I'm not a man who enjoys poetry
But at times, the beauty of a phrase whether spoken or written can grab me around the neck and almost throttle me with its beauty or power.
A verse in that fake Eurovision ballad Husavik - My home town captured my imagination just the other day
" Where the mountains sing through the screams of seagulls "Isn't that a fantastic description of an Iceland we all have in our imaginations?
When I was a child I loved a tiny poem Little Fish by D H Lawrence for exactly the same
" The tiny fish enjoy themselves
In the sea
Quick little splinters of life,
their little lives are fun to them
in the sea"
" Quick little Splinters of life"
A beautiful description again, economical and bang on the money
I borrowed a book from the hospice last week and found myself reading it last night.
It was a collection of " Best Loved Poems" illustrated by Isabelle Brent
I was unexpectedly melancholic, a moment's revisiting of old wounds and the feelings around them, and the book provided me with the escape that I needed
This poem by Emily Dickinson lingers in the mind
" A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day"
You can always count on Emily Dickens to notice, and to make a small moment in life joyous.
ReplyDeleteNo
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteI used to love the poems of Spike Milligan, some brilliant little snippets of wisdom and silliness.
ReplyDeleteSpring is sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where dem birdies is
... I forget the second verse!!
Or another example -
I must go down to the sea again,
to the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there -
I wonder if they're dry
Or I could quote Shakespeare ... but not today ;-)
Here's the second verse to your "Spring is riz..." poem.
DeleteThere they are, in the sky,
Dropping whitewash in your eye."
Well, that's one version, anyway.
Spike ......he was a patient in the private psychiatric hospital The Retreat in York when I was a psychiatric nurse in the city
DeleteI've got that one too John-and also"In the house of happiness"-I bought it from Isabelle Brent herself-I think about 20 years ago in Dorset-she was a lovely young woman and seemed thrilled that I bought her book and she asked if I'd like her to sign it-she had a stall in a local market there x
ReplyDeleteLovely drawings in it
Delete"The peace of wild things" Wendell Berry
ReplyDeleteWhen despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry is a favorite writer of mine. What wonder word pictures!
DeleteHugs!
That was lovely
Deletei don't mind eels
ReplyDeleteexcept as meals
an the way they feels
ogden nash
Algie saw the bear
DeleteThe bear saw Algie
The bear was bulgie
The bulge was algie
Love Ogden Nash.
DeleteJohn Betjeman could always be relied on for poems replete with graphic images which embed themselves permanently in one's mind. 'The Cottage Hospital', not a long poem, is a well-favoured, quite well-known exemplar of this.
ReplyDeleteThank you Raymondo
DeleteThe Cottage Hospital by John Betjeman
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects, and children played in the street.
Out of this bright intentness into the mulberry shade
Musca domestica (housefly) swung from the August light
Slap into slithery rigging by the waiting spider made
Which spun the lithe elastic till the fly was shrouded tight.
Down came the hairy talons and horrible poison blade
And none of the garden noticed that fizzing, hopeless fight.
Say in what Cottage Hospital whose pale green walls resound
With the tap upon polished parquet of inflexible nurses' feet
Shall I myself by lying when they range the screens around?
And say shall I groan in dying, as I twist the sweaty sheet?
Or gasp for breath uncrying, as I feel my senses drown'd
While the air is swimming with insects and children play in the street?
Thanks for taking the trouble to show the poem here, JayGee. Could have done it myself, of course, but felt that those who were sufficiently curious would have looked it up anyway.
DeleteI thought the subject matter was one you would readily identify with in your work, though thought you may well prefer not have been reminded if it. Very downbeat and direct, it goes without saying, though it touches on a subject few like to put in words - and J.B. does it ever so well.
I'm not a poetry lover either but this is one I do like by e.e. cummings:
ReplyDeletewho are you,little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window;at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
It's not showy but pure description
DeleteHi John,
ReplyDeleteI love poetry and two of my favourites are below.
The way through the woods. Rudyard Kipling
THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.
I think it's fabulously descriptive and I also love
The Listeners
BY WALTER DE LA MARE
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Love
Kim xxxxx
Kipling's Power of the dog
DeleteIs my all time favourite
One of mine too. I just can't bring myself to have another one as the loss really does "tear" the heart apart.
DeleteLove
Kim
xxxx
Hard to go wrong with an Emily Dickinson poem. Lucky enough to have had a semester-long class at university studying only her work. The professor was/is a leading authority on ED and her course was one of the best I've ever taken.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading six poems every morning for over 50 years - well, maybe 95% of mornings - but it seems at least to me, that a high proportion of Emily Dickinson's poetry which I've encountered seems to concern, or reference, the wind, which seems curious, even though there's nothing particularly 'wrong' if that is so. I don't know if that's a fair observation of her work overall, and I'm ready to be enlightened.
DeleteYou are a cultured soul Raymondo,
DeleteYou impress me
When I used to place contact ads [quite a number over the years] I used to describe myself as a 'culture-vulture', which I think put off at least as many as those who wanted to investigate. Some might have preferred the word 'boring'.
DeleteI'd never heard that D.H. Lawrence poem, but that is a fabulous line, "quick little splinters of life." I've always liked "Eel Grass" by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
ReplyDeleteNo matter what I say
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.
All it takes is one word written right that captures the attention
DeleteI am a great poetry lover John - can't even begin to say what my favourite is. But your Emily Dickinson poem does make me think of an expression one of my dearest friends is fond of quoting( he is gay)- 'Three things never return - the spent arrow, the lost opportunity and the spoken word.'
ReplyDeleteLess a poem more a necessary saying
DeleteLove teh ED poem, shes been a favorite of mine for decades.... here's one of my top 10..
ReplyDeleteThe Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –
Quite lovely
DeleteWords really do live, and never die. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could erase them from our minds.
ReplyDeleteReally?
DeleteI meant the hurtful ones!!!
DeleteI've so enjoyed reading these many lovely poems! Thanks to all!
ReplyDeleteHere is mine:
Reluctant Prophet by Luci Shaw
Both were dwellers
in deep places (one
in the dark bowels
of ships and great fish
and wounded pride.
The other
in the silvery belly
of the seas). Both
heard God saying
" Go! "
but the whale
did as he was told.
Hugs!
"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”
ReplyDelete~ Camille Pissarro
It says it all.... love Ro xx
Nicely put x
DeleteHi John, my favourite poem....one my late husband gave to me a few years after we met.
ReplyDeleteYou and i,
We met as strangers each carrying a mystery within us
I cannot say who you are
I may never know you completely
But I trust that you are a person in your own right possessed of a beauty and value that are the earth richest treasures.
So, I make this promise to you.
I will endeavour to impose no identities upon you, but will invite you to become yourself without shame or fear.
I will hold open a space for you in the world and allow your right to fill it with an authentic vocation and purpose.
For as long as your search takes , you have my loyalty.
He was a lovely man.
Love Jayne
Aww Jayne, that is so lovely it makes me very teary.
DeleteJo in Auckland
Something I would have spoken at my wedding x
DeleteI too am not one to pick up a book of poems.
ReplyDeleteYet, I collect, copy down, phrases from
prose or something poetic
that sings to me in the moment.
Here is one of my favorites
He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough
he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.
“Tell me you love me,” he says.
“Tell me again.”
Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask.
I get to tell.
“Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night” by Mary Oliver from Dog Songs
Gawd that made me tear up
DeleteI too adore poetry, old, new, modern and traditional.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite from childhood is anything by Hillare Belloc, especially Matilda.
Traditional is a joint fav being The Lady of Shallot and Under Milkwood.
Modern is anything by Benjamin Zephania and he is a bit of alright as well!
Tess xx
Get his name right if you like him so much, it is Benjamin Zephaniah!
ReplyDeleteT x
Snarky, Tsk.
DeleteJo in Auckland
That was me correcting myself! Tess
DeleteLol
DeleteI can't pick a favourite of mine, but I'll add yours to the list - well chosen!
ReplyDeleteThank u
DeleteI'm like you. I don't have a great love/appreciation of poetry in general, but sometimes a poet's lines will just hit me so perfectly.
ReplyDeleteYes, certain lines pierce your heart x
DeleteI love poetry and that looks like a lovely collection of poets. Thank you John for your helpful comments on my blog while Tom was in the hospital. Just knowing there are people that care makes a huge difference!
