A POET LAUREATE'S MUSE - NO FLIGHT OF FANCY,SHE - NYTimes.com A POET LAUREATE'S MUSE: NO FLIGHT OF FANCY,SHE By R. W. APPLE Jr. Published: October 30, 1984 LONDON, Oct. 29— Miss J. Hunter Dunn is as familiar a figure to lovers of middlebrow English poetry as is J. Alfred Prufrock to lovers of highbrow English poetry. It was Sir John Betjeman who immortalized her in the poem ''A Subaltern's Love Song,'' published in 1945 in ''New Bats from Old Belfries,'' imagining her as ''furnish'd and burnish'd by the Aldershot sun'' after a tennis match that she had played one afternoon. The choice of that Hampshire army town leaves the reader to infer that she was the daughter, perhaps, of a major or a colonel based there. An athletic daughter, to be sure, but a pretty one as well: Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won.

One whose way of life had little to do with wartime privation: Her father's euonymus shines as we walk, And swing past the summer house, buried in talk, And cool the veranda that welcomes us in To the six o'clock news and lime juice and gin. One whose charms the narrator could not, in the end, resist: We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Joan Hunter Dunn. 'Marvelous Girl' Exists Only last week, five months after Sir John's death, has it become widely known that there really was a Joan Hunter Dunn; in his new book, ''John Betjeman: a Life in Pictures,'' Bevis Hiller reproduces a picture of her taken at about the time when the future Poet Laureate first saw her in the Ministry of Information staff restaurant one lunch hour during World War II. ''Just look at that marvelous girl,'' he is said to have exclaimed to his companions. ''Gosh, I bet she comes from Aldershot.'' She was, in fact, a physician's daughter in her early 20's, not an army officer's, and she came from Farnborough, another Hampshire town about five miles from Aldershot.

At school she had been the head girl in her dormitory, and she had indeed been very good at sports. She was working at the time as deputy catering manager of the restaurant. The Two Kept in Touch ''You can just see why John fell for her,'' Mr. Hiller said. Sir John had married Penelope Chetwode in 1933, so there was no question of their being engaged. There is no suggestion in the book that they had an affair. But he met her, took her to lunch and asked whether he could use her name in a poem. She apparently said that he could. They kept in touch afterward, and in 1945 he went to her wedding to H. Wycliffe Jackson, according to friends of the poet. Mr. Jackson died of a heart attack when he was only 42, but the former Joan Hunter Dunn is still alive, a widow, living in Hampshire. She must be about 68, since she was 10 years younger than Sir John. She will not talk to reporters, apparently out of fear that instant celebrity would turn her life upside down.

But according to an article in a recent issue of The Guardian newspaper, she attended Sir John's memorial service at Westminster Abbey in June - although her name was not included in the long list of mourners published in The Times of London - and she sent an old photograph to Mr. Hiller so that it could be reproduced among the images of the Poet Laureate's life. photo of Sir John Betjeman and Joan Hunter Dunn The Wondering Minstrels: A Subaltern's Love Song -- John Betjeman A Subaltern's Love Song -- John Betjeman ( Poem #764 ) A Subaltern's Love Song Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament - you against me! Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won, The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less. Her father's euonymus shines as we walk, And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk, And cool the verandah that welcomes us in To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin. The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath, The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path, As I struggle with double-end evening tie, For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I. On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts, And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports, And westering, questioning settles the sun, On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall, The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall, My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways, She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, I can hear from the car park the dance has begun, Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand! Around us are Rovers and Austins afar, Above us the intimate roof of the car, And here on my right is the girl of my choice, With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice. And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. Poems of John Betjeman by J Brooke John Betjeman by Jocelyn Brooke John Betjeman's development as a poet has been slow and—since he writes in a number of contrasted styles, and is liable to revert, in his later work, to earlier techniques and mannerisms—not very easy to summarize.

