Author: richinaword

A Poem Just For Me – Roger McGough – Comments

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , , 1 Comment

A Poem Just For Me

Where am I now when I need me
Suddenly where have I gone?
I’m so alone here without me
Tell me please what have I done?

Once I did most things together
I went for walks hand in hand
I shared my life so completely
I met my every demand.

Tell me I’ll come back tomorrow
I’ll keep my arms open wide
Tell me that I’ll never leave me
My place is here at my side.

Maybe I’ve simply mislaid me
Like an umbrella or key
So until the day that I come my way
Here is a poem just for me.

Roger McGough

Well, some days you wake up and you just don’t feel your normal self … you’re not just there. What have you got to do to regain your Me! … who is this depressing foreigner that has walked into your skin while you have been sleeping … remove at once I want my Me back again … to feel good … like yesterday. Well, we all experience such feelings so it is easy to identify with these words … the question is how do we remove this imposter that has caused such an uncomfortable feeling.

Perhaps Roger’s poem helped him feel better … perhaps a poet always feels happier after creating a poem – well a poem that he thinks is Ok! … and looking at the text above he has put some work in construction and there is a nice flow of rhyme. A nice touch of humour with self-deprecation.

But do we know ourselves enough to know what we really should be doing in life … the true ‘Me’ that fits the jigsaw of existence. Even so we all have our down days and that is part of life – but getting to and doing something always helps don’t you think – so perhaps it is time to put the kettle  on (metaphorically speaking).

A link to Roger McGough on Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_McGough

Ant, Fish and Angel – John Blight – Comments

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , Leave a comment

Ant, Fish and Angel

Part of me, in the morning, may be an ant
or a fish swimming away, as I spit,
or defecate, collectively fouling the bay.
So I am part of my world and can’t
escape the bare truth, I am part of it;
that somewhere, an ant, or a fish swimming away,
is part of me. Oh ant! oh, circling fish!
stay, and look hard at me. Is it your wish
to be part of man, to devour his innate fear?
Into the maw of an ant I disappear.
How trifling, – be it a minnows appetite
or some great fish in a more sizeable bite
disposes of me – as such to reappear!
Angels and gods come bite and take your share.

John Blight (1913 – 1995)
Taken from The Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse.

This is such a different poem from my last Post in which Mary Oliver sees beauty in all nature and exhibits a sort of pantheistic undertone as she encounters the majesty of the world about her. But in this poem the whole of nature is reduced to a ‘dog eat dog’ devouring process. Everything is trapped in this process – we cannot escape for this is the way of the world. Everything is transformed to reappear as evolution takes its course, and we are all part of it.

One thing interesting is the implicit idea of zero waste for ‘everything’ is devoured – human waste is not wasted – thanks to the ant and the fish. It reminded me of the time I was in rural Vietnam a couple of years ago and being shown a ‘fish toilet’ by a villager.

Does it really matter how we are ‘devoured’? Well, there is a plea to the angels and the gods to come and take a share! Perhaps this is implicit anyway – if you take a pantheistic view of things!

Perhaps the creator didn’t have a waste-bin – something digest.

Sonnet – rhyming scheme abc/abc/dd/ee/ff/e/g
Maw = the mouth, stomach, jaws, or gullet of a voracious animal

John Blight on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Blight

The Summer Day – Mary Oliver – Comments

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , , Leave a comment

Mary Oliver is re-known for aligning the natural word with femininity. Here is one of her well known poems. I have broken the poem into a number of components with my commentary following in italics.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?

… from the general nebulous consideration to that of the very specific – the grasshopper … let us consider creation at this level where we can get our hands and eyes easily engaged

This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

… so looking at the grasshopper and with personal observation … the jaws and eyes are stand out features

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

… you can imagine interest kept until the grasshopper floats away … implying a sustained focus … and admiration in the movement of the insect

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

… an introduction to what is prayer for MO

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

… prayer can involve kneeling which is very apt … prayer can involve focus and awareness … so too appreciation … in this case an appreciation of nature for MO has spent the summer day in idle blessing of the wonder of nature … a way of saying thank you in the form of a living prayer of just being … exudes a certain contentment

Tell me, what else should I have done?

