Author: richinaword

Warning – Jenny Joseph – Comments

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Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph (1932 –

This well-known poem topped the most popular stakes in a 1996 BBC survey. Its popularity led to the formation of the ‘Red Hat Society’.

S1 … In a way this is a ‘list poem’ … JJ lists those slightly disobedient actions that may have crossed her mind at one stage when that she has been conditioned otherwise or told not to do so as a child. I can remember walking home from school when I picked a flower that was hanging over a garden wall, a teacher saw me and I was told off!

S2 … JJ thinks of some outlandish actions that suits her temperament – she obvious likes sausages and pickles!

S3 … reality strikes – she is bound by society expectations and she is young – so her desire for freer personal expression must wait another day

S4 … JJ gives humour to her ending twist … may be to start practising now! – so that others may recognise her later! … balancing the purple of the first line with the purple in the ending line! … and her ending marries so well with the title ‘Warning’.

Apparently Jenny Joseph wrote this poem when she was 29 so she may have been contemplating a future release of freedom to time when she could be a little naughty and a little defiant. Perhaps she was feeling constrained in her current life. Perhaps she knew a few old people that led dull lives. I do like both the expression of defiant nature, and that with age, a careless freedom to do as you please may open up a new life. These sentiments certainly hit immediate recognition with the poetry reading population in the UK.

But looking at ‘purple’ – what is it with this colour? So many ladies of a certain age really like to wear purple – akin to young girls liking pink. Of course ladies that wear this identity by colour are not always the audacious type who may be inclined to gorge themselves on sausages and other delights when you are not looking. So if you see such persons walking down the street they may be leading quite ordinary lives.

Crossing the water- Sylvia Plath – Analysis

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Crossing the Water

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

Sylvia Plath

This is the first poem in the poetry book of the same name Crossing the Water being a 1971 posthumous collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath that Ted Hughes prepared for publication. The collection was published in the UK by Faber & Faber in 1975.

S1 – it seems a dark night journey over the water … everything is black … and there is dark mystery in the personification of the numerous trees close to the water … the setting sounds like New Hampshire, America, perhaps after she was married and there with TH

S2 – the water flowers sound like lilies and the white picks up any light … filtering suggestive that the water is processing and giving up something via the lilies … thick leaves are preventing the boat from easy movement … and again darkness prevails in their advice … what are the water lilies saying? – don’t cross or go slow … more mystery in the personification of the flowers – are they trying to drag the boat down to a dark peril?

S3 – cold worlds that shake from the oar … the water is cold and another world, the mysterious world that is below … and the spirit of blackness is in us as though the black environment now enters us or gives recognition to our nature too … and as the boat passes through the mass of lilies the passing message is personified as a pale hand trying to catch the boat … like a snag catching hold of a fisherman’s line, it is always difficult to free a snagged line most times you lose hook and sinker

S4 – ‘stars open among the lilies’ – my first thought went to a patch of clear water with reflections from the sky – but perhaps more likely reference to the flowers themselves … in the next line their effect is so dramatic to be blinded – at least SP is blinded and this is after all the dark, dark, dark and then they are referred to as sirens for their beauty, imposing her femineity … clearly this sighting had a dramatic effect on SP … and in the last line there is a counter-play of silence as if SP and the audience is mummified

This is not the only SP poem which contrasts blackness with a sudden luminous spark of ‘heaven’ – consider, for example, ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ which also shows the extremes in the persona of SP.

Unfortunately the spirit of blackness haunted SP all of her life … in the poem the snag lifted and the boat moved on through the mass of lilies. Sadly, we all know that it was only a temporary reprieve and that her journey was cut short by those unsinkable demons below the surface.

‘The Prelude’ William Wordsworth – Nature

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William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth in the Lake District in England, an area known for its exceptional beauty. This countryside had a profound influence on his childhood and later in life he came back to live in the Lake District with his sister Dorothy.

His autobiographic epic poem ‘The Prelude’ is his most famous work. It is a long poem of 14 sections written in the form of a self-exploration. Reading this poem gives a clear understanding of how deeply he absorbed nature into his thinking. At times it seems he walked into a kind of romantic celestial field of daffodils. ‘The Prelude’ traces the growth of his mind through dark regions of intellect to an escape into his connectivity with nature. This was especially so following his great disappointment after going to France and becoming actively involved in the French Revolution. His invented life-force being called ‘Nature’ provided both great joy as well as a spiritual answer to his life.

He was certainly a great appreciator of nature and although not a ‘political environmentalist’ in terms of the sensitivity of today he does highlight humanity as being subservient within the forces of a greater natural world. How this ‘animal’ called nature responds to the threats posed by an indignant humanity is another question.

Some selected lines from ‘The Prelude’ (First Book, lines 401 to 424)

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought!
That giv’st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsaf’d to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At noon, and ‘mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling Lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
‘Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
And by the waters all the summer long.

William Wordsworth

WW also poses the question on whether we (you, I and humanity in general) have dim hearing to the voice of nature – are we caught up in the ‘vulgar works of man’.

A link to WW on Wikipedia

The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot

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The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot is a favourite Christmas poems. It is what I might call a factual poetic view of what the journey would have been like. At the same time giving latent links to events described in the bible. And of course giving the full implication of the birth of Christ.

