A memory

I've been over at the Toads again. Today's prompt is a video of a country music singer. It triggered this piece of doggerel.

I remember a night in a bar, far away
A stop on a road-trip in East USA.
A group of musicians arrayed to one side -
an eclectic group my companion decried.
A piano, a drum kit, guitar with a slide:
Their music was homely, a country-based thing.
But the lyrics familiar meant I too could sing,
so I had a great evening (my friend went to bed
and spent her time reading a novel instead)
I formed a fun memory, where sometimes I stray
 in my mind to that night in a bar, far away.
And when I hear bluegrass with twanging guitars,
see a real country singer with rhinestones like stars,
I'm immediately back to that music-filled place -
totally happy with a smile on my face!

Canals and poems

I've been asked by an interesting blog whether they can use my photo of a canal bridge to illustrate a poem.

The site's called Waterlines, and it's a blend of history and poetry about the UK's waterways network.

This is the photo. It's of Bridge No 1 on the Trent and Mersey Canal. The poem is, apparently, about this very bridge.  I've said yes, and I await the blog post with interest!

Meanwhile, here's something I wrote some time ago, when Jobbing Writer Morning AJ was known as the History Anorak......



What Masefield Missed

Painted narrow horse-boat with its polished butty
Climbing through the lock pounds, one by one
With a cargo of limestone
Iron waste, spelter
Carpets, vinegar
Or pure black coal.

Based on Cargoes by John Masefield

Now that April's here........ (Thursday extracts)

Home Thoughts From Abroad

O, to be in England   
Now that April 's there,   
And whoever wakes in England   
Sees, some morning, unaware,   
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf            
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,   
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough   
In England—now!

Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)
Poem dated 1845

Thursday extracts: It's still snowing!

April Snow

by Caroline Spencer

The green was creeping o'er the brown,
The skies dropt bluebirds yesterday;
Again today the snow is down,
And spring a thousand miles away.


Full text here.

Yeah - I know it's still March. But it won't be on Monday.

Thursday extracts: weather

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.   London Snow
Robert Bridges 1844–1930

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Seemed fitting. Although the most we've had overnight is three inches. And I'm nowhere near London.

Thursday Extracts: National Poetry Day

It Was One of Those Fine October Days

It was one of those fine October days
free from summer’s heat and haze
but not yet gripped by autumn chill.

It was one of those fine October days
when the sky’s so clear
you can see the moon
through the atmosphere
at midday.

It was one of those fine October days
when the trees sport yellow and red
instead of everyday summer green.

It was one of those fine October days
when one draws a deep breath
and is grateful
to be resident on Earth.

Richard Greene

September

Yesterday I saw a leaf, just one, drift past me as I walked.

It fell to earth, still green, but dry-looking and slightly wrinkled.

An omen of autumn; for while the sun is still bright, it is low in the sky

And it has lost the heat of summer.

Thursday extracts. Ever so portant

Lines and Squares

Whenever I walk in a London street,

I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, "Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all the squares!"

And the little bears growl to each other, "He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line."
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so portant how you walk.
And it's ever so jolly to call out, "Bears,
Just watch me walking in all the squares!"

A A Milne. When We Were Very Young. 1924

*********

More A A Milne. Because, as Pooh would say: "It's that sort of day."
The picture is one of E H Shepard's preparatory drawings for the illustration that went with the poem.

Thursday extracts: Checking your spelling.

Eye have a spelling chequer,

It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

A chequer is a bless thing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule.
 

*********

Taken from Wikipedia, which claims the original was written by Jerrold H. Zar in 1992. Several versions exist. Wiki also claims that modern spell checkers would be able to consider more than pure 'spelling' and realise that a lot of the poem is wrong.  We all know that's not true though, don't we?

More rescued words

There are no dates on the actual writings I have rescued from my old email folders - only the dates of storage. I know this one is older than July 2008 (when it was stashed away) because I know which event in my life it describes.

This one was for you, K!

*********

Love is a disease, they say, and it’s true.
The symptoms are the same.
The faster heart, the sweating palms
The lack of concentration
Could all be flu.
Do I know if I am ill? Or in Love’s sight??
Do past romances tell?
No use depending on old loves
For a clue as my last was
A parasite.

*********

Incidentally - six years on and he's still a keeper!

An advent calendar of sorts Day 16. (Also a FFF55)

The end of the year is approaching,
And nights are drawing in.
It’s time for presents and stockings,
And cracking the damson gin.

