Charles Tomlinson’s New Collected Poems gathers a lifetime’s work, from the 1950s to 2006. A poet deeply responsive to English landscape, grounded in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Tomlinson is also a writer of international renown, with wide-ranging interests in European and American poets, many of whom he has edited and translated. Collected Poems is an enriching journey across continents and literatures, friendships, collaborations and experiments, always with an eye keen for new places and possibilities. Tomlinson’s poetry is witty and luminous, marked by precise observation and language, alert to surfaces and depths, to the local and the universal.

Cover image: Janus Figure by Charles Tomlinson. Cover design by StephenRaw.com

Contents


Relations and Contraries (1951)
Poem (‘Wakening with the window over fields’)   

The Necklace (1955, 1966)
Aesthetic   
Venice   
Nine Variations in a Chinese Winter Setting   
Eight Observations on the Nature of Eternity   
Suggestions for the Improvement of a Sunset   
Sea Change   
Through Binoculars   
Montage   
Dialogue   
Flute Music   
The Bead   
The Art of Poetry   
Observation of Facts   
Fiascherino   

Seeing is Believing (1958, 1960)
The Atlantic   
Winter Encounters   
Reflections   
Oxen: Ploughing at Fiesole   
The Mediterranean   
Distinctions   
Variant on a Scrap of Conversation   
Icos   
How Still the Hawk   
Object in a Setting   
The Mausoleum   
Glass Grain   
Gli Scafari   
Tramontana at Lerici   
Northern Spring   
The Gorge   
On a Landscape by Li Ch’eng   
The Crane   
Paring the Apple   
Rose-hips   
More Foreign Cities   
At Delft   
The Jam Trap   
Poem (‘Upended, it crouches on broken limbs’)   
A Meditation on John Constable   
Frondes Agrestes   
Geneva Restored   
Farewell to Van Gogh   
Cézanne at Aix   
In Defence of Metaphysics   
Reeds   
The Shell   
Night-Piece: The Near and the Far   
At Holwell Farm   
On the Hall at Stowey   
Stone Walls: At Chew Magna   
Cradock Newton: From an Epitaph   
The Castle   
Sconset   
Civilities of Lamplight   
Fire in a Dark Landscape   
The Request   
The Ruin   
Aqueduct   
Encounter   
Antecedents: A Homage and Valediction
    I    Nothing: A Divagation   
    II    Praeludium   
    III    Lacunae   
    IV    Milieux   
    V    The Bells: A Period Piece   
    VI    Something: A Direction   
The Churchyard Wall   
Epitaph   

A Peopled Landscape (1963)
A Prelude   
Return to Hinton   
Winter-Piece   
History   
Lines   
Canal   
John Maydew or The Allotment   
Steel   
Crow   
Walking to Bells   
The Farmer’s Wife: At Fostons Ash   
The Hand at Callow Hill Farm   
Harvest Festival: At Ozleworth   
The Picture of J.T. in a Prospect of Stone   
Four Kantian Lyrics
    1    On a Theme of Pasternak   
    2    What It Was Like   
    3    An Insufficiency of Earth   
    4    How It Happened   
Up at La Serra   
Rhenish Winter   
The Archer   
At Wells: Polyphony   
Sea Poem   
Maillol   
Flame   
Head Hewn with an Axe   
Last Judgement   
The Beech (‘Nakedly muscular, the beech no longer regrets’)   
The Tree (‘I had seen a tree before’)   
The Gossamers  
The Barometer   
Cloud Change   
Letter from Costa Brava   
Chaconne for Unaccompanied Violin   
Ship’s Waiters   
The Flight   
Over Brooklyn Bridge   
Ode to Arnold Schoenberg   

American Scenes and Other Poems (1966)
Face and Image 
The Snow Fences   
The Fox   
Bone   
The Door   
The Weathercocks   
A Given Grace   
Saving the Appearances   
In Winter Woods
    1    Snow Sequence   
    2    The Meeting   
    3    Nocturnal   
    4    Focus   
The Cavern   
Arizona Desert   
A Death in the Desert   
On the Mountain   
Las Trampas USA   
Arroyo Seco   
Old Man at Valdez   
Mr Brodsky   
Chief Standing Water   
At Barstow   
Arizona Highway   
Two Views of Two Ghost Towns   
Ute Mountain   
In Connecticut   
Maine Winter   
Letters from Amherst   
In Longfellow’s Library   
On Eleventh Street   
A Garland for Thomas Eakins   
The Well (‘Leaning on’)   
On a Mexican Straw Christ   
On the Tlacolula Bus   
The Oaxaca Bus   
Constitution Day   
The Bootblack   
Theory of Regress   
In Michoacán   
Weeper in Jalisco   
Landscape   
Idyll   
Small Action Poem   

