The writings of Max Robinson: Poetry in motion

What is your favourite poem ?

Three of my own personal favouites are depicted here on what will become an anthology I will publish on Amazon - AN A B C OF POETRY.

So can you identify the three I have chosen to depict on the cover ?

THE SOLDIER by Pupert Brooke

UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE by William Wordsworh

TYGER by by William Blake

I am about to start work on the Letter K. This is going to be a major area with the anthology as I feature the work of this man.

He died at the age of just twenty-five and yet his poetical genius left so much beauty for us to enjoy.

John Keats who died aged twenty-five. He had contracted Tuberculosis - TB which was a feared and common killer in years gone by. My own grandfather died from TB which he originally contracted in the trenches of World War One. As a small boy I knew of people older than me who were being treated in special hospitals, called sanitoriums, for the illness.

In my youth there was hope for recovery but when my grandfather contracted this breathing disporder it was a death certificate. That certificate for Keats was called in when he was just twenty-five. Today Tuberculosis belongs to history.

Can you recognise this bird ? What species is it ?

NO, it is not a sparrow. Now an endangered species this is a nightingale. Keats wrote a beautiful poem AN ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. I love it.

I will be opening my letter K in the anthology with this poem.

Why did William Blake spell Tiger as Tyger in his poem ?

Stuffy academics will tell you that Blake used the Old English spelling. That, my friends, is RUBBISH ! Blake, in my arrogant opinion at least, spelt it tYger as he wanted to influence the way the word sounds.

Poems are not meant to be read in silence. Poems are meant to be read aloud. Preferably read aloud with the reader standing up.

A celebrated poet from World War One said that those who had died should not be remembered by monuments with names carved in stone. They should be remembered in peoples' hearts.

That was easy to say in the 1920's when there was an entire generation alive who had known them. No so now more than one hundred years later, we need those memorials BUT we should take the names off theem and do all we can to turn the dead back into living friends in our hearts. POETRY is a way we can do this.

In my anthology I quote samples of a poet's work then tell the reader a little bit about their genius. This is not meant to be a boring academic study but a book of fun sending the reader off to find out more about any given poem or its writer that that inspires the reader.

When will the book be finished ? When will Amazon publish it ?

As of my writing this blog the book contains 81,896 words. I think it will end up somewhere around 125,000. This will be my fifty-third Amazon publication since 1st January 2021 and my sixty-eighth since my writing challenge began on 1st April 2020. A while to go yet, the challenge ends on 31st December 2022. I am probably already the most prolific writer of e-books but, working with Amazon, I do not intend to claim the title until the end of the challenge in fourteen months time.