Are there any poets out there?

[cloughie]

Penultimate means last but one,
And then the Schubertfest is done,
What next from Mr Roger Wright,
To bombard us, both day and night,
With one composer, no respite?

No Couperin and not Scarlatti
Those Harpsichords would drive us Batty
And please not Stockhausen or Cage
Or else a war of words will wage
On whether it's music or sonic crimes
On these boards and in the Radio Times.

[Hornspieler]

No Couperin and not Scarlatti
Those Harpsichords would drive us Batty
And please not Stockhausen or Cage
Or else a war of words will wage
On whether its music or sonic crimes
On these boards and in the Radio Times.

[Hornspieler]

Here is a poem from an as yet unpublished novel:

Confession

Forgive me if I ought eschew
The feeling that I have for you
I know you not but love you yet.
With wondering eyes I meet your gaze
I see reality through a haze
I dare to hope that you might feel
as I do, that this could be real.
And when you walk away, I know
A deep despair that racks my frame.
My mind screams out `Don't go!'
My trembling lips whisper your name
Wishing that it could be mine
Wanting, begging, pleading, crying.

[EdgeleyRob]

I got a call yesterday from the compulsive rhymers society asking if I'd like to join.
I said okey dokey.

[amateur51]

I’d never have believed it true
The one I’d love would be like you
For in my dreams and darkest flights
The focus of my lonely nights
Was tanned and blond and six feet two
With eyes a most beguiling blue

And yet …

This small-boned body next to mine
With auburn curls and lashes fine
Reality wins the day it’s true
My mind would never conjour you.

[EdgeleyRob]

I was working on one for the budget,
In the end I had to abandon it,
The words that kept coming into my head,
It makes me feel and makes me see red,
I think it's so unfair indeed nasty,
Putting V A T on a Greggs pasty.

(Such profound stuff doesn't come easy you know)

[amateur51]

I was working on one for the budget,
In the end I had to abandon it,
The words that kept coming into my head,
It makes me feel and makes me see red,
I think it's so unfair indeed nasty,
Putting V A T on a Greggs pasty.

(Such profound stuff doesn't come easy you know)

[Hornspieler]

Here's an example of free verse, which I've just discovered when going through a few of my old scribblings:

Our fingers touched, and then
Knowing and yet not knowing
Touched again and held.

Sweet communion of flesh, Who is this dark stranger,
Mocking, smiling, Laughing with her eyes?
Reaching out, touching me. To the very being of my soul?

Our fingers part - she's gone,
Taking with her a part of me that I would gladly follow;
Even 'though I die.

I wrote this when I was sixteen and still at school. I've decided to call it Touching Moments

... well, I could hardly call it "Brief Encounter" could I?

Not since we've been married for all these years!

HS

[EdgeleyRob]

Schubert afterthought.

The Schubert fest is now all done,
Those presenting thought it was fun,
But we on the receiving end,
To three have a message to send,
We all love his music no doubt,
But what was this week all about,
When listening on the wireless,
It all seemed a bit of a mess,
We all have our highlights I'm sure,
But wall to wall lieder and more,
Can soon become very tiresome,
And to it the brain becomes numb,
We can all relax and sit back,
Now the schedule is back on track,
With different music to hear,
Mostly bleeding chunks though, I fear.

[amateur51]

Schubert afterthought.

The Schubert fest is now all done,
Those presenting thought it was fun,
But we on the receiving end,
To three have a message to send,
We all love his music no doubt,
But what was this week all about,
When listening on the wireless,
It all seemed a bit of a mess,
We all have our highlights I'm sure,
But wall to wall lieder and more,
Can soon become very tiresome,
And to it the brain becomes numb,
We can all relax and sit back,
Now the schedule is back on track,
With different music to hear,
Mostly bleeding chunks though, I fear.

Anyone got a styptic pencil?

[Hornspieler]

Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dirty British Coasters", Sir Henry Newboult's exhortation to "Play up, play up and play the game",
William Wordsworth's "Host of Golden Daffodils", Leigh Hunt's "Naughty boy and a naughty boy was he", The Rubyat of Omar Kyam" - we used to learn all these by heart in the Junior School.

Is poetry taught now at that age level, or even at Senior School level for that matter?

No wonder the exalted post of Poet Laureate is now looked upon with scorn, or ignored altogether.

