Author: richinaword

Prayer – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis

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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.

Carol Ann Duffy

Minim = a musical note with the time value of half a semibreve or two crotchets. It is written as an open note head with a stem.
Train = long moving line of people

Looking at this sonnet …

The first quatrain … when in the middle of a task something to the peripheral arrests attention … in this instant a voice from the trees … as though someone else is speaking and there is communion with the environment … the woman stops what she is doing and for one brief moment there is an appreciation of life … the joy of just being.… there is a gift of thanks … or putting it another way this can be thought of as a prayer of thanks whether or not just a thank you for life or whether a thank you to another ‘God’.

The second quatrain … prayers happen regardless of any formal faith … night is the time when the mind is vulnerable … and often in those sleep hours thoughts occur seemingly out of nowhere… and if the truth of the matter unravels there is usually some pain and discomfort from this communion in any resolution.

Maybe hearing a piece of music gives association to something way back from his youth … perhaps to a time when the man was more motivated and a time when he was following his young heart with strong purpose … and again this may be painful and the man may seek consolation if reflecting on unfilled dreams.

The third quatrain … pray for us now – this looks like an ask … an ask for help and we all need help and support in order to give help and support … prayer is defined as a solemn request or a giving of thanks to an object of worship (usually God) … so this is an ask for us to ask our ‘God’ for help for those in need … to invoke an external force … if the lodger needed consolation then the Grade 1 piano scales could be seen as a response to prayer. The last sentence seems to show a person in grief … as though they named their loss … in grief for a child and in need of consolation … in need of prayer

The rhyming couplet … mentioning the shipping forecast invokes a prayer for those at sea … a prayer that sailors may be able to heed the information and not risk life … darkness outside gives the feeling that prayer is a mystery and hidden … whereas inside the radio’s prayer gives the other side of the coin that prayer always emanates from the internal reaching out from the person

Re: shipping forecasts … the unique and distinctive sound of these broadcasts has led to their attracting an audience much wider than that directly interested in maritime weather conditions. Many listeners find the repetition of the names of the sea areas almost hypnotic, particularly during the night-time broadcast at 0048 UK time. (from Wikipedia)

I do like this sonnet as it widens the concept of traditional prayer and brings prayer down to the basics of everyday communication in the living of life.

And to end, –  a prayer that our daily transactions are appropriate as we negotiate life!

In the Bleak Mid-Winter – Christina Rossetti

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A Christmas Carol

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air –
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can, I give Him –
Give my heart.

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894)

Christina Rossetti was asked to write a Christmas poem for a magazine and so she had to consider the audience and clearly she has stayed true to the traditional Christmas story. And quite clearly she has but poetic thought in creating five eight line stanzas with rhyme and rhythm. So much so that her words have been used to create one of the most popular Christmas carols and the first line ‘in the bleak mid-winter’ has become well known.

S1 – she lived in London so snow and a winter Christmas was synonymous. Winter is always an appropriate setting for the coming of Christ … for the birth of redemption in a cold hard bleak world. And looking back on 2015 it doesn’t take much to see that a little bleakness is in evidence.

S2 – in this stanza there is an interpretation of biblical passages so Christina must have been familiar with her bible – the first four lines of the stanza are questioned in the analysis in Wikipedia (see the footnote below) … the lines ‘Heaven and earth shall flee away / When He comes to reign’ suggest a second coming – but who has any idea how this will manifest itself! Perhaps a daughter will be sent next time, that would show a nice balance between the sexes.

S3 – I have always liked the humble beginnings and the makeshift environment for the arrival of the most powerful entity imaginable.

S4 – of all the people and paraphernalia around the stable it is the mother Mary who truly worships the new born with a kiss. Whether or not He cried when He was born we do not know – perhaps it would be quite poetic and very appropriate if he had.

cherubim = angel, chubby-faced child
seraphim = an angel of the highest order of nine rankings

S5 – this shows a personal identity with Jesus … and if we have any understanding of the Christ gift in its unimaginable enormity then there is only one gift in return – it costs of course.

