Sidney Keyes: Collected Poems

by Sidney Keyes, Peter Meyer (Editor)

Overview

Including a wide variety of poems and dramatic monologues, this collection of Sidney Keyes’s work demonstrates the poet’s mastery of literature. Keyes was considered by some to be a prodigy, writing strikingly even before his undergraduate years at Oxford. His work illustrates his fusion of Romanticism and Continental style derived from his interest in such artists as Rilke, Wordsworth, Yeats, Schiller, and Klee. His unique, macabre, pastoral landscapes wildly separate him from his contemporaries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781857545807
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	06/01/2002
Series:	Poetry Pleiade
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Sidney Keyes (1922–1943) is considered one of the outstanding poets of World War II. After two weeks of active service, he died in combat in Tunisia, at the age of 20.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Preface to the 1988 edition	xv
	Elegy	1
	Prospero	1
	Nocturne for Four Voices	3
	Lament for Dead Symbolists	6
	Nefertiti	6
	Fragment: 'Shall the Dead Return?'	7
	Greenwich Observatory	8
	The Buzzard	9
	Cervieres	10
	Remember Your Lovers	12
	Sour Land	13
	William Yeats in Limbo	15
	Being not Proud	15
	Advice for a Journey	16
	Two Variations	17
	Elegy for Mrs Virginia Woolf	18
	Paul Klee	18
	Poem for May the First	19
	Poem for Milein Cosman	19
	Gilles de Retz	20
	Europe's Prisoners	21
	The Anti-Symbolist	22
	Ploughman	23
	St John Baptist	24
	A Garland for John Clare	24
	Neutrality	26
	For M.C., Written in the Train	27
	Extracts from 'A Journey through Limbo'	27
	William Wordsworth	30
	Pheasant	30
	The Glass Tower in Galway	31
	A Letter from Tartary	33
	Don Juan in Winter	34
	All Souls: A Dialogue	35
	Time will not Grant	38
	Lover's Complaint	38
	A Renunciation	39
	Holstenwall	40
	The Bards	41
	Against Divination	41
	Against a Second Coming	42
	Glaucus	46
	Troll Kings	46
	The Island City	47
	Schiller Dying	48
	Little Drawda	50
	The Parrot	50
	The Cruel Solstice	51
	Branwen Sailing to Ireland	52
	Sonnet i.m. The Lady Elizabeth Hastings	54
	The Snow	54
	The Migrant	55
	The Mad Lady and the Proud Talker	55
	The Foreign Gate	57
	Simon Magus	67
	Early Spring	67
	Lament for Adonis	68
	Hopes for a Lover	68
	Lament for Harpsichord: The Flowering Orchards	69
	Medallion	69
	Anarchy	70
	War Poet	70
	To Keep off Fears	71
	A Hope for Those Separated by War	71
	Ulster Soldier	72
	The True Heart	72
	The Vines are Planted	73
	Dunbar, 1650	74
	Images of Distress	74
	The Uncreated Images	75
	Not Chosen	75
	Two Offices of a Sentry	76
	Song: The Heart's Assurance	77
	Design for a Monument	77
	Night Estuary	78
	The Gardener	78
	Orestes and the Furies	79
	Seascape	80
	The Kestrels	81
	Dido's Lament for Aeneas	81
	Figure of a Bird and a Ring	82
	Rome Remember	82
	The Doubtful Season	83
	The Promised Landscape	84
	Timoshenko	85
	The Poet	85
	The Expected Guest	86
	Epithalamium	86
	North Sea	87
	Four Postures of Death	88
	William Byrd	92
	Moonlight Night on the Port	92
	Actaeon's Lament	93
	An Early Death	94
	Poem from the North	94
	The Grail	95
	The Wilderness	97
	Appendix 1
	South Wind	103
	Cathay	103
	Meditation of Phlebas the Phoenician	104
	Richmond Park	104
	Blues Song	105
	Blues	105
	Bix Blues	106
	Letter to M.C., 31.vii.41	107
	For Milein, 1.xii.41	108
	Premature Poem for Milein	109
	Mr U Saw Blues	110
	A Translation of Carmen XI by Catullus	111
	Cold Comfort for Mr Meyer	112
	Appendix 2
	Memoir by Milein Cosman	113
	Memoir by Michael Meyer	116
	Memoir by James Lucas	124
	Note to the 1945 edition	128
	Notes	129

Editorial Reviews

Above all, he was the first truly English poet effectively to marry Continental symbolism to the English Romantic tradition.”  —Michael Meyer, editor, Collected Poems

From the Publisher