Cellar Arts Poets - An Anthology of Unique and Inspiring Poems by Members

Cellar Arts Poets 

This delightful little poetry book was published just prior to the onset of the pandemic, and although we have sold quite a few, it obviously didn't get the attention it deserved. It's £3.20 to buy the paperback (and I think they add delivery if you don't have Prime).  So it's not too late to get your copy. No profit accrues to the poets or the editor, we did it for love of poetry. We just want to be read. 💓💓

Thank you. 

You Are Just Too Kind, by Len A. Hynds

Today I discovered this special poem written for me by a student from many years ago, Len A. Hynds, who was a much respected war veteran who wrote movingly about his experiences. He died last August 23, 2017.

I dedicate this poem to Janet Cameron MA., noted Author and Poet, and who was the editor of a writer's magazine that first published my work. When I attended University Janet was my tutor and lecturer on Creative Writing and Poetry, and we became good friends.
During one of her courses I received valuable advice from fellow students at a workshop, who were all ladies on that occasion, and I was mischievously unkind later in writing a series of Haikus making oblique references to a witches coven and whiskers sprouting out of chins, as they laughed gleefully with shrieks of delight, I wrote this poem to make amends.....
Written in three line Stanzas with a repetition rhyme pattern of A - B - A

YOU ARE JUST TOO KIND

By Len A.Hynds

Caress me not, for you are just too kind,
with flattering words, to brighten-up my eyes,
I'm beyond redemption, how can you find,

such lovely words, to ease my troubled mind,
like honeyed balm, soothing my restless sighs,
caress me not, for you are just too kind.

Our writings caused a friendship so entwined,
in syllables and stresses, lows and highs,
as I strive to be writing so refined.

I value those words, which are enshrined,
in my heart and mind, I tell you no lies,
caress me not, for you are just too kind.

Will you please forgive me, what I wrote so blind,
such as the eye of toad, the squash of flies,
a poem that I should never have signed.

That last tercet, oh so carefully timed,
came to the rescue, like a well earned prize,
caress me not, for you are just too kind.

"I Am" by John Clare - to Mark his Birthday Today, Born 13 July 1793

Wikimedia, Public Domain

Today, 13th July, is the birthday of Romantic poet John Clare, who was born in Helpston, Northamptonshire, in 1793 and died in 1864. He was the son of a farm labourer and his poems were generally rural.

He was a depressed, impoverished, insane and, sadly for him, unrecognised for his poetry in his lifetime.

Here's his most famous poem I Am, written when he was confined in the General Lunative Asylum in Northampton.











I am: yet what I am, none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes -
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
And strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - This Day in 1822, on the 8 July, the Much-Loved Poet Died in Italy

Dover, (c) Janet Cameron

Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley had a short, but intense life. Shelley was a rebel and an eccentric, whose outrageous behaviour shocked society.

    

When the Dover steam packet was introduced and crossed regularly from Dover to Calais in the 1780s, it proved a great success with the aristocracy, who began writing about their travels, describing them as "Grand Tours."

Soon the Dover cutters were so highly regarded that they were patronised by bankers, politicians, merchants and lawyers, as well as a love-struck poet. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) who had good reason to be glad of Dover's efficient port. The great poet, who is famous for such sublime poetry as "To a Skylark," was already married when he fell in love with sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin, daughter of publisher, William Godwin and women's rights champion, Mary Wollstonecroft.

Born in Horsham in Sussex, Shelley was a rebel and a rabble-rouser, intense, imaginative and unconventional. At school he was known as "Mad Shelley" or the "Eton Atheist."

Percy Shelley's First Elopement – Harriet Westbrook

Harriet was the daughter of the proprietor of a coffee-house, and when she was sixteen, she and Shelley eloped to Scotland and were married in Edinburgh in August 1811. For three years, the two young people led a nomadic existence. Their relationship was far from conventional, as apparently Shelley tried to share her with his friend T.J. Hogg. It's not too clear from literary references whether he was successful in persuading Harriet to comply.

By 1814, the marriage collapsed – which is unsurprising since Shelley disapproved of marriage, along with eating meat, religion and royalty. The couple had two children and the effect of Shelley's abandonment of them had dire effects on the whole family. Harriet became suicidal, making distressing scenes to try to get her husband to remain with her.

Ménage à Trois with Mary Godwin and Jane Clairmont

In 1814, when he was twenty-two, Shelley and Mary decided to elope. But first, Shelley invited along Mary's stepsister, Jane (Claire) Clairmont, who was just fifteen years old. The three of them made for Dover, boarding the first steam packet they could find. The carefree threesome travelled through France to Switzerland, where Shelley wrote to his wife, Harriet Westbrook, naively suggesting she should join them.

Instead, in 1816, Harriet threw herself into the Serpentine in London, leaving her unfaithful husband free to indulge his scandalous ménage à trois. His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein, and she began to write her great work in the summer of 1816, by Lake Geneva, where she spent her time with her husband and the poet, Lord Byron. Their ménage à trois continued until Percy Shelley's death in 1822 aged thirty-years.

In his essay "On Love," composed in July, 1818, Shelley says: "What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life; ask him who adores, what is God? The poet concludes: "So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was."

Sources:

• "On Love," Percy Bysshe Shelley, Romanticism An Anthology, Ed. Duncan Wu, Blackwell, 1994.

A Poem for When Everything Changes and Does Your Head In!

Copyright Janet Cameron

One thing is for sure, everything changes. Shelley knew this and right now, I need this poem!


MUTABILITY by Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

Emily Dickinson - Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Tonight I saw the film A Quiet Passion!  Cynthia Nixon was deeply convincing in the role of the central protagonist, Emily Dickinson. The interaction and conflict within this close-knit family was spellbinding, although distressing especially towards the end of the film which showed Nixon's fine exploration of how Emily must have suffered due to Bright's Disease.

Hard enough for her to have suffered from the derision heaped upon her for being a woman-poet. Only 7 of her poems were published in her lifetime.

The film ended with her poem, 497, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. There can't have been a dry eye in the theatre!

Sad to say, this poem was published posthumously. She never knew that one day she would be so admired and held in such high esteem.

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me –  
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –  
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads 
Were toward Eternity – 

A Special Love Poem for April

Public Domain

Always Marry an April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,

I found April in my arms.

April golden, April cloudy,

Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;

April soft in flowered languor,

April cold with sudden anger,

Ever changing, ever true —

I love April, I love you.


By Ogden Nash
1902-1971