E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

I just got Peter Porter's The Rest on the Flight: Selected Poems .  There's my summer gone.  Seriously, this massive collection is inspiring, and indicative.  I look forward to reading it.  Also to be recommended is The First Yeats , edited by Edward Larissy .  It is salutary to have the poems as Yeats first published them.

Peter Porter was, I have written below, a master craftsman, and particularly good at writing of loss and the temporal. This poem is very humbly offered to him, and his memory. In Memoriam, Peter Porter Your death happened on the BBC At six, on Radio 4. A sunny Day, and my listening to Kate Nash Now, which I know, Peter, smashes Any sense of decorum this might Have had. Then again, literary nights We met by accident with white wine You always spoke of music; fine Talk, and warm, as well. I replied That I liked popular things. Died, Porter? Impossible. He lived across Canvasses, or scores; in a note’s loss, In colour’s fading, also. He wrote of The world, as if to form is to love, As if to hold a word true to its place Was to rise in a chapel, kiss high grace. 23 April 2010, London

Sad news.  The major poet Peter Porter has died at the age of 81, in London.  Just heard this on the six o'clock BBC news.  The BBC report (a brief obituary notice) noted his "tragic life" - death of his mother at 9, and the suicide of his first wife, which led to his most-acclaimed book, The Cost of Seriousness .  It also noted that, while he has born Australian, he had long ago become one of England's most admired poets (he moved to London in 1951, half a century ago).  It noted his formal similarities to Auden , and his satirical edge.  It also noted his love of music and painting - constant themes in his poems.  Finally, it noted his many awards, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the Forward Prize.  I met Peter Porter soon after I moved to London in 2003.  While I cannot claim him as a friend, he was always an exceptionally courteous and lively interlocutor, at numerous literary events and parties, where my wife and I woul...