A Bit of Poetry

When I was at university, we had to study this poem:

This Is Just to Say
(by William Carlos Williams)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

While I was convinced that this was not really a poem but rather a note he'd left on the kitchen table that had fallen out of his ephemera; others in the class got terribly serious about his literary style. Today I was delighted to find this blog. Enjoy.

First Female Poet Laureate. Hurrah.

The BBC reports that the official announcement of the new Poet Laureate is imminent, and that it will be Carol Ann Duffy. She will be the first woman appointed, as well as the first Scot. Read about it here.

"The reigning monarch chooses the Laureate on the advice of the government. Part of Duffy's role over the next 10 years will be to write works commemorating royal events. Her predecessor, Motion, told the BBC he had found these "very difficult poems to write" and there are signs Duffy may also struggle with this side of the job. After being passed over for the Laureate job in 1999, she commented: "I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie. No self-respecting poet should have to.""

The Guardian writes:

"Duffy, 53, narrowly missed out on the laureateship to Motion in 1999 after Ted Hughes died. Despite being widely held as favourite at the time, she was reluctant to take up the prominent role given her status as a mother in a lesbian relationship (with the Scottish poet Jackie Kay; the relationship has since ended). There were also suggestions that Tony Blair had ruled her out because of her sexuality."

full article is here.

NB A Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events. The plural form is poets laureate. Wiki notes that "In ancient Greece the laurel was sacred to the god Apollo, and was used to form a crown or wreath of honour for poets and heroes. This custom has since become widespread, both in fact and as a metaphor. The word laureate or laureated thus came in English to signify eminence or association with glory."

Lorca was Censored

Did you know that Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was gay? I did not. But then I am a philistine who knows only one word of spanish (mantequilla), and who hasn't read much foreign poetry. I was therefore interested to read in the Indy of a new book coming out - 'Lorca y el mundo gay' (Lorca and the Gay World).

Lorca was assassinated by death squads at the start of the Spanish Civil War. In the book review, the author of the biography, Ian Gibson:

" describes how the poet's works were censored to conceal his sexuality. It was not until the late 1980s that Lorca's sexual identity became grudgingly acknowledged, in the face of denials and evasions. Gibson blames the decades of silence on a deep-seated Spanish homophobia. "Spain couldn't accept that the greatest Spanish poet of all time was homosexual. Homophobia existed on both sides in the civil war and afterwards; it was a national problem. Now Spain permits same-sex marriage that taboo must be broken.""

LIttle steps ...

The whole piece should be found here.

Eluned Phillips RIP

Another incredible woman utterly unknown to me until I read her obituary was Eluned Phillips, the Welsh poet who has died at the age of 94. The Independent writes that she:

" ... was unusual among Welsh writers of her generation in that she embraced a bohemian lifestyle which took her to pre-war London and Paris, where she made the acquaintance of such major artists as Augustus John, Dylan Thomas, Edith Piaf, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Chevalier and Pablo Picasso, the last of whom showed her the unfinished Guernica with the paint still wet on the canvas. She even made it to Casablanca, where she might easily have fitted in among the habitués of Rick's Bar. Nearer home, she was only the second woman to win the Crown, one of the major literary prizes awarded at the National Eisteddfod, and this she achieved on two occasions: first in 1967 and again in 1983."

I have probably said it several times, but I am constantly amazed at the achievements of women who lived in circumstances circumscribed by the general limitations on women in their particular time and place. Phillips is another to add to that group. Do read a little more here. The obit concludes:

"She explained that she had written her memoirs in English (and on a computer acquired in her 90th year) so that her many friends all over the world could read about the life of "a simple country girl with itchy feet". The book ends with her standing mischievously in the wet concrete of the Millennium Centre then under construction in Cardiff Bay and the typically spirited advice she gave to many a young writer: "Try to make as many footprints in the concrete as you can – and treasure them."

Thought for Tomorrow

I was leafing through a book of poetry today, and came across the following verse of an ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (the one that starts 'We are the music-makers'). I thought it fit my thoughts as I think about the inauguration of President Barack Obama tomorrow.

