Poet Laureate

Home , Alfred Austin, John Betjeman, John Masefield, Laurence Eusden, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe (writer)

“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

The Poets Laureate “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1400

Possibly as early as this year, John Gower lost his eyesight. At about this point, his CRONICA TRIPERTITA and, in English, IN PRAISE OF PEACE. Poetic praise of the new monarch King Henry IV would be rewarded with a pension paid in the form of an annual allowance of good wine from the king’s cellars.1

1. You will note that we now can denominate him as having been a “poet laureate” of England, not because he was called such in his era, for that didn’t happen, but simply because this honorable designation would eventually come to be marked by this grant of a lifetime supply of good wine from the monarch’s cellars. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1591

John Wilson was born.

THE SCARLET LETTER: The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. There he stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap, while his grey eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like those of Hester’s infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of those portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.

The Poets Laureate of England

1591-1599 Edmund Spenser 1599-1619 Samuel Daniel 1619-1637 Ben Jonson 1638-1668 William Davenant 1670-1689 John Dryden 1689-1692 Thomas Shadwell 1692-1715 Nahum Tate 1715-1718 Nicholas Rowe 1718-1730 Laurence Eusden 1730-1757 Colley Cibber 1758-1785 William Whitehead 1785-1790 Thomas Warton 1790-1813 Henry James Pye 1813-1843 Robert Southey 1843-1850 William Wordsworth 1850-1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson 1896-1913 Alfred Austin 1913-1930 Robert Bridges 1930-1967 John Masefield HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

The Poets Laureate of England

1967-1972 Cecil Day-Lewis 1972-1984 Sir John Betjeman 1984-1998 Ted Hughes 1999- Andrew Motion HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1599

January 16, Tuesday (1598, Old Style): Edmund Spenser died with his Arthurian poem, “The Faerie Queene,” still unfinished. In it his King Arthur figure portrays “magnanimity,” which to Spenser’s mind was the leading virtue.

MR.MAGNAMINITY

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1600

Charles I was born, the 2d son of King James VI of Scotland (who would become King James I of England) and Anne of Denmark.

Ben Jonson’s play CYNTHIA’S REVELS.

At about this point the commoner poet Samuel Daniel became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, daughter of the Countess of Cumberland. On the death of Edmund Spenser he was benefited with the somewhat vague office of Poet Laureate, which it seems however he would relinquish in favor of Jonson. Whether it was on this occasion is not known, but about this time, and at the recommendation of his brother-in-law, Giovanni Florio, he was taken into favor at court and wrote A PANEGYRICKE CONGRATULATORIE in ottava rima, which was offered to King James at Burleigh Harrington in Rutland.

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1616

Ben Jonson’s work were published in folio, an unprecedented honor. Despite the fact that his current comedy, The Devil is an Ass, was flopping at the box office, he became poet laureate of England and recipient of a substantial pension.

POET LAUREATE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1617

Robert Herrick graduated from St John’s College of Cambridge University.

He would become one of the groupies of the “Sons of Ben” that admired the works of Ben Jonson, and would himself create at least five poems in honor of that Poet Laureate of England.

Our Hero HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1630

Ben Jonson, as Poet Laureate of England, was granted by King Charles I the annual stipend of one “pipe,” or double-hogshead cast containing 126 gallons, of Canary wine. From this point until the death of Poet Laureate Thomas Warton and the acclamation of Poet Laureate Henry James Pye in 1790, the Poet Laureate, considered a life member of the Royal Household and charged with creating occasional verse upon occasion, would be rewarded in this manner.

POETS LAUREATE

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

The Poets Laureate of England

1718-1730 Laurence Eusden 1730-1757 Colley Cibber 1758-1785 William Whitehead 1785-1790 Thomas Warton 1790-1813 Henry James Pye 1813-1843 Robert Southey 1843-1850 William Wordsworth 1850-1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson 1896-1913 Alfred Austin 1913-1930 Robert Bridges 1930-1967 John Masefield 1967-1972 Cecil Day-Lewis 1972-1984 Sir John Betjeman 1984-1998 Ted Hughes 1999- Andrew Motion

“WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT”: The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet- laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is the most correct. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1637

August 6, Sunday (Old Style): Ben Jonson died.

August 9, Wednesday (Old Style): Ben Jonson’s body was interred in Westminster Abbey under a bare slab of stone — but we notice that at some later point an inscription was chiseled into this slab:

O RARE BEN JONSON!