The Way of a World (1969)
Swimming Chenango Lake   
Prometheus   
A Dream   
A Word in Edgeways   
Eden (‘I have seen Eden. It is a light of place’)   
Adam   
Night Transfigured   
Assassin   
Against Extremity   
In the Fullness of Time   
Music’s Trinity   
Logic   
The Way of a World   
Descartes and the Stove   
The Question (‘Having misread the house, “What’)   
The View   
Weatherman   
On the Principle of Blowclocks   
Clouds   
Words for the Madrigalist   
Anecdote   
Arroyo Hondo   
The Matachines   
Before the Dance   
A Sense of Distance   
The Instance   
A Little Night Music   
The Awakening   
The Windshield   
Last Days of the Miser   
Rumour   
Terminal Tramps   
The Fox Gallery   
Frost (‘clings to the shadows, a wan silhouette’)   
Composition   
The Beautiful Aeroplane   
To be Engraved on the Skull of a Cormorant   
Gull   
Oppositions   
Autumn (‘The civility of nature overthrown’)   
Tout Entouré de Mon Regard   
Skullshapes   
The Daisies   
Poem (‘The muscles which move the eyeballs’)   
Ceci n’est pas une pipe   
A Process   
The Chances of Rhyme   
The End   

Written on Water (1972)
On Water   
Mackinnon’s Boat   
The Thief’s Journal   
Rower   
The Lighthouse   
Two Poems on Titles Proposed by Octavio and
Marie José Paz
    I    Le Rendez-Vous des Paysages   
    II    La Promenade de Protée   
Stone Speech   
The Sea is Open to the Light   
Variation on Paz  
The Compact: At Volterra   
Two Poems of Lucio Piccolo
    I    Unstill Universe   
    II    Veneris Venefica Agrestis   
At Sant’ Antimo   
Tarquinia   
Santa Maria delle Nevi   
The Square   
Ariadne and the Minotaur  
Machiavelli in Exile   
Hawks   
Of Beginning Light   
Carscape   
Drive   
Legend (‘Midas eyes the seasonable glints’)   
Autumn Piece   
The White Van   
In October   
Urlicht   
Poem (‘space’)   
Appearance   
Ars Poetica   
Mélisande   
Dialectic   
The Night-Train   
Event   
Comedy   
Three Wagnerian Lyrics
    I    Liebestod   
    II    The Potion   
    III    Good Friday   
Over Elizabeth Bridge: A Circumvention   
In Memoriam Thomas Hardy   
Remembering Williams   
The Apparition   
Juliet’s Garden   
Against Portraits   
Green Quinces   
During Rain  
Elegy for Henry Street   
Mistlines   
Movements   
Curtain Call   

The Way In and Other Poems (1974)
The Way In   
Night Ride   
At Stoke   
Hokusai on the Trent   
Etruria Vale   
Gladstone Street   
Dates: Penkhull New Road   
Portrait of the Artist I   
Portrait of the Artist II   
The Tree (‘This child, shovelling away’)   
Midlands   
In the Ward   
The Marl Pits   
Class   
The Rich   
Bridges   
At Saint Mary’s Church   
In a Brooklyn Park   
Under the Moon’s Reign   
Foxes’ Moon   
After a Death   
Elemental   
In December (‘Cattle are crowding the salt-lick.’)   
Hyphens   
In March   
Discrepancies   
The Last of Night   
The Witnesses   
Hill Walk  
Lacoste   
How Far   
Tiger Skull   
The Greeting   
The Insistence of Things   
Idrigill   
Of Lady Grange  
The Promise   
Marine   
Rubh An’ Dunain   
Couplet   
Beethoven Attends the C Minor Seminar   
Consolations for Double Bass   
Melody   
Da Capo   