During a period of thirty years or so the quality of his sensibility has changed very little, though his verse as a whole shows a steady improvement in prosodic technique. The first poem in the Collected Poems, 'Death in Leamington', is presumably one of his earliest, and may be assigned to the late twenties or very early thirties. This description of an old lady's death in a decrepit Victorian villa already foreshadows most of his later preoccupations: nineteenth-century architecture, the niceties of social usage and vocabulary and the details of English upper-middle-class domesticity; significantly, too, the poem has that element of the macabre which will recur frequently throughout his work, for Betjeman is—as T. S. Eliot has said of Webster—'much possessed by death'. She died in the upstairs bedroom By the light of the ev'ning star That shone through the plate glass windows From over Leamington Spa. Beside her the lonely crochet Lay patiently and unstirred, But the fingers that would have work'd it Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs— But Nurse was alone with her own little soul, And the things were alone with theirs.... And 'Tea !' she said in a tiny voice 'Wake up ! It's nearly five.' Oh ! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness, Half dead and half alive ! . . . The contractions—'ev'ning', 'work'd'—are habitual with Betjeman, and like many of his other mannerisms carry an echo of minor Victorian verse. Later poems on similar themes tend to be less mannered, and it is interesting to compare 'Death in Leamington' with 'Remorse' (1954), of which I quote the first two stanzas: The lungs draw in the air and rattle it out again; The eyes revolve in their sockets and upwards stare; No more worry and waiting and troublesome doubt again— She whom I loved and left is no longer there. The nurse puts down her knitting and walks across to her With quick professional eye she surveys the dead. Just one patient the less and little the loss to her, Distantly tender she settles the shrunken head....

Here the slightly mocking tone of 'Leamington' has given place to a genuine compassion; the verse, moreover, is tauter and more firmly controlled, and the whole poem is a far more proficient piece of work, though some of Betjeman's admirers may regret the casual, rather amateurish quality which gave the earlier poems a charm of their own. In complete contrast with 'Death in Leamington' is another very early poem, 'The Varsity Students' Rag', of which I quote the first verse and chorus: I'm afraid the fellows in Putney rather wash they had The social ease and warmers of a 'varsity undergrad, For tho' they're awf'lly decent and up to a lark as a rule You want to have the 'varsity touch after a public school. CHORUS: We had a rag at Monico's. We had a rag at the Troc., And the one we had at the Berkeley gave the customers quite a shock. Then we went to the Popular, and after that—oh my ! I wish you'd seen the rag we had in the Grill Room at the Cri.

This poem is, of course, in itself something of a 'rag', but it is a good satire upon the loutish behaviour of a certain type of undergraduate at that time. The slang and many of the incidental allusions have dated, and future students of Mr. Betjeman's poetry may well be puzzled by such abbreviations as 'Troc.' and 'Cri.', for Trocadero and Criterion—restaurants in or near Piccadilly Circus, much frequented in those days by the rowdier element. The poem exemplifies, in fact, Betjeman's habit of addressing himself to a private—or at any rate an extremely restricted— audience, and it is fairly safe to say that only a person of approximately the poet's own age and educational back-ground would be able to comprehend it in detail. Such locutions, for example, as 'varsity' and 'undergrad' were at that period frowned upon by the smarter kind of under-graduate; but if Mr.

Betjeman's attitude seems here a trifle snobbish, it is only fair to point out that it is precisely the snobbery of the 'varsity' man—his ill-bred jeering at 'the fellows in Putney'—which is the main target of the satire. Another early poem, 'The Garden City', is perhaps worth quoting in part (it was omitted by Lord Birkenhead from his collection); this too is broadly satirical, though here the mockery is less unkind: O wot ye why in Orchard Way The roofs be steep and shelving? Or wot ye what the dwellers say In close and garden delving? 'Belike unlike my hearths to yours, Yet seemly if unlike them. Deep green and stalwart be my doors With bottle glass to fryke them. 'Hand-woven be my wefts, hand-made My pottery for pottage, And hoe and mattock, aye, and spade Hang up about my cottage'....

