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By Laura Riding Selection and Preface by the poet 1970; Persea Books, 1993 |
First published in England in 1970 and long out of print, Selected Poems: In Five Sets includes sixty-one poems personally selected and arranged by the author. Drawn from her Collected Poems of 1938, this is a remarkable distillation of Laura Riding's poetic achievement. The preface is perhaps Laura (Riding) Jackson's most succinct explanation of her renunciation of the writing of poetry, and is a provocative commentary on the contemporary poetry scene.
"Laura Riding is the greatest lost poet in American literature. W.H. Auden once called her the only living philosophical poet . . . . The discoveries of Laura Riding's subtle ear escape analysis." --Kenneth Rexroth
The World and I
by Laura Riding
This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun,
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
What a world of awkwardness!
What hostile implements of sense!
Perhaps this is as close a meaning
As perhaps becomes such knowing.
Else I think the world and I
Must live together as strangers and die--
A sour love, each doubtful whether
Was ever a thing to love the other.
No, better for both to be nearly sure
Each of each--exactly where
Exactly I and exactly the world
Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.
With the Face
by Laura Riding
With the face goes a mirror
As with the mind a world.
Likeness tells the doubting eye
That strangeness is not strange.
At an early hour and knowledge
Identity not yet familiar
Looks back upon itself from later,
And seems itself.
To-day seems now.
With reality-to-be goes time.
With the mind goes a world.
Wit the heart goes a weather.
With the face goes a mirror
As with the body a fear.
Young self goes staring to the wall
Where dumb futurity speaks calm,
And between then and then
Forebeing grows of age.
The mirror mixes with the eye.
Soon will it be the very eye.
Soon will the eye that was
The very mirror be.
Death, the final image, will shine
Transparently not otherwise
Than as the dark sun described
With such faint brightnesses.
Copyright © 1997 by The Board of Literary Management of the late Laura (Riding) Jackson
Updated 12 June 1997 || ottotwo@email.unc.edu