collection of Siegfried Sassoon’s war diaries at the Cambridge University Library several years ago, and found them intriguing, heartbreaking and hopeful. I caught the windhover reference. My favourite GMH poems are Pied Beauty and Spring and Fall - I find myself returning to Hopkins at this time of year in our exquisite autumn weather in Melbourne.