A solemn footnote informs us that 'fryke' is a mediaeval word for deck, and the whole poem hits off splendidly that spurious and suburbanized 'arty-craftiness' which was one of the less fortunate by-products of the doctrines of William Morris. Most poets write love-poems, and John Betjeman is no exception, though as a lover he appears to have somewhat recondite tastes: The sort of girl I like to see Smiles down from her great height at me. She stands in strong athletic pose And wrinkles her retrousse' nose.... Oh ! would I were her racket press'd With hard excitement to her breast And swished into the sunlit air Arm-high above her tousledhair.... —('The Olympic Girl') Elsewhere he writes appreciatively of a 'great big mountainous sports girl', with arms 'as firm and hairy as Hendren's', and the same slightly masochistic element is present in one of his most celebrated poems, 'A Subaltern's Love-song': Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament—you against me !

The poem goes on to describe a drive: Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells, and a dance in the town: Oh ! full Surrey twilight ! importunate band ! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand! And finally: the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. We sat in the car park: till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. Such poems have their closest literary parallel, perhaps, in Swinburne who, if he were alive today, might well find the charms of Miss J. Hunter Dunn no less stimulating than those of the famous 'equestrienne', Adah Menken. For the most part these love-poems are linked with the poet's nostalgia for his childhood and adolescence; he seldom concerns himself with physical sexuality, and when he does tends to relate it to that macabre obsession with old-age and death which has already been noted: . . I run my fingers down your dress With brandy-certain aim And you respond to my caress And maybe feel the same.

But I've a picture of my own Of this reunion night, Wherein two skeletons are shewn To hold each other tight; Dark sockets look on emptiness Which once was loving-eyed, The mouth that opens for a kiss Has got no tongue inside....—('Late-Flowering Lust') « A Subaltern's Love Song | poetryarchive.org A Subaltern's Love Song More by this poet Poem introduction I can't find 'Joan Hunter Dunn' - what on earth's it called? It's not called that. [someone from the audience - 'A Subaltern's Love Song']. 'A Subaltern's Love Song' - I wish there was a first lines index. Anyone got the hymn book? 155? Thanks. Oh, 105 - thanks awfully, very kind. Oh I've got it, yes, right. Ready? About the Poem Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament - you against me! Love-thirty, love-forty, oh!

weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won, The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less. Her father's euonymus shines as we walk, And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk, And cool the verandah that welcomes us in To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin. The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath, The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path, As I struggle with double-end evening tie, For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I. On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts, And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports, And westering, questioning settles the sun, On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall, The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall, My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair And there on the landing's the light on your hair. By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways, She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, I can hear from the car park the dance has begun, Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand! Around us are Rovers and Austins afar, Above us the intimate roof of the car, And here on my right is the girl of my choice, With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice. And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

from Collected Poems (John Murray, 1978), © The Betjeman Literary Estate, by permission of the publisher and Gillon Aitken Associates Ltd. for the Betjeman Estate. Recording used by permission of The British Library Sound Archive and The Poetry Society. Where next? John Betjeman: A poetic visionary who spoke for England Authors John Betjeman: A poetic visionary who spoke for England Betjeman, a founder member of the Victorian Society, campaigned tirelessly to conserve parts of Britain's heritage Credit: Topfoto Telegraph Reporters 19 May 2016 • 8:17am Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate from 1972, died aged 77 on May 19, 1984. He was a hero and prophet. His matchless lyricism and love of the past went to the heart of what it means to be English, says AN Wilson. This article was originally published in 2014. It is three decades since the death of John Betjeman – Poet Laureate, campaigner for the salvation of old architecture, and broadcaster of genius. To my mind, he was the greatest Englishman of his generation.

He spoke for his country, more than any politician or journalistic wiseacre. And, unlike most public figures, he still survives. There are three primary reasons for this. First, he was a poet, the first best-selling English poet since Byron. (They shared a publisher, John Murray.) Some of his contemporaries supposed that he was only capable of writing doggerel. As a boy he was taught by TS Eliot, when the great American modernist was a master at Highgate Junior School. Betj was a friend and admirer of WH Auden. He totally understood the modernist movement in poetry. He simply chose to do something different. Rather as William Blake, towards the close of the 18th century, created his original poetic vision by means of ballad and hymn-forms, so Betjeman wrote about his great themes – love, God, death, and place – in accessible forms, which owed much to music hall and to Hymns Ancient and Modern. But time and again, he revealed himself to be a truly original poet, a “lord of language”, to use Tennyson’s phrase.

