Poets on Poets

By Claude McKay, Alice Meynell and Richard Le Gallienne

Writing poetry always seems to be something we learn at school, usually beginning with a couplet of child-like rhyme that brings gales of laughter. Later it may be agonising over a verse or two attempting to rhapsodise on love and then the years roll on with only an occasional desire to return.

In this volume we put together wordsmiths of the highest caliber as they write on Poets themselves. Many of the poems provide valuable insights on how other poets are seen by their peers. Some are deeply personal others are abstract. Whether they speak at the celebration of a birth or the knowing tragedy of entering a slaughterous battle these poets take us into new uncharted territories revealing their inner selves in raw and tender ways.

Yeats, Flecker, Benet, Yeats, Dickinson, Coleridge, Millay, Levy, Gurney are but a few of their number who speak with the clarity, the eloquence and the truth that only a poet can know….but all can share.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470770

Book preview

Poets on Poets

An Introduction

Writing poetry always seems to be something we learn at school, usually beginning with a couplet of child-like rhyme that brings gales of laughter.  Later it may be agonising over a verse or two attempting to rhapsodise on love and then the years roll on with only an occasional desire to return. 

In this volume we put together wordsmiths of the highest caliber as they write on Poets themselves.  Many of the poems provide valuable insights on how other poets are seen by their peers.  Some are deeply personal others are abstract.  Whether they speak at the celebration of a birth or the knowing tragedy of entering a slaughterous battle these poets take us into new uncharted territories revealing their inner selves in raw and tender ways.

Yeats, Flecker, Benet, Yeats, Dickinson, Coleridge, Millay, Levy, Gurney are but a few of their number who speak with the clarity, the eloquence and the truth that only a poet can know….but all can share.   

Index of Contents

A Caution to Poets by Matthew Arnold

To a Poet by Emily Hickey

To a Poet by Alice Meynell

To a Poet by Claude McKay

To Poets by Charles Sorley

The Poet by Aleksandr Pushkin

The Poet by Radclyffe Hall

The Poet by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Poet to Nature by Alice Meynell

Sonnet VII - Sweet Poet of the Woods by Charlotte Smith

To John Keats, Poet, at Spring Time by Countee Cullen

False Poets and True (To Wordsworth) by Thomas Hood

On Dryden by Christopher Caudwell

On Poet-Ape by Ben Jonson

On the Morals of Poets by Richard Le Gallienne

The Poets by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Toast by Ernest Rhys

A Minor Poet by Stephen Vincent Benét

To Alex Smith, The Glasgow Poet On His Sonnet to Fame by George Meredith

The Peasant Poet by John Clare

London Poets by Amy Levy

Negro Poets by Charles Bertram Johnson

A Poet's Hope by Ambrose Bierce

The Poet's Portion by Thomas Hood

Poets by Khalil Gibran

The Poet's Apology by Aristophanes

A Tale of the Miser and His Poet by Anne Kingsmill Finch

The Poet, the Oyster and Sensitive Plant by William Cowper

The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad by Robert Herrick

Besides the Autumn Poets Sing by Emily Dickinson

A Poet of One Mood by Alice Meynell

Fancy in Nubibus or the Poet in the Clouds  by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers by W B Yeats

Singers to Come by Alice Meynell

To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence by James Elroy Flecker

The Young Poet by James Elroy Flecker

Portrait of the Author by William Carlos Williams

The Modern Poet - A Song of Derivations by Alice Meynell

The Poet to His Childhood by Alice Meynell

A Poet's Father by Ambrose Bierce

A Poet's Welcome To His Love Begotten Daughter by Robert Burns

A Poet to His Baby Son by James Weldon Johnson

Mother and Poet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Martyr Poets - Did Not Tell by Emily Dickinson

Trench Poets by Edgell Rickword

England's Poet by Laurence Binyon

A Poet Unknown by Ernest Rhys

To the Poet Before Battle by Ivor Gurney

The Poets Are Waiting by Harold Munro

Lament for the Poets, 1916 by Francis Ledwidge

The Poet's Knowledge by Raymond Chandler

These Things That Poets Said by Edward Thomas

This Was a Poet - It Is That by Emily Dickinson

The Old Poet by Amy Levy

The Old Poet by James Elroy Flecker

The Poet to Death by Sarojini Naidu

A Poet's Dying Hymn by Grace Aguilar

The Poet's Death by John Clare

To A Dead Poet by Amy Levy

At a Poet's Grave by Francis Ledwidge

To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare and What He hath Left Us by Ben Jonson

The Poet and His Book by Edna St Vincent Millay

The Passionate Reader to His Poet by Richard Le Gallienne

POETS ON POETS

A Caution