May you appreciate your gifts this Christmas and enjoy with family and friends.

Here is a You Tube recording of the carol sung by Susan Boyle

Footnote …

From Wikipedia … Wikipedia Analysis

‘Hymnologist and theologian Ian Bradley has questioned the poem’s theology: “Is it right to say that heaven cannot hold God, nor the earth sustain, and what about heaven and earth fleeing away when he comes to reign?”[3] However I Kings 8.27, in Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the Temple, says: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you.” Regarding “heaven and earth fleeing away”, many New Testament apocalyptic passages use such language, principally Revelation 20. 11 “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them” (KJV). Similar language is used in II Peter 3. 10-11: “The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire… That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (NIV).’

Let us drink and be merry – Thomas Jordan

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Let us drink and be merry

Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!
The changeable world to our joy is unjust,
All treasure’s uncertain,
Then down with your dust!
In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence,
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.

We’ll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly,
Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy:
Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea,
Dame Venus, love’s lady,
Was born of the sea:
With her and with Bacchus we’ll tickle the sense,
For we shall be past it a hundred years hence.

Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown’d
And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground.
Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour
That one but the stars
Are thought fit to attend her,
Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense,
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence.

Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears,
Turn all our tranquill’ty to sighs and to tears?
Let’s eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us,
’Tis certain, Post mortem
Nulla voluptas.
For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense,
Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence.

Thomas Jordan (1612-1685)

The poem is well crafted – iambic with rhyming couplets – it has been labelled a song and it does have a nice rhythmic beat.

Theorbo – plucked string instrument of the lute family
Venus – Goddess of love and beauty
Bacchus – God of wine
Post mortem nulla voluptas – after death no pleasure remains

Interesting that oysters were known as an aphrodisiac over four hundred years ago.

Well it is the season to be merry. Thomas Jordan is not thinking of Christmas – quite clearly he is thinking of death of where he, or others, will be in a hundred years’ time.

To me the words have a sense of ‘must’ and a sense of urgency while accepting that we only have this moment – the now to be enjoyed in all its’ fullness. But in my book when you try to force merriment the party often falls flat.

Having said that I insist you have a ‘merry’ Christmas.

Anyway isn’t Christmas the celebration of the birth of life eternal so who knows what pleasures will be unwrapped in the future! Well one day we all may know.

A link to Thomas Jordan on Wikipedia.

The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats – Analysis

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The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

Comments …

It is Advent now and the lead up to the celebration of the birth of Christ. In this poem Yeats considers the lead up to a second coming – the inference is the coming of another being to the world whether or not a second coming of Christ.

The first eight lines of the poem define the nature of a world scene as the prerequisite to such an event. This is not a pleasant view for ‘the best lack all conviction’ the worst ‘full of passionate intensity’. It is as though the world has lost contact with its creator – the falcon not hearing the falconer. And that memorable line ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’.

Yeats also suggest the world will know intuitively when it is time for a second coming. For Yeats it is the ancient image of the Great Sphinx that comes to mind – a sculpture that was created about 2,500 years before the birth of Christ. And Yeats identifies a second coming with the underlying ‘Spirit of the World’ made manifest through this ancient sculpture. But what has invoked the pending birth of this somewhat terrifying mystical monster?

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle

Well, I think the answer is in the above lines – ‘twenty centuries of stony sleep’. When Christ came into the world everything was turned on its head and life suddenly became a little uncomfortable. This is made so very clear on a practical level in the T. S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’.

The question is has the world responded to any measurable extent to the message of Christ. In Yeats’ scenario it looks like the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. He was writing after the end of the First World War, but what of today – I will leave it for the reader to contemplate on how our world is changing.

Looking at this poem perhaps the ‘response’ to a ‘non-responsive world’ is the coming of something quite frightening exemplified by a slouching sphinx crawling towards Bethlehem to be born.

Alternatively, the slouching sphinx may be the world that we are currently creating. We are perhaps in the process of slouching towards the birth of quite a monster.

