Review
Sarah Lapsley gets into the literary spirit of the season…
- Christmas Poems: A Holiday Gift Book
- W. W. Norton
All Through the House…
We all know the famous Night Before Christmas, first published anonymously in 1823 and latterly attributed to either Clement Clarke Moore or Henry Livingston.
But apart from that, most people would be hard pressed to name another Christmas poem. This small but perfectly formed (much like a good poem), yuletide collection, aims to remedy that. First published in the 1940s and reissued in the 1970s, before this newest incarnation, it’s a perfectly sized stocking filler for the fan of poetry. Delightfully diverse, the poems here range from Virgil, through Chaucer, Milton and Yeats – up to the present day, with pit-stops at e.e. cummings and William Carlos Williams, not to mention a smattering of works by the prolific (and long-lived) ‘Anonymous’. In the true spirit of the season, the secular sits comfortably alongside the Christian. Christina Rossetti acts as a prelude to William Shakespeare and the celebratory and pensive mingle happily.
It’s a lovely little collection, well designed, diverse and inclusive and, of course, the final say is given to the Irish W.B. Yeats; closing proceedings with his take on the wise men in ‘The Magi’: ‘And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,/ And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,/ Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,/ The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.’ Better than mince pies for setting the mood!
