Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Sunlight on the Garden

For the first time in days, the sun is out. I shall venture forth and stock up provisions for the rains to come.

In the meantime, I thought I'd record Louis MacNeice's poem "The Sunlight on the Garden." I first encountered this poem when John MacKenzie posted a recording of it on his now-neglected blog "Salt and Ice." (Unfortunately, John recorded it before he started using archive.org and the link to the audio-blogger post doesn't work anymore.) It's a gorgeous poem, full of the sort of aural densities for which I am such a sucker. I particularly like the anadiplotic feminine rhymes, not a device you see used very often. I am grateful for "The Sunlight on the Garden"!

Here's my recording of "The Sunlight on the Garden."

3 comments:

Brenda Schmidt said...

Yay! I love this poem! It's one of the few that I've memorized. So I'm grateful, too, for sunlight on New Westminster...

Zachariah Wells said...

Come to think of it, wasn't it you who requested John read it, Brenda?

Brenda Schmidt said...

Yepper. Here's my post about the poem at the time of John's reading in Jan 2005 and a related post in Dec 2005. Groan worthy, perhaps, but I don't care. I love the poem. It's a treat every time I hear it.