Customer Reviews

Collected Poems

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What can I say, it's John Betjeman... He's great!

I especially love his poem, 'Slough' (rhymes with cow) -- imagine that he wrote this poem as war with Germany loomed on the horizon and England was soon to be bombed unmercifully. Opening stanza:

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
-- Swarm over, Death!

Betjeman is so easy going that the radical or even impudent aspect of some of his ideas passes under your guard and strikes like a knife when it catches up to you. He's undoubtedly one of the best poets of the 20th Century. The intensely local aspect of a lot of his poetry is opaque to an international audience, but there is still plenty that is deep and universal here.

I tried very hard to build up some enthusiasm for this collection. Betjeman has long been one of the most loved and popular of English poets. But I found the light verse too light, and the precise description of English landscape uncorrelated with some higher moral and spiritual vision as for instance in Wordsworth.

Not my cup of tea, but this does not mean that it is not a good brew for those who enjoy an intelligent rhyming perceptiveness, a humorous at times wistfully imaginative view of the world.

Because my review is I think gives a poor description of Betjeman's poem I will bring an example , so that the reader of this review will at last have a ' feel' of what the work is.

14 November 1973

Hundreds of birds in the air

And millions of leaves on the pavement,

And Westminster bells ringing on

To palace and people outside-

And for all the words,' I will'

To love's most willing enslavement,

All of our people rejoice

With venturous bridegroom and bride.

Trumpets blare at the entrance,

Multitudes crane and sway

Glow, white lily in London,

You are high in our hearts today!