Being the big girls blouse and general ponce around town that I am, I spent most of last night reading poetry. I discovered the American Mary Oliver, who mainly writes about nature and our place it. She’s really good, and not just because some of her verses read like NMA with a Pulitzer.
“Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
So this is a thread to talk about poetry. Who are your favourite poets? Why? Quote us some of your favourite verses!
Kid Dynamite says
I have also been digging Ryokan, a hermit monk from eighteenth century Japan who lived alone in the woods and wrote Zen poetry, also celebrating nature. My kind of guy. I picked up a collection called One Robe, One Bowl on a whim in a charity shop a few years ago, and it turned out I really, really, liked it.
A cold night – sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed, several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines through the top of the window
And the entire neighbourhood is still except the cry of insects
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion
But not one word.
H.P. Saucecraft says
At the time – late sixties – I was very impressed by the Liverpool Scene – Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri and, er … all them poets. Mainly because they were easy to read, and were published in nifty little paperbacks with titles like “Love, Love, Love” and “The Children Of Albion”. I won a prize in a national peotry (hem-hem) competition – the second time I’d seen my name in print (the first being a letter published in Mad – still something of a career high point) – for a bit of free verse leaning heavily on the Lily The Pink hitmaker’s work. The next poet who blew my adolescent mind was Don Van Vliet, whose lyrics were unlike anything I’d heard or read. And still are. We were fed Dylan Thomas at skool (forthright, signifficant) and W. Owen W. Wordsworth ect. chiz chiz.
Apart from the occasional koan, peotry is one vast undiscovered area for me, and I’m sure I’ve missed out (Keats, Byron, all them blokes). Can’t stand Phillip Larkin, Ted Hughes, and found Betjeman strangely uncompelling.
duco01 says
Hello, H.P.
A couple of years ago, on this very board, you posted a poem about your father.
I’m sure I’m not the only Afterworder who remembers it.
It was very, very good indeed.
Gary says
I remember that too. It was seriously brilliant.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Thank ‘ee.
Junior Wells says
Woah, just hold up a bit. How’d you get a letter published in Mad magazine ?
I thought they were all bullshit letters, for which of course you’d be perfectly qualified HP, but not real names.
H.P. Saucecraft says
This was Mad UK, something of a disappoint to me because I was used to the US imports. The UK edition for some reason tried to Anglicise the language and in some cases the jokes, all in a clumsy pasted-up font. Bu the letters page was real enough. I copied a letter I found in Cracked magazine, altered it slightly, and they published it. *proud*
Twang says
Roger McGough….
“Out of work, divorced, usually pissed
He aimed low in life
And missed”.
RubyBlue says
Very pleased to see Mary Oliver mentioned, who is unique.
I’ll come back later and post my favourite (when I can find the book).
Predictably I love Emily Dickinson and e.e. cummings.
Autocorrect really hates that name in lower case.
Moose the Mooche says
Not even the rain has such small letters.
Gatz says
I read that poem at my sister’s wedding the other year. I read it to The Light beforehand as a practice, because cummings can really trip you up read out loud. When I got to the end (‘nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands’) she looked puzzled, then said, ‘Who’s Lorraine?’
retropath2 says
My sister in law, Vicki Feaver is pretty damn good: I have subsequently explored poetry with a greater zeal:
This is called “Forgetfulness”
When my memory
was a film library
with a keen curator
who knew precisely
where to find clips
of every word
I wished unsaid,
or deed undone,
to play back to me
on sleepless nights,
I’d have welcomed her
muddling the reels.
But now the curator’s
retired, the ordered
shelves are in chaos.
I roam the racks
without a guide
searching for scenes
I’ve lost. Sometimes,
unable to remember
what I’m searching for,
I find Forgetfulness
kneeling on the floor –
an old woman, pale
and worried as a ghost,
rummaging in a tangle
of shiny black ribbons.
JustB says
This is Good Bones by Maggie Smith which did the rounds a bit last year. I think it’s wonderful.