The Shaft (1978)
Charlotte Corday   
Marat Dead   
A Self-Portrait: David   
For Danton  
Lines Written in the Euganean Hills   
Death in Venice   
Near Corinium   
Casarola   
Portobello Carnival 1973   
Prose Poem   
Departure   
Images of Perfection   
Rhymes   
The Perfection   
The Hesitation   
The Faring   
The Metamorphosis   
Below Tintern   
Providence (‘It is May: “A bad winter”’)   
Mushrooms   
In the Intensity of Final Light   
The Spring Symphony   
Nature Poem   
The Whip   
To See the Heron   
One Day of Autumn   
October   
Old Man’s Beard   
…Or Traveller’s Joy   
In the Balance   
The Death of Will   
A Night at the Opera   
In the Studio   
Misprint   
Maintenant   
Sky Writing (‘A plane goes by’)   
Into Distance   
Embassy   
The Race   
In Arden   
The Roe Deer   
The Shaft   
De Sole   
Macduff   
Tree   
The Gap   
The Scream   
Translating the Birds   
The Scar   
At Dawn   

The Flood (1981)
Snow Signs  
Their Voices Rang   
The Double Rainbow   
For Miriam   
The Recompense   
Poem (‘It falls onto my page like rain’)   
In April   
The Order of Saying   
The Lesson   
Hay   
The Conspiracy   
The Gate   
At the Edge   
The Near and the Far   
Albuquerque   
Jemez   
Cochiti   
Abiquiu   
Quarai   
Under the Bridge   
Cronkhite Beach   
Poolville, NY   
Parsnips   
Programme Note   
On a Pig’s Head   
Ritornello   
San Fruttuoso   
Above Carrara   
Fireflies   
Thunder in Tuscany   
Giovanni Diodati   
On a May Night  
Instead of an Essay   
Barque Nornen   
The Littleton Whale   
The Flood   
Severnside   
In the Estuary   
The Epilogue   

Notes from New York and Other Poems (1984)
The Landing   
Above Manhattan   
At the Trade Center   
On Madison   
What Virginia Said   
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry   
In Verdi Square   
Lament for Doormen   
All Afternoon   
The Arrival   
Byzantium   
The Mirror in the Roadway   
Hero Sandwiches   
Of the Winter Ball Game   
Ice Cream at Blauenberg   
From the Motorway   
To Ivor Gurney   
The Question (‘The curve of lamps that climbs into the dark’)   
Black Brook   
Poem for my Father   
The Journey   
The Arch   
Hedgerows   
The Shout   
High Summer   
The Quarry   
The Beech (‘Blizzards have brought down the beech tree’)   
After the Storm   
Confluence   
In December (‘The fog, as it enters the lowland, is
    smoothing away’)   
At a Glance   
The Glacier   
Night Fishers   
Near Hartland   
Morwenna’s Cliff   
Near Ceibwr   
At the Hill Fort   
The Moment   
Writing on Sand   
Van Gogh   
Legend (‘The hill-top schloss’)   
The Sound of Time   
History of a Malady   
Desert Autumn   
Mictlantecuhtli   
At Trotsky’s House   
Los Pobrecitos   
Teotihuacán   
Valle de Oaxaca   
Sight and Flight   

The Return (1987)
In the Borghese Gardens   
Revolution  
Fountain   
In San Clemente   
In the Gesù  
The Wind from Africa   
The Return
    I    The Road   
    II    Between Serra and Rocchetta   
    III    Graziella   
    IV    Th e Fireflies   
Tyrrhenian  
Travelling   
Palermo   
Catacomb   
The Unpainted Mountain   
The Miracle of the Bottle and the Fishes   
Soutine at Céret   
Self-Portrait   
The Peak   
Netherlands   
Anniversary   
In Memory of George Oppen   
In Oklahoma   
Interpretations   
At Chimayó   
The Tax Inspector   
At Huexotla   
Machu Picchu   
Winter Journey  
Heron (‘Metamorphosed’)   
The Harbinger   
A Rose for Janet   
February (‘In the month-long frost, the waters’)   
Mid-March   
From Porlock   
The Well (‘We loosen the coping-stone that has sealed for
    years’)   
Coombe  
Hearing the Ways   
What Next?   
The Night Farm   
The Hawthorn in Trent Vale   
The Way Through  
Night Ferry  
Ararat  

