Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Chaucer the Maker by John Speirs (Faber, 12s. Gd.).
The Pleasures of Poverty, An Argument and an Anthology, by Anthony Bertram (Hollis & Carter, 15s.).
Selected Poems of Thomas Merton. Introduced by Robert Speaight (Hollis & Carter, 12s. Gd.).  

The unifying links between these books are first the values of Catholic Christianity which form an accepted standard for the subject of the first, the editor of the second, and the author of the third; and secondly, Mr. Bertram’s title which would be readily understood by the other two— “pleasures” which have in fact been voluntarily embraced by Thomas Merton as a monk of the Carthusian Order.  

That voluntary embracement of poverty—“holy poverty” as Mr. Bertram calls it— is the peak up to which his anthology leads; but the willing acceptance and turning to peace of mind and spiritual account of that poverty forced upon us by hap or circumstance is a no less important feature of the book. In extracts in prose and verse, culled from his readings in English, French, and Latin translations, Mr. Bertram has built up a consecutive theme so that his book can be read as a whole and not merely dipped into in the manner of the usual anthology.  

It is divided into three parts and many sub-sections. Those of the first and longest part, “The Imperfect Paradise”, deal with the earthly delights and consolations of a poverty that is never destitution but a humble sufficiency; the second part deals with wealth as “The Bane of Bliss”; and the third with “The Long Reward” of those who have patiently suffered or joyfully embraced the Lady Poverty: inevitably its key figure is St. Francis of Assisi. It is a wholesome and heartening compilation, garnered with loving care, and a very present spiritual help to many who are today being gathered into the Lady’s ranks whether they will or no.  

From among her voluntary servants comes the voice of Thomas Merton’s Selected Poems. Some of these date from his secular days and are on Classical themes, on war subjects or quotidian experience; but for the most—and best—part they are the fruit of his vocation as a Carthusian. They are interior in a double sense: subjective explorations of the mystic way—explorations which, from the very nature of mystical experience, cannot be wholly articulate; and, written from the interior of the cloister, they sometimes, as Robert Speaight confesses in his sensitive Foreword, too angrily reject the world, or speak in accents a shade too Biblical. But Merton’s stature perceptibly increases with the later poems, where feeling and intellect are happily wed. This is still a volume of promise rather than achievement, but the promise is, nevertheless, considerable; its appeal is essentially to those who have already travelled some distance along the author’s road: they will derive much solace and delight from this poet of Elected Silence, as he titles his recent autobiography.

Mr. Speirs pays full tribute to the medieval Christian order lying at the back of all that Chaucer wrote—an order with the enormous advantage lacking to a modern writer of being universally valid for poet and audience alike. Chaucer’s caustic quips at clerical abuses partake of the nature of Aristophanes’ jibes at the Gods: they are made by a believer to those inside the fold. But while Mr. Speirs unquestioningly accepts Chaucer’s identification with his age, he too lightly esteems the efforts of the scholars who alone have made a proper understanding of that age possible. The result is that in his admirable, close analysis of the text of the poems he often misses allusions, and even examples of that delicious irony of Chaucer’s that he elsewhere so justly praises. This disparagement of “mere scholarship” causes him also to underestimate the poet’s indebtedness to do the French and Italian, and correspondingly to overrate his “English” originality. Yet, with these reservations, his book is an eminently readable and exhilerating exploration of Chaucer’s work; indeed one of the most vital and arresting introductions to Chaucer which a student can hope to encounter.