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
Gatz says
Rather lovely. The pay off can help but bring to mind @RubyBlue ‘s favourite cummings’ ‘pity this monster, manukind’
RubyBlue says
Mary Oliver:
NOT ANYONE WHO SAYS
Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be
careful and smart in matters of love,”
who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,”
but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all
but were, as it were, chosen
by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable
and beautiful and possibly even
unsuitable —
only those know what I’m talking about
in this talking about love.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Byron went to my school you know, my school house was named after him. Naturally at 16 I was Byron: I was a poet, I was moody, a hit with all the women , I wrote poems every day (one of those facts may not be true).
At 17 I was Roger McGough spending my Summer with Monica. Next I was Adrian Mitchell telling Lies about Vietnam.
In London I submitted many a poem to many a journal, a few were published, most were not. I haven’t written a poem since 1975.
Last year I started re-reading Byron and much to my surprise I really loved it.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
There is a tide in the affairs of women
Which, taken at the flood, leads — God knows where:
Those navigators must be able seamen
Whose charts lay down its current to a hair;
Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen
With its strange whirls and eddies can compare:
Men with their heads reflect on this and that —
But women with their hearts on heaven knows what!
And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright she,
Young, beautiful, and daring — who would risk
A throne, the world, the universe, to be
Beloved in her own way, and rather whisk
The stars from out the sky, than not be free
As are the billows when the breeze is brisk —
Though such a she’s a devil (if that there be one),
Yet she would make full many a Manichean.
Sitheref2409 says
I am partial to a bit of Galway Kinnell, who comes up every so often on The Writers Almanac each morning at 6.44.
Promissory Note:
If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.
‘Wait’ is also a bit of a tear jerker
Kid Dynamite says
Lots of good stuff in this thread (good work all), but this one really connected. Thanks.
Moose the Mooche says
Funny to find this thread, as I went to the Philip Larkin exhibition today. His books, his ties, even his glasses were there. Very affecting.
And, yes, his copies of With The Beatles and Blonde On Blonde.
RubyBlue says
@moose_the_mooch I heard about that on R4 the other day and wondered if you would go. Very tempted, but it means going to Hull, sadly.
Moose the Mooche says
Well, there’s my pesky court order of course.
Bartleby says
I reviewed a new anthology of war poetry a couple of years back. Sadly it omitted one of my favourites, by Alun Lewis:
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees:
Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.
And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.
ruff-diamond says
Edward Thomas – one of my favourites. Robert Macfarlane’s “The Old Ways” has a chapter devoted to Thomas. His description of Thomas’ last parting from his wife as he leaves for France is heartbreaking (“as he descends the hill, he keeps on calling ‘coo-ee!’ to her, as if he were arriving rather than leaving. She answers him with her ‘coo-ee!’, and they go on like that, call and answer, fainter and fainter”)
I do feel that I should pedantically point out though that it wasn’t a bullet that “stopped his song” but the pneumatic concussion from an artillery shellburst.
Bartleby says
Ha! Fair point. Maybe that’s why Lewis got the brush-off.
bungliemutt says
Edward Thomas nails it with Adlestrop.
Yes, I remember Adlestrop —
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop — only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Gatz says
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2017/may/13/stephen-collins-on-poetry-cartoon (may contain Whitsun Weddings and others too)
Tony Japanese says
Poetry is a wonderful thing. I started writing it when I was seventeen, before I’d even had the privilege of reading the likes of Wendy Cope, or Wilfred Owen; Plath, Larkin or Arimitage. The first piece I wrote was called ‘The Dead Pig’. For a few years around University I would write hundreds of pieces, quite often variations on the same subject – love (and the lack of being loved), although I would sometimes branch out and write about sex too (or the lack of it etc). I think a song can be improved tenfold if it has good lyrics, and the likes of Colin Meloy, Stuart Murdoch, Nick Cave, Will Self and Alex Turner have inspired me more than the aforementioned poets above.
Although I’ve slowed down a bit in recent years, I still love being able to create something from nothing; it’s one of the few things I think I’m actually ok at.
rocker49 says
Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for the Doomed Youth” always takes me back to late 1970s grammar school. Here is Sean Bean reciting it, and this is as good as it gets.
Twang says
God yes Owen. Did it for A level. I was reading “Dulce et decorum est” with Twang Jr a few days ago – he’d been on a school trip to the first world war battlefields including the reading of “In Flanders field” at Ypres and was taken with WW1 poetry.