Footnotes …

Gyre … a circular course of action, in the context of this poem perhaps a historical cycle of about 2000 years.

Spiritus Mundi  -a Latin term that literally means, ‘world spirit’.

According to William Butler Yeats this is a universal memory and a ‘muse’ of sorts that provides inspiration to artists.

The Great Sphinx of Giza from Wikipedia …

The Terrifying One; literally: Father of Dread, commonly referred to as the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining or couchant sphinx (a mythical creature with a lion’s body and a human head) that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the face of the Pharaoh Khafra.

It is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 73.5 metres (241 ft) long, 19.3 metres (63 ft) wide, and 20.22 m (66.34 ft) high. It is the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafra (c. 2558–2532 BC).

see T. S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’  

Poetry and Influence

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To what extent can poetry influence the world … well, for that matter, to what extent can any words or thoughts change behaviour and influence life. It is happening all the time of course … we all contribute in one way or another. Today the influence of  the internet and social networking is a very powerful force … that is another issue.

And for those who believe in a ‘living creator’ … how is ‘this voice’ made manifest in the on-going life of the world – if at all?

Song of the Universe

Every Voice
Endless Rapture
Your

Voice
Oration Instilled
Creating Eternity

Some days we may not hear great harmony.

Below is the text I wrote for a local Anglican publication a couple of days after the terrorist attack in Paris.. It happened to be on ‘International Tolerance Day’.

Paris Aftermath

Where to now after such a vile act that everyone is finding hard to comprehend? How should we deal with those that foster terrorism abroad and how do we deal with the self-proclaimed terrorist Islamic State when any form of negotiation is impossible?

Anger and fear may generate more violence in the form of retaliation and revenge. And unfortunately increased polarisation is inevitable. Annihilation of the enemy and from a distance to minimise personal loss is always going to be a short term band aid solution.

The following poem was written to counteract those that think the only solution is violence and annihilation. Terrorists for all their blatant sins happen to be human so on this ‘International Day of Tolerance’ it is well to remember this fact.

Closure
in memory of a twelve year old who self-detonated
early to save lives

don’t slam the door kid, when you leave your room
don’t slam the door tight when you enter the night
go quietly; go gently, as you enter the night
go gently as you vanish from sight

at that age when there is no age
and when the rolling of the years
matters only to another
and the inscription on the wall
is left for others to recall
and when they resurrect your name
will they relinquish certain blame?
let them shed their tears kid!

how can that have any meaning
is there meaning in a flower?
you knew exactly who you were kid!

don’t slam the door kid when you leave your room
don’t slam the door tight when you enter the night
go quietly; go gently, as you enter the night
go gently as you vanish from sight

Footnote …

The long term solution will lie with succeeding generations – ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’. It is imperative that we instil in our children a sense of value and respect for life – their own life and the life of others – in particular to be inclusive of all peoples no matter what religion. Tantamount to this text is the ability to think for oneself without being misled by the mob. Hopefully such values will stay with them throughout their days in that great endeavour to make the world a better place.

Being an optimist I know that one day peace will again come to the troubled regions of our world.

In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’.

Enjoy the beauty of this day and the wonder of creation.

Richard Scutter 16 November 2015

Il pleure dans mon coeur – Paul Verlaine

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Il pleure dans mon coeur

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon coeur ?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un coeur qui s’ennuie
Ô le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s’écoeure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison?
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C’est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon coeur a tant de peine !

           Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896)

My translation without attempting rhyme …

My heart is crying

my heart is crying
as it rains on the town
what is this sadness
so heavy on my heart

o sweet sound of rain
on the roofs and ground
filling my heart with grief
the song of the rain

it rains without reason
in this sicken heart
what! – no betrayal?
this meaningless grief

what pain is worse
that is without reason
without love or hate
that makes my heart cry
……….

This poem expels such a melancholic mood. I would not regard this as depression more an overwhelming sadness while watching rain fall, perhaps looking out of a window in Paris on a gloomy wet winter day.

