Poetry by Henry Reed. Links to a selection of
Reed's poems, written between the 1930s and 1950s, including the famous Lessons of the War
series, the parody "Chard Whitlow," and the title poem from his collection,
A Map of Verona:
Restrained drama unfurls in this long, 300-line, Hardyesque poem about a country auction and the battle for a special painting. Originally published in Encounter, October 1958.
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Reed's famous parody of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets won a New Statesman and Nation contest, and was published there on May 10, 1941.
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A short poem of love and longing, "The Door and the Window" first appeared in The Listener, on November 2, 1944.
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Part Two of Reed's Lessons of the War was first published in The New Statesman and Nation on March 6, 1943.
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A contemplation of a future visit to Italy, the title poem of Reed's first book originally appeared in the March 12, 1942 Listener.
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A short musing on love, "Morning" was first published in The Listener, July 27, 1944.
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Part Three of Reed's Lessons of the War was first published in the April 6, 1950 Listener.
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Based on his experiences during basic training in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Part One of Lessons of the War was originally published in The New Statesman and Nation on August 8, 1942, while Reed was stationed at Bletchley Park.
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Never published during his lifetime, a draft of this long addition to Lessons of the War (Part Five) appears in the Collected Poems, published in 1991.
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Part Six and the concluding section of Reed's series was first printed in The Listener, October 29, 1970, although an earlier version was broadcast on the BBC in 1966 as part of The Complete Lessons of the War.
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A meditation on an imaginary landscape, this early poem was originally published in the February 26, 1938 New Statesman and Nation.
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Part Four of Lessons of the War first appeared in The New Statesman and Nation on April 28, 1945.
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