Selected Poems: Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins was an accomplished Welsh poet, published throughout his lifetime and acclaimed by his peers, but in recent years, public awareness of Watkins has ceased, creating a bizarre gap in the perception of 20th-century poetry. This new selection introduces his work to a new generation.

Vernon Watkins was under consideration as a poet laureate at the time of his death in 1967. He won several major poetry prizes and had nine volumes of poetry published, among them Affinities, The Ballad of Mari Lwyd and Other Poems, and The Death Bell and Other Poems, as well as a volume of his correspondence with Dylan Thomas. Richard Ramsbotham is a speech and drama teacher who lectured in English at Warsaw University from 1989 to 1993. He is the author of Who Wrote Bacon? William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and James I: A Mystery for the Twenty-first Century.

Foreword by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury

ix

Introduction

xi

from The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd (1941)

The Collier

1

(2)

Griefs of the Sea

3

(1)

Two Decisions

4

(1)

Stone Footing

5

(1)

from Ballad of the Mari Lwyd

5

(5)

from The Lady with the Unicorn (1948)

Music of Colours: White Blossom

10

(2)

The Feather

12

(1)

Crowds

13

(1)

Lover and Girl

13

(1)

Gravestones

14

(1)

The Listening Days

15

(1)

from The Death Bell (1954)

Time's Deathbed

16

(2)

The Dead Shag

18

(2)

The Shell

20

(2)

Art and the Ravens

22

(2)

Taliesin in Gower

24

(3)

Ballad of the Rough Sea

27

(3)

from Cypress and Acacia (1959)

Three Harps

30

(1)

Taliesin and the Spring of Vision

31

(1)

A Man with a Field

32

(1)

The Mare

33

(1)

Hunt's Bay

34

(1)

Trust Darkness

35

(2)

The Exacting Ghost

37

(2)

The Curlew

39

(1)

Angel and Man

39

(2)

The Tributary Seasons

41

(3)

Moonrise

44

(1)

Ode at the Spring Equinox

44

(3)

Good Friday

47

(2)

Great Nights Returning

49

(1)

from Affinities (1962)

The Precision of the Wheel

50

(2)

The Interval

52

(1)

Rewards of the Fountain

52

(1)

Vine

53

(1)

Affinities

54

(1)

from The Childhood of Hölderlin

55

(5)

Bishopston Stream

60

(1)

Music of Colours: Dragonfoil and the Furnace of Colours

61

(3)

Five Poems of Magdalenian Darkness

64

(3)

Returning from Harvest

67

(2)

from Fidelities (1968)

Two Sources of Life

69

(1)

Earth and Fire

69

(1)

The Sibyl

70

(1)

The Guest

71

(1)

The Razor Shell

72

(1)

Fisherman

72

(1)

Cornfields

73

(1)

Trees in a Town

74

(1)

Sonnet

75

(1)

Rebirth

76

(1)

The Snow Curlew

77

(1)

Means of Protection

77

(1)

Vultures

78

(1)

The Stayers

79

(1)

Strictness of Speech

79

(1)

Unity of the Stream

79

(1)

Fidelities

80

(1)

To a Shell

81

(1)

The Beaver

82

(1)

Triads

83

(2)

from Uncollected Poems (1969)

Air

85

(1)

Second air

85

(1)

The Coin

86

(2)

from The Ballad of the Outer Dark (1979)

A Dry Prophet

88

(1)

Rhadamanthus and the New Soul

89

(2)

from The Breaking of the Wave (1979)

May You Love Leaves

91

(1)

I Do Not Ask a Gentle Way

91

(1)

Villanelle

92

(1)

Though to Please Man

93

(1)

Rarely Published and Unpublished Poems

True Lovers

94

(1)

from Sonnets of Resurrection

95

(1)

Untitled

95

(1)

Parable Winkle

96

(1)

Attis

97

(3)

The Melodramatic

100

(1)

Aphorisms (Prose)

101

(2)

Notes

103

(10)

Selected Bibliography

113

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

FREE SHIPPING

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Selected Poems: Vernon Watkins

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials