thomas hardy

i have always found it very tough to read poetry, except for the michael ondaatje’s relatively easy image heavy poems and a few more exceptions. i bought the book ‘the harvill book of twentieth century poetry in english' after deciding that reading poetry was a skill i had to develop.

i started the book with some thomas hardy poems, which i found very often sickeningly romantic, as he perpetually pines for places and times when he was happier. this constant nostalgia for bygone eras and quest to find happiness in the past was not particularly appealing to me, even though i always thought that i was a little sentimental in nature.

still liked some poems though – ‘a broken appointment’ where he is accusing a lover who does not love him about not having the politeness to keep an appointment; ‘heredity’ in which he examines his features and traces them in the future and the past; ‘thoughts of phena’ about someone who died; ‘afterwards’ about how he hopes he will be remembered; ‘during wind and rain’ about the last days of a home.