It’s just about coming up to Last Orders on National Poetry Day in the UK. I’m not sure we have one here in the Land of Saints and Scholars (Ireland to save you a Google). Anyway, your challenge should you choose to accept it is to post a poem or excerpt from a poem that you particularly like or that means something to you. The only rule I would like to apply is that you choose a poem that you came to know outside formal education. Fire away…
Poetry Please
by 69 Comments
Definitely didn’t do this one at school…
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Blake, Coleridge and Yeats have always been my favourite poets.
Japanese Maple by Clive James
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
Little bird
Fly so high
Drop a message
From the sky
Mister Farmer
Wipes his eye
Says “thank goodness
cows can’t fly”
(Amongst the first works I learned by heart, and its stately cadence triggers yet emotions deep.)
You’re a bit of a softy, aren’t you?
I like a pome that tells a story…
This Is Just To Say (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
Jolly good I’m sure, Mike my dear old blister, but isn’t it just the line breaks that make us understand/appreciate it as poetry? I know this brings up the pointless “what is poetry” discourse that leads nowhere, but … as you were. This is just to say 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. I’ll pick up some more at Waitrose. Yrs., Bill.
Take that up with William Carlos Williams, he’s waiting for your call. I like it, so ner.
There is much to like, and it is not – trust me – a swipe at your taste. Whose mouth would not water at his economic evocation of the juicy comestible? And I’m sure I get the underlying message – that peotry is to be found in the mundane. But it is just the line breaks that make us recognise it as peotry, is it not? This is my point. I for one feel short changed. Many of (say) fentonsteve’s technical comments are more peotic, but are not given the artistic credibility they might get if laid out, as here, in blank verse.
It seems disingenuous not to give Sir Williams some help, so here’s the sort of direction I think he should have taken:
Oh the plums
In the fridge
Are now in my tums
So it’s porridge
For breakfish
I couldn’t resist
They were delish
Please don’t get pissed
I for
one do not
much
care if you for
one are feeling short-
changed. I am
too busy counting angels
on
thehead of
a
pin
I would argue that yes it is mostly the line breaks but this is because it encourages us to see the language as symbolically heightened.
Possibly the best answer. I’m also reading a biblical forbidden fruit theme into the lines, which I wouldn’t have thought about had it been set out as a paragraph – it only occurred to me because I saw it as a poem.
One of the poems that made me pull over when it came on the radio at about 0635 on The Writers Almanac. Promissory Note, by Galway Kinnell
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.
Very good, but – go with me on this – isn’t it just the line breaks that allow us to see it as poetry?
Here I sit, broken-hearted…
My friend Billy….
Do the shake and vac…
A sonnet, which should satisfy those with stricter views on what constitutes ‘poetry’, by Carol Ann Duffy. I hadn’t thought about for a while until I saw this thread but realised I knew by heart when I look it up to copy and paste.
Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
I love this poem
I shall read more of her work
Thank you for this gift
That’s a haiku, Philistines! 😉
I came across this poem by Ted Hughes recently. Made me chuckle. (The poem is from the book Crow. My favourite book of poems. Hughes style, especially in Crow, reminds me a little of Roger Waters lyrics. Similar sense of irony and bleak humour and economy.)
Apple Tragedy
So on the seventh day
The serpent rested,
God came up to him.
“I’ve invented a new game,” he said.
The serpent stared in surprise
At this interloper.
But God said: “You see this apple?”
I squeeze it and look-cider.”
The serpent had a good drink
And curled up into a question mark.
Adam drank and said: “Be my god.”
Eve drank and opened her legs
And called to the cockeyed serpent
And gave him a wild time.
God ran and told Adam
Who in drunken rage tried to hang himself in the orchard.
The serpent tried to explain, crying “Stop”
But drink was splitting his syllable.
And Eve started screeching: “Rape! Rape!”
And stamping on his head.
Now whenever the snake appears she screeches
“Here it comes again! Help! O Help!”
Then Adam smashes a chair on his head,
And God says: “I am well pleased”
And everything goes to hell.
I have friends who live here so this resonates well.
Our Poet Laureate and his take on Luddenden (with and without foot)
Simon Armitage
Full Moon
It’s midnight in Luddenden,
midnight in Luddenden,
midnight in Luddenwhen
all of a suddenden
here comes a shape in a cloak and a hood.
They’re holding hands in Luddendenfoot
and there’s trouble in Luddenden,
trouble in Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.