Annunciations (1989)
Annunciation   
The Blade   
Variation   
In New Mexico   
Above the Rio Grande   
The Santa Fe Railroad   
Parking Lot  
Ailanthus   
Catalpa  
Acoma: The Round-Up   
Here and There  
The Plaza   
In the Emperor’s Garden   
Hudson River School 
Along the Mohawk   
Pines   
In the Steps of Emily Carr  
North with Lawren Harris   
Far Point   
Algoma   
Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici   
The Labyrinth   
Carrara Revisited   
The House in the Quarry   
At the Autumn Equinox   
Oxen   
The Butterflies   
Chronochromie   
Ruskin Remembered   
A Ruskinian Fable Retold: Courtesy   
Bluebells   
Harvest   
The Garden   
Letter to Uehata   
Apples Painted  
Winter  
The Cycle  
Two Poems for Fay Godwin
    I    Leaping Lurcher  
Felix Randal   
Music and the Poet’s Cat   
Ode to Dmitri Shostakovich   
Moonrise   
Orion over Farne   
Chance   
The Headland   
For a Godchild   

The Door in the Wall (1992)
The Operation  
The Clearance   
Siena in Sixty-Eight  
Paris in Sixty-Nine   
In a Cambridge Garden   
Tübingen   
Blaubeuren   
Campos de Castilla   
The Door in the Wall   
At Bob Lucid’s Place   
At Hanratty’s   
Ode to San Francisco   
Porto Venere   
September Swamp   
The House on the Susquehanna   
North   
Geese Going South   
Upstate   
The Stair   
The Trees   
Fire   
December (‘They are decorating their concrete houses’)   
Haçienda   
The Autograph Tree   
Crossing Aguadilla   
From Gloucestershire   
Sight and Sound   
A Glade   
The Choice   
On the Shannon  
In a Cornish Church   
Response to Hopkins   
Hartland Cliff   
Song   
Second Song   
February (‘February is the mad month for the fox, the wind’)   
The Broom   
On a Passage from Hardy’s Life   
A Note Left on Finding Two People Asleep   
Before the Concert   
The Prisoner   
On a Collage of Marie José Paz   
On a Glass Engraving by Peter David   
Portraits of Hands: Hals   
On a Dutch Picture   
The Discovery   
Lunar   
The Morning Moon   
Picking Mushrooms by Moonlight  

Jubilation (1995)
For a Granddaughter
    1    On the Terrace   
    2    To Be Read Later On   
    3    Jessica Learned to Kiss   
    4    After Hugo   
    5    Pavane for a Live Infanta   
    6    To My Daughter   
Against Travel   
The Cypresses   
Lago di Como   
Varenna   
Asolo   
To Vasko Popa in Rome   
San Carlo ai Catinari   
Roman Fugue   
Gutenberg and the Grapes   
Horizons   
Valestrieri   
Down from Colonnata   
A Retrospect: 1951–91   
Portuguese Pieces
    1    Alto Minho   
    2    Ponte de Lima   
    3    Soajo   
    4    Swallows   
    5    Oporto: St John’s Eve   
    6    In Lisbon   
    7    Tagus, Farewell   
Zipangu
    1    The Pines at Hakone   
    2    Heron (‘The river crosses the city over a series of falls’)   
    3    Shugakuin Garden   
    4    Yamadera   
    5    Epilogue   
Interior   
Snapshot   
The Improvement   
To a Yorkshireman in Devon  
Crossing the Moor   
Hay Tor   
Jubilación   
Durham in March   
Near Bickering   
Autumn (‘Neither pink nor brown’)   
Weather Report   
Cosmology   
December (‘Frost followed frost, each colder’)   
The Track of the Deer   
To a Photographer  
The Shadow   
Walks  
Transaction at Mallards Pike   
The Song of Adam   
To a Christian Concerning Ivor Gurney   
9 a.m.   
Knowledge (‘I want the knowledge of afternoon as it
    recedes’)   
On the Late Plane   

