James Simmons Poems
A collection of select James Simmons famous poems that were written by James Simmons or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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by
Tebb, Barry
...l the boxer
Broke - was it Redgrove’s brolly? - over his head and had
To hide in the Gents till time was called.
James Simmons boasted of how the pint he threw
At Anthony Thwaite hit Geoffrey Hill instead.
O, for the company of the missing and the dead
Martin Bell, Wendy Oliver, Iris and Ted....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...junk.
An ivory dial telephone, a bowl of early daffodils
To focus on.
I was the first to read, speaking of James Simmons’ death,
My anguish at the year long silence from his last letter
To the Christmas card in Gaelic Nollaig Shona -
With the message “Jimmy’s doing better than expected.”
The difficulty I had in finding his publisher’s address -
Salmon Press, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare -
Then a soft sad Irish woman’s voice explained
“Jimmy’s had a ma...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...Sitting in outpatients
With my own minor ills
Dawn’s depression lifts
To the lilt of amitryptilene,
A double dose for a day’s journey
To a distant ward.
The word was out that Simmons
Had died eighteen months after
An aneurism at sixty seven.
The meeting he proposed in his second letter
Could never happen: a few days later
A Christmas...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...You were the one I wanted most to know
So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,
The casual voice, the sharp invective,
The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant
Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms
Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt
For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry
Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.
You ...Read more of this...