… very apt to be appreciative of nature on a summer day … we should all do this too … say thank you for the blessing of the natural world … defined specifically by our own place and time … whether or not we have fields at hand to wander in wonderment

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

… make the most of every moment – appreciate what we have … now and to the full

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your wild and precious life?

… a question that only the reader can answer … you are wild – part of the natural world … and of course you are precious … like all life

Mary Oliver (1935 – ) from House of Light

Perhaps this poem highlights the need for us to stop for a moment and say thank you … and interesting to look closely around us too … to see our blessings which we quite often take for granted … and be content on where we are … I guess we all need to do this at times.

A link to Mary Oliver reading this poem .

Mary Oliver on Wilipedia. 

The Poor, Poor Country – John Shaw Neilson

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , , Leave a comment

The Poor, Poor Country

Oh ’twas a poor country, in Autumn it was bare,
The only green was the cutting grass and the sheep found little there.
Oh, the thin wheat and the brown oats were never two foot high,
But down in the poor country no pauper was I.

My wealth it was the glow that lives forever in the young,
‘Twas on the brown water, in the green leaves it hung.
The blue cranes fed their young all day – how far in a tall tree!
And the poor, poor country made no pauper of me.

I waded out to the swan’s nest – at night I heard them sing,
I stood amazed at the Pelican, and crowned him for a king;
I saw the black duck in the reeds, and the spoonbill on the sky,
And in that poor country no pauper was I.

The mountain-ducks down in the dark made many a hollow sound,
I saw in sleep the Bunyip creep from the waters underground.
I found the plovers’ island home, and they fought right valiantly,
Poor was the country, but it made no pauper of me.

My riches all went into dreams that never yet came home,
They touched upon the wild cherries and the slabs of honeycomb,
They were not of the desolate brood that men can sell or buy,
Down in that poor country no pauper was I.

* * * * *

The New Year came with heat and thirst and the little lakes were low,
The blue cranes were my nearest friends and I mourned to see them go;
I watched their wings so long until I only saw the sky,
Down in that poor country no pauper was I.

John Shaw Neilson (1872 – 1942)

Pauper = impoverished person
Bunyip = legendary Australian monster

JSN did not have a formal education. He attended his local school for less than two years and as a small child worked as a farm-labourer for his father. Much of his life was spent labouring.

His Scottish family migrated to Australia and they took up a selection to clear and farm in the poor scrub covered Mallee of Victoria. It was a continual struggle trying to develop this harsh environment. It was aptly named as ‘poor country’.

JSN must have heard his father curse his predicament. The land was only seen in economic terms to escape poverty. But JSN saw the land as a boy discovering Nature without the dictate of financial gain. He was observant to all that this ‘poor country’ had to offer and unlike the improvised land he recognised the great wealth of his surroundings. And perhaps given the task to labour the land without siblings or children to play with he welcomed the birdlife as his friends. He saw the land from a different perspective and although without education gave his contrast voice to it in this poem.

The story of his life as a labourer and how he became recognised  as a poet is set out in this Australian Dictionary of Biography link … http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/neilson-john-shaw-764

Perhaps his most well-known poem is ‘The Orange Tree’ … http://richard-outoftheblue.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/orange-tree-john-shaw-neilson.html

Originally – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Originally

We came from our own country in a red room
Which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,
Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
where we didn’t live any more. I stared
at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.

All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,
leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue
where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.
Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,
leading to unimagined pebble-dashed estates, big boys
eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.
My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.

But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,
and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue
shedding its skin like a snake, my voice
in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.

Carol Ann Duffy

A poem about being asked this question … ‘where do you come from originally?’ … obviously you are now in another place. But being asked that question you have to give the questioner your own personal response to your original home place … and of course this may be many locations back depending on the extent of relocation in your life coupled with the time lapse of how long ago it was that you were back home in that original location.

This poem is the first poem in the book ‘The Other Country’. Arguably the first poem in a book is usually a key poem to entice readers to delve further. In similar regard the first stanza of that poem is most important.