Well today there is plenty of reason for pain to flood the heart as one looks at the rain falling in Paris in the news items in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. And paining the many world-wide who are far from Paris who look through the window of television sets.

The above was taken from this Site – http://thehuuvandan.org/lit.html where there are more examples of his work and more French poetry.

From this Site a comment about Paul Verlaine –

‘Verlaine’s art resides in the music of his poetry. It is this inebriating quality, combined with the finely wrought melancholy, the sadness of love and unattained happiness, the delicate and sentimental touch, that sets him apart as a magician of the word.’.

And Am to Pambula Come – Michael Farrell – Analysis

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AndAmtoPambulaCome (2)

This poem appeared in the Canberra Times on 17 October (see the above image). It is by the ‘modern experimental poet’ Michael Farrell and as you can see it is a little different from a normal sonnet though it meets the fourteen line requirement. You will notice there are no capital letters and that includes place names and personal pronouns.

In trying to give some understanding I broke the text into six components defined by the punctuation. My initial comments are in italics after each of these sections. Alongside the poem is an image of what appears to be sea waves so I bore this in mind when I looked at the text.

Note that they were my thoughts without any knowledge of the experimental nature of the poet so please read the comments that follow after the poem …

And Am to Pambula Come

Pambula is a seaside town on the south New South Wales coast. So perhaps this is about someone making a visit to that town.

Unvisited

Pambula is declared as unvisited. Why we don’t know until we understand the poem.

as i wash my mouth with a wave of his name, do not tax
me with any version of fragen: of the hill i came from or
neighbouring resort.

After reading the whole poem this is my interpretation. I think the person speaking is an Aborigine and ‘he’ is the personification of progress – which is distasteful. Don’t ask me who I am and where I came from whether from the country or a holiday resort. ‘Fragen’ is German for ‘ask’. Asking this is foreign to me in any language.

rather let me learn the art of packing
groceries, kneeling in creeks for splinters of yellow that
a thousand might make a sock.

Let me just keep on doing the menial tasks assigned to me packing groceries or searching for gold – to support your meaningless industries – a cynical statement .

let me be born here,
while the dingoes come, where the non-mechanics and
the would-not-be millhands flock.

Let this be my home, my birth where there are dingoes and where the people flock that are not mechanics or millhands. People I can identify with – my flock.

my ears full of
scriptures on the sand: i stand with a slice of cucumber or
plate of melon to refresh my palate, to avoid swallowing
brine, when i see the castle your head resembles.

My scriptures are of the sand and the sound of the sea. Not the scriptures brought by foreigners from overseas. Perhaps ‘head’ is a reference to the person asking or represents the personification of progress. Progress started from the sea and from the land of castles so the sea could represent the inflow of progress many years ago – however there is a certain irony here as cucumber and melon may have come from overseas.

there
are things to do in towamba and burragate, where i might
if necessary, gouge some sap with my teeth so i mightn’t
speak.

Burragate and Towamba are two places away from the coast and up the Bega valley. Presumably untouched by progress and where the trees are still available – where there is no need to complain about deforestation.

No trains arrive, and if trains go he’d be on them
i’ve plenty of reason, axe in hand, the forest to denude.

No trains arrive progress hasn’t reached these places and if trains came progress and the deforesters would sure be on them. And if they came there would be plenty of reason to do my own deforestation by removing the foresters with my axe.

If you treated these last two lines as the ‘rhyming couplet’ there is no way one could understand this sentence without reading the full poem – except of course picking up a great degree of anger.

Referring back to ‘Unvisited’ – the land is in the blood of the Aborigine so when he goes to Pambula he is never a visitor.

Michael Farrell

The above was based on my interpretation without knowledge of the experimental nature of  the poet. As a follow-up I obtained the following feedback on the Canberra Times literary selection … and as you can see I fell into an over-analysis trap. I have retained my text in this Post as an example of what can happen!

