Poetry

[johncorrigan]

Just finished reading Louis MacNeice's 'Autumn Journal' - from 1938, with all the resonances one might expect from such a date in poet very, very aware of what had happened in Spain, was seeing the rise of Hitler, and what he thinks of as the unavoidable impact of the future.

BUT there's so much else in it than broodings.

A real stimulant.

I bought a copy of 'Autumn Journal' following your recommendation last year, Draco, and am re-reading it at the moment. This excerpt from poem V really struck home.

Autumn Journal

V (excerpt)

And so to my flat with the trees outside the window
And the dahlia shapes as used for a gun emplacement
And very likely will
Be used that way again. The bloody frontier
Converges on our beds
Like jungle beaters closing in on their destined
Trophy of pelts and heads.
And at this hour of the day it is no good saying
‘Take away this cup’;
Having helped to fill it ourselves it is only logic
That now we should drink it up.
Nor can we hide our heads in the sands, the sands have
Filtered away;
Nothing remains but rock at this hour, this zero
Hour of the day.
Or that is how it seems to me as I listen
To a hooter call at six
And then a woodpigeon calls and stops but the wind
continues
Playing its dirge in the trees, playing its tricks.
And now the dairy cart comes clopping slowly —
Milk at the doors —
And factory workers are on their way to factories
And charwomen to chores.
And I notice feathers sprouting from the rotted
Silk of my black
Double eiderdown which was a wedding
Present eight years back.
And the linen which I lie on came from Ireland
In the easy days
When all I thought of was affection and comfort,
Petting and praise.
And now the woodpigeon starts again denying
The values of the town
And a car having crossed the hill accelerates, changes
Up, having just changed down.
And a train begins to chug and I wonder what the
morning
Paper will say,
And decide to go quickly to sleep for the morning already
Is with us, the day is to-day.

Louis MacNeice (1938)

[antongould]

I bought a copy of 'Autumn Journal' following your recommendation last year, Draco, and am re-reading it at the moment. This excerpt from poem V really struck home.

Autumn Journal

V (excerpt)

And so to my flat with the trees outside the window
And the dahlia shapes as used for a gun emplacement
And very likely will
Be used that way again. The bloody frontier
Converges on our beds
Like jungle beaters closing in on their destined
Trophy of pelts and heads.
And at this hour of the day it is no good saying
‘Take away this cup’;
Having helped to fill it ourselves it is only logic
That now we should drink it up.
Nor can we hide our heads in the sands, the sands have
Filtered away;
Nothing remains but rock at this hour, this zero
Hour of the day.
Or that is how it seems to me as I listen
To a hooter call at six
And then a woodpigeon calls and stops but the wind
continues
Playing its dirge in the trees, playing its tricks.
And now the dairy cart comes clopping slowly —
Milk at the doors —
And factory workers are on their way to factories
And charwomen to chores.
And I notice feathers sprouting from the rotted
Silk of my black
Double eiderdown which was a wedding
Present eight years back.
And the linen which I lie on came from Ireland
In the easy days
When all I thought of was affection and comfort,
Petting and praise.
And now the woodpigeon starts again denying
The values of the town
And a car having crossed the hill accelerates, changes
Up, having just changed down.
And a train begins to chug and I wonder what the
morning
Paper will say,
And decide to go quickly to sleep for the morning already
Is with us, the day is to-day.

Louis MacNeice (1938)

Wonderful jc

[Padraig]

What Do You Want: A Meaningful Dialogue, or a Satisfactory Talk?

Bad money drives out good.
That's Gresham's Law, which I have not until recently understood.
No economist I, to economics I have an incurable allergy,
But now I understand Gresham's Law through obvious analogy.
Just as bad money drives the good beyond our reach,
So has the jargon of the hippie, the huckster and the bureaucrat debased
the sterling of our once lucid speech.
What's worse, it has induced the amnesia by which I am faced -
I can't recall the original phraseology which the jargon has replaced.
Would that I had the memory of a computer or an elephant!
What used I to say instead of uptight, clout and thrust and relevant?
Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I'm in Oz,
Just trying to tell it like it was.