For this Post I am going to look at that first stanza in the context of having read the whole poem enabling greater contextual background which might empower the text to greater understanding. That first line is so important too and the words ‘red room’ catch the reader into a bit of a thought puzzle. Here are my thoughts …

The poem is about the grief of a child in leaving their first home in the city to a place in the country. And the child remembers that time dearly and the journey is by car. The child is in a ‘red room’ so it could be reference to a red car. A child’s room in a house is very important to that child. Her new home in transit as she rides with her parents could in fact refer to the space in the car. ‘Red’ is a highly emotive colour for example a colour which promotes anger in a bull. The car is also ‘falling’ ‘through the fields as it travels personifying grieve.

Quite clearly there is great contrast between the emotional state of the child and the joy expressed by her mother as the mother sings to the tune of her husband’s turning wheels.

The child’s brothers appear to be younger but in great sympathy. And the contrast is again highlighted by the bawl of the brothers against the song of the mother. The brothers to not actually say ‘home, home’ – the ‘bawl, bawl’ states this meaning through these cries.

Although the car is travelling away from the city – in the eyes of the children each mile away is a mile back to their original home. Back to the city, back to the street, back to their original home and back to their precious first rooms. The rooms are now vacant which adds poignancy. Again there is great contrast in the two directions associated with the change of location. Joy in one direction sorrow in another.

It appears the child has something in her hands in the car to remind her of her room. She is holding the ‘paw’ (hand) of her precious mute toy-friend. A friend that is ‘blind’ to the predicament of the journey.

This poem gives reinforcement on why Carol Ann Duffy is such an eminent poet in the minds of many readers and gives authority to CAD in being chosen as the UK Poet Laureate in 2009.

Some more questions that you may be hesitant to contemplate – Where do you come from originally? and How does your current mind create the image of that past place?  How does it differ from the actual reality of that original first experience?

Carol Ann Duffy on Wikipedia

Death in Leamington – John Betjeman – Analysis

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , , 2 Comments

Death in Leamington

She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev’ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa.

Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work’d it
Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high ‘mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
She covered the fire with coal.

And ‘Tea!’ she said in a tiny voice
“Wake up! It’s nearly five.”
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive!

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
At the grey, decaying face,
As the calm of a Leamington ev’ning
Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall.

John Betjeman 1906-1984 (from Mount Zion 1932)
This was one of the first poems published by JB.

S1 … The first line defines the death and place of death without adjective and as a matter-of-fact statement, leaving the reader to furnish an image from his or her own thoughts. Time-wise she died at the time the evening star – Venus – the planet of love and beauty – was visible from her window, an appropriate marriage with death. The window had expensive plate glass and looked out over Leamington Spa – a royal town noted for those seeking heath cures.

S2 … Death is transferred to the unfinished crochet work … the fingers are dead in line with the voice. How the crochet will come alive again and finished is another matter. It points to how the lady was using her last days – the scene is easy to picture.

S3 … The Nurse enters with her tea-things pre-occupied with her the jobs at hand and her internal thoughts and oblivious to the death. What a brilliant way to put it – ‘alone with her own little soul’ – and again the tea-things are personified in a similar way. A clear separateness is established between the death and the Nurse.

S4 … the Nurse goes about her routine evening work … she is fully focused on this … before having time to address the sick lady

S5 … then with some cheeriness the Nurse announces the arrival of tea … asking for her patient to wakeup … you can imagine her speaking with the back to the bed … the Nurse is very much alive and of course her ladyship very much dead … the room is distinctly divided … ‘half dead and half alive’ nicely gives a comparison between the two.

S6 … then still not aware of the situation and not looking at the bed the Nurse comments on the state of the plasterwork … death is personified in the falling plaster … and the Nurse says ‘do you know that the heart will stop’ referring to the arches … (if the lady could speak she would say ‘Yes indeed’!)

S7 … then attention is turned to the bed and bedside … and Nurse becomes well aware of what has happened … and there is a still calm about the death scene and equally the still of a Leamington evening drifts into place as the day dies in unison

S8 … the Nurse is very careful now to show great respect by moving bottles to safety at the bedside and then quietly leaving without disturbing the peace of death to quietly tip toe down the stairs and to turn down the hall gas – (symbolic sympathy by this action)

It is so easy to picture the scene … beautifully crafted with the dying day and the dying plaster… with just enough detail in the account of the transaction focusing on specific actions … showing the respect between Nurse and patient together with a sort of matter of fact acceptance of death which Nurse knew was coming soon.