Kaisfatdad says
Excellent idea for a thread. Look forward to reading through the suggestions.
Twang says
We learned this at school and I still remember most of it. ..WH Auden…
Night Mail
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers’ declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Crawford’s
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
I love the rhythmic devices where he uses rhyme to create the momentum of the train then breaks it for a more thoughtful moment. Lovely.
Bartleby says
There’s a YouTube video of it you might like Twang.
The only poetry I can recall from memory is a bit of Hardy’s Darkling Thrush and the opening lines to TS Eliot’s Love Song for J Alfred Prufrock, something that I occasionally parrot to my kids, who now parrot it back to me:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
poolhallrichard says
Trub?
Twang says
Arf. That made me laugh! No, earlier – primary school
mikethep says
This far down and no mention of T S Eliot? I have spent most of my life puzzling away at his poetry, and will continue to do so. He haunts me, is about the size of it. The opening of The Waste Land:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
Gary says
I like that so much I memorised it last year. The whole of the first section, Burial Of The Dead. Took me bloody ages. Gawd knows how actors memorise whole plays. The iPad app The Wasteland is really good, and features an excellent recital of it by Fiona Shaw.
Bartleby says
It’s wonderful isn’t it.
Eliot, Hardy, Andrew Marvell and Keats – my teenage poetic Morrisseys.
I never learnt the Waste Land, but can always remember the opening verse of Wendy Cope’s parody:
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyantes distress me,
Commuters depress me–
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.
Twang says
I nicked a Marvell couplet for a sing I wrote – no one ever spotted it!
In my current band we do a song which is one of Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” poems put to music:
WAKE: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.
Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.
Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
‘Who ’ll beyond the hills away?’
Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries all;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.
Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.
Clay lies still, but blood ’s a rover;
Breath ’s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey ’s over
There ’ll be time enough to sleep.
Bartleby says
Doubleplusgood
mikethep says
Yes, the app is brilliant. I’m also partial to Alec Guinness’s rather fruitier rendering.
Junior Wells says
That’s not him, it’s you Thep, just with a bit more pudd around the jowls.
mikethep says
🙂
H.P. Saucecraft says
T.S. Eliot and S.J.Perelman were big pals.
mikethep says
Eliot and Groucho were fans of each other, but their one meeting didn’t go too well, apparently. Groucho wanted to talk about The Waste Land and Eliot wanted to talk about Duck Soup.
Wheldrake says
My favourite poem. The Wasteland app for ipad is very informative, with readings, notes and other goodies and has a brilliant reading by Fiona Shaw, the first part of which is here:
https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk
Gary says
Although she does get little bits wrong. In that section, for example, Eliot wrote “he took me out on a sled” but she says “he took us out on a sleigh”.
Gary says
Every time there’s a poetry thread I post the same old one. The Days Of Wine And Roses by Earnest Dowson. It’s still my favourite.
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
bricameron says
I’m a poet. I sowes I Showed it!
Diddling with the Afterword Moose will grow it.
H.P. Sauciness wordsmith wordsmirth
Minibreakfast will tell ya
What the latest vinyl acquisition is!
Break it down…
Moose the Mooche says
Shite.
bricameron says
🍷
bricameron says
Phew!
😂😂😂
robert says
As far as modern poets go, aside from Simon Armitage (new collection “The Unaccompanied” is terrific), Alice Oswald is worth reading.
I am a secondary school English teacher and my sixth formers seem to enjoy responding to what she does, which is probably some kind of oblique recommendation.
This one is good; there’s a lot going on in here:
Flies
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
bricameron says
What a bunch of shite.
Junior Wells says
aaah you can be a dickhead sometimes can’t you Bri ? (Rhetorical question). I mean why bother to put that down? Oh I know, first thought, type, press submit, done. …then next.
bricameron says
Pretty much in this case but not always. Am I or anyone else to be challenged everytime I say something provocative? Are you everyone that sensitive?
😉
Junior Wells says
How about for a nanosecond contemplating Robert’s reaction to your comment on his post?
Can’t be that hard.
JustB says
Don’t confuse being interestingly provocative with thoughtless trolling.
I think you’re a good guy, Bri, but I also think you maybe want to reconsider posting while in an altered state.
