Poetry!!!

[thebish]

splendid jugs, you say?

You're not really a man of the cloth, are you?

[Bruce Rioja]

Stolen.

Fireflies scar black twilight tonight,
Removed from sight and sat aside my lonely light,
Faithful darkness come collect me quickly,
Be swift to lift me from this pain inflicted,
I'd put no woman above you, Trust me, I love you.


With haste displace this taste I face from lies with kisses sweet as apple pies,
I find my mind aligned with lines, I ryhme in time and laugh as I still try to justify how you can cry,
When I have been the victim of this crime you seem to have to hide,
I need this time alone to try and figure out where I survive,
I will not leave you, You are mine, And I without you would surely die.


You have to understand what we have planned is sacred to this man,
So how could you go back on what you promised me, I cannot stand,
my knees will rest upon the floor, My eyes will produce tears, I'm sure,
But I love you Still, Forvever more, I swear I will not let you go.


I am not mad, Upset and Sad are more the words I'd choose to paint,
Your honesty is all I ask, But lies you mask with ill restraint,
I see you shine I swear I feel your soul within me all the time,
My stomachs pit is filled with sick and stolen kisses spring to mind.


I fear to lose you more than any other fear I've ever known,
I've ripped my pages out and without doubt the most to you I've shown,
You know I'm patient, I could wait until the the days no longer wake,
I won't forsake you, Never break you, But Lies I just can't seem to shake.


You have to know that I'm prepared for you to share my every thought,
My every smile, My every tear, My life and Death,
I'm so distraught.

Wow!

Where's that from, Iggy?

[William the White]

splendid jugs, you say?

You're not really a man of the cloth, are you?

He's a collector of fine examples of Anglo-Saxon pottery... As opposed to poetry...

[IggyTheDawgster]

Stolen.

Fireflies scar black twilight tonight,
Removed from sight and sat aside my lonely light,
Faithful darkness come collect me quickly,
Be swift to lift me from this pain inflicted,
I'd put no woman above you, Trust me, I love you.


With haste displace this taste I face from lies with kisses sweet as apple pies,
I find my mind aligned with lines, I ryhme in time and laugh as I still try to justify how you can cry,
When I have been the victim of this crime you seem to have to hide,
I need this time alone to try and figure out where I survive,
I will not leave you, You are mine, And I without you would surely die.


You have to understand what we have planned is sacred to this man,
So how could you go back on what you promised me, I cannot stand,
my knees will rest upon the floor, My eyes will produce tears, I'm sure,
But I love you Still, Forvever more, I swear I will not let you go.


I am not mad, Upset and Sad are more the words I'd choose to paint,
Your honesty is all I ask, But lies you mask with ill restraint,
I see you shine I swear I feel your soul within me all the time,
My stomachs pit is filled with sick and stolen kisses spring to mind.


I fear to lose you more than any other fear I've ever known,
I've ripped my pages out and without doubt the most to you I've shown,
You know I'm patient, I could wait until the the days no longer wake,
I won't forsake you, Never break you, But Lies I just can't seem to shake.


You have to know that I'm prepared for you to share my every thought,
My every smile, My every tear, My life and Death,
I'm so distraught.

Wow!

Where's that from, Iggy?

I wrote that one, One of many from years ago now.

[thebish]

At the close of his Nobel address, heaney spoke of "poetry's power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry's credit":

"the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being".'

[William the White]

Seamus Heaney, the most beautiful, gentle poet, died today.

A brief tribute:

The poem was over,
the poet had performed, a pleasant murmer
started on the benches, stewards did the rounds
with wine in splendid jugs...

From Heaney's award-winning 1999 translation of Beowulf.

Heaney's Beowulf is Book of the Week on R4 at 9.45...

[Il Pirate]

Seamus Heaney, the most beautiful, gentle poet, died today.

A brief tribute:

The poem was over,
the poet had performed, a pleasant murmer
started on the benches, stewards did the rounds
with wine in splendid jugs...

From Heaney's award-winning 1999 translation of Beowulf.

Heaney's Beowulf is Book of the Week on R4 at 9.45...

I've alway's loved his use of language, summed up best for me in the poem 'For Bernard & Janet McCabe'

The riverbed, dried-up, half full of leaves.
Us, listening to a river in the trees.

