Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (19 page)

Dennis O’Driscoll
(
b
. Co. Tipperary, 1954) is an Irish poet, critic and anthologist who has worked as a civil servant since the age of 16. He is a poet of humanity whose wittily observant poetry is attuned to the tragedies and comedies of contemporary life.
‘Missing God’ [67].

Sharon Olds
(
b
. San Francisco, 1942) is an American poet noted for the candour and brutal honesty of her unflinching poems about love, sex, women and difficult family relationships, but she distinguishes her ‘apparently personal poetry’ from that of the Confessional poets: ‘I have an old-fashioned vision of the word confession. I believe that a confession is a telling, publicly
or privately, of a wrong that one has done, which one regrets. And the confession is a way of trying to get to the other side and change one’s nature. So I have written two or three confessional poems. I would use the phrase apparently personal poetry for the kind of poetry that I think people are referring to as “confessional”. Apparently personal because how do we really know? We don’t.’ [
Poets & Writers Magazine,
1993]
‘This Hour’ [56].

Mary Oliver
(
b
. Ohio, 1935) is America’s most popular contemporary poet. Her luminous poetry celebrates nature and beauty, love and the spirit, silence and wonder, extending the visionary American tradition of Whitman, Emerson and Emily Dickinson. It is nourished by her intimate knowledge and minute daily observation of the New England coast around Cape Cod, its woods and ponds, its birds, animals, plants and trees.
‘Wild Geese’ [11], ‘The Journey’ [22].

Alice Oswald
(
b
. England, 1966) is probably the most distinctively individual English poet of her generation. Trained as a classicist, she later worked as a gardener, and now lives in Devon. Her poetry is highly musical, often concerned with the natural world, drawing on the English oral tradition and oral history as well as on Homer and Greek mythology. Since
Dart
(2002), each of her books has differed greatly from its predecessor, being conceived as a coherent work of imagination, complete in itself and a powerful testament to the importance of its subject.
‘Wedding’ [64].

Fernando Pessoa
(
b
. Lisbon, 1888-1935) lived in Lisbon for most of his life, and died in obscurity there, but is now recognised as one of the most innovative and radical literary figures in modern poetry. He wrote under numerous “heteronyms”, literary alter egos with their own identities and writing styles, who supported and criticised each other in the literary journals. The poem here [
14] was published by Pessoa as an ode by Ricardo Reis.

Rainer Maria Rilke
(
b
. Prague, 1875-1926) was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. His poetry addresses questions of
how to live and relate to the world in a voice that is simultaneously prophetic and intensely personal. Most of his major work was written in German, including the
Duino Elegies
and
S
onnets to Orpheus
. Born in Prague, he lived in France from 1902 and then Switzerland from 1919 until his death.
‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’ [22].

Jelaluddin
Rumi
(
b
. Wakhsh, Persia, 1207-73) was a Sufi mystic and poet, born in what is now Tajikistan, who founded the ecstatic dancing order known as the Mevlevi or Whirling Dervishes. Rumi would recite his poems in any place, sometimes day and night for several days, with his disciple Husam writing them down.
‘The Guest House’ [13].
See also
Coleman Barks.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg
(
b
. Tacoma, Washington, 1953) is a American poet known for the sensuous richness of her imaginatively daring poetry of ideas and ‘her stunning command of prosody’ (Eliza Griswold). She has published four collections featuring extended sequences relating to history, art, literature, myth, philosophy and human suffering, and two book-length sequences,
The Throne of Labdacus
(2000), and
Heavenly Questions
(2010/2011), a setting of six long poems of passion, mourning and redemption.
‘Snow Melting’ [57].

Ken Smith
(
b
. Rudston, Yorkshire, 1938-2002) was an English poet whose work and example inspired a whole generation of younger poets. His poetry shifted territory with time, from rural Yorkshire, America and London to the war-ravaged Balkans and Eastern Europe (before and after Communism). His early books span a transition from a preoccupation with land and myth to his later engagement with urban Britain and the politics of radical disaffection. Smith grew up in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the son of an itinerant farm labourer, and his poem ‘Being the third song of Urias’ [
46] is written from both these perspectives, evoking the boy back in the raw landscape of his childhood as well as the grown-up man looking back at his life, examining his feelings of separation from the inarticulate, unloving father he sought to understand in this and other poems.

William Stafford
(
b.
Kansas, 1914-93) was an American poet who published his first collection at the age of 48. His contemplative poetry celebrates human virtues and universal mysteries, with nature, war, technology and Native American people as his abiding themes. In a typical Stafford poem he seeks an almost sacred place in the wilderness untouched by man, finding meaning in the quest itself and its implications.
‘The Way It Is’ [32].