Poetry

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I didn't know that Updike wrote poetry - and fine work, too, if that delicate and moving piece is representative. Many thanks, John - and best wishes.

[amateur51]

Raymond Carver is best known for his short stories but he too wrote poetry ...



Grief


Woke up early this morning and from my bed
looked far across the Strait to see
a small boat moving through the choppy water,
a single running light on. Remembered
my friend who used to shout
his dead wife's name from hilltops
around Perugia. Who set a plate
for her at his simple table long after
she was gone. And opened the windows
so she could have fresh air. Such display
I found embarrassing. So did his other
friends. I couldn't see it.
Not until this morning.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Wow, ami - the similarities with the Tony Harrison that Tevot posted a couple of weeks ago. The grief of others, how it embarrasses "us" and how "we" come to feel it ourselves. And the involved detachment of the writing - the poise and the passion that this poise both holds back and makes eloquently clear. (Gosh, doesn't Art force us to make statements that out of context sound such pseudy bullucks?! That last sentence of the Alice Herz-Sommer Obit: "The world is wonderful, it's full of beauty and full of miracles. Our brain, the memory, how does it work? Not to speak of art and music … It is a miracle."

... and to continue the intense gentlness of this elegiac mood, I contribute another RS Thomas:

A Marriage

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
'Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance, And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.

[johncorrigan]

I contribute another RS Thomas:

[FONT=Georgia][SIZE=2]A Marriage

His public image would suggest such a poem impossible - glorious.
I heard this piece on Private Passions with Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell today. When she was asked about her favourite poem about the night sky she suggested this one and I really liked it:

Delay


The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings

[Paul Sherratt]

John,
This discussion is not unlike ' Poetry Please ' Fondly absent is any mention of John Cooper Clarke !

[johncorrigan]

John,
This discussion is not unlike ' Poetry Please ' Fondly absent is any mention of John Cooper Clarke !

...and all because he's having chips, Paul!
I have been toying with this gem, my Sittingroom favourite, perhaps, though it's difficult to read and not hear Ivor's voice and harmonium.

Life in a Scotch Sittingroom Volume 2, Episode 16

‘Scotland gets its brains from the herring,’ said Grandpa, and we all nodded our heads with complete incomprehension.
Sometimes, for a treat, we got playing with their heads;
glutinous bony affairs, without room for brains, and a look of lust on their narrow soprano jaws.
The time I lifted the lid of the midden on a winter night,
and there, a cool blue gleam
herring heads . . .
Other heads do not gleam in the dark. So perhaps Grandpa was right.
To make sure we ate the most intelligent herring, he fished the estuary.
He planted a notice, ‘Literate herring this way!‘
below the water-line at the corner where it met the sea.
The paint for the notice was made of crushed heads.
Red-eyed herring, sore from reading, would round the corner, read the notice and sense the estuary water, bland and eye-easing.
A few feet brought them within the confining friendliness of his manilla net and a purposeful end.
There was only one way to cook it:
a deep batter of porridge left from breakfast was patted round
and it was fed on to the hot griddle athwart the coal fire.
In seconds, a thick aroma leaned around and bent against the walls.
We lay down and dribbled on the carpet. Also, the air was fresher.
Time passed.
In exactly twenty-five minutes the porridge cracked, and juice steamed through with a glad fizz.
We ate the batter first to take the edge off our appetites, so that we could eat the herring with respect; which we did, including the bones.
After supper, assuming the herring to have worked, we were asked questions.
In Latin, Greek and Hebrew, we had to know the principal parts of verbs. In Geography, the five main glove-manufacturing towns in the Midlands, and in History, the development of Glasgow’s sewage system.
There’s nothing quite like a Scotch education. One is left with an irreparable debt. My head is full of irregular verbs still.

Ivor Cutler

[amateur51]

Crimea 03 March 2014 ...



SEPTEMBER 1, 1939


I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.


W.H.Auden

[Beef Oven!]

There was an old woman of 92 parlez vous.
There was an old woman of 92 parlez vous.
There was an old woman of 92,
Lifted her leg and a fart came through,
Inky pinky parlez vous.
The fart went rolling down the street parlez vous.
The fart went rolling down the street parlez vous.
The fart went rolling down the street,
Knocked the copper off his feet,
Inky pinky parlez vous.
The copper got out his water pistol parlez vous.
The copper got out his water pistol parlez vous.
The copper got out his water pistol,
Blew the fart from here to Bristol,
Inky pinky parlez vous.
Bristol Rovers playing at home parlez vous.
Bristol Rovers playing at home parlez vous.
Bristol Rovers playing at home,
Kicked the fart from here to Rome,
Inky pinky parlez vous.
Julius Caeser drinking wine parlez vous.
Julius Caeser drinking wine parlez vous.
Julius ceaser drinking wine,
Swallowed the fart the dirty swine,
Inky pinky parlez vous.

