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Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon

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The early Swinburne (1860's-1880) is a very exciting poet and critic, and he has been one of my favorites for many years now. He is said to be a young man's poet, which, if certain themes in his "Poems and Ballads" be taken on a superficial level, he may well appear to be. Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads," like every book ever written,is an acknowledged classic, a masterpiece, and all of that sort of meaningless critical verbiage-- but "Poems and Ballads" really is a masterpiece in every sense of that fairly undefinable category.
If there any aspiring poets among you who are unaquainted with Swinburne, I suggest that you become acquainted with him at once-- you will almost certainly learn something from him on how powerful a well constructed, but seemingly artless poem can be. He is an absolute master of nearly every poetic form and poetic rhythm, and one of those uncommon writers of such facility that they seem to speak for you, or rather-- Swinburne manages to put into glittering poetic phrasing, thoughts and sentiments that every person feels, but only a few writers, such as Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, can both cogently and beautifully articulate. Naturally, such writers are the envy of everyone, but reading such poems of Swinburne's as "Hymn to Proserpine," "The Leper," or "A Ballad of Life," is as genuinely pleasurable as reading can possibly be.
For those of you who do not know Swinburne, I envy you your potential new discovery-- its not every day (given the popular availability of Baudelaire, Donne, et. al.) that one can turn up a writer of such calibur from nearly a century ago-- and who, until very recently, was practically forgotten. So many great poets and writers are only able to be read by English speakers in translation- we are nevertheless fortunate in our wealth of great English writers like Shakespeare, Marvell, even Emily Bronte. Swinburne is one of those writers by whom we English speakers should count ourselves fortunate to be able to read in the original language, and should avail ourselves in doing so.

How strange it is that a poet who burst on the scene like a thunderbolt in the 1860s is all but forgotten today. Perhaps we have Eliot to blame: his comments on Swinburne are certainly pervasive in all latter-day criticism on the poet. Others might say that the relevance of his poetry, with its devastating and blasphemous anti-christianity, its violent portrayal of atypical and obscene sexuality, and its recurring death-wish, is tied in with the period that created them.

Yet I beg to differ. Famous lines like "the supreme evil, God" and "There is no God found stronger than death and death is a sleep" may strike home more powerfully in the changing but still thoroughly Christian world of mid-nineteenth century England, but the sentiments expressed apply just as well to our times. Swinburne was, besides many other things, a poet of freedom at all costs, the heir of Blake, Shelley and the French Revolution. His tirades against Christianity are essentially tirades against oppression, against the soul's oppression of the body and the church's oppression of her followers, and as long as there are people who are not free, his voice is one to be heard.

Nor is it all blasphemy with Swinburne. In fact, perhaps the most highly rated poem in this volume is "The Triumph of Time", a long lament over lost love in which Swinburne displays all his technichal virtuosity without losing out in emotional content. Memorable lines may stand out, "I have woven a veil for the weeping face / whose lips have drunken the wine of tears", "Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow / to tender things on a spring-tide sea", but singling them out is like singling out notes in Beethoven's Ninth. Swinburne's poetry is musical in more than only the sound of his language: it is musical also in its very structure, its non-linearity and in its constant appeal to the emotions. To experience it fully, you must, at least for moment, allow yourself to be swept away by the thundering currents and roaring rapids of his angry verses, and to move with the neverending tides of his slow and mournful sea-music.

The effort is well worth it indeed, and this volume is an excellent place to start.

As previous reviewers have noted so eloquently, Swinburne is sadly neglected these days. More's the pity, because his mastery of the flowing, luxuriously melodic line is astonishing, as is his ability to create vivid imagery. All the senses are engaged in his poems, so that the reader can practically feel the lines as if they were silk or satin. And all of this is so seemingly effortless, even though the technical skill required to create such work is painstaking & precise, the result of intense focus. Yet you'll come away feeling as if every line came naturally, spontaneously to Swinburne, a direct expression of his deepest feelings, thoughts & yearnings.

He has the reputation as a controversial poet, rebelling against the hypocritical moral & social strictures of his time. This is true, of course, although he was more the rebel in his poetry than in his day-to-day life. But he seems equally transgressive today, for quite a different reason: when shock & ugliness have become tired clichés, when imitative edginess is passed off as genuine rebellion, then it's actual beauty that becomes truly transgressive & taboo. Not the shoddy, mass-produced kitsch of a Thomas Kinkade or Hallmark cards, mind you, which has absolutely nothing to do with beauty -- no, Swinburne offers something very real, very moving -- an overgrown garden of roses (with thorns), rather than plastic flowers churned out by a factory.

For those who wish to lose themselves within a world of exquisite beauty -- one that's no stranger to grief or sorrow, either -- you can do no better than this very rich volume. Most highly recommended!

Length:: 4:44 Mins

The editor of this Penguin Classics selection of Swinburne's poetry, Kenneth Hayes, writes of "Dolores" that she is Swinburne's anti-Madonna" and that in the poem his "paganism is tinged with his own interest in sadomasochism."

One can well see why High-Victorian heads were turned when poems like this one were published,and Swinburne was accused of blasphemy etc. as the publishers were forced to withdraw his "Poems and Ballads" for a time.

To read Swinburne is to luxuriate in the English language, and whilst one detects the influences of Shelley, Baudelaire et al and his own immersion in the Classical Greek tragedians, his verse-style is certainly his own and non other's. I couldn't imagine anyone familiar with even one or two of his poems opening this book at any page and not recognising, in the rich musicality and facility with the depths of language, Swinburne's hallmarks.

My reading of a part of the poem - necessitated, alas, by Amazon's restrictions on video size - does not, of course do Swinburne justice, but my hope is that this small fragment will whet the reader's appetite for a poetry uniquely rich and strange.

If you are like the mass of humanity you probably don't know Algernon Swinburne or his poems. It is a shame that so few do. If you'll forgive my presumptuousness, please let me tell you why you should take the time to meet the man and his poems.
First, you should meet him because he is messy.

If you have ever read Keats (lamentably few of you have probably even done this--much less reading Swinburne) then you will know the glory of the perfectly visual, perfectly written poem.

Swinburne, for all of the beauty in his words, has none of this in his writing. If the poetry of Keats is a stunningly well tended garden then the poetry of Swinburne is a lush overgrown field of wildflowers.

Second, you should meet Swinburne because he is exhilarating.

Few poets have the courage or the skill to layer line after unforgettable line like Swinburne. The very first poem in this book: A Ballad of Life, will demonstrate what I mean.

Third, you should meet Swinburne because of the very fact that he is too little read.

He is considered to be one of the group called Pre-Raphaelite poets (his book Poems and Ballads is dedicated to his friend and Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones).

This group as a whole gets criminally overlooked. After reading works by Pre-Raphaelites like Swinburne, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti I must say that I believe they stack up very well against their predecessors (the Romantics) and (in my opinion) eclipse successors like Yeats.

So, if you are looking for something to expand your literary horizons, or would just like something truly powerful and lovely to read, give this book by Swinburne a try.

I give it my recommendation.

Thhis is the best book of Pre-Raph poetry, art and history that I have ever seen/read. I cannot believe that only 2 people have read and writtewn reviews about it. I am an artist, and the artwork, etc. in this text (art school textbook for me) is extremely emotive and inspirational!

It is expensive, but it is worth every red cent to an art and poetry lover!!! Give it a chance.