Ogden Nash.

[kernelbogey]

Watching Classic Cellists at the BBC on BBC4.

Film on Jacqueline du Pre to follow at 2000.

[Padraig]

Watching Classic Cellists at the BBC on BBC4.

Film on Jacqueline du Pre to follow at 2000.

No denying the poetry of her performances! . .

. . . but I was continuing my perusal of The Oxford Book of Comic Verse, following Ogden Nash's poem and came across this clerihew by E.C Bentley :

Wynkyn De Worde
Has as funny a name as ever I heard.
Of what could they have been thinking
When they called him Wynkyn?

This reminded me of a thread some years ago devoted to clerihews. It's fun, with all persons, past and present, usually but not necessarily famous, up for inspection. Any one game to start Clerihews 2?

[johncorrigan]

Any one game to start Clerihews 2?

I don't know what a clerihew is, Padraig. I'll dig around and see what they do.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for that, I heard an old 'Short Cuts' on Radio 4 extra this evening. One of the sections was of Terry Jones, with alzheimers taking hold, doing a very moving performance of Dylan Thomas' 'Poem in October' - it was great to hear him again. It being National Poetry Day tomorrow, I thought I would post it for the day.

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron priested shore
The morning beckoned with water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net-webbed wall
Myself to set foot that second
In the still sleeping town and set forth

My birthday began with the water birds
And the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose in a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived
When I took the road over the border
And the gates of the town closed as the town awoke

A springful of larks in a rolling cloud
And the roadside bushes brimming with whistling blackbirds
And the sun of October, summery on the hill's shoulder
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly come in the morning
Where I wandered and listened to the rain wringing wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea-wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle brown as owls
But all the gardens of spring and summer
Were blooming in the tall tales beyond the border
And under the lark full cloud
There could I marvel my birthday away
But the weather turned around

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples, pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning, so clearly, a child's forgotten mornings
When he walked with his mother through the parables of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice-told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks, and his heart moved in mine
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy in the listening summertime of the dead
Whispered the truth of his joy to the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide
And the mystery sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds

And there could I marvel my birthday away
But the weather turned around
And the true joy of the long dead child sang burning in the sun
It was my thirtieth Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood

O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning

Dylan Thomas

If you want to hear Terry reading it, it's the first ten minutes of the programme. Here's the link - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gd0f

[johncorrigan]

Any one game to start Clerihews 2?

Based on TV tonight, Padraig, here's a rather feeble attempt.

The mighty David Attenborough
Has always seemed so thorough.
Despite a public vote
He got his name put on a boat.


Dylan Thomas it ain't!

[Padraig]

Based on TV tonight, Padraig, here's a rather feeble attempt.

The mighty David Attenborough
Has always seemed so thorough.
Despite a public vote
He got his name put on a boat.


Dylan Thomas it ain't!

Noted, John! Congratulations! The ice is broken. All that is needed is for a separate thread called Clerihews. I promise to think one up and post it there along with the many others.

Meantime, I had prepared one earlier for a final comic verse post, coupled with an exhortation for poets like yourself to fling caution to the wind and go for it.

Engineers' Corner

Why isn't there an Engineers' Corner in Westminster Abbey? In Britain we've always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint. . . How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers?
Advertisement placed in The Times by the Engineering Council

We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints -
That's why so many poets end up rich,
While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets.
Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch?

Whereas the person who can write a sonnet
Has got it made. It's always been the way,
For everybody knows we all need poems
And everybody reads them every day.

Yes, life is hard if you choose engineering -
You're sure to need another job as well;
You'll have to plan your projects in the evenings
Instead of going out. It must be hell.

While well-heeled poets ride around in Daimlers,
You'll burn the midnight oil to earn a crust,
With no hope of a statue in the Abbey,
With no hope, even, of a modest bust.

No wonder small boys dream of writing couplets
And spurn the bike, the lorry and the train.
There's far too much encouragement for poets -
That's why this country's going down the drain.

Wendy Cope

[Padraig]

Based on TV tonight, Padraig, here's a rather feeble attempt.

The mighty David Attenborough
Has always seemed so thorough.
Despite a public vote
He got his name put on a boat.

As promised, John. Since Bach is COTW here is my one-off clerihew to end the series!

Bach J S
Of composers was the very best.
Give him a keyboard or a fiddle, a soprano or a choir
And his achievements just kept getting higher.

[johncorrigan]

As promised, John. Since Bach is COTW here is my one-off clerihew to end the series!

Bach J S
Of composers was the very best.
Give him a keyboard or a fiddle, a soprano or a choir
And his achievements just kept getting higher.

Johnson's previous health minister, Hancock
Saw a sudden UNexpected rise in his stock.
But it was all short lived, and he no longer enjoyed
Favour, and found himself again UNemployed.

[johncorrigan]

I was in the Cairngorms last week and had some of MacCaig's Assynt poetry with me. I thought I would post 'On the Lairg to Lochinver Bus' written by the poet in 1981. MacCaig lived in Edinburgh but travelled every year to Assynt to spend summers fishing and walking and drinking; and then spent much of the rest of the year writing poems about it. Lairg is where he would get off the train from Edinburgh.


On the Lairg to Lochinver Bus

I travel West, a smudged figure
among people in four rows
divided in two.

The driver chain smokes. I know him.
Inside his bald head are microfilms
of poaching stags, and loose women
and half bottles at Brackloch.

A young tourist (Scandinavian?)
stares at a map while the true facts
slide by the window.

We're apt to do that.

I've a map of tomorrow.
When I get there
I'll look round anxiously to see
if it's out of date.

If the broken gate is mended,
if old Flora is still alive,
if the tide still comes in
and goes out.

Norman MacCaig (1981)

[Padraig]

I was in the Cairngorms last week and had some of MacCaig's Assynt poetry with me. I thought I would post 'On the Lairg to Lochinver Bus' written by the poet in 1981. MacCaig lived in Edinburgh but travelled every year to Assynt to spend summers fishing and walking and drinking; and then spent much of the rest of the year writing poems about it. Lairg is where he would get off the train from Edinburgh.


On the Lairg to Lochinver Bus

I travel West . . .

Norman MacCaig (1981)

I like this poem John. It starts off well, as it means to continue. It brings to mind my departed fishing companion and friend, who would have loved the poem too, AND the poet. He would say " There are three essentials in buying a car: it costs less than £100; it has a tow bar; it faces West."

However, I notice that you have persisted with the clerihews in spite of my indicating that the event was concluded. I have no choice but to retaliate:

John Corrigan
Loves all music Afrigan
Which partly explains why he'd often choose
A guitar man singing the Blues.

[Padraig]

. . . continuing the theme of 'Words in Poetry' . . . Part 1

I found the words to every thought
I ever had - but One -
And that - defies me -
As a hand did try to chalk the Sun

To Races - nurtured in the Dark -
How would your own - begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal -
Or Noon - in Mazarin?

Emily Dickinson 1862 pub 1891

What Thought defies her?

[Padraig]

. . . continuing the theme of 'Words in Poetry' . . . Part 1

Part 2

Shall I take thee, the Poet said
To the propounded word?
Be stationed with the Candidates
Till I have finer tried -

The Poet searched Philology
And was about to ring
For the suspended Candidate
There came unsummoned in -
That portion of the Vision
The Word applied to fill
Not unto nomination
The Cherubim reveal -

Emily Dickinson 1868 pub 1945

So Heaven's Angels came to the rescue?

[Padraig]

Another sly poem about Poetry.

The Thought Fox

I imagine this midnight's forest:
Something else is alive.
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that's now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and the hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye
A widening, deepening greenness
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still, the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes 1957