Nostalgia, we learnt from notes on Carol Ann Duffy’s poem of that name, is a term coined by a 17th century medical student to describe the acute homesickness of Swiss mercenary soldiers in his care.
Nostalgia for one’s school days is the very theme of the Harrow School song “Forty years on” (words by Ernest Bowen), as adopted by Ermysted’s School in Skipton and many others, inspiring Alan Bennett’s play of the same name. We were treated to renditions of the song and of Ermysted’s own appropriately earthy cross-country running song.
John Updike’s ‘Shillington’ celebrates the lasting influence of his childhood home (now a museum of his life and work). Also evocative of childhood experiences are Seamus Heaney’s ‘The harvest bow’, using half rhymes throughout, Stephen Spender’s ‘Lost days’ and Thomas Hardy’s ‘The self-unseeing’. In the last, the poet recalls a scene that he didn’t appreciate at the time. There’s a similar sentiment in Wendy Cope’s ‘Little donkey’. In Hardy’s ‘Joys of memory’, he regularly relives a particular significant spring day. The poem uses an unusual rhyme scheme.
‘Onion and cucumber’ by our own Ken Gambles also deals with vivid childhood memories. Louise Gluck’s ‘Nostos’ disconcertingly seems to suggest that after childhood there are no new experiences.
The father who advocated ‘The manly art of knitting’ in Christopher James’ poem led by splendid example, but considered tapestry to be women’s work.
Another father, in Cecil Day Lewis’s ‘Walking away’ recalls the moment when his child first exhibited his independence. An interesting rhyme scheme is used in these 5-line verses.
As in ‘The self-unseeing’, Christina Rossetti’s ‘I wish I could remember that first day’ speaks of not taking it all in at the time. The epigraph to this sonnet includes a reference to proto-sonneteer Petrarch.
John Betjeman’s ‘Parliament Hill Fields’ recalls a time of steam trains, open-topped trams, and coal merchants. It also features his interest in Victorian church architecture. The rhythm is typical Betjeman, but note the 5-line verses rhyming AABBB.
Brian Bilston’s ‘Every song on the radio reminds me of you’ is doubly nostalgic as it also reminds us of those old hit songs. His ‘Bonfire 451’ with its well-timed punchline, on the other hand, reminds us of literature for which we are rather less likely to feel nostalgia.
‘We are the village green preservation society’, by pop’s curator of nostalgia Ray Davies, has winningly witty wordplay.
From another notable nostalgist, A E Housman, we had ‘When I was one-and-twenty’.
Both U A Fanthorpe’s ‘The sheepdog’ and a prose extract from Laurie Lee’s ‘Cider with Rosie’ evoke the wonder of the first Christmas through the experiences of country folk and animals.
In Robert Browning’s ‘Home thoughts from abroad’ the poet would prefer to be in England and similarly in Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Old Vicarage Grantchester’, from which extracts containing various famous lines were read. We also had short extracts from Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘The deserted village’, dealing with the iniquity of the clearances.
Two well-known poems redolent of nostalgia which we didn’t get round to, but always worth revisiting, are DH Lawrence’s ‘Piano’ and Dylan Thomas’s ‘Fern Hill’.
Wow, that’s a real list. Thanks Chris.