Poetry

Inversnaid – Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Inversnaid

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).

Inversnaid is a small hamlet on the north-eastern shore of Lock Lomond, Scotland. There is a famous waterfall and hotel there and I wouldn’t be surprised if Gerard Manley Hopkins stayed there at some stage.

This poem is an excellent example of alliteration, but more so onomatopoeia – where the sound of the word suggests the meaning of the word – as in hiss, snap and bang.

And you notice that the very first word falls into this category. But what about the makeup word ‘twindles’ – a mixture of twists, twitches and dwindles. To me twindles just sounds so right for the movement of water in the stream – it has a certain sparkle-life to it, compare to trundles for example.

But look at some other make-up words –

Rollrock – a combination of rolling and rocking frown on the moor
Heathpacks = clumps of heathland, maybe including heather
wind-puff-bonnet – froth which sits like a hat lightly on the water and created by the wind
fawn-froth – suggests a light brown-yellow (fawn = young deer)
Fell-frowning fell = high barren field or moor – the water creates a
Beadbonny – this word conjures up the look of the branches of an ash tree – bonnie = beautiful beads (black from memory).

And the poem contains Scottish specific words – Burn = stream, Brae = hillside along a river, and Degged = sprinkled.

Comb = a rippling stretch of water.

… and I like the use of the word ‘groins’ that suggest the body curves of the hillside

The last stanza is an environmentalist cry. But this is a poem to be heard, here is a link to a BBC audio plus visual images of the scenery –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/poetryhopkins/1hopkins_inversubjectrev1.shtml

… and if you are interested in discovering Scottish words this is a good site … http://mudcat.org/scots/index.cfm

To Time – An early Sylvia Plath Sonnet

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The following sonnet was written by Sylvia Plath about 1952-53 at the age of 19-20, and probably as a student as a class assignment for her English professor, Alfred Young Fisher, at Smith College. Apparently SP followed the annotated suggestions of her professor.

Sonnet: To Time

Today we move in jade and cease with garnet
amid the clicking jewelled clocks that mark
our years. Death comes in a casual steel car, yet
we vaunt our days in neon, and scorn the dark.

But outside the diabolic steel of this
most plastic-windowed city, I can hear
the lone wind raving in the gutter, his
voice crying exclusion in my ear.

So cry for the pagan girl left picking olives
beside a sun-blue sea, and mourn the flagon
raised to toast a thousand kings, for all gives
sorrow: weep for the legendary dragon.

Time is a great machine of iron bars
that drains eternally the milk of stars.

Sylvia Plath

This poem was taken from the Juvenilia section of ‘SP Collected Poems’.

Here are some questions to promote discussion …

What type of sonnet … what is the rhyming scheme and metre?

What is the overall issue of concern?

How does jade and garnet relate to time?

Why does the poet view the city as plastic-windowed?

What is the overall feeling conveyed by the second stanza?

Why a ‘legendary dragon’ … why weep for the dragon?

What is missed by the reader if only the couplet is read?

And for the creative, write an alternative couplet based on a positive perspective of time in relation to the universe, for example …

time endlessly spreads the rays of the sun
throughout our world touching everyone.

Winter Sea – Caseys Beach

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WinterSeaCaseysBeach

Caseys Beach, Batehaven – South Coast of New South Wales

Winter Sea – Caseys Beach

applique on applique of dulling light
washes the bland sky-sea merge
into an ever increasing dark

spates of seaweed disgorge a thick edge
the lonely remnants of empty days
the late afternoon drifts to an early close

finally the beach is lost of light
but an intermittent sigh continues
like a sallow woman refusing death

across the road homes define
as lights increase in intensity and number
respite to the night-wrapped street

Richard Scutter 26 June 2014

Winter – Shakespeare – Analysis

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Winter
(From Love’s Labour’s Lost)

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

William Shakespeare

Crabs = crab apples … my mother used to core apples and fill with raisins and currants and brown sugar then bake in the oven with the roast
Keel = to cool – perhaps by stirring the pot
Saw = well known phrase giving advice about life

Rhyming scheme – ababaa – then the chorus

S1 … Well here we have the winter of seventeen century rural England … the poor old shepherd can only blow on his fingers … a vain attempt at warmth … logs and milk have to be brought inside the milk freezing on the journey … and blood is nipp’d perhaps implying loss of circulation (rather than a reference to drink) … and difficult mobility (ways be foul) … it gives great emphasis to the harsh outside conditions

Chorus … we are taken to the night blacking out the cold except for the hoot of the staring owl … but why is this a merry note? … usually more thought of as sinister and haunting … perhaps it is because we are now indoors with Joan and in the welcome warmth of the kitchen and from this perspective it could be seen as ‘merry’ … and ‘merry’ has connotations with Christmas time too and celebration … an indoor celebration from the cold

… but why is Joan greasy? – because of her work with meat in the kitchen? … or because her clothes are dirty covered in grease from cooking – rather than because she has greasy skin herself … for it must have been difficult to keep clothes clean in those day.