A play he had been unable to finish, Sad Shepherd’s Tale, would see publication in 1641.

The post of Poet Laureate of England having been left open by this death, the post would be filled in the following year by William Davenant (chosen over Thomas May, the other candidate, despite that fact that Davenant’s masque Britannica Triumphans, with its initial performance having been scheduled for a Sunday, had needed for politico-religious reasons to be suppressed). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1638

Publication of a collection of memorial elegies for the former Poet Laureate of England Ben Jonson, JONSONUS VIRBIUS.

Thomas Heywood’s THE WISE-WOMAN OF HOGSDON.

Named as the next Poet Laureate of England, William Davenant collected his minor lyrical pieces into a volume entitled MADAGASCAR, WITH OTHER POEMS (also during this year, with Inigo Jones, publication of BRITANNIA TRIUMPHANS and LUMINALIA, or The Festival of Light). POETS LAUREATE

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1668

John Dryden agreed to write exclusively for Thomas Killigrew’s theatrical company and became a shareholder. The Archbishop of Canterbury granted him the degree of Master of Arts. He was appointed to become, at the death of Sir William Davenant, the next Poet Laureate of England (but when William and Mary would come to power, he would be stripped of this title due to religious differences). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1670

John Dryden’s heroic tragedy The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards. (George Villiers’s satire of the “heroic tragedy” form of play The Rehearsal would be so vicious and so effective that it that it would bring this style of writing abruptly to an end.)

Dryden was appointed as royal historiographer at an annual salary of £200.

Sir William Davenant having deceased, Dryden was appointed as Poet Laureate of England.

The Poets Laureate of England

JOHN DRYDEN’S POEMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1689

John Dryden’s play Don Sebastian. King James II having fled to France after the landing of William, Prince of Orange at Brigham in southwestern England backed up by a Dutch army, suddenly William and his wife Mary were William III and Mary II, King and Queen of England — and Johnny-boy was no longer England’s Poet Laureate.

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1693

Joseph Addison addressed a poem to John Dryden, former Poet Laureate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1758

December 15, Friday: Thomas Gray was offered, but declined, the post of Poet Laureate, which had become vacant through the death of Colley Cibber. POETS LAUREATE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1782

May 27 (Trinity Monday): Henry Headley was elected scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. Other students there, the critic William Lisle Bowles and the classicist William Benwell, would become his friends. Headley would fall under the influence of Poet Laureate Thomas Warton, then a fellow of this college.

Aaron Lopez was in a carriage, returning to Newport, Rhode Island, and stopped off at Scott’s Pond in Smithfield to let his horse drink. The horse bolted into deep water, the carriage overturned, and the rich man drowned.2

On this day the course of instruction at the College of Rhode Island atop College Hill in Providence was resuming after the wartime hiatus. Long live peace! BAPTISTS BROWN UNIVERSITY

2. To get some idea of just how easily one might become entangled in apparatus and unable to extricate oneself underwater from the wreckage of this sort of conveyance, you might take a close look at John Brown’s “chariot” — which is stored behind the John Brown mansion in Providence, Rhode Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1785

The Reverend Professor Thomas Warton, D.D. was appointed Poet Laureate of England and became Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University (he would hold both posts until his death)

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1790

Ben Jonson, as Poet Laureate of England, had been granted by his monarch from 1790 forward the annual stipend of one “pipe,” or double-hogshead cast containing 126 gallons, of Canary wine. In this year Poet Laureate Thomas Warton died and William Hayley was offered the laureateship, but he declined. Henry James Pye was acclaimed as Poet Laureate and, although the holder of this office would still be considered a life member of the Royal Household and would still be charged with creating occasional verse upon occasion, there would be no more of this particular sort of reward. POETS LAUREATE

The Poets Laureate of England

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet- laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is the most correct HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1813

September: Robert Southey was anointed Poet Laureate to the Royal Family of England, after Walter Scott had declined that honor.

Scott’s THE VISION OF DON RODERICK, ROKEBY, and THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1819

January 30, Saturday: Poet Laureate Robert Southey wrote a long and carefully considered letter to Ebenezer Elliott, pointing out faults in the poem Night. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1841

November 30, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau began to spend some of his days in the “Poetry Alcove” at Gore Hall, the new Harvard Library, reading in Geoffrey Chaucer and Sir Walter Raleigh.