John Betjeman in 1963 Credit: Rex Features Spirits of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe, / Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky, the memorial ode for King George V, the poem on the Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, the celebrations of Miss Joan Hunter Dunn on the tennis courts, the account of wandering with a new love in Willesden Churchyard… There are no other poems like this in the English language. And there is a lyricism which goes back to the great Romantics: Burst, good June, with a rush this morning, / Bindweed weave me an emerald rope / Sun, shine bright on the blossoming trellises, / June and lavender, bring me hope… As well as being wonderful poems in themselves, these are immortal snapshots of our land. A Maltese friend of mine came here more than 30 years ago and was having difficulty coming to grips with Britain and its strange ways. “Read Betjeman,” said his employer. “Then you’ll understand us.” Second, as well as being remembered as a great poet, Betjeman was the man who helped us look at our architectural heritage and appreciate it.

When they restored St Pancras Station, rightly did they erect a statue of Betjeman on the platform overlooking the spot where the Eurostar trains pull in and out. If it had not been for Betjeman’s belief in the beauty both of the station and of George Gilbert Scott’s St Pancras Hotel, both buildings would have been demolished. He was among those who campaigned to save the great Euston Arch – the propylaeum of Philip Hardwick. Betjeman saw this as one of the great buildings of London. Money talked, and of course, British Rail, and Harold Macmillan, and the ruling orthodoxy all decided that it would be more sensible to pull down one of the masterpieces of the Greek revival, and erect a nondescript monstrosity. 15 best poetry books of all time Betj, bless his heart, was just a sentimentalist, wasn’t he? Who cared for railway stations and olde-tyme buildings? That was the attitude. And there were moments when he almost appeared to stand alone against the vandalism of the age. He and friends joined together to form the Victorian Society, and it was largely thanks to Betjeman that so much was saved.

The wreckers tried to destroy the Albert Bridge: he saved it. They wanted to “develop” Bedford Park: he saved it. When I wrote his biography in 2006 one of the chief things which struck me about him was his generosity with time. He was never a rich man, and he never received a penny in payment for his conservation work. Yet most of his work time was spent in answering letters and campaigning to save threatened architecture. He travelled the length and breadth of the kingdoms, he made speeches, he wrote letters. He was tireless, and deeply serious (for all his larking around) about the damage being inflicted by the plansters, as he called them. Now we can all see that Betjeman was right and the modernists and the shysters were wrong. But I wonder whether we totally appreciate what motivated his vision. Sir John Betjeman statue by artist Martin Jennings was unveiled at St Pancras International Station in 2007 Credit: Rex Features At heart, Betjeman was one of the most profoundly Christian men of his age.

I sometimes think that the Church of England was saved in the 18th century by melancholy-mad, lazy layman Samuel Johnson; and in the 20th century – this is his third great achievement – by the chaotic and melancholy John Betj. He campaigned for old buildings because they were beautiful. But he also did so because, as a Christian man, he saw through the pernicious belief in so-called progress and economic “growth” which politicians have used to justify so many deeds of evil. Betjeman did not believe in “growth”. As a near-pacifist, he did not believe in patriotism or war or bossing. He was far from conservative in his views of sexual morals – being entirely on the side of persecuted homosexuals, for example. His poems, and the letters edited by his daughter Candida Lycett Green, are full of understanding of sex and love, and of the need for the “sexual revolution”. He was a puncturer of humbug. He could not have been such an eloquent prophet for our times if he had not himself been a broken man, with, in effect, two wives, of whom he was very fond, and whose pain wracked him with ineffectual guilt.