It is easy to see why this was chosen as the first up poem in my ‘Best of Betjeman’ book.

John Betjeman was Poet Laureate of the UK from 1972 to 1984 and here is a link to John Betjeman on Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Betjeman

And here is a reading of this poem on YouTube (by Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams) …   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dI8SYa8Szo

Two ‘Voices’ – Cavafy

richinaword Other words on poetry, Poetry analysis Tags: , , 2 Comments

‘Voices’ – Cavafy and editing

The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy was a perfectionist, obsessively refining every single line of his poetry. He did not like his early work and changed his early poems by making them free of adjectives. He rewrote the poem ‘Sweet Voices’ with a poem simply titled ‘Voices’. It is interesting to compare the two versions … see below …

Sweet Voices (1894)

Those voices are the sweeter which have fallen
forever silent, mournfully
resounding only in the heart that sorrows.

In dreams the melancholic voices come,
timorous and humble,
and bring before our feeble memory

the precious dead, whom the cold cold earth
conceals; for whom the mirthful
daybreak never shines, nor springtimes blossom.

Melodious voices sigh; and in the soul
our life’s first poetry
sounds — like music, in the night, that’s far away.
(translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)

Voices (1904)

Imagined voices, and beloved, too,
of those who died, or of those who are
lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return
sounds from the first poetry of our life—
like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.
(translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)

Constantine Cavafy (29 April 1863 – April 29, 1933)

I prefer the adjective-free version. The reader is left to create his or her own adjectives – there is no need to define the voices as sweet, melodious, or melancholic… the reader perhaps remembering specific voices of those that have been dear to them, whether died or lost … ‘sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them’ … no more needs to be said … this one line is sufficient.

A poem is a perpetual Lazarus … dead meat … only coming alive when it is read … and when a poem does come alive the poem is not merely the words on the page but an extension involving the reader … the poem is a unique combination of both poet and reader. In the above the reader component is all important.

A link to Cavafy on Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_P._Cavafy

IPSI Festival Canberra – Poetry and Place – Simon Armitage

richinaword Other words on poetry, Poetry analysis Tags: , , Leave a comment

The International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) is part of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research in the Arts and Design Faculty of Canberra University.

Last week (6-16 Sept 2016) IPSI was host to a Festival entitled ‘Poetry on the Move’. And poetry is certainly on the move in Canberra in an upward direction. There were quite a variety of sessions including launches, readings, workshops and lectures.

There were two international poets in residence for the Festival – Simon Armitage from the UK and Tusiata Avia a Samoan-New Zealand poet.

For this post I will concentrate on the keynote lecture given by Simon Armitage (Professor of Poetry at Sheffield University, and last year appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford – a part-time position.)

His topic was Poetry and Place. The first-up poem he chose to demonstrate the link was the Ted Hughes poem – ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’.

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket –
And you listening.
A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath –
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

I was interested in the key word that SA chose in relation to ‘place’. It was the word ‘there’ in that long first line in the second stanza.

‘There’ telescopes the mind to a distinct familiar place – familiar to the poet Ted Hughes. TH wrote this poem at ‘Court Green’, Devon. If you are familiar with the English countryside and the narrow lanes and if you have experienced waiting for a long line of cows to wind their way to a place of milking you can readily visualise a specific place akin to that described.

If a poet knows a place intimately then description is authentic and, as in this poem, if personal detail is involved more attention is likely in the construction. That instance in the yard involving TH and Frieda is caught as a lasting memory of a valued moment between a father and the toddler daughter. Apparently Sylvia Plath had a liking for this text as she had kept the manuscript and it was in her flat at the time of her death.

I have discussed this poem in more detail in a previous post, which includes comments from Andrew Motion … http://richard-outoftheblue.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/full-moon-and-little-frieda-ted-hughes.html

A link to Canberra University and IPSI … https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/cccr/ipsi

A link to Simon Armitage’s ‘Poetry and Place’ lecture will appear on the IPSI journal website … http://www.axonjournal.com.au/