Donne, Frost, Longley

Articles seen recently on three of the poets who are on the Leaving Certificate cycle :-

Andrew Motion (British Poet Laureate) reviews John Stubbs’s new biography of John Donne (also recommended by us here) in the Guardian :-
“His evocation is at once highly readable - because it's dashing as well as detailed - and sombre: although the poems may sometimes be playful, they arose from circumstances that were often frustratingly difficult. By giving these problems due weight, Stubbs manages to make Donne seem recognisable and sympathetic, and also the inhabitant of a world that has long since disappeared.” continued …

In the LA Times, Meghan O’Rourke reviews the newly published Notebooks of Robert Frost :- “Patient readers will discover plenty of the pith of which Frost was capable. Cumulatively, the fragments are almost poignant; they underscore the privacy of the human mind and remind us of the labor that goes into the apparent transparency of Frost's poetry.” continued …

And last autumn’s Collected Poems by Michael Longley are reviewed in the Guardian by David Wheatley :-
“In his truest and most enduring poems, Longley manages, in Yeats's words, to hold justice and reality in a single thought without doing violence to either. The many poems in which Longley succeeds in this aim are among the great poems of our time”. continued ...