He had a depressive temperament, ill health and no money; while being, as one of his close friends said to me once, a man of “blinding charm” and hilarity. The charm communicated itself to millions of television viewers who watched enthralled as he mused on decaying seaside towns or laughed at the music hall, or drew our eye towards the wonders of Gothic. He raised telly to the level of an art form. I can’t do that, but I have tried to give the great man his just homage in a programme for BBC4, coming out later this summer, called Betjemanland. The good bits won’t be me, but the old archive footage of this prophet, poet and hero. To order Lovely Bits of Old England : John Betjeman at the Telegraph for £8.99 plus p&p, call 0844 871 1515, or visit books.telegraph.co.uk Follow Telegraph Books When it comes to royalty, poets often have no rhyme or reason When it comes to royalty, poets often have no rhyme or reason 19 April 2016 • 5:28pm Carol Ann Duffy is marking the Queen's birthday by writing about...

gas meters Poetry doesn’t have to be about daffodils. It isn’t all wild surmises, heavenly muses or even the black night that covers me. It’s the world, and everything that’s in it. That’s presumably why Carol Ann Duffy has taken it upon herself to write a threnody to the gas meter , defunct after 2020, instead of some lines on the Queen’s 90th birthday. Perhaps she thinks she’s doing her duty as a poet. Poets have often written about strangely unstrange topics: there’s Mayakovsky on the telephone, Seamus Heaney on the pen he so memorably compared to a spade, and Douglas Dunn, who’s written poems that include a paean to the pencil and a recipe for ratatouille . If T S Eliot’s Prufrock can measure out his life with coffee spoons, then we can’t we measure ours in joules? Andrew Motion: regretted the awful poem he wrote for Prince William's 21st birthday Yet a question arises because Duffy is the Poet Laureate ; and poets in that role have had to make something of their royal connection.

Tennyson managed it; others did in their crawling way, but it was never easy for them to maintain their credibility with poets who are, more often than not, poetically progressive. Byron’s lines about Robert Southey, who became Poet Laureate in 1813, are splendidly splenetic; and later poets have found the post hard to live down. Sir Andrew Motion later recanted his ill-judged lines on Prince William’s 21st birthday, which included such howlers as “Better stand back it’s an age attack.” “Duffy has clearly decided that she will have to maintain the respect of fellow poets after her tenure is finished” Ted Hughes entered into the spirit wholeheartedly, and couldn’t see why other poets found his “Rain Charm for the Duchy” embarrassing, or smirked at the sincerity of his tribute to the Queen Mother. For him there was something tribal about the dynastic nature of the monarchy, which felt to him natural, in the full sense of that word For Duffy, the national nature of the job is more significant than its royal connotations.

She has occasionally written royal poems, and did time a winning lyric to coincide with the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton; but her instinct has been more to give her blessings to the Trades Union Conference or lambast MPs fiddling their expenses . Carol Ann Duffy did write a rather pleasing few lines for the Royal wedding Credit: Tom Hevezi It’s not be to all tastes, but it might be a smart tactic. When Sir Andrew was appointed in 1999, he became the first poet laureate to learn that he would have the job for just ten years. Before that, the office was for life. Hughes and John Betjeman could write stuff that made other poets cringe and still go to their graves knowing that the honour was really a lifetime achievement award. Their best work is still what survives them: we remember Betjeman for “Miss Joan Hunter Dunn” and “Slough”, and not, thank goodness, for “Blackbirds in city churchyards hail the dawn/Charles and Diana on your wedding morn ...”. Duffy has clearly decided that she will have to maintain the respect of fellow poets after her tenure is finished.

She’s learnt from Sir Andrew, who’s written wisely about the pressures of poets seeming to be “owned” by patrons and the public. She’s unlikely to write something about royalty that doesn’t have some wider resonance. But she’s also learnt from what Sir Andrew got right – the need to use the post to engage us all with poetry. For that reason at least, she’s right to consider subjects common to our daily lives; and if that makes meters matter for her meter, so be it. BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Betjeman's 'muse' dies aged 92 Betjeman's 'muse' dies aged 92 Sir John met "Miss J Hunter Dunn" in the 1930s The woman who inspired one of Sir John Betjeman's most famous poems has died at the age of 92. Joan Jackson was immortalised in print as Miss J Hunter Dunn in Sir John's 1941 poem, A Subaltern's Love Song. Mrs Jackson, who first met Sir John while working at the Ministry of Information in the 1930s, died at a London nursing home last week.