Luddendenfoot, Luddendenfoot,
they’re forming a circle in Luddendenfoot,
but the frumpy librarian’s really a witch
who’s bedding a druid from Hebenden Bridge –
hubble and bubble there’s trouble in Luddenden
trouble in Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.
Luddendenfoot, Luddendenfoot,
they’re closing rank in Luddendenfoot.
Round the back of a hut
a goat gets killed with a woodenden clubenden,
chickens are slaughtered,
Catholics are neutered,
the queen of the covenden
working up phelgm with soya milk bubblegum
gobs on the grave of the great and the goodenden
curses the vicars
of Mixenden, Illingworth, Warley and Ovenden.
Look, Mother, look,
in the locked-up, blacked-out community centre
they’re burning a book. Nothing is sacred –
they’re writhing and shaking, they’re stark bollock naked
they’re painting their genitals green and magenta,
they’re veggies as well but they’re eating placenta
they’re all in a huddleden
daubing themselves with henna and mudenden,
here comes the knife and here comes the bloodenden.
Call for the cops –
there’s trouble in Luddenden,
trouble in Luddenden,
trouble tonight and it’s double in Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.
That is so wonderfully amusing, Hubert. Now I want to hear it live.
While looking for that I found this; Simon’s poem about the passing of the Queen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-1NKgKcAw
I do like Mr Armitage. Without being sycophantic, he’s managed to write a very decent, sincere poem.
When I get to see him live, I probably won’t be screaming out for that poem, but it doesn’t make me cringe,
Might I have another, sir? Not the whole poem, but a bleeding chunk torn from Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I can’t read this without hearing it in Leo McKern’s voice:
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
T’is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
A lot of people will have found that poem via Frasier Crane.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dj6cjvPpps
I’d forgotten about that! My introduction was via Rumpole of the Bailey.
Nice one @Hamlet. He reads it so well. And the panning across all his colleagues watching him through the glass is magnificently done.
‘Star Teachers’ –
George ‘AE’ Russell
Even as a bird sprays many-coloured fires
The plumes of paradise, the dying light
Rays through the fevered air in misty spires
That vanish in the heights.
These myriad eyes that look on me are mine
Wandering beneath them I have found again
The ancient ample moment, the divine
The God-root within men.
For this, for this the lights innumerable
As symbols shine that we the true light win:
For every star and every deep they fill
Are stars and deeps within.
Silly Old Baboon – Spike Milligan
There was a baboon
Who one afternoon
Said I think I will fly to the sun
So with great palms
Strapped to his arms
He started his takeoff run
Mile after mile
He galloped in style
But never once left the ground
You’re going too slow said a passing crow
Try reaching the speed of sound
So he put on a spurt
My God how it hurt
Both the soles of his feet caught on fire
As he went through a stream
There were great clouds of steam
But he still never got any higher
On and on through the night
Both his knees caught alight
Clouds of smoke billowed out of his rear
Quick to his aid
Were the fire brigade
They chased him for over a year
Many moons passed by
Did Baboon ever fly
Did he ever get to the sun?
I’ve just heard today,
He’s well on his way
He’ll be passing through Acton at one.
PS – Well, what do you expect from a baboon
Does this count? I certainly did not get Gil Scott Heron in my school days.
Or Ginsberg for that matter.
Ageing hippy? Moi?
Have you ever seen the film Howl, starring James Franco as Ginsberg? I liked it. A very interesting exploration of the poem’s meaning and factual history. A mix of colour, black and white, animated, old footage. Definitely worth seeing.
I’m quite a Ginsberg fan as well. Here he is with Dirk.
My favourite Ginsberg is America.
His use of language is so beautiful, and the opening 20 lines are just straight fire.
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Ginsberg’s recitation is probably my all time favourite reading of any poem I can think of. And the pairing of the audio with Tom Waits is entirely inspired.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZQ1F45j8Vc
That’s a superb recitation. Thanks for posting Bingo.
Well, I’d delighted that Ginsberg got such a positive response.
It is claimed that his appearance at the Albert Hall was the spark that launched the whole Underground scene in the UK. Trying to find the date for that let me to…..The Spectator.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spaced-out-years
The sea goat casts Aquarian runes through beads of mirrored tears
Suave pirates’ words of apricot crawl out of your veneer
Anoint your eyes with Midas’s oil and make it still appear
Aladdin’s lamp is glowing bright transmuting panacea;
To fill your souls with sugared holes
“Oh can’t you hear” sang the sea goat “the nonsense makes me numb.”
