Amelia Opie's Lemaistre Sequence and the Romantic Occasional Poem

The occasional poem was one of the most commonly and diversely used Romantic genres, especially in informal and sociable modalities, yet is almost entirely marginalised in scholarship. This essay uses the reflexivity of Amelia Opie's sequence of birthday poems to Elizabeth Lemaistre (1815–44) to examine the dynamics of occasionality. Precisely because Opie must repeat the occasion across the sequence, the poetics of occasionality are clarified: each poem exists as a single dated action but also part of an ongoing work. This reflexive tension between the poem's character as act and text is explored through the nature of content in occasional verse; dating and temporality; and the phenomenon of the gift poem. An analysis of the Lemaistre sequence not only helps us to understand Opie's specific uses of the occasional to articulate friendship across networks of sociable affect, but also to determine more widely relevant traits of genre – not least, occasionality as a social practice and not just a literary classification.

The Poet and the Philanthropists: William Chapman's Aspirational Bid for the Nobel Prize

French Canadian poet William Chapman is generally dismissed as second-rate imitator of Lamartine, Hugo or his compatriot Louis Fréchette. Chapman's bitter feud with Fréchette has been – much more than the five collections of verse he published between 1876 and 1912 – his claim to fame. Despite being at odds with his North American contemporaries, Chapman was indefatigable in his pursuit of literary prestige. Chapman's quest for literary honours including the Nobel Prize, while it has thus far attracted the derision of critics, in fact provides context for a deeper understanding of his poetic practice within the shifting philanthropic landscape of the turn of the century. Close readings of two of Chapman's poems, ‘À M. Andrew Carnegie’ and ‘Nobel’, alongside contemporary journalistic sources, point to a new understanding of Chapman's considerable body of occasional verse and of Chapman himself as a savvy professional attuned to the developing ‘economy of prestige’.

Miscellany Publication

This chapter addresses Pope’s hitherto neglected use of miscellany publication. With the exceptions of An Essay on Criticism, The Temple of Fame, and Windsor-Forest, all Pope’s early printed poems first appeared in miscellanies or periodicals. Three miscellanies are of particular importance: the sixth and final volume of Jacob Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies (1709), Bernard Lintot’s Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1712), and Poems on Several Occasions (1717), also published by Lintot. A section is devoted to each of those miscellanies. Pope made his public print debut in the first one, was the guiding spirit behind the second, and the editor of the third. In his roles as contributor and editor, Pope encouraged friends to contribute to the collections too, dragging them from the world of clandestine scribal publication into that of print. The chapter scrutinizes the content surrounding Pope’s poems in these miscellanies and teases out the sophisticated political resonances of those texts. By 1717 Pope had transformed the miscellany from a mere vessel for minor occasional verse into a focal point for dissident wits who otherwise wrote principally for scribal publication.

Refuges and Refugees

While increasing attention has been paid to the role of Buddhism in Chinese literature and aesthetics, relatively little has been written on the place of the religion in the poetry of Du Fu. This essay examines ways in which the poet deploys Buddhist imagery and themes, particularly in occasional verse. It also argues that “Buddhist poetry” in China is best examined through social praxis (temple-visiting, poetic exchanges with monks, etc.) than through explicit or implicit philosophical discourse. Though Buddhism is by no means a prominent aspect in Du Fu’s work, examination of Buddhist motifs and situations in it gives us a useful guide for its cultural presence in Tang poetry overall.

“Ser caixão de lixo ou arquivo”: ambiguidades de um Museu cabralino / “A Box of Trash or an Archive”: Ambiguities in Cabral de Melo Neto’s Museum