Her son, Edward, told The Times: "She never said she was proud to be his muse but she did not consider it a joke." He added: "She just said that John was a nice man." 'Important role' In A Subaltern's Love Song, the poet is transfixed by Miss J Hunter Dunn while playing tennis against her. He wrote: "Miss J Hunter Dunn, Miss J Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun." The poem results in the tennis playing duo attending a dance and subsequently becoming engaged. She was certainly his muse as far as that poem was concerned John Heald, the Betjeman Society But in reality the young Miss Dunn got married and became Mrs Jackson, before going to live abroad, returning with her family to the UK in the 1960s. John Heald, chairman of the Betjeman Society, said that "Miss J Hunter Dunn" had played an important role in Sir John's life as a poet. He said: "She induced in him a feeling of happiness and well being that permeates through a lot of his work.

"She really was important to him, they did remain close - they met frequently and they did dine together from time to time." He added: "She was certainly his muse as far as that poem was concerned - he rather liked attractive women." Sir John, who died in 1984, was made Poet Laureate in 1972. His other works included the poem Slough, with the famous opening lines: "Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough, it isn't fit for humans now." John Stammers's top 10 love poems | Books | The Guardian Top 10s John Stammers's top 10 love poems Ahead of Valentine's Day, steel yourself for romantic disappointment as the poet considers the literature of desire, from Marvell's coy mistress to John Betjeman's lovelorn subaltern Iamb smitten ... Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love John Stammers Wednesday 9 February 2011 05.26 EST First published on Wednesday 9 February 2011 05.26 EST Share on Messenger Close John Stammers is a poet and creative writing teacher.

His first collection, Panoramic Lounge-Bar, won the Forward prize for best first collection in 2001 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread poetry award. His second collection, Stolen Love Behaviour, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. In a review for the Guardian, Charles Bainbridge wrote that it explored "the shady areas of libido and guilt, of bars, boudoirs and basements, the fragile underbelly of the hip and sophisticated." He is the editor of the Picador Book of Love Poems. "If ever two were made for each other surely it is love and poetry: the infinite variety of love meeting the boundless capacity of poetry to embrace it. There is something both sweet and intense about all aspects of romantic love, a combination that is ideally suited to poetry's marriage of the music of speech with compressed content. This is true from love's first blush through to its heady consummation. "It is a surprise, however, to find that the straightforward romantic paean is comparatively rare amongst great love poems. Perhaps this is because the self-satisfied I'm-so-happy-now-we-twain-are-one approach can cloy.

For the most part, great love poems are either ones of wily courtship, unrequited love, or the bitterest regret. There is something delicious about these marginal states in which Desire (for it is he) is constantly unsatisfied, confounded or denied. I would hazard a shaft that it is just this strange quality of desire to persist in the face of its own negation that we find compelling. With that in mind, and with the exception of the Shakespeare (he seems to be able to carry it off), all the poems I've chosen, in no particular order, are of this type. " A romantic take on Horace's Carpe Diem in which the suitor desires to seize rather more than simply the day. This poem contains many of the cleverest metaphysical conceits: witness "our vegetable love" or those trying worms. 2. The Love-Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot This is a truly subversive poem, whose first three lines signal the arrival of literary modernism and which can be practically read as its credo. Prufrock is a miscast troubadour of the Edwardian drawing room who fails to raise his lute or his voice due to simple lack of courage.

The poem is an anthem for all those who have failed through inaction, which probably includes us all at some time, and which no doubt is what provides it with its great poignancy. 4. A Subaltern's Love Song by John Betjeman A latter-day warrior is beguiled to his inevitable fate by, as her name suggests, a temptress in the mythic tradition. The quiet stroke of brilliance in this poem is just that fact that Betjeman makes the narrator a soldier, trained to repel any military assault no doubt, but defenceless in the face of "strenuous singles" with the athletic young Joan Hunter Dunn. She runs out the "victor", not only in the tennis, but in all regards. A caveat on the hazards of mixing hormones with physical activity. 5. Whoso List to Hunt by Thomas Wyatt When Henry VIII announced that he intended to marry Anne Boleyn, Wyatt wrote to the king in an effort to dissuade him, saying he himself had had knowledge of her.

