Her poetry - and that of her master William
Blake - resonates with me much less than the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and many
others does, but I find some of her other writings of great interest and
relevance.
She has been featured and quoted in some
articles on here, and there are some incidental references in others.
To mark the occasion, I want to say a little
more about Kathleen Raine and her life.
Three books of interest
After reading Kathleen Raine’s three-volume
autobiography, I went through it again and made notes of everything that seemed
particularly insightful and resonated very strongly with my own thoughts and
experiences. Much of the material I copied is very inspiring; much of is the exact
opposite. Some of it provides independent confirmation of my own conclusions.
I ended up with many pages of material; it is
very tempting to reproduce a lot of it on here, but although I put some of her thoughts into this article and a few others, the quotations are best read in
their original context. The three books I got the material from are Farewell Happy Fields, The Land Unknown and The
Lion’s Mouth.
Kathleen Raine’s view of her life
While reading her autobiography, I noticed immediately
that Kathleen Raine attempts to analyse and make sense of her ideas and
experiences. She tries to make an honest evaluation of her life.
She tries hard to understand the causes of
the suffering she has experienced; she takes responsibility where appropriate; she demonstrates great courage, understanding and insight.
All this is admirable and much of what she
says seems spot on, but I noticed that something was missing.