… ‘the speaker in the poem is a gay man missing his lover. However trying to “translate” a Michael Farrell poem into any kind of sequential logical train of thought is missing the point. He is deliberately trying to jump all over the place. At the base of this poem is a moving sense of longing and loss, and a deep engagement with landscape, but the path the poem takes is meant to be confusing, surreal, playful and unsettling’

The links below may be helpful in understanding the poet and the nature of this very different experimental work.

This link gives a review of his all work …
http://www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/who-fries-a-crumpet/

Details on the poet Michael Farrell via the Australian Book Review Site – https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/component/k2/152-march-2015-no-369/2402-michael-farrell-is-poet-of-the-month

In summary, it is a difficult poem to come to terms with and I know some people are immediately put off by this type of poetry and readily dismiss it. An understanding of the poet may increase value.

Journey to the Interior – Margaret Atwood – Analysis

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Journey to the Interior

There are similarities
I notice: that the hills
which the eyes make flat as a wall, welded
together, open as I move
to let me through; become
endless as prairies; that the trees
grow spindly, have their roots
often in swamps; that this is a poor country;
that a cliff is not known
as rough except by hand, and is
therefore inaccessible. Mostly
that travel is not the easy going

from point to point, a dotted
line on a map, location
plotted on a square surface
but that I move surrounded by a tangle
of branches, a net of air and alternate
light and dark, at all times;
that there are no destinations
apart from this.

There are differences
of course: the lack of reliable charts;
more important, the distraction of small details:
your shoe among the brambles under the chair
where it shouldn’t be; lucent
white mushrooms and a paring knife
on the kitchen table; a sentence
crossing my path, sodden as a fallen log
I’m sure I passed yesterday

(have l been
walking in circles again?)

but mostly the danger:
many have been here, but only
some have returned safely.

A compass is useless; also
trying to take directions
from the movements of the sun,
which are erratic;
and words here are as pointless
as calling in a vacant wilderness.

Whatever I do I must
keep my head. I know
it is easier for me to lose my way
forever here, than in other landscapes

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is better known as a Canadian author of books rather than a poet. She is a prolific writer and very creative so it is interesting to look at this poem. 

S1 … This is obviously an internal journey within contrasted with travelling in the external environment. The first line states that there are ‘similarities’. The eyes define the scene as a wall to be broken … perhaps a ‘flat wall’ as the scene only comes ‘known’ when entered at a personal level. But what is found in S1 is that the environment is endless as ‘prairies’ and that it is ‘poor country’ and not easy going.

Well, to get to know yourself – who you really are – is perhaps a difficult and endless task. But this is the start of the journey so, hopefully, the country will improve with travel. It is interesting that the cliffs cannot be seen for what they are except at a very base level.

S2 … Destination is unknown except to be vague as a dotted line between points on a map. The endless light and dark could relate to both day and night as well as emotional highs and lows. I guess when we start any internal search we have little idea of what might be revealed … and again it is a difficult journey to untangle.

S3 … It is the small details in life that have internal effect. Small details can absorb much of our thinking if they have sufficient deep association. ‘A shoe among the brambles under a chair/ where it shouldn’t be’ – this implies an unfortunate meeting with another person – the ‘shoe’ indicating crossing another’s journey. White mushrooms are immature mushrooms and a paring knife is used to peel fruit to make it edible. What significance these hold for the poet is not known. You could of course liken the personal journey to that of fruit being made acceptable.

A ‘sentence crossing’ my path has double meaning – life as a sentence, and the written sentence of the poet that is now ‘sodden as a fallen log’ whereas yesterday it was more acceptable – ‘I’m sure I passed yesterday’.

S4 and S5 – this search for self is circulating into deep depression to the extent of self-danger. The poet knows within of this danger – ironic self knowledge given the circumstances.

S6 – There is no solution not from any words, not from the poet’s writing or from the Sun (whether or not indicating religious connotation). There is a cry for help.

S7 – The solution is internal – to stay focused and rational – ‘keep my head’  … a double meaning in a very real sense.

Here is a Wikipedia link  to Margaret Atwood.