![]() ![]() He would have chosen Donne's romantic and philosophical reverie The Good Morrow, he said, that begins, "I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did till we loved … " Holden has expressed surprise that his own favourites – the metaphysical poets, John Donne, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell – have not been picked by any of the contributors. "We hope that this anthology will encourage boys, in particular, to know that crying – and poetry – isn't just for girls." "Gender stereotyping is dangerous because it represses ability and ambition, encourages discrimination and upholds social inequalities that are often a root cause of violence," said Kate Allen, the British director of the charity. ![]() The book is designed to raise money for Amnesty International as well as to break down traditional ideas of "manhood" as an emotion-free zone. Although the contributors to the anthology are all men, there are more than a dozen poems by women in the collection, as well as an essay by the Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, who has said: "Everyone who reads this collection will be roused: disturbed by the pain, exalted in the zest for joy given by poets."Ĭarey has suggested that he may have become more susceptible to emotion with age, but Holden said he has always cried over the literature he loves, although this is no guarantee, he admits, that he is a nice person. But when it came to including lines from James Joyce's stream-of-consciousness novel Finnegan's Wake, chosen by an American contributor, both editors were initially unsure, then gave in. Should they include song lyrics, they wondered, when an astronaut asked to include the words of a song from a West End musical? Father said no. ![]() Promoting the book for publisher Simon & Schuster, its father-and-son editing team have spoken of their occasional editorial disagreements. Speaking last week on BBC Radio 4's Midweek programme, Professor John Carey revealed he found his own choice, Ben Jonson's farewell poem to his dead child, On My First Sonne, "impossible to read without breaking down at the early moment where the poet appears to turn to speak to his son with the words, "My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy." Many of the poems are about the loss of a child or parent. In joint second place come Thomas Hardy, AE Housman and Philip Larkin. He has been selected five times for different poems in the anthology. Contributor Simon Schama has tweeted enthusing about his choice, WH Auden's Lullaby, the poem that opens with the words "Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm." Auden turns out to be the overall winner in this unusual competition to bring men to tears with the power of a pen. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |