November is right around the corner. Sort of. I happened to be reading two (entirely?) forgotten poets (who I want to write more about) but who were very well known in their day. If you are looking for poetry by poets skilled in rhyme and meter, to set beside the likes of Robert Frost, then you will enjoy Dilys Laing (October 1906, Pwllheli, North Wales — 14 February 1960, Norwich, Vermont) and Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 — February 22, 1978). McGinley, according to Wikipedia, was the first poet to receive the Pulitzer for “light verse”. Dilys Laing, who writes in a more serious vein, gets almost no love at Wikipedia but you’ll find a good article about her here. Neither poet rises to the status of great poet, but neither are they any less worth reading than the many critically overrated poets of the same generation. Anyway, I was randomly reading through their collections and noticed they’d both written poems on November. I thought I would post them here alongside some other favorites, including my own.
November Abstract All the green summer through it came incarnate in scented snowflakes clustered on frail umbels of Queen Anne's Lace, in goldenrod, in cymbals of dandelion. My fingers have uptorn it delicately in orchid, trillium, clover, hepatica and all the tribe of daisies and lodged it briefly in my bowls and vases: beauty to ease my spirit of its fever. And now I wander through the blond, bleached acres sucked of their color by the North's sharp hunger, and with a sober joy, from earth no longer vital, but brought to death's pale browns and ochres, I pluck the residual beauty, the bones of glamour: grey goldenrod, brown burdocks, milkweed purses and skeletal grass, and their dry beauty pierces my kindred bones beyond the trust of summer. — by Dilys Laing
November Away with the vanity of Man. Now comes to visit here The Maiden Aunt, the Puritan, The Spinster of the year. She likes a world that's furnished plain, A sky that's clean and bare, And garments eminently sne For her consistent wear. Let others dick them as they please In frill and furbelow. She scorns alike the fripperies Of flowers and of snow. Her very speech is shrewd and slight, With innuendos done; And all of her hard, thin light Or shadow sharp as sun. Indifferent to the drifting leaf, And innocent of guile, She scarcely knows there dwells a brief Enchantment in her smile. So love her with a sparing love. That is her private fashion, Who fears the August ardor of A demonstrated passion. Yet love her somewhat. It is meet, And for our own defense, After October to find sweet Her chilly common sense. — by Phyllis McGinley
My November Guest
My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
— by Robert Frost
There’s nothing left but overall Remnants of what had once been fall; Even where a week before A leaf or two blew through the door The dwindling days have turned to soot The little traveling underfoot. Snow will follow soon enough Careening through the unmown scruff Of jimson weed and bush clover, Nothing apt to be covered over With just a midday’s squall—but soon Winter will stay the afternoon. Then who will afterward remember The few days readied since September?— The ghostly sighs of thimbleweed, The bony knuckles of the reed, Whole fields of startled hair turned white Before the year end’s stricken flight. I wouldn’t ask but that I know It’s not just seasons come and go. When ice gives way to watercress And all of April’s loveliness, Remember, though the days are few, November has its flowers too. November by Me, Patrick Gillespie, and read here
Besides the autumn poets sing, A few prosaic days A little this side of the snow And that side of the haze. A few incisive mornings, A few ascetic eyes, — Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod, And Mr. Thomson's sheaves. Still is the bustle in the brook, Sealed are the spicy valves; Mesmeric fingers softly touch The eyes of many elves. Perhaps a squirrel may remain, My sentiments to share. Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind, Thy windy will to bear! — by Emily Dickinson
The Pity of the Leaves Vengeful across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, Words out of lips that were no more to speak— Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors. And then there were the leaves that plagued him so! The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then They stopped, and stayed there—just to let him know How dead they were; but if the old man cried, They fluttered off like withered souls of men. — by EA Robinson
And if these have got you in the mood for cold November days, look here.
PoemShape 