Resumo: O décimo quarto livro de João Cabral é apresentado no seu primeiro poema – “O museu de tudo” – como algo propenso à ambiguidade. De modo irônico, o sujeito poético o situa em duas pontas contrárias: tanto pode ser um caixão de lixo quanto um arquivo. O aspecto ambíguo desse “poema-apresentação” perpassa o conjunto de 80 poemas que integram Museu de tudo (1975), livro a que tanto o seu autor quanto a crítica especializada definem como mais propenso ao circunstancial, embora também o relacionem ao exercício da poesia crítica. A partir da dualidade sugerida pela metáfora do Museu cabralino como um espaço onde se guardam preciosismos estéticos e rejeitos de menor valia, ao mesmo tempo, este trabalho pretende apontar como princípios poéticos aparentemente díspares – poesia crítica e poemas de circunstâncias – configuram-se como aspectos basilares de Museu de tudo.Palavras-chave: Poéticas da modernidade; João Cabral de Melo Neto; Museu de tudo; poesia de circunstância; poesia crítica.Abstract: The first poem of João Cabral de Melo Neto’s fourteenth book – “The museum of everything” (O museu de tudo, in the original) – presents itself as something prone to ambiguity. Ironically, the poetic persona places it on two opposite ends: it can be either a box of trash or an archive. The ambiguous aspect of this “presentation poem” permeates the set of 80 poems that integrates Museu de tudo (1975), a book that both its author and the specialized critic define as more prone to circumstantial poetry, although they also relate it to the exercise of critical poetry. Based on the tension suggested by the metaphor of De Melo Neto’s Museum as a space where aesthetic treasures and less valuable waste are kept, at the same time, this work aims at demonstrating how apparently disparate poetic principles – critical poetry and poems of circumstances – are assembled as the cornerstones of the Museu de tudo.Keywords: Poetics of modernity; João Cabral de Melo Neto; Museum of everything; occasional verse; critical poetry.

‘Too Severe on the Female Sex’?

This chapter explores how Stephen Duck negotiated the competing hierarchies of gender and class as he sought to establish himself as a poet who moved in courtly circles. In both his narrative and occasional verse, Duck’s writing about, and addressed to, women was informed by his own unique and unprecedented position as a former thresher who had been brought to live at the periphery of the royal court. As several contemporary commentators noted, women and labouring-class men were often considered to be similarly—though not equally—circumscribed when it came to accessing literary and intellectual culture. Duck repeatedly made use of this supposed equivalence in order to bolster his own position against that of women who were, by birth, above him in the Georgian social strata. Now a labourer no more, Duck used the hierarchy of gender to trump the hierarchy of class. As this chapter shows, Duck’s misogyny was a product of the culture in which he was writing, but it was also a tool that he could strategically deploy in a variety of circumstances in the service of establishing his own credentials as a would-be gentleman.

Study on medieval scholar’s Ramachandra Kavirayar and Avvaiyar lifestyle through their occasional verse

It is worth noting that occasional verse (Thani Padalgal) plays an important role in medieval literature. The Sangam scholars compiled songs. But they did not disappear in the middle Ages, and the composers were largely absent. So, we have lost lot of them. Again, in the middle Ages, scholars composed many books separately and they are all unique. This is because they are meant to clarify their personal instincts and dislikes in their lives. The each occasional verse has a wide variety of themes and genres and they were composed by many scholars. Among them Ramachandra Kavirayar and Avvaiyar are notable personalities. In this article, we will discuss the life of Ramachandra Kavirayar and Avvaiyar through their occasional verse.

Martial Ethiopianism in Verse

This chapter addresses the explosion of verse dealing with the “Ethiopian Crisis,” or the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, such as J. Harvey L. Baxter's “Sonnets for the Ethiopians” and Melvin Tolson's “The Bard of Addis Ababa.” Returning to traditional tropes of nineteenth-century Ethiopianism even in the face of modern warfare, Baxter calls upon the nation's resources of antiquity to produce a counteroffensive against the ancient Roman Empire that Mussolini looked upon with such nostalgia. It also discusses the occasional verse by lesser lights and unknown bards such as Rufus Gibson and Jay N. Hill and by important figures such as Marcus Garvey. The tenor of Garvey's elegies written in honor of fallen Ethiopian war heroes Ras Nasibu of Ogaden and Ras Desta presents a fascinating contrast to his expressed disdain for Haile Selassie. The chapter also talks about the global importance of the agitprop role of the New Times and Ethiopia News.

The Work of Verse

The first chapter provides an introduction to, and overview of, ‘occasional’ verse and performed verse, and considers the functions of newspaper poetry columns. Its broad remit underpins the detailed studies in the later chapters, and sets up the arguments about the work done by Scottish working-class poetry that re-occur in these. It contains an opening section discussing why working-class poetry came to seem so prevalent in Scotland, and how it became considered vital to Scottish cultural identity. This is followed by subsections on the role of occasional verse in commemorating and celebrating particular events or social occasions, the rise of newspaper poetry columns, and the way in which these columns fostered poetic communities.