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted.
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

Sylvia Plath's only play

Viv Groskop reports in the Guardian about the current London production of Sylvia Plath's verse play 'Three Women':

"Most people consider the writer Sylvia Plath to have been a poet first (with the superlative Ariel), a novelist second (with the wrenching The Bell Jar), and that there her talents ended. The theatre director Robert Shaw begs to differ. His production of Plath's verse play, Three Women, has just opened in London - the first time it has been professionally staged. And Shaw believes the work shows Plath's brilliance as a dramatist."There is something magical about it that I have not tried to analyse too carefully," he says. "People respond to it and find things in this piece that they understand and relate to; things that perhaps Plath was able to express in a way no one else has.""

Apart from nursery rhymes, I believe that Sylvia Plath's poems were the first poems I ever read. I may have mentioned before that at the age of 5 I saw the book called 'Ariel' on a shelf at home and, recognising the name, took it down. Later, my father found me drawing pictures to go with the poems. He was somewhat concerned about my interest in the lines, "Daddy I had to kill you." :-)

When I studied 20th century American lit as part of my undergraduate degree, Plath was the only woman whose work was included in the course; and the professor still felt that she was second-rate. I was, of course, infuriated, since she was a goddess to me, a kind of literary version of James Dean. Am thus always delighted to read of public appreciation ...

"The play is a powerful expression of pregnancy and maternity, but Shaw does not feel it is simply a "women's piece". "It has a kind of universality," he says. "She expresses someone's internal life in the most extraordinary way." How people will respond to the play, meanwhile, remains to be seen. "It is a risk," admits Shaw, "But it's an important risk to take. What we see is Plath the dramatist.

It gives us an idea of what we missed and what we might have had if we had had her for longer. Six months after it was broadcast, she died. It gives us a strong idea of what might have happened if she'd had a chance to develop it." He pauses. "It's really quite tantalising.""

a poem

HUMAN BEINGS

Adrian Mitchell

Look at your hands
your beautiful useful hands
you’re not an ape
you’re not a parrot
you’re not a slow loris
or a smart missile
you’re human
not british
not american
not israeli
not palestinian
you’re human
not catholic
not protestant
not muslim
not hindu
you’re human
we all start human
we end up human
human first
human last
we’re human
or we’re nothing
nothing but bombs
and poison gas
nothing but guns
and torturers
nothing but slaves
of Greed and War
if we’re not human
look at your body
with its amazing systems
of nerve-wires and blood canals
think about your mind
which can think about itself
and the whole universe
look at your face
which can freeze into horror
or melt into love
look at all that life
all that beauty
you’re human
they are human
we are human
let’s try to be human
dance!

another death of the past week was the poet adrian mitchell. this is his most well-known poem. his website is here.

isaac rosenberg's bee

as a belated marking of veterans day here in the usa, a verse from a rosenberg poem i heard sir antony sher reading on radio four this past weekend:

"None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift iron burning bee
Drained the wild honey of their youth."

the poem is 'dead man's dump', and may be found here

bathroom reading update

nu - i returned from my last visit to london with a fistful of books gleaned from the shelves my mother wishes to decimate. since shelf space is also at a premium in our flat, the tomes are double-stacked right opposite the bathroom door, which makes them handy when reading material is required. so it is that i am currently dipping into poetry. yehuda amichai, t carmi & dan pagis, john betjeman, william blake and the faber book of comic verse. there are also a couple of newish asterix books lying around, and an english translation of struwwelpeter. the israelis are also in translation, although perhaps looking at the original might be more helpful re the bathroom part of bathroom reading. finally, there is a selection of midrashim by my father's old friend hyam maccoby z"l with the lovely title of 'the day god laughed'.

remembrance sunday

poppy day is here. bbc online has memories from survivors of the First World War here.

this is one of my favourite poems by the war poets:

Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

Isaac Rosenberg
(1890 - 1918)

thursday thirteen meme viii

Thirteen Poems I Like 1. A Poison Tree by William Blake 2. Todesfuge by Paul Celan 3. Poem by Judy Chicago 4. i carry your heart with me by e. e. cummings 5. I Felt a Funeral in my Brain by Emily Dickinson 6. In Flanders Fields by John McCrae 7. Teddy Bear by A. A. Milne 8. The Parable of the Old Man and the Young by Wilfrid Owen 9. Coda by Dorothy Parker 10. Daddy by Sylvia Plath 11. Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith 12. Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (my father (z"l)'s favourite) 13. The World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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