[Il Pirate]

As it's national poetry day today; anyone want to post some poetry?

[Gary the Enfield]

Try this:

How will I know?
How can I ever understand the way to be?
The seeds of doubt begin to grow into the tree
Which speaks and yet, cannot be heard.

You're closed to me
The hidden meanings, implications of a wrong
The truth uncovered in a song
You close your eyes and find the answers held inside

Where go we now?
Our separate ways may never find a single path
Lacrimations shed in aftermath
And we shall die before revealing true intents.

[TANGODANCER]

Learned many years ago in junior school. Never forgotten:

Piping Down the Valleys Wild

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again.'
So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer.'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.'
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

William Blake

[Montreal Wanderer]

An elderly dancer named Tango
Chewed C4 in a Fandango
They found his left shoe
Somewhere near Timbuktu
And one of his balls in Durango.

[Il Pirate]

An elderly dancer named Tango
Chewed C4 in a Fandango
They found his left shoe
Somewhere near Timbuktu
And one of his balls in Durango.

A noble effort Monty.

[William the White]

Carol Ann Duffy's Christmas poem Bethlehem was published in Saturday's Guardian and is outstanding. It offers a highly condensed vision of the city, crowded, full of life. And the story of the birth given as a set of rumours, glorious, half-believed, perhaps important.

It's up there, for me, with Eliot's Journey of the Magi in the way it transforms the nativity story into a human event full of mystery and the tendentious.

Just very, very good.

[Prufrock]

Frank Turner tweeted (god what an awful verb that is) a link to this article on WH Auden. Think a few on here would find it interesting.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... ret-auden/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[William the White]

Frank Turner tweeted (god what an awful verb that is) a link to this article on WH Auden. Think a few on here would find it interesting.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... ret-auden/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thank you for that, Pru.

A treat to read such an intelligent article about a poet whose reputation, i think, has faded over the years.

Does a good job of rehabilitation of him as a thinker, if not as a poet.

And, while on the poetry thread, I'll be at a Bolton Uni/Octagon poetry reading on Tuesday. And youngest daughter will be reading one of her poems.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Very thoughtful and moving radio this morning. Clive James (the Australian author and critic) is 74 years old and is terminally ill with leukaemia and emphysema. If you have 15 minutes spare this evening, listen to his interview on the Today programme this morning, then to him reading his poem 'Sentenced to Life' afterwards. The interview starts slowly, but unwinds with incredible insight.

1. Interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01zk57r" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2. 'Sentenced to life': http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01zk4r8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Once, I would not have noticed; nor have known
The name for Japanese anemones,
So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone
Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees
Without my seeing them. I count the bees."

I know I have been banging on about my Matisse programme, but this is a powerful articulation of why I am moved by Matisse's late work. I'm sure he came to count the bees too.

If you make it this far, then I recommend his essay in the TLS. The last paragraph... bloody hell. http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1410176.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can't help but feel that an affinity for poetry is something my generation lacks. I don't remember ever looking at any poetry at school that wasn't war-related.

[TANGODANCER]

I'll get around to reading that. Always like Clive James, not least for his humour. I used to watch his shows regularly at one time.

[Prufrock]

Very thoughtful and moving radio this morning. Clive James (the Australian author and critic) is 74 years old and is terminally ill with leukaemia and emphysema. If you have 15 minutes spare this evening, listen to his interview on the Today programme this morning, then to him reading his poem 'Sentenced to Life' afterwards. The interview starts slowly, but unwinds with incredible insight.

1. Interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01zk57r" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2. 'Sentenced to life': http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01zk4r8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Once, I would not have noticed; nor have known
The name for Japanese anemones,
So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone
Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees
Without my seeing them. I count the bees."

I know I have been banging on about my Matisse programme, but this is a powerful articulation of why I am moved by Matisse's late work. I'm sure he came to count the bees too.

If you make it this far, then I recommend his essay in the TLS. The last paragraph... bloody hell. http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1410176.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can't help but feel that an affinity for poetry is something my generation lacks. I don't remember ever looking at any poetry at school that wasn't war-related.

Cheers for that Crayons. I mentioned in the reading thread the other day that I was reading his Cultural Amnesia. I knew he was ill, but didn't realise it was terminal .