S2 …Again the contrast between the outdoors and the indoors returning to the kitchen and the cooking of crab-apples before the repeat of the chorus

What is the parson’s saw – getting his teeth into the congregation? …perhaps all fire and brimstone … but winter is a time of coughing and colds and the congregation get their own back by drowning the parson’s words with their noise … and winter slows things down and in line with the nipp’d blood of S1 the birds sit brooding … so there is a nice balance between the two stanzas

The Chorus again … the repeat of the owl from the warmth of the kitchen

In summary, this is a descriptive poem on winter and how people lived at that time in rural England giving great contrast between the outside severity and the indoor warmth – with the sense of it being rather nice to be indoors after being outside.

On a personal note I can identify with this poem remembering times when I was a child and we used to have family visits to an uncle, a farmer in rural Hampshire. In winter the large low-ceiling farmhouse lounge was heated by a wood-fire – the fireplace of such dimensions that one could literally sit within its structure on either side of the threatening blaze – while outside a blustery cold wind battered snowflakes against the front door. And of course the dining room table was always adorned with wonderful home cooked food – in particular meringue halves kissed with farm-cream and brandy snaps filled with the same. The contrast between the warmth and cold externals was heightened when car trouble sometimes delayed our departure into the black night.

Douglas Stewart – Scribbly Gum – Analysis

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Here is a simple poem from Australian poet Douglas Stewart (1913 – 1985). He was born in New Zealand but lived most of his life in Australia. He was editor of the Bulletin for twenty years. This poem appeared in the centenary publication of the Bulletin.

Scribbly Gum

A child might think
The fairies have come
And scribbled in play
On the scribbly gum,

But we say, no;
Burrowing and biting,
It’s some small insect
Has done this writing;

And yet as though
Wild honey dripped
Down the white tree
To shape the script,

The creature makes
Such clear gold words
Of rock and bush
And leaves and birds

And it its own strange life
As it writes on bark
Like poetry dancing
Out of the dark,

Perhaps after all
The thick white wood
Does hide a fairy
Or just as good.

Douglas Stewart
 
The shorter the text the more thought needed … the more imagination needed perhaps and this is a poem about both imagination and nature and how we communicate with nature. Douglas Stewart wrote many poems on nature so that it is no surprise that such a poem was included in the special edition.

When I first read the poem I immediately thought of my grandchildren and their interpretation of nature and life when they do not relate to any adult understanding. Children, of course, readily make up fanciful stories. The Sribbly Gum along with other eucalypts shed bark leaving quite a beautiful white trunk and insects that create their random scribble then open up a book to be read. Similarly honey can also create interesting language on the trunk of the tree – notice that the ‘words’ are in gold indicating both importance and the link with honey.

This can be seen as nature communicating – and a child or a poet or anyone with imagination can interpret accordingly to their fancy.

And perhaps this is what poetry is all about – an imaginative interpretation of all life. And it must be said that we are part of the natural world too, for so often we seem to separate humanity as something special above environment and other life.

The question is how does nature communicate within its own … and of more importance what is our understanding … it may not be as clear as the scribble on a tree – but it is always there for us to understand, as well as admire the beauty and diversity. And of course when the environment turns sick the message is very clear … how we respond is another matter.

And for those that like to explain everything in life … it is well to recognise that there will always be ‘fairies’ – or just as good! – and we should take a lesson from our children. After all what would life be without the unknown and a little mystery.

Below is an image of the trunk of a Sribbly Gum.

Scribbly Gum 

A link to the background on Douglas Stewart.

Shelley and the Moon

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The moon is a feature in some of Shelley’s work … including his masterpiece ‘Prometheus Unbound’ … whether or not you know anything about Shelley and his poetry have a look at the imagery conjured by this beautiful little poem (these are two fragments that were put together after his death) …

THE MOON

I.

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp’d in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.

