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By Laura Riding Edited, with an introduction, by Robert Nye Persea Books, 1994 |
"In a word, this writer hailed by Martin Seymour-Smith in his Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Literature (1976) as 'the most consistently good woman poet of all time' decided that the practice of poetry is truth-baffling, that its procedures make it impossible for it to fulfill the linguistic and spiritual expectations which it excites. Respecting this decision as one must, I would still remark that Laura Riding's poems seem to me to express what would be otherwise inexpressible, saying that which could not be said were it not for the moment of the poem and the medium of poetry. Her finest poems, moreover, seem to me those in which she makes discovery as she writes, poems in which the heart's and mind's truth comes more as something learned than something taught." --Robert Nye, from his introduction.
In Due Form
by Laura Riding
I do not doubt you.
I know you love me.
It is a fact of your indoor face,
A true fancy of your muscularity.
Your step is confident.
Your look is thorough.
Your stay-beside-me is a pillow
To roll over on
And sleep as on my own upon.
But make me a statement
In due form on endless foolscap
Witnessed before a notary
And sent by post, registered,
To be signed for on receipt
And opened under oath to believe;
An antique paper missing from my strong-box,
A bond to clutch when hail tortures the chimney
And lightning circles redder round the city,
And your brisk step and thorough look
Are gallant but uncircumstantial,
And not mentionable in a doom-book.
Yes and No
by Laura Riding
Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet--
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas--
Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.
Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?
Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.
Copyright © 1997 by The Board of Literary Management of the late Laura (Riding) Jackson
Updated 11 June 1997 || ottotwo@email.unc.edu