We suppose he didn’t find in that alcove anything quite as pretty as the page shown on a following screen, from an original copy of Poet Laureate John Gower’s CONFESSIO AMANTIS: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

He checked out the Reverend Professor Thomas Warton, D.D.’s THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY: FROM THE CLOSE OF THE ELEVENTH TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (Ed. Richard Price. London: T. Tegg, 1824).

THOMAS WARTON I THOMAS WARTON II THOMAS WARTON III THOMAS WARTON IV

He also checked out, again, the initial volume of THE CANTERBURY TALES OF CHAUCER; WITH AN ESSAY ON HIS LANGUAGE AND VERSIFICATION, AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE, NOTES AND A GLOSSARY BY THO. TYRWHITT, ESQ.... (London: W. Pickering, 1830). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

CANTERBURY TALES, I

Nov. 30. Tuesday. Cambridge. — When looking over the dry and dusty volumes of the English poets, I cannot believe that those fresh and fair creations I had imagined are contained in them. English poetry from Gower down, collected into one alcove, and so from the library window compared with the commonest nature, JOHN AUBREY seems very mean. Poetry cannot breathe in the scholar’s atmosphere. The Aubreys and Hickeses, with all their learning, prophane it yet indirectly by their zeal. You need not envy his feelings who for the first time has cornered up poetry in an alcove. I can hardly be serious with myself when I remember that I have come to Cambridge after poetry; and while I am running over the catalogue and collating and selecting, I think if it would not be a shorter way to a complete volume to step at once into the field or wood, with a very low reverence to students and librarians. Milton did not foresee what company he was to fall into. On running over the titles of these books, looking from time to time at their first pages or farther, I am oppressed by an inevitable sadness. One must have come into a library by an oriel window, as softly and undisturbed as the light which falls on the books through a stained window, and not by the librarian’s door, else all his dreams will vanish. Can the Valhalla be warmed by steam and go by clock and bell? Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is, nothing but healthy speech. Though the speech of the poet goes to the heart of things, yet he is that one especially who speaks civilly to Nature as a second person and in some sense is the patron of the world. Though more than any he stands in the midst of Nature, yet more than any he can stand aloof from her. The best lines, perhaps, only suggest to me that that man simply saw or heard or felt what seems the commonest fact in my experience. One will know how to appreciate Chaucer best who has come down to him the natural way through the very meagre pastures of Saxon and ante-Chaucerian poetry. So human and wise he seems after such diet that we are as liable to misjudge him so as usually.

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vulgar — lies very near to them.

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The Saxon Poetry extant seems of a more serious and philosophical cast than the very earliest that can be called HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

English— It has more thought, but less music. It translates Boethius, it paraphrases the Hebrew Bible, it solemnly sings of war –of life and death– and chronicles events— The earliest English poetry is tinctured with romance through the influence of the Normans, as the Saxon was not— The ballad and Metrical Romance belong to this period. Those old singers were for the most part imitators or translators — Or will it not appear when viewed at a sufficient distance — that our brave new poets are also secondary as they, and refer the eye that reads them and their poetry too, back and backward without end?3