This poem portrays a hind that the speaker and others pursue vainly and which wears a necklace of jewels that spell out "Noli me tangere [Do not touch me], for Caesar's I am." In the event, Henry took no notice of the letter, thinking perhaps that Wyatt had written it out of jealously. The rest is monumental history. 6. The Flea by John Donne If there are a number of great conceits in the Marvell, then there is a single one in this, at first sight tasteless masterpiece. Almost, one feels, as an exercise in virtuosity, Donne turns a human flea into a persuasive romantic symbol. Said flea has just bitten both himself and the object of his attentions and so becomes an improbable erotic crucible: Donne argues disingenuously that, as the two of them are now conjoined in the flea, they might just as well get on with the grosser physical details. 8. Methought I Saw My Late Espousèd Saint by John Milton The unusual thing about this poem is that it is contextualised externally: the reader needs to know that, by the time of writing, Milton is blind. There is one place he can still see however: in dream.

This paradox is used to provide the poem with a truly devastating denouement. 9. A Private Bottling by Don Paterson The end of many a relationship has left a sour taste in the mouth; in this case it is that of single-malt whiskys. Our insomniac narrator sets a fairy ring of nips about a room and the sad circle begins where it ends via unfulfilled potential and sorry recollection blended with acid judgment of the betrayer. It concludes with as bitter a toast to a woman as was ever offered by man. 10. Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare In this staple of wedding ceremonies, "mind" probably means something nearer to what we mean by the word "spirit". Or we have a more modern term that covers it: "soul-mate".

From this poem we can, as is so often the case, give the last word to Shakespeare, a succinct characterisation of the wish for enduring love: "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds." 10 Great John Betjeman Poems Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature 10 Great John Betjeman Poems Everyone Should Read Posted by interestingliterature The best poems by John Betjeman – and some interesting facts about them Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) was UK Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death, and became one of Britain’s best-loved poets of the twentieth century. When his Collected Poems was published in 1955, it was a bestseller. Below is our selection of Betjeman’s best poems, along with a short summary of each poem and a link to where you can read it. Do you agree with this list? We’ve arranged them in roughly chronological order, rather than attempting to rank them in a ‘best to worst’ or ‘worst to best’ order. What would you pick as Betjeman’s best poem? ‘ Death in Leamington ‘.

This was one of Betjeman’s first published poems, appearing in the 1932 volume Mount Zion, Betjeman’s first collection. It describes the lonesome death of an old lady in the English midlands spa town (presumably to suggest its ordinariness: death, like Larkin’s nothing , happens anywhere), and, even though it’s an early poem, it already displays Betjeman’s eye for small everyday details, such as the tea-things and the landlady turning down the gas in the hall. ‘ The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel ‘. This poem was published in Betjeman’s second volume of poems, Continual Dew, in 1937. As the title suggests, it describes Wilde’s arrest at the London hotel following his failed attempts to sue the Marquis of Queensberry for libel. Wilde would subsequently stand trial for ‘gross indecency’; he would be found guilty and condemned to two years’ hard labour. Watch out for the Cockney speech of the two plain-clothes arresting officers. ‘ Slough ‘. The opening lines of this poem are probably Betjeman’s most famous.