Have some Larkin on me.
The Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
Junior Wells says
We had a tortoise
It went for a wander
In the longish grass
On a sunny day
A lovely day
A mowing day
true story dat
David Kendal says
I read an article on the BBC website a couple of weeks ago about an odd exhibition in Hull of items that had belonged to Larkin. One of the things in it was his lawnmower – just rereading that poem, its significance has clicked.
The exhibition still seems a bit odd. It looks like an attempt to produce a mythology for him. It’s almost like revenge for the low profile he kept when he was alive– the work isn’t enough, the public has a right to know about “the real man”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40496677
Moose the Mooche says
I know what it’s like to be dead!
JustB says
Lovely. That’s great, is that. (Also, secondary school English teachers called Robert: SOLIDARITY!) 😊
robert says
🙏🏻
bricameron says
No . I was right the first time . What a pile of nonsensical rubbish that is. Who thinks this is relevant for teaching?
Twang says
Obviously the teacher who posted it. And the pupils who enjoy it. Perhaps a bit of time thinking before saying it’s crap might be helpful?
Junior Wells says
My point is not whether your view on the poetry is right, it is whether your decision to just blurt that unvarnished unhelpful comment was right.
Your comment was complete shite.
bricameron says
Unhelpful? Quite the opposite.
🎁
JustB says
No. It isn’t. Just calling something shit and leaving it at that isn’t ever helpful, under any circumstances. It’s not like you’ve explained why you don’t like the poem.
JustB says
Bri, please show your working. Your failure to understand something doesn’t make it nonsense. And what does the phrase “relevant for teaching” mean?
I realise you’re usually either pissed or stoned or both when you post, but honestly man, it’s not cool to shit uninformedly over another poster’s contribution without offering something constructive. (FWIW I find the poem lovely.)
bricameron says
Red Wine I should not drink.
It turns me into a colossal prick!
I’ve been dreading all day reading back what I posted last night. I even considered hitching a ride on a Chinese Junk to Singapore just to avoid the shame.
Sorry for that.
Bri.
robert says
Well, it would be a rather miserable old world if we all agreed on everything, wouldn’t it Bri?
Anyway, over the past couple of decades I’ve had far more colourfully aggressive observations made directly to my face by the real-life youngsters I’ve been charged to “inspire”; it’s easy to not get worked up by such things.
No hard feelings.
(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/09/alice-oswald-wins-37000-griffin-prize-poems-poetry-falling-awake-canada)
bricameron says
Junior Wells says
One for you Bri
JustB says
Bless you. You’re a good man, Mr Cameron. 🙂
seanioio says
Can I weigh in with John Cooper Clarke? I love the fact that he is used in GCSE English these days, I would have loved to study his stuff.
I first saw him support Joe Strummer & have to admit to never having heard of him before. It was a revelation to me – I love the breakneck speed he delivers it & he is of course very funny. I spent a good year or two tracking down a reasonably priced copy of ’10 years in an open necked shirt’ & it is now one of my most cherished books. (Due to a resurgence in all things JCC It is since reprinted & can be bought for next to nothing!)
Hie has done some wonderful pieces (Kung Fu International, Twat, Beasley Street) but his Haiku is one of my favourites
‘To convey ones mood in seventeen syllables is very diffic’
I also love some of the pieces he has done about Burnley (whose football team I support) as I think they are cruelly brilliant.
I’ll tell you now & I’ll tell firmly
I don’t want to go to Burnley
What they do there don’t concern me
Why would anyone make that journey?
He also has one of my favourite one liners ‘The one thing money can’t buy…..Poverty’
Gatz says
I saw Doctor Clarke perform a week or two ago at a festival in Chelmsford, battling with the bass from the main stage on the other side of the park. The last time I saw him was at a recording of his work in the BBC Radio Theatre, and to be honest he was a bit of a mess then – losing his place, unable to read more than about 4 lines without grinding to a halt and so on. This time he was on much better form.
JustB says
I’m not a huge fan of JCC but I do really like that we get to teach stuff that isn’t necessarily “Oxford Book of Approved Verse” these days.
