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Calon - M. Wynn Thomas

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79 pages

English

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A fascinating and exhilarating look at the many ways we love, and are loved.

Following on from his bestselling The History of Wales in 12 Poems, M. Wynn Thomas turns his attention in A Map of Love to poems from Wales and reflects on what they have to say on the age-old subject of love in its many and varied forms.

Featuring twelve pieces dating from the fourteenth century to the present, this absorbing collection deliberately veers far from clichéd verses with its poems of regret and of mourning; straight love and gay love; bawdy verses of passion and desire, and gentle meditations on motherhood and marriage. It features anonymous and lesser-known writers as well as household names such as Gillian Clarke and R. S. Thomas, and it includes a previously unpublished poem by Emyr Humphreys.

With original illustrations by Ruth Jên Evans throughout, this short but powerful collection will appeal to anyone interested in people and their complex relationships.

Sujets

Themes

Subjects

Poetry

Erotica

Love

Informations

Publié par	Calon
Date de parution	02 février 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781915279446
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0650€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A Map of Love

Text M. Wynn Thomas, 2023
Illustrations Ruth J n Evans, 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-915279-43-9
eISBN: 978-1-915279-44-6
The right of M. Wynn Thomas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Books Council of Wales
Contents
Prefatory Note
Sun Burn
Dafydd ap Gwilym Morfudd fel yr Haul
A Closed Door
Llywelyn Goch ap Meurig Hen Marwnad Lleucu Llwyd
A Vagina Monologue
Gwerful Mechain Cywydd y Cedor
Uncommon Sense
Anon. untitled
Macho Men
T. Harri Jones Love s Mythology
Erotic Shipwreck
Brenda Chamberlain untitled
A Hippopotamus
Bobi Jones Menyw Feichiog (mewn gwely)
A Mother s Love
Gillian Clarke The Sundial
Love and UFOs
Mihangel Morgan Anfon Hedbeth Annadnabyddedig yn Llatai
In the Bonds of Love
Glyn Jones The Common Path
An Ogre s Love
R. S. Thomas In Memoriam: M.E.E.
Lost
Emyr Humphreys Marooned