ReplyDeleteMy fifth and sixth grade English teacher had each of us keep a poetry notebook. Every month she would print a poem on the board and we had to copy it down in our notebooks, using our best penmanship (mine never was very good--I'm left-handed).
ReplyDeleteWe were to memorize the poem, and sometime during the month, when we were ready, we would stand at her desk, give her our notebooks (which she would grade for our penmanship) and recite the poem to her. We didn't have to do it in front of the whole class, just her. I still have those notebooks, and I can still recite many of the poems from memory, such as "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Those poetry notebooks began my love of poetry.
Jon are you familiar with the essays and poems by Mary Oliver? I really enjoy some of her work.
ReplyDeleteNot at all...send me one you like
DeleteTeach the children. We don't matter so much,but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors,mallow,sunbursts,the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones-inkberry,lamb's quarters,blueberries. And the aromatic ones-rosemary,oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream,head the upstream,rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in,its sticks and leaves and then the silent,beautiful blossoms. Attention is the beginning of devotion. Mary Oliver.
DeleteAh, Emily, one of America's greatest poets.
ReplyDeleteWhose woods these are I think I know.
ReplyDeleteHis 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.
By Robert Frost. My mum quoted that to one of her grandchildren shortly before she died and he read it at her funeral. I do love poetry.
This is one of my favorites and especially so because it actually rhymes.
DeleteI actually do like poetry when it is filled with symbolism that is not lost on my little pea brain. I frequently say this to my students on the last day of school, words by e e cummings.
ReplyDelete"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else...means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight; and never stop fighting...
I've never heard that one mick
DeleteSit by me ,so that I know the depths of hurt and pain.
ReplyDeleteCan stroke your head and sooth with touch.
Can hum a tune to calm your fears.
Read you a line to convey understanding.
Take you in my arms to soothe the worry.
A wonderful memory we will make.
Mine
Who wrote that
DeleteHence the mine at the bottom. :)
ReplyDeleteYou baby boomers destroyed your own children's future, and then laughed about it and blamed it on them. Do you realize that you are going to end up in a retirement home where you are going to get treated like total trash, and abused? Your children won't be able to help you, even if they wanted to. Karma's a bitch, you boomer scum.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWild Geese | Mary Oliver
ReplyDeleteYou 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
I can stop one heart from breaking
ReplyDeleteby
Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Fainting robins..... Is there a thing more heartbreaking, heartopening, hearsoftening?
There should be an If at the beginning of the title
ReplyDeleteHours fly
ReplyDeleteFlowers die
New Days
New ways
Pass by
Love stays
Perfect
DeleteI am not particularly fond of poetry but for some reason this one makes me want to cry at the end of it!!
ReplyDelete“Where are the snowdrops?” said the sun.
“Dead” said the frost, “Buried and lost, every one.”
“A foolish answer,” said the sun
“They did not die, asleep they lie, every one.
And I will awake them, I the sun,
Into the light, all clad in white, every one.”
“It’s rather dark in the earth today”
said one little bulb to its brother.
“But I thought that I felt a sunbeam’s ray.
We must strive and grow ’til we find our way”
and they nestled close to each other.
They struggled and strived by day and by night,
’til two little snowdrops in green and white
rose out of the darkness and into the light;
and softly kissed one another.
By Annie Mattheson born March 1853 died 1924
PS...I like this one too,
ReplyDeleteWho's that tickling my back
said the wall,
It's me said the caterpillar,
I'm learning to crawl.
Spike Milligan.
Duh!
ReplyDeleteLovely
On a lighter note: I came across this years ago, and do declare Millay was peeking into my garden!
ReplyDelete"Portrait by a Neighbour"
BEFORE she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!
It's long after midnight,
Her key's in the lock,
And you'll never see her chimney smoke
Till past ten o'clock!
She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,
She walks up the walk
like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
And pays you back cream!
Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's Lace!
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Lol loved it
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely post I have enjoyed reading all the poems, I must admit that I like W H Auden Funeral Blues it's sad although in this case the person died but it could also be about love lost. I also like The Raven by Edgar Alan Po, and for all the dog lovers I like Beau by Jimmy Stewart.
ReplyDelete