This activity, as the editors suggest, was “a product, as Marjorie Swann has pointed out, of the humanist education system and its ‘notebook method’, which treated texts ‘as bundles of fragments which could be appropriated by readers and writers’.” Prior to the subsequent rise of the printing press, it played a predominant and central role in how a poet gained popularity and became known to a reading audience. It’s a generous wealth of material, including musical settings for several poems made for Court performances possibly by the likes of Herrick’s friend the composer Henry Lawes: “evidence of three manuscript songbooks containing settings of Herrick’s work indicated that his lyrics were being performed in semi-public concerts in London in the late 1640s and early 1650s.”īefore printing presses really took off and books by individual poets were widely available, poems usually circulated as transcribed by hand into manuscript books known as “miscellanies.” Shared among acquaintances, numerous individuals might contribute entries as the book was passed round from gathering to gathering. The second volume includes generally brief annotations for individual poems as well as significantly enlarges critical approaches to Herrick’s work from the manuscript book level up. There’s a novel waiting to be written imagining the poet’s apparently ‘silent’ final twenty-six years of life. Published in 1648 when Herrick was fifty-seven, this single collection while nonetheless large is yet the extent of his work despite the fact he continued living until 1674. The poems appear as individual sequentially numbered entries, some titled some not, separated into two sections: the secular, larger Hesperides followed by the religious, slimmer His Noble Numbers. The religious nature of the latter section reflects Herrick’s time as a country pastor.įor contemporary readers there’s a fair amount of disjuncture between the two sections as numerous sexual and otherwise bawdy scenarios play out in the rather un-pastor-like first two-thirds of the book yet for his time, Herrick’s role as a gentleman pastor who had his fair share of womanizing and drinking was rather par for the course. The majority of the remaining 800+ pages contain Herrick’s sole publication in his lifetime of his entire 1400 poetic works. The first volume opens with a succinct biographical account, introducing Herrick’s life and work.
#HESPERIDES POETRY COLLECTION FULL#
This two volume edition amply supplies the full range of available Herrick material. As a result, my focus here will not be upon individual poems so much as the editorial work performed and subsequent argument presented. From “To the Virgins, To make Much of Time” as recited by the late Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society onwards to other regular anthology pieces such as “To Daffodils” or “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” Herrick’s lyrics are rather ubiquitously found as cultural reference points representing poetry-at-large. Many readers will be readily familiar with Herrick’s poetry. I’ve never questioned the work’s sustained relevancy despite that Herrick’s reputation comes from a relatively few number of poems from out the phenomenal 1400 he composed. As with so many other poets, such as John Keats, Tom truly brought the Herrick’s work to life. Hearing Tom expound upon Herrick’s life and work opened new avenues of appreciation. The full work of a recognized master of the lyric form achieves due notice. I became entranced and inducted into a lifelong engagement with reading Robert Herrick’s poetry as a student of poet Tom Clark’s classes in Poetics at New College of California. Without question The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrickis a milestone in the appreciation and recognition of one of the chief poets of delight among the English.
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