Acknowledgements
Prefatory Note
I n his volume The Map of Love , Dylan Thomas proudly declares that his heart has witnesses / In all love s countries . It is a claim for a poet s powers that is confirmed by the variety of poems on that subject in his volume. He spies the cuckoo / Lovers in the dirt of their leafy beds , a typically whimsical snapshot of that state of craziness to which lovers have always been prone. And he associates himself with the fishermen of mermen , seeing himself as one who hunts for strange, elusive creatures, inhabitants of the fathomless depths of human passion.
In this present volume, too, love comes in what seems to be a bewilderingly infinite variety of forms, both ordinary and strange, lovely and weird, domesticated, wild and dangerous. It therefore covers a whole spectrum of human experience. Love poems can operate both at room temperature and at fever pitch. And the latter, in particular, seem to exhibit one consistent characteristic - they introduce us to a realm of change, of transformation, of transfiguration; a realm where we often, if not always, find ourselves inescapably estranged from ourselves, for however brief a period; a deeply disconcerting realm where we seem to become other .
It is therefore no wonder that poets intent on exploring the world of passion should so often associate it with the heavingly turbulent sea. When Christopher Marlowe, the great Elizabethan gay poet, wanted to capture his experiences, he did so by narrating, in verse, the Classical story of Leander s heroic but tragic attempt to swim across the Hellespont to his lover, Hero. It is a heterosexual story, but Marlowe turns it into a gay narrative by describing how Neptune, the sea god, becomes so infatuated with the young man s lovely form as he swims that he lovingly and sinuously wraps himself around him and will not let him go; with predictably fatal consequences. That seems to me a perfect expression of the plight of beautiful people the world over today: that beauty, which is their greatest asset, is also their greatest danger. And when another gay poet, the American Hart Crane, wants to map the same underworld of passion four centuries later, he does so by writing a sequence that is entitled Voyages , because it is all about the risky venture of abandoning oneself to the doubtful mercies of the sea, of responding to the great inviting and insinuating wink of eternity , as Crane describes the eternal movement of the tides.
The Brenda Chamberlain poem in this collection dives into precisely such treacherous depths. And the T. Harri Jones poem follows an analogous tack. It images passion as a dark, fabulous world of transformations, of guises and disguises that are at once magical and bestial. In other words, it images the self as infinitely malleable, as consisting of a menagerie of exotic forms. The carnivalesque parading of these forms has been common practice among humans from the dissolute courts of the Roman emperors, to the Elizabethan age, with its elaborate masques and revels, and right down to the present, with its extravagant Rio Carnival and glut of pop videos featuring one or other of the incarnations of Madonna or Lady Gaga.
Both Chamberlain and Jones were Welsh poets of the twentieth century. And thereby hangs a tale. The twilight of the Middle Ages saw the creation in Wales of a gloriously uninhibited body of love poetry. The poets could work intricate gold filigrees of romantic writing, but they were not afraid of getting down and dirty, producing poems that were magnificently saucy and bawdy. However, as the centuries passed, so chapel blight began to afflict Wales. By the nineteenth century the poetry of love had shrivelled to insipid sentimental lyrics, except when passion was translated into sublimely sensual religious experience. It was only with the twentieth century that the body began once more to put in an appearance - and then, even pregnant women began to receive their due, as Bobi Jones s poem to his hippopotamus wife shows.
This collection does feature one poem - by Gwerful Mechain - that would have been deemed too obscene for publication not so long ago. It also deliberately lowers the temperature in places in order to accommodate such different expressions of love as that of a mother for her child (Gillian Clarke), and even allows for the registering (Glyn Jones) of sympathy for the common plight of all humanity. Because all these ostensible outliers are also authentic poems of love, in their own modest way, as are the love poems of old age, even when all passion is spent.
Robert Frost once remarked that helping a reader to understand a poem was like showing someone a face in a carrot. It was enough just to indicate the nose, the rest would then naturally appear. In this collection I have similarly tried to adopt a very light touch in my commentaries.
I am very grateful to my friend, the distinguished novelist Stevie Davies, for her generous advice and support during the writing of this book.
M. Wynn Thomas
Sun Burn
W e are back in the grim time of the Black Death with the first poem, and Owain Glyndw r s rebellion has yet to be so much as a glint in a warrior s eye. Come summer, unruly members of the colourful, bickering company of bards - a closed shop of professional poets jealously guarding their arcane secrets of word, metre and sound - take to the road, or rather to the scant tracks that cross Wales. Some of these are well-beaten paths to familiar doors; those of the minor gentry ( uchelwyr ) and the great Cistercian houses that for a century have sheltered, fed and watered the licensed bardic vagrants, bereft of court patronage ever since the killing of the last prince of Wales.
The bards have their own distinct pecking order, and cock of the walk is indisputably Dafydd ap Gwilym. He is the Lionel Messi of the word, whose easy, eerie virtuosity baffles ordinary comprehension. Better socially connected than the average, he is proudly able to canu ar ei fwyd ei hun - not for him any demeaning need to sing for his supper . And sing he did. In this period poetry was written not for the page but for performance to a stringed instrument such as a crwth or a telyn , meaning that it has more in common with modern rap than with printed texts.
A native of Cardiganshire, he enjoys star billing as Eos Dyfed ( the Nightingale of south-west Wales ). His social confidence is evident in the chutzpah of his poetry, much like the perfect poise and timing of a top performer. Never composing on the page, he improvises on the hoof, and adjusts his poems in recital to the varying tastes of his fickle listeners. He can set words dancing at will to any tune of his choosing.

DAFYDD AP GWILYM
Morfudd fel yr Haul
fourteenth century
Gorllwyn ydd wyf ddyn geirllaes,
Gorlliw eiry m n marian maes.
Gwy l, Dduw, mae golau o ddyn,
Goleuach nog ael ewyn.
Goleudon lafarfron liw,
Goleudaer ddyn, gw yl ydiw.
Gw yr obryn serch gerdd o m pen
Hyd y llawr, dirfawr derfyn,
Haul a ddaw mal hyloyw ddyn
Yn deg o fewn corff un dydd,
Bugeilies wybr bwygilydd
Pell i neb wybod yna,
P l yw i Dduw, pa le dd .
Ni chaiff llaw yrthiaw wrthi,
Nac ymafael i hael hi.
Trannoeth y dyrchaif hefyd,
Ennyn o bell nen y byd.
Nid annhebig, ddig ddogni,
Ymachludd Morfudd mi.

Morfudd like the sun
I wait for a softly spoken girl,
Sheen of white snow on a pebbly field,
A radiant girl, God knows,
Brighter than spume of foam,
Aglitter with colour like the echoing breast of a wave.
Ablaze with light, yet modest,
She knows how to woo a love song from my lips
From far east to west, across the vastness of earth
The sun moves with the dazzle of a girl
Beautifully dressed in the body of day.
It shepherds the sky from horizon to horizon
Where God s ball, the sun, goes
Is anyone s guess.
No hand can touch it,
Or grasp so much as its fringe.
But come day, aloft it soars anew,
Distantly setting world s firmament alight
Very similar - and cause of my grief -
Is Morfudd s setting out of my sight.