Red robins are heard in the garden
We watch every morning for snow
Wish each other holiday greetings
And watch as smiles light up and glow.

Compliments of the season my readers!

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FFF55 is a weekly challenge set by The G-Man. Trot over to his blog to see what others have composed.

Thursday extracts: McGough on Poems

A Good Poem

 I like a good poem
 one with lots of fighting
 in it. Blood, and the
 clanging of armour. Poems

 against Scotland are good,
 and poems that defeat
 the French with crossbows.
 I don't like poems that

 aren't about anything.
 Sonnets are wet and
 a waste of time.
 Also poems that don't

 know how to rhyme.
 If I was a poem
 I'd play football and
 get picked for England.

Roger McGough

camera obscura

clear view

skewed

inverted

introverted

reflected
far off

from afar

twisted mind

converts reality

truth is

a black wall

a pinhole

admitting light

admitting guilt

in a dark room

I cannot leave

*********

Inspired by the above photo, which appeared in New Scientist a couple of weeks ago. The picture is by Abelardo Morell and shows New York's Central Park, upside down, as revealed by a camera obscura.

Thursday extracts. Keats's Autumnwatch

We did this as part of our O level course. (Age 16 exams - for my US readers) It's sort of haunted me ever since. Just pick a line - any line - and it oozes Autumn, like the cider-press, or the bees' clammy cells.

*********

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

Posted automatically in absentia.

Reciting poetry and reading aloud

I wonder....

 Do kids still learn poems "off by heart" and have to recite them at school?
Back when I was a youngster (and God were a lad - as they say where I come from) we were encouraged to learn poems and recite to class members. Or at least read them aloud. I suspect that it helped create the love of language that has given me a career for most of my life.

There was a time when I knew this one - or at least the first verse - but I had simply forgotten it until it turned up on Platform 2 of Belper Station as part of the poetry trail (see yesterday's post). As soon as I started reading this it came back to me.

For K it triggered a memory of an old film that some of you might remember too. The Night Mail by W H Auden.

Do you remember any poetry and do you ever recite it?

If only I could write like that

Part of a poetry trail in the Derbyshire town of Belper. It's on the entrance to the library.

L’Égérie (The Muse)

L’Égérie (The Muse) it said
On a plastic plaque beside the work.
I looked at it (a long time)
But felt no echo in my mind
No similarity with mine.
How could this angular thing inspire?
This flat, red multiple thing
With extra heads, but lacking arms
And charms. (I could not see.)
Perhaps sculptors need a driving force
More pointed (or with razor's edge)
To guide their hands, their hammers
Or their welding torches.
We of the Word need gentler touch.
(I feel.)



I visited the annual sculpture show at Leicester Univerity botanic gardens yesterday and this was one of the works. Called L’Égérie (The Muse) by Laurence Ambrose. I can't see anything like my own muse in this at all. But I guess every muse is dfferent. 



What does everyone else think?

fff55:Shoreline

Shoreline.
Unsure line
Lapping waves
Draw a line in the sand:
Here and no further.
Erased by the next tide
High tide
A tide in the affairs of man.
Time and tide wait for none.
A time for change
A change of mind.
Leaving on the new tide.
New journey
New horizons
New shores.
Shoreline.



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FFF55 is a weekly challenge set by the G-Man over at Mr Knowitall's blog. You know the score by now. Go and see everyone else's offerings!

Thursday extracts. Walt Whitman on love...

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet, was a man ahead of his time. He wrote some of the sexiest poetry ever put on paper - and it got him into trouble.
His collection Leaves of Grass was deemed obscene because of its overtly sexual nature. Here's a taster of why.



From Spontaneous Me

The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all men carry,
(Know once for all, avow'd on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers,
and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts
of love, bellies press'd and glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,
The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body of the
man, the body of the earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down, that gripes the
full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes
his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight till he is satisfied;

*********

Poems in the Waiting Room

I've been to the doctor's this morning. Nothing serious - all routine - but I was happy to find a new copy of a little leaflet that's available there. Happy to find a leaflet in the doctor's?  What's it about?


Well - it's a triple fold card called "Poems in the Waiting Room" that offers a selection of poetry you can read while you wait and can take home with you.  I always pick one up when I see one and often find some excellent new poems as well as some old favourites.

Check them out here if you would like to know more.



And here's a choice from the current selection:
Madonna of the Evening Flowers

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely;
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud,
sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

(Sorry - I don't have any photos of larkspur.)