Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026William Barnes. If this isn’t a great poem, I don’t know what is. 010
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 22/09/2026One of the many gems of Dublin folklore about Yeats, recorded by Richard Ellmann in 1946. 0134
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Pindar, in a way. (Only last line is a direct translation , of fr.36a. The rest half-imitation, half something else.) From my book The House of Clay (2007). 092
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 16/09/2026I’ve always thought this, by A.E. Housman about his late colleague Arthur Platt, one of the best paragraphs of English prose there is. But more than that too: like Johnson at his finest, he also has emotional truths to tell, almost too true to tell at all. 060
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 12/09/2026A Michael Longley poem for a President to give Trump? This one. (I hope Connolly would commend it to the Irish as well.) 020
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Lionel Johnson (WB Yeats's friend) writing in 1891. Plenty here that still has critical point, I think. 141
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Louis MacNeice, who died in London sixty-three years ago today. 1122
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 02/09/2026I love a good misprint. Here in the NY magazine Current Opinion (Dec 1917) unsuspecting young men are getting a whiff of Maud Gonne as she goes by … Probably all that French cooking. 000
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 27/08/2026I gave Geoffrey Hill’s posthumous Baruch a largely disappointed review (in Stand) when it came out. My reservations remain - but it does contain great things, like this section on Yeats and ‘Easter 1916’. 021
Reposted by Peter McDonaldA. E. Stallings @aestallings.bsky.social · 06/08/2026Well, for better or worse, my Odyssey review is out: www.the-tls.com/arts/film/th...the-tls.comShowdowns and shootoutsIn the past week, I enjoyed two movies at Athens’s outdoor summer cinemas (my favourite summer activity: the scent of basil and jasmine, the shadows of 0175
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 05/08/2026www.the-tls.com/classics/cro... My review of Emily Wilson and Henry Power in the new TLS.the-tls.comEnglished Homer“It is probable”, Alexander Pope wrote in his translation of the Iliad (1715–20), “the author’s own words, at the time he used them, never meant half so 082
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 18/07/2026Emily Wilson’s Odyssey: so good she’s doing it twice. (From Prospect magazine.) I do wish Alexander Pope was alive to do this stuff justice… 000
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 06/07/2026www.carcanet.co.uk/978178410176... Ten years old now, but if this is indeed going to be a Homeric summer, a few people might be interested in tracking it down now. The material is odd, yes; but I do hope (he says modestly) this is the best translation available. (Well sort of available...)carcanet.co.ukThe Homeric HymnsA 2016 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation The Homeric Hymns are a crucial work in the Western literary canon, and Peter McDonald’s new verse tran... 000
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 06/07/2026www.carcanet.co.uk/978178410176... Ten years old now, but if this is indeed going to be a Homeric summer, a few people might be interested in tracking it down now. The material is odd, yes; but I do hope (he says modestly) this is the best translation available. (Well sort of available...)carcanet.co.ukThe Homeric HymnsA 2016 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation The Homeric Hymns are a crucial work in the Western literary canon, and Peter McDonald’s new verse tran... 000
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 27/06/2026There’s a Michael Longley poem for most situations, isn’t there? (From The Slain Birds, 2022) 070
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 17/06/2026By Jack Yeats, perhaps c.1887. Quite a pose. 073
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 13/06/2026A reason for keeping silent I think it better that at times like these We poets keep our mouths shut; for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He’s had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth Or an old man upon a winter’s night. WBY b.13 Jun 1865 010
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 08/06/2026One had a lovely face And two or three had charm But face and charm were in vain I could not change for the grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain. WB Yeats, earliest surviving text of ‘Memory’ (published 1916). 030
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 07/06/2026This needed to be said.drb.ieWhen More is Less - Dublin Review of BooksWhen More is Less - % Dublin Review of Books 194
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 06/06/2026Feeling some “righteous anger” myself today on hearing the obscenities spewing from JD Vance’s mouth. Here is a soldier from the Sikh Regiment, at the liberation of Italy. They fought and died with us in North Africa too, and all through the War. Decent folk remember. 020
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 27/05/2026youtu.be/aZuQbZv0OQs As long as a feature film, but you never know, might interest some folk. Now imagine doing this for every poem WBY ever wrote …youtu.be"September 1913" (with Peter McDonald)YouTube video by DrRobDoggett 150
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 11/05/2026This weather had better improve, is all I’m saying. (Louis MacNeice said it better: from The Burning Perch (1963)) 010
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 30/04/2026F.T. Prince (from “Senilia” in his 1993 Collected Poems) 161
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 17/04/2026A.E. Housman, on the hilarious folly of classical metre in English. (Not that anyone actually thinks about this stuff any more. Still…) 030
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 01/04/2026www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seam... June 2027: this will be a wonderful event - come to Belfast and participate!qub.ac.ukMichael Longley Conference - 2027 | Seamus Heaney Centre | Queen's University Belfast 180
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 26/03/2026When one takes to oneself a French mistress, it’s important to make sure your Japanese valet vets the candidates. 020
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 17/03/2026Happy St Patrick’s Day to all! Ben Bulben, seen from Glencar. 021
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 03/03/2026In a time of war: written 1992, from my book Adam’s Dream (1996). 030
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 22/02/2026The crooked ways of literary history. I’m the baby (take that how you will). From my book Torchlight (2011). 020
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 12/02/2026This is what happens when you let WB Yeats go to the country and play with Ezra Pound. Awkward. 010
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 10/02/2026Yeats on Synge, 1909. Astonishingly powerful. 161
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 03/02/2026Lucinda Williams in London tonight: majestic, magnificent. 020
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 21/01/2026www.the-tls.com/lives/letter... Or, when the poetry stopped (and the peke’s eye popped).the-tls.comThe exasperated spiritDuring the Second World War, Shamley Wood House in Surrey was a place of refuge for T. S. Eliot. The poet worked in Faber’s Russell Square offices for part of each week, fire-watching by night, and re... 010
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 19/01/2026Ezra Pound, 1913. “Beautiful” last-gasping, but on life support from “ugly”. 000
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 06/01/2026Not just timely by any means, but timely all the same: John Jay Chapman (1862-1933) on “The President’s Dictatorship”. As quoted in Christopher Ricks’s splendid chapter on Chapman in his book Along Heroic Lines (2021). 020
Peter McDonald @pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social · 04/12/2025Gerard Hopkins, 1864. “Overloaded, apparently “ he recorded after it in his notebook. What a strange poet he was, even early on. 030