Teaching poetry is my favourite thing – and, dare I say it, a bit of a speciality. I think being a good reader of poetry is a really interesting high-wire act: being alive to the big-picture music of the language and metre takes a certain detachment from the meaning, IMO, which you have to balance with the forensic attention to the meaning at the same time! Something I say to kids all the time is that – for a decent poet – everything is on purpose. So the least we can do is respect the meticulous craft of it and recognise that every word is what it is, and where it is, for a conscious reason.
Tony Japanese says
At the time I couldn’t stand the study of poetry (not because I didn’t like any of it, or understand it but ) because I sometimes failed to see beyond the ‘Why did Ted Hughes use this word to describe the pike?’ beyond thinking it was because it rhymed or something daft like that.
JustB says
Yeah, I think we often run straight to the technique, which is a shame: it tends to make kids think the point of poetry *is* the technique, rather than the perfect crystallising of thought and feeling which it is at its best. When I’m teaching, I tend to try and find the emotional truth of the poem first, then unpack how the poet did it. One of the many many reasons I love teaching English so much is how much of it is storytelling, and helping kids who don’t really read find new horizons by showing them recognisable truth beautifully expressed through someone else’s experience.
robert says
What he said.
That’s the kind of concise, precise and succinct summary of the task in the classroom which I ought to save and share with my Department colleagues (and our ITT placement student) in September.
Thanks, Bob. It sounds like it would be a privilege and a thrill to be in one of your lessons.
JustB says
Oh Robert, that’s a lovely thing to say – thank you. I doubt the kids would agree, but I really love my job: I’m having a new lease of passion for it at the moment thanks to having jacked in being an assistant head a few months ago! 🙂
Kaisfatdad says
Glad to hear you’ve got your mojo back, Bob. Robert is quite right: you hit the nail on the head.
I would love to eavesdrop on one of your lessons.
We’ve just watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the looks of utter boredom on the teenagers’ faces in the English lesson are painfully hilarious.
I take my hat off to anyone who teaches poetry to teenage boys.
JustB says
Teenage boys aren’t inherently averse to poetry!
And trust me, my lessons are probably nothing to write home about. Handcuffed by the curriculum, as always. 🙂
Kaisfatdad says
Far too modest, I am sure! But you are damn right about the curricular handcuffs. I have no doubt that if teachers were able to “freestyle” more and adapt more to the group of kids in front of them, they would make contact with far more of them.
From what I have seen of our kids’ teachers here in Sweden, they are burdened by a tiresome amount of paperwork which has to be done “to ensure quality”.
Grrrrr!
JustB says
Whenever we do this I always post Aubade by Philip Larkin, which for me is one of the great poems of the 20th century. So I won’t do it again.
Instead let’s Frost.
After Apple-Picking
BY ROBERT FROST
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
bungliemutt says
Can’t beat a bit of Robert Frost, and this is one of the best.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
JustB says
God it’s perfect, isn’t it?
Timbar says
You can sing it to Hernando’s Hideaway too.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Oh hahahahahahaha. Ha ha ha ha!
Kaisfatdad says
Teaching poetry to schoolkids must be a fascinating challenge. I would find it difficult to find a poet or poem that would appeal to my 14 year old son.
Not impossible though. JCC might be a good start. There’s a lot of humour in his poems.
Or Roger Robinson perhaps.
H.P. Saucecraft says
“Teaching poetry to schoolkids must be a fascinating challenge”
slotbadger says
Always loved this
You know this world is complicated, imperfect and oppressed
And it’s not hard to feel timid, apprehensive and depressed.
It seems that all around us tides of questions ebb and flow
And people want solutions but they don’t know where to go.
Opinions abound but who is wrong and who is right.
People need a prophet, a diffuser of the light.
Someone they can turn to as the crises rage and swirl.
Someone with the remedy, the wisdom, and the pearl.
Well . . . they should have asked my ‘usband, he’d have told’em then and there.
His thoughts on immigration, teenage mothers, Tony Blair,
The future of the monarchy, house prices in the south
The wait for hip replacements, BSE and foot and mouth.
Yes . . . they should have asked my husband he can sort out any mess
He can rejuvenate the railways he can cure the NHS
So any little niggle, anything you want to know
Just run it past my husband, wind him up and let him go.
