“It’s easy to write / of eternal night / and to compose / flowery verses / about one’s mortality / but many a poet curses / the reality / behind his poetry.”

• Title: Light and Shade: Serious (and Not So Serious) Poems
• Author: K. Morris
• Genre: Poetry
• Pages: 127 pages
• Publication date: June, 2020

K. Morris runs a blog that I follow all the time, so of course I had to read his book, Light and Shade: Serious (and Not So Serious) Poems. The book itself is split into two sections. The first one has serious poems that focus on love, nature, and time, while the second section has silly, humorous poems.

I didn’t expect the poems to be so relevant even though this book was recently published. Some poems were about the coronavirus and the social distancing that followed. It was interesting…

Solitude is usually defined as “the state of being, or living alone. Seclusion”.

We have the dictionary definition above, but what does solitude mean for the writer?

In his oft quoted poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Wordsworth describes solitude as a state of bliss:

“For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.”

(see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud).

There are, of course individuals who do everything within their power to avoid solitude, for they fear being alone with their own thoughts. As Philip Larkin so eloquently puts it in “Aubade”, being alone, in the early morn focuses the mind on death, which is uncomfortable for many:

“Most things may never happen: this one will,   

And realisation of it rages…