The Vineyard Above the Sea (1999)
Verse   
A Festivity   
Mythology   
In Abruzzo   
Trebiano   
The Vineyard Above the Sea   
Fonte Gaia   
News   
Oporto   
Rua do Carriçal  
The Green Balloon   
Hellas
    1    Kéa   
    2    Apollo at Delphi   
    3    Epidauros   
    4    Fragment   
    5    Olympia   
    6    Pastoral   
    7    Like Greek Prose   
    8    From the Greek   
    9    In the Cathedral   
    10    Melville on the Acropolis   
    11    Homecoming   
On the Dunes   
Shorelines   
Directions   
In the Room   
The Gift (‘The allée I call it. It is scarcely that’)   
Poem (‘The great cloud-barrier, building’)   
For Want of Seraphim   
Measure   
Wall   
Snowbound   
Blackthorn Winter   
Drawing Down the Moon   
Storm Song   
The Tree House   
The Blossom   
Listening to Leaves   
Gibbet   
In Winter   
The Sisters   
To Modulate   
The First Death   
Another Summer   
To Robert Creeley in the Judaean Desert   
Then   
In Memoriam Ángel Crespo   
MacDiarmid   
History of a House   
By Night   

Skywriting (2003)
Skywriting (‘Three jets are streaking west’)   
Mexico: A Sequence
    I    Mexico   
    II    Tenochtitlán   
    III    Xochimilco   
A Visit to Don Miguel 
Waiting for the Bus   
A Fragment from Mexico   
From the Plane   
Piazza  
In Ferrara   
The Etruscan Graveyard at Marzabotto   
In June   
The Runners at San Benedetto   
July on the High Plain   
The Journey: Pescocostanzo–Roma   
Roma
    I    Monte del Gallo   
    II    At Tivoli   
    III    Liszt at the Villa d’Este   
    IV    In the Park   
Piazza Navona   
Farewell to Europa   
Japanese Notebook   
To Shizue   
For Nōrikō   
Macao   
On Lantau Island   
Waiting for John   
Bristol Night Walk   
Death of a Poet  
For T.H.   
Cotswold Journey   
Spem in Alium   
Trout   
Track   
Slow Down   
Newark Park: An Upward Glance   
Reflection   
In the Hallway   
A Riddle   
The Even Numbers   
If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper   
The Gift (‘A man stepped out of the field’)   
Midwinter   
The Transformation   
Ode to Memory   
The Leaper   
Fire and Air   
Primal Fire   
Knowledge (‘The nicks in the panes of each window square’)   
Watching Water   
Along this Stream   
Floodtime   
The Martins   
Tonight   

Cracks in the Universe (2006)
Above the City   
A View from the Shore   
New Jersey–New York   
A Name on the Map   
The Upstate Freeze   
Apples   
Four for David Smith
    1    Interior for Exterior   
    2    The Timeless Clock   
    3    Hudson River Landscape   
    4    Bolton Landing   
Recalling Orson Welles   
Providence (‘Morning shadows waiting to surprise us’)   
Thomas Jones in Naples, 1782   
Stellar Friendship   
The Pupil   
La Rochelle   
Monet’s Giverny   
Les Joueurs de Football   
Bread and Stone   
Fantasia in Limestone   
Choice   
Pebble   
Chinchón   
November in Aranjuez   
Santiago de Compostela   
The Portuguese Ox   
Lessons
    1    On a Picture of Burslem by Leonard Brammer   
    2    The Fruits of Ignominy   
    3    The Bicycle   
    4    In Memory of Agnes Beverley Burton   
    5    To Nora Christabel Pennet   
    6    The Boy on the Sick-Bed   
The Photograph   
Little Eve and the Miners   
In ’35   
I Was a Child   
Aubade   
Seasons   
In the Valley   
Tree Talk   
Dragonflies   
Swifts   
In Autumn   
In January   
The Rain Is Over   
Jaws   
Across the Dark   
Westminster Bridge from the Eye   
In the Wind   
Returning   
In the Mirror   
A Rose from Fronteira   
Return to Valestrieri   
Mandarinas   
November   
Morning   
Frost (‘The sky is blank with a single vapour trail’)   
On Snow   
Resemblances   
In a Glass of Water   
Vessel   
The Holy Man   
Inheritance   
Nocturne   
The Way Back   
M62   
A Ballad of Iole and Dryope   
An Ovidian Ballad   
Eden (‘There was no Eden’)   

Index of Titles   
Index of First Lines