Congestion on the motorways, free holidays for thugs
The damage to the ozone layer, refugees and drugs.
These may defeat the brain of any politician bloke
But present it to my husband and he’ll solve it at a stroke.
He’ll clarify the situation; he will make it crystal clear
You’ll feel the glazing of your eyeballs, and the bending of your ear.
Corruption at the top, he’s an authority on that
And the Mafia, Gadafia and Yasser Arafat.
Upon these areas he brings his intellect to shine
In a great compelling voice that’s twice as loud as yours or mine.
I often wonder what it must be like to be so strong,
Infallible, articulate, self-confident …… and wrong.
When it comes to tolerance – he hasn’t got a lot
Joyriders should be guillotined and muggers should be shot.
The sound of his own voice becomes like music to his ears
And he hasn’t got an inkling that he’s boring us to tears.
My friends don’t call so often, they have busy lives I know
But its not everyday you want to hear a windbag suck and blow.
Encyclopaedias, on them we never have to call
Why clutter up the bookshelf when my husband knows it all!
minibreakfast says
Hoorah for Pam! I’ve bought a couple of her collections recently (car boot LP and chazza CD), and her gentle humour is a right tonic.
Moose the Mooche says
Oi wish oi’d looked arfter me vinly!
Black Celebration says
Thanks for posting that. Love it.
Tony Japanese says
We’re off to see John Cooper Clarke later in the year. He’s somebody I’ve never been too bothered about until fairly recently, and I feel as though he works better on the stage than on the page. As far as contemporary poets go, I’d recommend Angela Readman and Stephen Watt as two writers I admire.
slotbadger says
Saw him for the first time in London a few months back, he wasn’t on for long, but was splendid form. Ended with a crowd-pleasing, slurred, machine-gunning ‘Evidently Chickentown’. Met him afterwards and he put up with my incoherent babblings of adoration with gentle good humour, patience and grace. A gent.
eddie g says
Idris and Jenny
When she couldn’t speak she’d nod.
One meant hello. Two meant things
were fine. ‘Eyes shut’ nod meant she knew
I had to leave for the train to uni.
I was two hundred miles away when she died.
She once trod on a kitten’s head. One step back,
her stiletto cracking the egg-shell animal skull.
The cat was a goner but she ignored the vet –
taught Waldo to walk again – tiny paw in each hand,
one in front of the other, two hours each day.
He lived to be a mouser. Died at thirteen.
At chapel she’d screech and hymns were trans-
formed from algebraic so-fah into cacophonous
whoops and chants. Idris ignored it. Everyone did.
It just proved how much she loved Jesus.
(And how much he must have loved her back).
Idris, high on stout, had used the sofa money
to buy a set of encyclopaedias from a salesman.
When the sofa man came the pot was empty.
For years they listened to ITMA
huddled on chairs made of books.
Idris held out until the coffin hummed
onto the conveyor belt. He leapt
to his feet howling her first name
as if she was sixteen again –
“Jenny!”
Freewheeling on a bicycle down Twthill
because she was late. Knowing he’d be there,
with flowers maybe, hair brylcreemed, tie straight.
Four other girls dumped – and all for her!
She turned the corner.
That’s how it begins.
Locust says
That’s yours, isn’t it? I remember you posting it on another poetry thread. It made me tear up this time too! Beautiful.
JustB says
Proper lovely, Eddie. Thanks for it.
eddie g says
Thanks fellas. Yes, it is one of mine. Encouraged by your response, here’s another…
Impostor
This is not you because you don’t work
anymore. Hands that once caused crowds
to roar in derby matches– flicking
balls like flies over the bar– now struggle
with a fork. That chest which swelled
to face the cavalry stampede of strikers
groans at all the air still left in the world.
Legs which booted the ball miles behind
enemy lines now buckle like wiry twigs.
We sit in the car listening to the sea
and the football results. Bolton wanted you
once. You could have played in the
Matthews final but you stayed behind
because of me. I was a baby. Old enough
to kick you taught me the goalie’s trade-
dragging lines in the grass with your boot
to show where the posts were. Making
your body big. Yours has shrunk.
I never got a ball past you, now
I could score all day. You smile and
the tutti-frutti dribbles like Charlton down
your cheek. I flick a tissue. Wipe it away.
