Reading poems is speed-dating for souls.

I’d have welcomed speed-dating in my dating years. I was never good at the initial stages of courtship. My clumsiness discomfited, humiliated, but what choice did I have? One had to pretend one enjoyed those introductory insipidities, flirtations, deceptions. Take care, Carll, not to brandish polysyllables!

Deliver my spiel fast – in five minutes, tops – and evaluate hers? That I could manage. A quick audition, in and out, no improvisation required. Piece of cake.

Any poem worth reading strips its maker’s soul naked. Here is the truth of me, my pain, my most. Prose is better at bullshitting, gaslighting, digressing. Creeps can compose prose capably if they’ve a gift for gab. A poem is a confession: a superfluous ejaculation and urgent plea. Please, please, take me to heart. (I’m speaking lyrical poetry here, not performative or comic.)

Anthologies are the hired halls where poetic speed-dating occurs. A fat anthology is fiercely competitive. No one reads an anthology straight through; you browse curiously, pause to savor, then move on. Your host, the compiler/curator, may effect introductions or not, but in the end, a song must sell itself. So many needy souls tugging at you like peddlers in a souk! It’s flattering – to be so in demand – but also intimidating. Spurning petitioners is no fun unless you’re a sadist.

Though no scholar, I’ve encountered most of the name-brand poets in English, at least in passing. I have my opinions – preferences, allergies. What excites me about anthologies is my opinions never stay still. I just (for example) enjoyed a Wallace Stevens’ poem I’d long resisted, even inveighed against. I blushed apologetically. Had I changed – or the weather – or the Weltanschauung – or what? Old infatuations and antagonisms fade. I check out Shelly for the umpteenth time to see if I can fathom his appeal. (I can’t.)

Today’s “find” is Edward Thomas (1878-1917). I knew of Thomas, a friend of Robert Frost’s, as a member of the school now labeled “Georgian”, a “minor” poet. Minor is academic shorthand for don’t waste your time. “Major” poets, in academic vogue circa 1970, were modernists, craggy, obscure, requiring professors to intervene on their behalf.

Easy to skip this minor – sniff – Georgian – sniff – but, hey, when one’s over the hill one no longer needs to be au courant. Dawdling, dabbling are among the pleasures of retirement.

Maybe you know “The Owl,” reprinted below. Its quiet loveliness astonished me. I read and reread – so gentle, unpretentious, modest, good. The poet vividly shows us himself without showing off. He’s been hiking – alone – made glad by normal feelings – hunger, chilliness, fatigue – sure that the inn where he’ll sleep, with its “food, fire, and rest” will satisfy his needs. An appreciative, unpretentious soul, humble in the best sense, no great Shakes maybe, but a nice guy. Happy dreams!

Only into his slumber sneaks an owl’s hoot, “a most melancholy cry.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedShaken out long and clear upon the hill,No merry note, nor cause of merriment,But one telling me plain…

Telling him what? How easy it is to forget our enormous luck. If we’ve our health, food, shelter and chance, we live in an abundance, for which we should rejoice. But do we rejoice? You’d think from how folks grouse and growl they live in hell, railing to make their nation “great” again. Most lives are already great – except for those who lack the rudimentary requirements of existence, “soldiers and the poor.” The owl recalls them to mind.

Edward Thomas preaches without preaching what we need to hear – and hear again. He was killed, a common soldier, in World War One.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDownhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I. All of the night was quite barred out except An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill, No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose, Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice Speaking for all who lay under the stars, Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.