Here is a link to this poem and more discussion

 

A Song for Simeon – T. S. Eliot – Analysis

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Looking at T. S..Eliot’s poem ‘A Song for Simeon’ based on the Gospel of Luke 2 verses 25-35 and the the followomg ‘Song of Simeon’ text –

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

My comments in bracketted italics.

A Song for Simeon

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

(The Roman Hyacinths denote the foreign domination at the time of Christ. A powerful description of old age … waiting for death … but there is sun in the distance … but waiting for the wind that chills … the ending of the journey … but Simeon is ‘waiting for the consolation of Israel’ before he can die. He will eventually get a very personal appreciation of that consolation.)

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

(Simeon’s testimony to a good life … but knowing that the world will change after the birth of JC … foreseeing the future … a time of sorrow and of fleeing from persecution by escaping to the mountains … fleeing from foreign armies and their weapons)

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.

(It is a season of birth and death … the death of winter and the birth of spring …  the death of the old order associated with the consolation and what this will bring to the world – he is now ready to die … he has been to the Temple and held the consolation of Israel ‘the child Christ’ in his own arms)

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

(Simeon sees the full consequences of the coming of the Lord’s Christ. He wants to depart without further participation. The ‘saint’s stair’ is not for him. His dying will be the same as those after him. The last lines give his final plea for departure having seen the ‘salvation’.)

T. S. Eliot

I have always thought the ‘Song of Simeon’ to be a beautiful representation of an aging gentleman who has led a good life and is ready to die. His life is now complete. He is happy to leave this world in peace and in the knowledge that all peoples will have access to this salvation. The inclusive nature so important in a world that is so divisive.

A Subaltern’s Love Song – John Betjeman – Analysis

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A Subaltern’s Love Song

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament — you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath.
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.

By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Betjeman

Subaltern – junior officer in the British Army of rank below captain.
Euonymus – a tree or bush grown for its decorative evergreen foliage and clusters of orange or red fruits.

Ten syllable lines of flowing (dancing) iambic rhythm with ‘aabb’ rhyme as the story of a love affair unfolds – all be it an imaginary conceit.

This is a delightful poem reflecting English middle-class culture at the time it was written in 1941. I’m sure they had a glass of lemonade and maybe a cucumber sandwich as they sat in the garden recovering from their tennis exertion. And owning a car shows a certain status and so too membership of a Golf Club.

The context behind this poem is very personal to the life of JB. The muse of this poem is Joan Hunter Dunn the daughter of a Farnborough doctor. JB met Joan in London in 1940. She was working in the canteen at the University of London where JB was working. At the time JB was a married man of seven years but he was so taken by Joan’s beauty and manner that he composed the above 44 line poem fantasizing himself as the subaltern. At a subsequent interview in 1965 Joan commented that her life was very much like that depicted in the poem and that the poem and meeting JB gave some light relief from the stress of the war.

Aldershot is the home of the British Army and Farnborough is adjacent and many will know about the Farnborough Air Show. I am familiar with Farnborough, Aldershot and Camberley. I can easily identify with the woodland scenery of the country lanes in the drive to the Golf Club. There is such a contrast in sentiment between these towns and the angry word blast that came in JB’s  1937 poem ‘Slough’ when he reacted so strongly to the changing English urban architecture. That tragic first line –
‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!’

It is quite obvious that a poet must be careful when including actual place names and actual people. This poem has both and hopefully today we would be more sensitive. For JB published the poem in a magazine without informing Joan Hunter Dunn. He then invited her to dinner and apologised. And in 1937 when he wrote ‘Slough’ JB was 31 without the recognition of Poet Laureate which brought more attention to the poem. On the centenary of Betjeman’s birth in 2006 his daughter Candida Lycett-Green apologised to Slough on his behalf saying her father regretted writing the poem.

Here is a link to details on Joan Hunter Dunn. She died in 2008 at the age of 92 … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hunter_Dunn

John Betjeman on Wikipedia – he was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death

Visitant – A. D. Hope – Analysis

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Visitant

Earth swings away to the cold.
Though I have what I came here to find,
Time changes and alters the mould.
As a new age replaces the old
I feel the world leave me behind.

It is not my world anymore;
But of course was it ever mine?
Bred up to a different law,
I came from a distant shore
To watch, to appraise, to divine.

Yet much which I saw became dear;
Some few were close to my heart;
Although it was perfectly clear
I was a stranger here
Standing aloof and apart.

Now it is time to return,
I shall miss this world more than I thought.
All I came here merely to learn
Holds me now with such love and concern,
To whom do I make my report?

A. D. Hope

There are four five line stanzas with rhyming scheme ‘abaab’.

We are here for such a short time and it is not our real ‘home’. We are only taking up temporary accommodation. So it is quite alright to consider ourselves as a visitor to the world – well that is the thought behind these words – so what has this visitation been like? And when we return to our true ‘home’ what report will be rendered (and to whom)?

The other underlying thought concerns age when the world of our youth is remembered with affection – was it ever ours anyway. As we age the changing world leaves us behind as much as we are about to leave the world behind too.

The world has been kind and will be missed. I like the nice sentiment to be held in the love of all that has been learnt.

Perhaps we should leave a written report below before that final journey then when we get to ‘wherever’ hopefully (excuse the pun) we may be able to reference it and then we won’t forget anything! Lines of communication may be a problem of course – a special type of Email?

Here is a link to the Australian poet A. D. Hope on Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._D._Hope