Like ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ it appeared in Continual Dew. Because of its blistering attack on the industrial trading estate that Slough became in the 1930s, many residents of the Berkshire town have objected to Betjeman’s tone in the poem, especially the notion that bombing Slough may be the best thing for it (it proved oddly ominous, since two years after the poem was published, when WWII broke out, Slough would be bombed by the Germans). Betjeman’s daughter publicly apologised for her father’s poem in 2006! ‘ In Westminster Abbey ‘. Published in 1940 in Betjeman’s third volume, Old Lights for New Chancels, ‘In Westminster Abbey’ reflects its wartime publication date. The poem pokes fun at the idea of believing oneself superior because one is a) upper-class, b) a good Christian woman, c) English, and d) white. Bomb the Germans, the speaker of the poem entreats while praying to God – but keep the English safe. The poem is a fine example of how genteelly but powerfully satirical Betjeman could be. ‘ A Subaltern’s Love Song ‘.

No list of Betjeman’s best poems would be complete without this. One of Betjeman’s best-loved poems, this is the ‘Miss J. Hunter Dunn’ one (its opening line is more famous than its actual title). Published in 1945 in Betjeman’s fourth collection, New Bats in Old Belfries, ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’ is a love song of a peculiarly English kind. The Joan Hunter Dunn who inspired the poem was a real person , who died in 2008 – Betjeman met her during wartime in 1940 and was struck by her, and wrote ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’ about what it might be like for the two of them to play tennis, fall in love, and get engaged (Betjeman was a married man when he wrote the poem, and the relationship with Miss J. Hunter Dunn remained a fantasy rather than a reality). A ‘subaltern’, by the way, is an officer in the British army below the rank of captain. ‘ Christmas ‘.

Betjeman wrote several poems about Christmas, and this one, from his 1954 volume A Few Late Chrysanthemums, is probably the best of them. Like Thomas Hardy ‘s ‘The Oxen’ (which, along with Betjeman’s poem, we include in our pick of the best Christmas poems ), Betjeman’s ‘Christmas’ sees the speaker of the poem yearning to believe in the story of the nativity. Betjeman (who was a Christian, though a doubting one) seems to conclude that it is true. ‘ How to Get On in Society ‘. This short poems sticks the knife into the pretentious world of the upper-middle classes. It appeared in A Few Late Chrysanthemums in 1954. Betjeman wrote ‘How to Get On in Society’ as part of a competition in Time and Tide magazine in December 1951, where Betjeman invited readers to write another stanza for the poem. A short analysis of the poem, along with a parody of Betjeman’s poem (which he proclaimed to be better than his own!), can be found here . ‘ Diary of a Church Mouse ‘.

A fine example of Betjeman’s Chaucerian style, ‘Diary of a Church Mouse’ (1954) is another piece of gentle mockery of a certain class of person – here, fair-weather Christians who use the church when it suits them but are nowhere to be seen for most of the year. Betjeman uses animals to make his point, and it’s not hard to see why this has become one of Betjeman’s most popular poems – it appeals to people of all ages, and even those who miss the satire. ‘ Archibald ‘. Archibald Ormsby-Gore was, according to Betjeman, the one person who never let him down. Archibald was also, famously, a teddy bear – and the inspiration for Sebastian Flyte’s teddy Aloysius in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. This poem reflects Betjeman’s fondness for his stuffed toy, and helps to explain why Betjeman became, for Britain, ‘the nation’s teddy bear’. Archibald, and Betjeman’s toy elephant Jumbo, were in his arms when he died in 1984. ‘ The Last Laugh ‘.

This short poem was written late in Betjeman’s life and reflects the mixture of tender melancholy and humour that pervade his other work, though there is a deeper awareness of death and (like his friend Philip Larkin) a terror of dying lurking behind the poem. We had to leave John Betjeman’s 1960 blank-verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, off the list, but if you’ve feasted on the ten shorter poems listed above and are hungry for more of Betjeman’s quintessentially English loveliness, you can read Summoned by Bells, and all of his other best poems, in John Betjeman Collected Poems , published by John Murray. Image (top): John Betjeman Statue by Martin Jennings, St Pancras Station, London (author: Christine Matthews), Wikimedia Commons . Image (bottom): The John Betjeman Centre Memorabilia Room showing the office from his home in Trebetherick (author: Neil Kennedy), Wikimedia Commons . Share this:

Question: Which poet wrote about the charms of Miss Joan Hunter Dunn?
Answer: John BETJEMAN