Tony Japanese says
Eddie, those are both great. You definitely know what you’re doing.
rocker49 says
Robert Southey was a minor romantic poet who wrote this poem in the 1820s about a waterfall near Derwent Water in Cumbria. I believe it was one of Nick Drake’s favourites.
I liked it as a kid because I could understand it. Through this poem I think I learned almost every verb associated with movement and sound in one go. Read on.
The Cataract of Lodore
“How does the water
Come down at Lodore?”
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And ’twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.
From its sources which well
In the tarn on the fell;
From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For a while, till it sleeps
In its own little lake.
And thence at departing,
Awakening and starting,
It runs through the reeds,
And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,
In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-skurry.
Here it comes sparkling,
And there it lies darkling;
Now smoking and frothing
Its tumult and wrath in,
Till, in this rapid race
On which it is bent,
It reaches the place
Of its steep descent.
The cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war raging
Its caverns and rocks among;
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound:
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.
Collecting, projecting,
Receding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining,
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring and roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and going,
And running and stunning,
And foaming and roaming,
And dinning and spinning,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And guggling and struggling,
And heaving and cleaving,
And moaning and groaning;
And glittering and frittering,
And gathering and feathering,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hurrying and skurrying,
And thundering and floundering;
Dividing and gliding and sliding,
And falling and brawling and sprawling,
And driving and riving and striving,
And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
And sounding and bounding and rounding,
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
And clattering and battering and shattering;
Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending
All at once and all o’er, with a mighty uproar, –
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
Tiggerlion says
Last time I posted any Kate Tempest, there was a lot of love and hate. I’m gratified that no less an authority than The London Evening Standard thinks she’s rubbish.
Ketamine For Breakfast
Now look here, in the house opposite
Black gate posts with a concrete frog squatting on top of it
Through the hallway
Ancient wallpaper, nicotine gold
Up the stairs, rickety
Loaded with history
Here, in the top flat
Flowers on the windowsill
Little breeze fluttering the petals as they stare out
At the city streets
Gemma is awake
What woke her?
Open eyes, street lights float slowly through broken blinds
She watches as the light plays across the tattered carpet
And she holds herself tight in the room’s half darkness
It’s cold
She wedges her hands underneath her armpits
It’s 04:18
And Gemma’s thinking
Before I was a adult
I was a little wreck
Peddling whatever I could get my grubby mitts on
Ketamine for beakfast
Bad girls were drinking with
I gave ’em puppy dog eyes for the acid on their fingertips
Heads in the basement
Lips without faces
Getting feisty, half-baked in a bakery
Eating pastries
Desperate for a body who could save me
But I never really wondered what they gave me
Always wanted something else
Sweating in the dole queue
Spittin’ like a villain in the pantomime old shoes
Bad teeth
Drinking in the rain with my ghost
Sitting in the back of the class, comatose
Uh, villains on my back in the dark
Hold me close
But you never held
I did some things I swore I’d never
‘Til that night you tried to kill me
Run me down with your car in the snow
I didn’t realise I thought you would go
Every day I live lives in the day I wake up in
My dreams are all screaming “Oh fuck!”
But I’m fine now
Something remains, it’s still pulling me
Yeah my future is bright but my past tryna ruin me
Tried to change it but I know
If you’re good to me I will let you go
Tried to fight it but I’m sure
If you’re bad to me, I will like you more
I saw some things when I was young
That made me who I would become
I feel them with me everyday
‘Cause if you try and run away
They run beside you place for place
Trip you up and drag your face
Freedom out of every waste
They chancing every bit of taste
Heart is sprayed up with the names
Of all my friends who lost their way
Doesn’t change it all remains
It takes my strength and gives me shame
All I want is someone great
To make me everything I ain’t
But the only ones for me
Are the ones that shouldn’t be
Even though I’m doing good
I’m working hard, my work is strong
Might be fun just for a while
To go back to where my hurt is from
Rinse myself through emptiness
And push my body close to
Anybody who can recognise the presence of my ghost
Tried to change it but I know
If you’re good to me I will let you go
Tried to fight it but I’m sure
If you’re bad to me I will like you more
Tony Japanese says
My problem with Kate Tempest (and it may be my preference for poetry that conforms to proper structures – e.g. sonnets, villanelles etc or metre ) is that it’s too free for my liking. She’s obviously influenced more by rap than she is by Keats or Wordworth, which is no bad thing although some of her rhymes are cringeworthy – ‘opposite/on top of it’, ‘dole queue/old shoes’.
