Literary Advent Calendar | 8th - 12th December

Everything should be caught up after today, so enjoy this installment of poems. I'm hoping to expand them into other forms as well after today's blog.

8TH DECEMBER
"Leda and the Swan" by WB Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

                                  Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

 

I discovered this poem over the summer, and it's one of the only Yeats poems I've actually read. Leda is also a big theme throughout Orphan Black, so that's another plus to the poem.

 

9TH DECEMBER

"Brand New Ancients" by Kate Tempest

 

 

Short of a Christmas song, I was wondering how I was gonna get a video into this Calendar. But then I remembered this, Kate Tempest's very modern and critically acclaimed poem. It's delivered by her (she's also a rap artist by the way) with filmed inserts telling the story. I'd highly recommend watching all of it, it feels so alive.  

10TH DECEMBER

"You Only Live Twice" by Ian Fleming

 

 You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.

 

Written "after Basho", Basho being the famous haiku writer, I was going to pair this with a poem by him - but then I couldn't find any I actually like. So I stuck with just this, Fleming's attempt at a haiku, written in Chapter 11 of You Only Live Twice (and also before the novel starts). I think it's really good and it's definitely stuck with me. While we're on the subject of Fleming, I'd say Casino Royale was definitely worth a read if you haven't already.

 

11TH DECEMBER

An extract from "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe

 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

''Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door-

Only this, and nothing more.'

 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-

Nameless here for evermore.

The poem goes on for a lot longer and is definitely worth a read. When the raven starts speaking it definitely gets even more strange. It's an odd poem, and I've never particularly adored the way it's written, but there's something irresistable and mystical about it, so here it is.

 

12TH DECEMBER

"The Sun Rising" by John Donne

 
 BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
      Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
      Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
      Late school-boys and sour prentices,
   Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
   Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. 

      Thy beams so reverend, and strong
      Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
      If her eyes have not blinded thine,
      Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
   Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
   Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

      She's all states, and all princes I;
      Nothing else is;
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
      Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
      In that the world's contracted thus;
   Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
   To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Another poem I studied last year and another favourite. I'm not a fan of all of Donne's poetry, but this is definitely a highlight.

No doubt I'll throw some Shakespeare in here in the future or something similar, and other than that, who knows! But I'm now fully caught up, so it'll be a new blog a day or, if I run behind, a couple of days.