Don't know his poetry, but in his short-form writing he has a fantastic ability to write pieces which begin with ideas we've all had flicker in the back of our minds once but which he properly explores. It makes the reader feel intelligent, the notion that we could have written this brilliant pieces if only we'd stopped to do so, but you're also aware at the same time that this is of course a massive self-delusion. It's an ability he shares with Hitch (how are you getting on there by the way?)

As for our generation and poetry, I don't know. I know people who do love it, two of my friends had a Facebook discussion about John Cooper Clarke the other day, and I know another girl who is currently memorising Shakespeare Sonnets but, yeah, I don't really think that came from school, and I wouldn't disagree that it's something our generation lacks generally. We did do more than just war poems; I remember doing Heaney and Duffy and also some colonial stuff including a poem called Half-Caste I still remember really well, but I don't remember it grabbing us at school like Farenheit 451 did. I've got a fair bit of poetry on my 'to read' list, but it does feel like something we have to consciously decide to go and try rather than natural.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Cheers for that Crayons. I mentioned in the reading thread the other day that I was reading his Cultural Amnesia. I knew he was ill, but didn't realise it was terminal .

Don't know his poetry, but in his short-form writing he has a fantastic ability to write pieces which begin with ideas we've all had flicker in the back of our minds once but which he properly explores. It makes the reader feel intelligent, the notion that we could have written this brilliant pieces if only we'd stopped to do so, but you're also aware at the same time that this is of course a massive self-delusion. It's an ability he shares with Hitch (how are you getting on there by the way?)

As for our generation and poetry, I don't know. I know people who do love it, two of my friends had a Facebook discussion about John Cooper Clarke the other day, and I know another girl who is currently memorising Shakespeare Sonnets but, yeah, I don't really think that came from school, and I wouldn't disagree that it's something our generation lacks generally. We did do more than just war poems; I remember doing Heaney and Duffy and also some colonial stuff including a poem called Half-Caste I still remember really well, but I don't remember it grabbing us at school like Farenheit 451 did. I've got a fair bit of poetry on my 'to read' list, but it does feel like something we have to consciously decide to go and try rather than natural.

Still haven't read any Hitch, but do keep nudging me and threaten to repossess if necessary.

I'm panicky that the era of guys like Hitch and James, and, in the visual arts, Robert Hughes, is about to come to an end. Does every generation feel like this? I have discussed the remake of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series with lots of people, and the depressing consensus is that we have to have a box-ticking panel of views these days. It might even be interesting, but it's not a remake of 'Civilisation: A Personal View'. Recommended viewing as a history of European thought as well art, by the way - I have the DVDs but it is on YouTube.

I'm now obsessed with James in the way that you may know I become obsessed with things quickly, so do recommend more books if you have read any. His Dante translation is epic.

As for our generation and English language poetry - bearing in mind I did English Lit to AS-Level in my GCSE year - I am convinced that I did not read anything other than Shakespeare or war poetry in my last 4 years at school.

[Prufrock]

There's no rush on Hitch, only that you are wasting time in your life not having read it when you could be spending that time having read it!

On James, I only have Cultural Amnesia which I recommend if you haven't already read it. I only happened to pick it from my 'must read' list a few weeks ago but have a similar 'obsession' now. Not read it but have heard good things about Visions Before Midnight, a collection of his columns from when he was a TV critic. Will also order that Dante though I already have another translation I haven't read yet. Is James' prose or poetry?

I bought a book of Rimbaud's poetry on a whim the other day. Think I'll have to start that soon or it might stay on the shelf of shame for a bit!

Don't know about school, maybe we had different exam boards? Ours was AQA I think, and Heaney, Duffy and the other stuff were definitely on my GCSE. Also perhaps the syllabus had changed in the 2 (?) intervening years?

I don't know Hughes but Hitch and James did lots of newspaper column writing. Perhaps the modern equivalent (newspaper column writing online, blogs etc) will be the way into TV for individuals to make similarly individual shows. That or those already making individual shows for Chinese TV! Perhaps instead of it being a trend towards box-ticking panel stuff, there'll be cycles and it'll come round again. Dunno, would be a shame if it went though.