“It’s near it’s clear” sang the sea goat “we live to overcome
The madman’s voice and his nowhere choice
The pain that drains like an endless day of rain.”
The sea goat reads the flight of birds and writes upon the sand;
Gold waterfalls of autumn wheat slip through a pointing hand
Whose fingers stiff with sentences still beckon to the band
To play the “Best Foot Forward March” and deafen all the land
With hollow words, it’s so absurd!
“Take your stand” sang the sea goat, “the night goes on and on.”
“Unwrap your plans” sang the sea goat “tell everyone you’ve gone
To touch the earth and to see the birth
The smile, the style down an unspun mile of life.”
The sea goat sips and hurls his glass along the smoke-filled road
Where shuttered snakes of brakeless trains run aching with their load
Of spring-eyed, tongue-tied, wool-dyed lads who kiss the L-shaped goad
Which soon will smear their uniforms with blood, whitewash & woad
Damn iron minded, gold braid blinded, officers and gentlemen!
“God!” sang the sea goat “is always on both sides.”
“Change” sang the sea goat “is constant as the tides
“And this play” sang the sea goat “is strangely synthesised
When your part of a cast where the first comes last
Where the east goes west and the sun is burning out
And you’re part of a cast…”
…makes ya fink, dunnit?
When I was young I bought a copy of Open Heart University by Spike Milligan which contained a number of his poems. One I recall is:
There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
But they’re ever so small
That’s why the rain is thin.
Despite it’s brevity, the man´s nature comes through.
John Hegley, I think it’s called Electric Chair.
The volts,
the jolts,
the end
Might have cheated a bit there cos I did hear it at school, but our physics teacher read it out in assembly, along with the one about a dog that looks like a large white sliced loaf. Always remember that.
Spot of Alec Guinness reading T S Eliot? Why not?
John Cooper Clarke would be the last person any of us would have had taught at school, yet now he’s part of the syllabub. Ditto Benjamin Zephaniah.
But my fave is Vicki Feaver, not only because she is my sister in law.
https://poetryarchive.org/poem/gun/
Out of work, divorced
Usually pissed
He aimed low in life
And missed
Roger McGough
Also by Roger McGough…
Scintillate
I have outlived my youthfulness,
Old age hath come for me,
Where once I used to scintillate,
Now I only sin till three.
I met him once in a pub in my London days. Lovely man. He was happy to show me stuff he was working on and said he rarely met anyone who knew his stuff outside readings or other events. He wasn’t on our syllabus in Ireland but he was always on my radar thanks to the BBC.
Bit more McGough.
Conservative Government.
Unemployment?
Figures.
John Cooper-Clarke
Kung Fu International
Outside the take-away, Saturday night
A bald adolescent, asks me out for a fight
He was no bigger than a two-penny fart
He was a deft exponent of the martial art
He gave me three warnings:
Trod on me toes, stuck his fingers in my eyes
And kicked me in the nose
A rabbit punch made me eyes explode
My head went dead, I fell in the road
I pleaded for mercy
I wriggled on the ground
He kicked me in the balls
And said something profound
Gave my face the millimetre tread
Stole me chop suey and left me for dead
Through rivers of blood and splintered bones
I crawled half a mile to the public telephone
Pulled the corpse out the call box, held back the bile
And with a broken index finger, I proceeded to dial
I couldn’t get an ambulance
The phone was screwed
The receiver fell in half
It had been kung fu’d
A black belt karate cop opened up the door
Demanding information about the stiff on the floor
He looked like an extra from Yang Shang Po
He said “What’s all this then
Ah so, ah so, ah so.”
He wore a bamboo mask
He was gen’ned on zen
He finished his devotions and he beat me up again
Thanks to that embryonic Bruce Lee
I’m a shadow of the person that I used to be
I can’t go back to Salford
The cops have got me marked
Enter the Dragon
Exit Johnny Clarke
I Wanna Be Yours
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
Breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
Let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your raincoat
For those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
When you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
Take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
You’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
Hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
That’s how deep is my devotion
Well, Rigid Digit, if I mention the two albums that JCC did with the Invisible Girls, it will be like teaching grannies how to suck eggs.
I’m going to anyway, just in case, there is oen single person here who has not heard them.
The band featured Vini O’Reilly, Martin Hannett, Steve Hopkins and Peter Shelley
From Snap, Crackle and Bop – Beasley Street,
From Disguise in Love – I married a monster from outer space
Enjoy!