Nothing is so attractive and unceasingly curious as character. There is no plant that needs such tender treatment, there is none that will endure so rough. It is the violet and the oak. It is the thing we mean, let us say what we will. We mean our own character, or we mean yours. It is divine and related to the heavens, as the earth is by the flashes of the Aurora. It has no acquaintance nor companion. It goes silent and unobserved longer than any planet in space, but when at length it does show itself, it seems like the flowering of all the world, and its before unseen orbit is lit up like the trail of a meteor. I hear no good news ever but some trait of a noble character. It reproaches me plaintively. I am mean in contrast, but again am thrilled and elevated that I can see my own meanness, and again still, that my own aspiration is realized in that other. You reach me, my friend, not by your kind or wise words to me here or there; but as you retreat, perhaps after years of vain familiarity, some gesture or unconscious action in the distance speaks to me with more emphasis than all those years. I am not concerned 3. This paragraph needs to be understood in the context of the various texts upon which Thoreau had relied while a student at Harvard College, texts which have been identified as: the Reverend Joseph Bosworth’s THE ELEMENTS OF ANGLO=SAXON GRAMMAR ... (London: Printed for Harding, Mavor, and Lepard, 1823), the Reverend John Josias Conybeare’s ILLUSTRATIONS OF ANGLO-SAXON POETRY, EDITED, WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES, INTRODUCTORY NOTICES, &C., BY HIS BROTHER WILLIAM DANIEL CONYBEARE (London: Harding and Lepard, 1826), the three volumes of Lord Bishop Thomas Percy’s RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY (London: J. Dodsley, 1765), the three volumes of Joseph Ritson’s ANCIENT ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCES (London: W. Bulmer, for G. & W. Nicol, 1802), the four volumes of Thomas Evans’s OLD BALLADS, HISTORICAL AND NARRATIVE, WITH SOME OF MODERN DATE COLLECTED FROM RARE COPIES AND MANUSCRIPTS... A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CONSIDERABLY ENLARGED FROM PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS, BY HIS SON, R.H. EVANS (London: Printed for R.H. Evans, by W. Bulmer and co., 1810), and the two volumes of Robert Jamieson’s POPULAR BALLADS AND SONGS, FROM TRADITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS AND SCARCE EDITIONS; WITH TRANSLATIONS OF SIMILAR PIECES FROM THE ANCIENT DANISH LANGUAGE, AND A FEW ORIGINALS BY THE EDITOR. (Edinburgh: A. Constable and co.; [etc. etc.], 1806). BOSWORTH’S ANGLOSAXON CONYBEARE’S ANGLOSAXON THOMAS PERCY’S RELIQUES RITSON’S ROMANCES I RITSON’S ROMANCES II RITSON’S ROMANCES III EVANS’S OLD BALLADS I EVANS’S OLD BALLADS II EVANS’S OLD BALLADS III EVANS’S OLD BALLADS IV JAMIESON’S BALLADS I JAMIESON’S BALLADS II HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

to know what eighth planet is wandering in space up there, or when Venus or Orion rises, but if, in any cot to east or west and set behind the woods, there is any planetary character illuminating the earth.

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes Which outward nature wears, For, as its hourly fashions change, It all things else repairs. My eyes look inward, not without, And I but hear myself, And this new wealth which I have got Is part of my own pelf. For while I look for change abroad, I can no difference find, Till some new ray of peace uncalled Lumines my inmost mind, As, when the sun streams through the wood, Upon a winter’s morn, Where’er his silent beams may stray The murky night is gone. How could the patient pine have known The morning breeze would come, Or simple flowers anticipate The insect’s noonday hum, Till that new light with morning cheer From far streamed through the aisles, And nimbly told the forest trees For many stretching miles? HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1843

Having long since put aside radicalism, William Wordsworth was named poet laureate of England.

(The Poet Laureate of England was considered a life member of the Royal Household, charged with creating occasional verse upon occasion — but he no longer received his traditional annual award of one “pipe,” or double-hogshead cast containing 126 gallons, of Canary wine. The monarchy, which had begun that practice in 1630, had for reasons unknown discontinued it as of 1790.) POETS LAUREATE “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT”: The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet- laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is the most correct. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1844

J.M.W. Turner painted “Rail, Steam, and Speed — The Great Western Railway,” depicting the 200-mile line between London and Birmingham, England that had been constructed by Brunel between 1834 and 1838. The painting is now in the National Gallery at London.

When a railroad threatened to provide inexpensive access to Windermere in the Lake District of England, William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate of England, rose up in protest. Why? One suspects that the cult of scenery was an important marker of one’s social standing, and that he correctly perceived that this marker would be being cheapened by the introduction of people of more moderate means.

In London, new Royal Exchange building opened.

In London, an Association for Promoting Cleanliness Amongst the Poor was founded.

In London, Tom Thumb appeared at the Egyptian Hall.

In London, full length of Dover railway opened.

In London, Fleet Prison was demolished. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1850

April 23, Tuesday: In Arizona, John Glanton and his gang of professional scalphunters were surrounded and killed by the Yuma. Over the previous couple of years Glanton’s gang had killed approximately a thousand native Americans, earning roughly $100,000 by turning in their scalps for the Mexican government’s reward. Since they also sold Mexican and anglo scalps as native American scalps, the United States of America had been offering a $75,000 reward for their capture (the Yuma, being colored people, would of course not be eligible for such a monetary reward from the government — however, Fort Yuma would be named in their honor).