To me, it's a part of the English Heritage which is now totally neglected and the world of literature is made poorer by its absence.

Byron, Keats, Masefield, Shelley, the Metaphysical Poets, Milton and, above all, Shakespeare were revered throughout the English speaking world.

Does it matter? When we lose those standards, the Country has abandoned those values which helped to make it great.

What do others think?

HS

[amateur51]

Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dirty British Coasters", Sir Henry Newboult's exhortation to "Play up, play up and play the game",
William Wordsworth's "Host of Golden Daffodils", Leigh Hunt's "Naughty boy and a naughty boy was he", The Rubyat of Omar Kyam" - we used to learn all these by heart in the Junior School.

Is poetry taught now at that age level, or even at Senior School level for that matter?

No wonder the exalted post of Poet Laureate is now looked upon with scorn, or ignored altogether.

To me, it's a part of the English Heritage which is now totally neglected and the world of literature is made poorer by its absence.

Byron, Keats, Masefield, Shelley, the Metaphysical Poets, Milton and, above all, Shakespeare were revered throughout the English speaking world.

Does it matter? When we lose those standards, the Country has abandoned those values which helped to make it great.

What do others think?

HS

I think that you're exaggerating, HS. There are some wonderful currently active poets, the present Poet Laureate is a mould-breaking cracker, and poetry clubs/groups are thriving all over the country.

Things are certainly different, particularly from the examples that you give, but doesn't mean that they are not as good, maybe differently good?

But it's all a matter of opinion, of course

[John Skelton]

No wonder the exalted post of Poet Laureate is now looked upon with scorn, or ignored altogether.

...

What do others think?

HS

Alexander Pope wasn't exactly impressed by the Poet Laureate, Colley Cibber, in 1743 (Book I of the Four Book Dunciad):


Thou, Cibber! thou his laurel shalt support;
Folly, my son, has still a Friend at Court.
Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come!
Sound, sound ye viols, be the cat-call dumb!
Bring, bring the madding Bay, the drunken Vine,
The creeping, dirty, courtly Ivy join.
And thou! his Aid-de-camp, lead on my sons,
Light-arm’d with Points, Antitheses, and Puns.
Let Bawdry, Billingsgate, my daughters dear,
Support his front, and Oaths bring up the rear:
And under his, and under Archer’s wing,
Gaming and Grub-street skulk behind the King.
‘Oh! when shall rise a monarch all our own,
And I, a nursing mother, rock the throne;
’Twixt Prince and People close the curtain draw,
Shade him from light, and cover him from law;
Fatten the Courtier, starve the learned band,
And suckle Armies, and dry-nurse the land;
Till Senates nod to lullabies divine,
And all be sleep, as at an Ode of thine?’
She ceas’d. Then swells the Chapel-royal throat;
‘God save King Cibber!’ mounts in every note.
Familiar White’s, ‘God save King Colley!’ cries,
‘God save King Colley!’ Drury-lane replies.
To Needham’s quick the voice triumphant rode,
But pious Needham dropt the name of God;
Back to the Devil the last echoes roll,
And ‘Coll!’ each butcher roars at Hockley-hole.
So when Jove’s block descended from on high
(As sings thy great forefather Ogilby),
Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog,
And the hoarse nation croak’d, ‘God save King Log!’

[Flosshilde]

When we lose those standards, the Country has abandoned those values which helped to make it great.

What do others think?

HS

I think that you are sailing close to the Daily Wail reefs. Children do learn about poetry; they might learn those poets, or they might learn some rather more recent ones - Benjamin Zephania, perhaps (although he's getting rather long in the tooth). It doesn't mean that any 'standards' have been lost, or that the 'Country' has abandoned any values (I think that the present government is managing to do that quite well).

(incidentally, I'm intrigued that you moved from playing the horn in an orchestra to being a management consultant - quite a career jump )

[mercia]

Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dirty British Coasters"

I thought "Dirty British Coaster" was part of a line from Masefield's Cargoes

EDIT - and whilst in corrective mood, might "Naughty boy and a naughty boy was he" actually be by Keats rather than Leigh Hunt ?

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/keats/john/poems/a-song-about-myself.html

as to your question in #86, whilst I am completely out of touch with what goes on in schools, surely poetry still forms part of GCSE and A-level English Literature courses ?