And so on............................................

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And so on............................................

Well; that shut us up!

For some reason, this has been popping in and out of my memory all weekend:

First Love

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale.
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked, what could I ail?
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away,
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start --
They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice,
Not love's appeals to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more


John Clare

[johncorrigan]

The Skylarks are 'hanging a dust-spot in the sunny sky' out there this morning and although this poem is later in the year - well for these parts anyway - Clare's is one of my favourite poems about birds.

The Skylark



The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside

The battered road; and spreading far and wide

Above the russet clods, the corn is seen

Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,

Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,

Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.

Opening their golden caskets to the sun,

The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,

To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—

Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,

And o'er her half-formed nest, with happy wings

Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,

Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,

And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,

Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then

That birds which flew so high would drop agen

To nests upon the ground, which anything

May come at to destroy. Had they the wing

Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,

And build on nothing but a passing cloud!

As free from danger as the heavens are free

From pain and toil, there would they build and be,

And sail about the world to scenes unheard

Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!

So think they, while they listen to its song,

And smile and fancy and so pass along;

While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,

Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.

By John Clare

[Padraig]

The Greatest Man

My teacher said us boys should write
about some great man, so I thought last night
'n thought about heroes and men
that had done great things,
'n then I got to thinking 'bout my pa;
he ain't a hero 'r anything but pshaw!
Say! He can ride the wildest hoss
'n find minners near the moss
down by the creek; 'n he can swim
'n fish, we ketched five new lights, me 'n him!
Dad's some hunter too - oh my!
Miss Molly Cottontail sure does fly
when he tromps through the fields 'n brush!
(Dad won't kill a lark or thrush.)
Once when I was sick 'n though his hands were rough
he rubbed the pains right out. "That's the stuff"
he said when I winked back the tears. He never cried
but once 'n that was when my mother died.
There's lots o' great men: George Washington 'n Lee,
But Dad's got 'em all beat holler, seems to me.

Anne Collins

You think that's great? So did Ives. And Marni Nixon gets to make it unforgettable. Hear it!

[Ferretfancy]

I'd like to include this, not because of any profundity, but just for the romance of it.


I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village that men still call Tyre,
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire;
And all those ships were certainly so old
Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun,
Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges,
The pirate Genoese
Hell-raked them till they rolled
Blood, water,fruit, and corpses up the hold.
But now through friendly seas they softly run,
Painted the mid-sea blue or shore sea green,
Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold.
But I have seen,
Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn
And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay,
A drowsy ship of some yet older day;
And, wonder's breath indrawn,
Thought I-who knows-but in that same
(Fished up beyond Aeaa, patched up new
( Stern painted brighter blue-)
That talkative bald-headed seamen came
( Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar)
From Troy's doom crimson shore,
And with great lies about his wooden horse
Set the crew laughing and forgot his course.
It was so old a ship-who knows- who knows?
-And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain
To see the mast burst open like a rose,
And the whole deck put on its leaves again.

James Elroy Flecker

[Padraig]

The Greatest Man


Anne Collins

You think that's great? So did Ives. And Marni Nixon gets to make it unforgettable. Hear it!

Anybody hear it? What did anyone think?

On the same highly recommended CD Marnie Nixon sings West London. Arnold's sonnet is magically set by Ives.

Here is the song, with a different singer.

West London

Crouch'd on the pavement close by Belgrave Square
A tramp I saw, ill, moody and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.
Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there
Pass'd opposite; she touched her girl who hied
Across, and begg'd and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
She turns from that cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.

Matthew Arnold

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJerLQ9ZmyM

[Tevot]

“This is the first thing / I have understood: / Time is the echo of an axe / Within a wood.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Philip Larkin : The North Ship : Poem XXVI

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Rising Five

I’m rising five” he said
“Not four” and the little coils of hair
Un-clicked themselves upon his head.
His spectacles, brimful of eyes to stare
At me and the meadow, reflected cones of light
Above his toffee-buckled cheeks. He’d been alive
Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more;
Not four
But rising five.

Around him in the field, the cells of spring
Bubbled and doubled; buds unbuttoned; shoot
And stem shook out the creases from their frills,
And every tree was swilled with green.
It was the season after blossoming,
Before the forming of the fruit:
Not May
But rising June.

And in the sky
The dust dissected the tangential light:
Not day
But rising night;
Not now
But rising soon.
The new buds push the old leaves from the bough.
We drop our youth behind us like a boy
Throwing away his toffee-wrappers. We never see the flower,
But only the fruit in the flower; never the fruit,
But only the rot in the fruit. We look for the marriage bed
In the baby’s cradle; we look for the grave in the bed;
Not living
But rising dead.


Norman Nicholson