She just doesn’t do it for me. Mind you, she’s very popular and the critics seem to like her so what do I know?
JustB says
Ha! You posted as I was writing.
JustB says
I’m not buying the whole Kate Tempest thing. She’s so literal, and she seems to operate exclusively in couplets. It grates.
For me, the language of poetry is mostly metaphor, and she seems either not to use it or to use it clumsily. But because she and everyone else can’t seem to decide if she’s a poet or a rapper, she gets – to my eyes – to be mediocre at both and still get the Front Row Is Being Cool This Week seal of approval. A little more flowery and narrow-your-eyes-and-could-be-mistaken-for-erudite than many rappers; a little more faux-street than many poets (another rankle: she’s 31, not yoof, and to listen to her you’d think she was 19 and came up hard, when she’s perfectly middle class. That accent: nobody with her background in Brockley talks like that. Grrr).
Tiggerlion says
She certainly paints a picture with words, which she deploys with care and delivers with rhythm and tempo, in order to elicit an emotional response. It works better on the ear than on the page. Living in the North, I can’t judge her accent. To me, her voice suits the words she speaks, even if it is an act. I certainly find it less offensive than, say, Mick Jagger’s Southern hillbilly accent for his Country songs. She is capable of catching people’s attention and holding it for some time. I like the fact she pushes against the boundaries. Is it poetry, is it rap, is it something else? Whatever she is doing, she is exposing some people to a love of language that they may not have otherwise.
Plus, an absence of metaphor is not necessarily a bad thing. If you’ve got something to say, just say it is okay, even in poetry.
Kaisfatdad says
Can’t believe we have gone so far …and not had a mention of Yeats.
So many fine poems, not least The Second Coming which is eerily topical.
https://m.youtube.com/https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n_gtGfAail4?v=OEunVObSnVM
Another vote for Eliot too.
Blue Boy says
Yes to Yeats, the great Seamus Heaney, and Belfast’s contemporary of Auden, Louis MacNeice. Here’s his Prayer Before Birth…
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Kaisfatdad says
He may sound like one of Optimus Prime’s team, but the late, great Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer, is worthy of your attention. And there are some quite decent English translations.
Try The Blue House, the last one on this page.
https://tomastranstromer.net/poetry/
Artery says
The best poetry moves from personal observation to universal truth.
Here’s a concise example by someone who is commonly regarded as cynical, but I disagree.
The Mower by Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
JustB says
Lovely. But ahem. Look up. 👆🏻
😉
Artery says
I hadn’t read the thread for a few days. I’m like that – behind the times. Soz DBob
I suppose Musee Des Beaux Arts by Auden is already here too? If not:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
JustB says
Ha, no worries, just teasing. 😉
That Auden is an absolute belter. Living where we live, we get into Her Maj’s place for nothing and hanging on one of her walls is a Breughel. It always makes me think of this poem whenever I see it.
Artery says
And by way of, erm, light relief here’s one by Fiona Pitt-Kethley:
Song of the Nymphomaniac
From Baffin Bay down to Tasmania
I’ve preached and practised nymphomania,
Had gentlemen of all complexions,
All with varying erections:
Coalmen, miners, metallurgists,
Gurus, wizards, thaumaturgists,
Aerial artists, roustabouts,
Recidivists and down-and-outs,
Salesmen, agents, wheeler-dealers,
Dieticians, nurses, healers,
Surgeons, coroners and doctors,
Academics, profs and proctors,
Butchers, bakers, candle-makers,
Airmen, soldiers, poodlefakers,
Able seamen, captains, stokers,
Tax-inspectors, traders, brokers,
Preachers, canons, rural deans,
Bandy cowboys fed on beans,
Civil-servants, politicians,
Taxidermists and morticians.
I like them young, I like them old,
I like them hot, I like them cold.
Yet, I’m no tart, no easy lay –
My name is Death. We’ll meet one day.