William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, Grasmere, Westmorland at the age of 80. Alfred, Lord Tennyson would be chosen to succeed him as Poet Laureate. (The Poet Laureate of England was considered a life member of the Royal Household, charged with creating occasional verse upon occasion, but no longer received his traditional annual award of one “pipe,” or double-hogshead cast containing 126 gallons, of Canary wine. The monarchy, which had begun that practice in 1630, had for reasons unknown discontinued it as of 1790.) POETS LAUREATE

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1850

November 19, Tuesday: Director Domenico Ronzani of Trieste’s Teatro Civico Grande was enjoined by the president of the theater to warn the singers, that they departed in the slightest from the words of Giuseppe Verdi’s Stiffelio as they had been heavily censored and printed in the approved libretto, there would be the most dire consequences.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson became Poet Laureate of Great Britain, succeeding defunct William Wordsworth. POETS LAUREATE

Nov. 19th The first really cold day. I find on breaking off a shrub-oak leaf a little life at the foot of the leaf-stalk so that a part of the green comes off– It has not died quite down to the point of separation as it will do, I suppose, before spring. Most of the oaks have lost their leaves except on the lower branches, as if they were less exposed and less mature there and felt the changes of the seasons less. The leaves have either fallen or withered long since Yet I found this afternoon cold as it is, and there has been snow in the neighborhood, some sprouts which had come up this year from the stump of a young black looking oak –covered still with handsome fresh red & green leaves very large and unwithered & unwilted. It was on the south side of Fair Haven in a warm angle where the wood was cut last winter and the exposed edge of the still standing wood running North & south met the cliff at right angles & served for a fence to keep off the wind. There were one or two stumps here whose sprouts had fresh leaves which transported me back to October. Yet the surrounding shrub oaks leaves were as dry & dead as usual. There were also some minute birches only a year old their leaves still freshly yellow –and some young wild apple trees apparently still growing their leaves as green and tender as in summer– The golden rods –one or more species of the white & some yellow ones were many of them still quite fresh.– though elsewhere they are all whitesh & dry– I saw one whose top rose above the edge of a rock and so much of it was turned white & dry –but the lower part of its raceme was still yellow. Some of the white species seemed to have started again as if for another spring– They had sprung up freshly a foot or more & were budded to blossom fresh & green. And sometimes on the same stem were old & dry and white downy flowers –& fresh green blossoms buds not yet expanded. I saw there some pale blue asters still bright and the mullein leaves still large & green one green to its top– And I discovered that when I put my hand on the mullein leaves they felt decidedly warm but the radical leaves of the golden rods felt cold & clammy– There was also the columbine its leaves still alive and green and I was pleased to smell the Pennyroyal which I had bruised though this dried up long ago. Each season is thus drawn out & lingers in certain localities –as the birds and insects know very well If you penetrate to some warm recess under a cliff in the woods you will be astonished at the amount of summer life that still flourishes there No doubt more of the summer’s life than we are aware of thus slips by & outmanoevres the winter –gliding from fence to fence. I have no doubt that a dilligent search in proper places would discover many more of our summer plants & flowers thus lingering till the snow came, than we suspect.– It is as if the plant made no preparation for winter Now that the grass is withered & the leaves are withered or fallen it begins to appear what is ever-green; The partridge & checker berry & winter green leaves even –are more conspicuous The old leaves have been off the pines now for a month. I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden tucked in behind a lichen on a pine about as high as my head either by a crow or a squirrel it was a mile at least from any cornfield. Several species plainly linger till the snow comes– HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1984

December 19, Wednesday: The number of injured in the Bhopal disaster was officially placed at 150,000.

Ted Hughes was named Poet Laureate of Great Britain. POETS LAUREATE

Sextet for two amplified pianos or synthesizers and various percussion instruments by Steve Reich was performed for the initial time, in Centre Pompidou, Paris.

The Reagan administration confirmed that it was intending to withdraw the US from UNESCO, claiming to have been able to detect an anti-western bias in that organization.

The US Food and Drug Administration authorized use of a kidney stone smasher, the lithotripter. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

1985

December 20, Friday: The position of Poet Laureate of the United States was created. Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you. No, you can’t. Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Yes, I can, Yes, I can!

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2010. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 20 Miles Avenue, Providence RI 02906. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: August 11, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE POETS LAUREATE OF ENGLAND

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.