Two by John Robert Lee

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

John Robert Lee was born, and lives in St Lucia. He is the author of three collections of poetry, Elemental, (2008), Collected Poems 1975-2015, (2017), and Pierrot, (2020). His poems are included in a number of international anthologies and periodicals including The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, Poetry Wales, Small Axe, and The Missing Slate. He has also published short stories in anthologies such as The Faber Book of Contemporary Caribbean Short Stories, and Facing the Sea. He edited a St. Lucian anthology of poetry and art spanning fifty years, Roseau Valley and other poems, and with his younger colleague Kendel Hippolyte, he compiled and edited an anthology of reviews covering the history of St. Lucian literature and theatre, (Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an anthology of reviews. His reviews and columns appear widely, and he produced and presented radio and television programmes in Saint Lucia for many years.

-bio via Peepal Tree Press

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.3	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, March 25th, 2024.
0:09.1	Today's poem is by John Robert Lee, a contemporary poet and a member of a remarkable school of St. Lucian poets.
0:18.9	He was a friend and protege of the poet and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott.
0:25.3	Walcott had this to say about Lee's work. Robert Lee has been a scrupulous poet. That's the
0:32.8	biggest virtue that he has, and it's not a common virtue in poets to be scrupulous and modest in the best sense, not to overextend the range of the truth that he has, and it's not a common virtue in poets to be scrupulous and modest in the best sense,
0:39.0	not to overextend the range of the truth of his emotions, not to go for the grandiose.
0:45.1	He is a Christian poet, obviously. You don't get in the poetry anything that is, in a sense,
0:50.9	preachy or self-advertising in terms of its morality. In short, he is a fine poet.
0:59.6	I'll be reading two of Lee's poems today, and together I think they exhibit pretty well
1:06.0	what Walcott is praised about Lee's work there. Together, they also form a unit that's pretty appropriate for the date.
1:16.6	March 25th is historically the Feast of the Annunciation in the Christian Liturgical Calendar,
1:25.9	the announcement of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary
1:30.1	that she will conceive and bear a child who will be Christ the Lord.
1:36.2	The first poem takes us back to the Garden of Eden, and it's called Temptations.
1:46.8	It is clear she was beguiled by the serpent's sinuous flatteries, but he, was he, seduced by her
1:54.7	full curving softnesses, allured by those flittering lashes, tripped into the parting chasms of her sweet flirtatious mouth.
2:04.1	So says the old poet.
2:06.5	Or eavesdropping, curious man,
2:09.1	did he wonder about the crystal gate,
2:12.3	the proffered dominion,
2:14.1	the deadly enticements of wisdom,
	...

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