Anthology

 As far as the list-making fetish goes, for a poet or poetry reader the making of one's own anthology must be the ultimate project. Why I thought I'd begin mine I'm not sure but making a list is as compulsive as it is daft, especially if a numerical limit is not put on it. Most lists are themed or else one could please onself with Dadaist lists, like- The Moon, antibiotics, turbot, The War of Jenkins' Ear, Felicity Kendall, kumquat and Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band.

So it's only now, having got 121 lines on the Excel spreadsheet of my anthology, I begin to consider its parameters. I've limited it to three poems per poet, mainly arbitrarily but a few would get double figures straight off without such a quota. Would I stop at 500. Would I get to 500. There's always just one more. At least the Spotify playlist at DGBooks Radio has decided for itself what my favourite pop music is.  

Going back to basics, what is the etymology of 'anthology'. It's,

'mid 17th century: via French or medieval Latin from Greek anthologia, from anthos ‘flower’ + -logia ‘collection’ (from legein ‘gather’). In Greek, the word originally denoted a collection of the ‘flowers’ of verse, i.e. small choice poems or epigrams, by various authors.'

 

But why and how did 'small' creep in there. Collections of flowers can be extensive, as per the Chelsea Flower Show so we must be careful of definitions.

Certainly the contents of an anthology need to be regarded as worthy. So there must be a remit, like 'these are the best poems ever', 'these poems represent C19th French Poetry' or 'these are my personal favourite poems', etc.

I'm very much tending towards the lattermost of those even if several poets would get more than three at the expense of others getting any without that prescription. If, at present, it goes from Catullus to Julia Copus, it has to be said that poems from 1900 onwards begin at no. 29 out of the 121 so it's hardly a broad sweep of English Poetry and there are 10 translations - from Latin, French, Polish and Russian- so it's not 'English' poetry to begin with. I've tried to include as much as possible from pre-1900 but vast continents of Edmund Spenser, Paradise Lost and John Dryden are lost on me. 

So at whatever lengths it stops at, it will be all the poems I could think of, not including those from fourth place downwards by any given poet except there will be the one I forgot about and then the other one I forgot about.

Not to worry. No publisher is pressing me to do this. There are no 'permissions' to pay for. It's like any other compulsion- 'the four aways', the ITV 7 or not stepping on the cracks in the pavement- golf, for some- that has no end until maybe one day it has been left aside for so long that it's not worth going back to.

Would that it were, as Robert Robinson used to say. It's problem is not so much how it will end but how it was ever allowed to begin.

Meanwhile, I've allocated two poems each to Rosemary Tonks and Wisława Szymborska. I really ought to decide which to put in.