I conducted a wedding yesterday and read ‘I wanna be yours’ … very hard not to deliver in a poor Salford accent but it went down so well
I used a rewritten version of I Wanna Be Yours as part of our wedding vows. It went down well. I’ll post it here if I can find it.
Set to music, rather brilliantly, by Arctic Monkeys
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.
Edward Thomas
my friend Chloe is a very good poet, I hope you enjoy this short film of hers
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two-
And what worms are eating
At the rind.
– Langston Hughes
Don’t you love it when you post something in the wrong place & then due to being (ahem) over-served at the home bar, you miss words out of somebody else’s succinct verse?
2nd attempt:
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two-
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
– Langston Hughes
(& apologies for getting in the way of Chloe Jacquet’s thread).
Thumbs up from me ….for Chloe’s poem
Another thumbs up for Chloe. Too good not to share, so I posted it on Facebook.
All this talk of poetry got me wondering how many poets had won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature
We all remember 2016 of course, the poet who became a Laureate was Bob Dylan.
Somehow it passed me by, but in 2020 the prize went to an American poet, Louise Glück.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/books/nobel-prize-literature-winner.html
Here’s The Myth of Innocence
Here’s the text.
https://thefloatinglibrary.com/2009/08/06/a-myth-of-innocence-louise-gluck/
I found the date of Ginsberg’s appearance at the RAH and a list of all the other poets that appeared.
11th June 1965
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Poetry_Incarnation
A large venue packed with people who came to hear poetry.
I must have been to a poetry reading at some time, but it was years ago.
I’d definitely go if Simon Armitage did a reading in Stockholm.
And if Philip Larkin came… I would pay serious money to attend this miraculous event.
I’ve probably posted this, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, before
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.
My favourite poet. Superb.
I love a banana,
From Havana.
I love a Scrapple
From the Apple.
Gerald Manley Hopkins!! Bravo!
What a wonderfully eclectic anthology this is turning out to be!
I’m going off at a slight tangent here.
On my way home from the supermarket last weekend, I ran into my Jazz Neighbour, Fredrik, who works in the library in Sergelstorg. He told me he’d just been chatting with some young South African poets who were performing there at Kulturhuset
What did they talk about? Jazz of course! The visitors were well up to speed on the latest releases on SA jazz scene.
Poetry is alive and well in South Africa, Give a listen to Puleka Putama.
It struck me that jazz and poetry have gone hand in hand ever since the days of Adrien Henry and the Liverpool Scene and Alan Ginsberg and the Beat Poets.
I mentioned this on Facebook and got a wonderful response from @Mike_H.
Namely,two magic YT clips.
Really free! John Otway sings about Poetry and jazz
And then Mike came up with this Langston Hughes clip from 1958.
What a gem!
I’d never heard of Langston. He was a very charming, witty chap.
Is this poetry? Yes. I’d say so.
Definitely poetry! What a remarkable performance! Easy to see why SAHB have such a reputation.
I had to look at the comments and discovered to my surprise that it is a Jacques Brel cover!
Scott Walker did a definite version.
I love The Wild Geese by Mary Oliver for many reasons, not least the rejection of holy men telling you how to lead your life and the idea that redemption. salvation, transcendence, call it what you want, is found all around us in nature
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
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.
Also a big fan of this:
The summer I lived as a wolf, by Pippa Little
I knew the names of stones at the river mouth,
crossed giving thanks to their uneasy spirits.
I heard killings in the shadows, knew to turn keen and quick,
travel in the presence of thunder, leave no scent or spoor behind.
Preferring the high places closest to the moon
where the wind ran with me, I practiced abandon,
my spine a scimitar, star-whetted, flayed old disguises
into strands and rips, underneath I was sleek, open:
my muzzle carved air into four queendoms and I knew them all
as they knew me, tooth, soul, tatterdemalion heart,
and I flew, I think, in that time, when nobody needed
or shamed me and I was always hungry, bloody-tongued
but louche and free and supple, perfumed in pine and ashes.
I included this on one of my CD swap compilations. I love it for the sheer arrogant joy of it…
The Tap, by Adrian Mole
The tap drips and keeps me awake,
In the morning there will be a lake.
For the want of a washer the carpet will spoil,
Then for another my father will toil.
My father could snuff it while he is at work.
Dad, fit a washer don’t be a burk!