I think these things are poems, though there’s a bit of damage and they’re of no great age. Start me at £20, anyone?

On to re-posting more poems with comments and expolanations of a sort. Here goes: GLASS The glass creation on the shelf In the early morning light refracts, transmutes The arriving light into changing colours and links That fade and reform with the slightest of gentle shifts. If you try to see through it the waving [...]

Gloomy. Obscure. Negative. Vague. This sounds good…

I’m carrying on commenting on some poems I’ve already posted. They aren’t necessarily the best in my opinion, as some poems seem to me to be fairly obvious in their meaning and technique, and they could just possibly be good. The first one here, though, seems to me to be one of my best. UNDERWATER [...]

The Last Problem

Sherlock Holmes is a figure who has developed mythic force and a life outside the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When Conan Doyle, wanting to move on, killed him off, he came back. He appears in countless cartoons, stories, film and TV adaptations. The struggle of Holmes against arch-villain and intellect of equal power [...]

Selected Poems of Simon Banks

(Well, about half my poems don’t make it on to the word file. They may survive in a handwritten notebook, or they may have been scrawled on a piece of paper and then I don’t rate them. From the word file a selection gets posted here – and from that, some which most seem to [...]

Empire

  I usually find I can’t sustain a long poem unless I’m on holiday alone, able to get away from unusual distractions, even though there will be other things to think about.  That’s what happened here on a holiday. I’d felt I had a poem in me about the collapse of a glorious and cultured [...]

The definitive, authoritative, comprehensive commentary on the poetic works of Simon Banks

will not be written. However, here are some thoughts on a few more poems.   ESTUARY   The church is early 12th century. Some two miles from here The Romans crossed the estuary by a ford Now long impassable The shades settle   I am confused by their weight, my questions muffled By their insistent [...]

Sleeping

Back today to posting poems I haven’t posted before – so getting gradually nearer the present day. The first two lines of this one came to me as I was driving from Maldon to Colchester by a B road and I fashioned the rest of it while driving, with much mental repetition to try to [...]

Still Trying to Explain Myself

which if you go by the Latin origin, means “to lay myself out flat”. So that’s why it’s difficult.   By the way, when I re-posted the last batch of poems, they somehow lost the gaps between the verses and also a distinctive layout for one poem (“Wolf”). I’ve now restored these features. For “Wolf” [...]

More explaining what I think I meant

In this post, the respected critic Simon Banks comments on the work of the obscure poet Simon Banks. In the last post I analysed, or at least commented on, Spirit Mountain and Knight at Arms. Now, proceeding from the earliest poems posted here towards the latest and selecting poems I think I’ve got something to [...]

Reaper

  I met him at the corner of the street Standing behind a pillar, in a cloak; He raised his hand as if to say, “I know you. We have corresponded. I’ll meet you Again.” I went away Smiling.   This poem was originally called “Unhorsed” and there must have been a reason for that, [...]

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