II.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

… and here are some ‘transformation lines’ from Prometheus Unbound (1 see below) showing a thankful Moon in discussion with Earth …

THE EARTH
…

“How art thou sunk, withdrawn, cover’d drunk up
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drained by a Desart-troop – a little drop for all;
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, Love
Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunderball”

THE MOON

The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid Oceans flow and sing and shine
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth
My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!

Gazing on thee, I feel, I know,
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow
And living shapes upon my bosom move:
Music is in the sea and air,
Winged clouds soar here and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
“Tis Love, all Love!

Prometheus Unbound Act 4 (lines 350-369)

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Footnote …

1 Prometheus Unbound is based on the work of Aeschylus which dramatizes the sufferings of Prometheus, unrepentant champion of humanity, who, because he had stolen fire from Heaven, was condemned by Zeus to be chained to Mount Caucasus and to be tortured by a vulture feeding on his liver. Shelley continued the story but transformed it into a symbolic drama about the origin of evil and of overcoming it.

(Aeschylus (525-455BC) was an ancient Greek playwright … the father of tragedy … earliest of the three Greek playwrights Sophocles, Euripides.)

For those interested in Shelley’s background this is a link to an excellent bio –

… and some relevant text from the above site …

During this 1818-1819 period Shelley wrote what many consider to be his masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound (1820), subtitled A Lyrical Drama, perhaps to suggest a hybrid genre in the way Wordsworth and Coleridge had signalled their pioneering efforts by titling their first volume of poetry Lyrical Ballads (1798). Shelley had been developing the symbolism, imagery, and ideas for the poem for several years. For example, he states in the preface that “the imagery which I have employed will be found … to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind,” a technique he had already used in Mont Blanc. Shelley had had a longstanding interest in and familiarity with Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, even translating it for Byron, but he could not accept the idea that Aeschylus had bound the champion of mankind for eternity, or even worse, that Prometheus would have been reconciled with Jupiter in Aeschylus’s lost drama, the sequel to Prometheus Bound. As Shelley avers in the preface, “I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind.” The choice of Prometheus as his hero is not surprising, given this mythological character’s association with rebellion and isolation from his act of giving fire to man against the gods’ wishes and his reputation as a “fore-thinker” or prophet. For Shelley he came to symbolize the mind or soul of man in its highest potential.

Shelley was willing to challenge ‘the establishment’, the conventions of his day, and of more importance ‘The Gods’ (God) to establish his own internal truth.

P. B. Shelley – Philosophy from his Poetry

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P. B. Shelley’s philosophy (following my previous Post on Love’s Philosophy) …

He went from an external to an internal philosophy based on humanity having the power to combat the sources of suffering based on a personal responsibility within the social framework (a micro view).

Here is his philosophy as reflected in some of his poetry … based on ‘The Norton Anthology’ –

1 … In Queen Mab …

… Shelley believed that injustice and suffering can be eliminated by an external revolution that will wipe out or radically reform the sources of evil

2 … In Prometheus Unbound …

… the origin of evil and the possibility of reform are the responsibility of men and women themselves. Social chaos and wars are a gigantic projection of human moral disorder and inner division and conflict, tyrants are the outer representatives of the tyranny of our baser over our better elements; hatred for others is a product of self-contempt; and successful political reform is impossible unless we have reformed our own nature at its roots, by substituting selfless love for divisive hate. Shelley incorporates into his secular myth … (i.e.  universal regeneration by an apocalypse of the moral imagination of the human race) … the ethical teaching of Christ on the Mount, as well as the highest classical morality represented in Prometheus.

Note … Prometheus Unbound (from Shelley’s preface) … is a large and intricate imaginative construction that involves premises about human nature and the springs of morality and creativity (Shelley abhorred didactic poetry).

The non-Christian poet W. B. Yeats called PU one of ‘the sacred books of the world’.

The Christian critic C. S. Lewis found in PU poetic powers matched only by Dante.

When I am in doubt – Glenn Colquhoun

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When I am in doubt
(a poem for surgeons)

When I am in doubt
I talk to surgeons.
I know they will know what to do.

They seem so sure.

Once I talked to a surgeon.
He said that when he is in doubt
he talks to priests.
Priests will know what to do.

They seem so sure.

Once I talked to a priest.
He said that when he is in doubt
he talks to God.
God will know what to do.

God seems so sure.

Once I talked to God.
He said that when he is in doubt
he thinks of me.
He says I will know what to do.

I seem so sure.

Dr Glenn Colquhoun
Hammersmith Press UK 2007
First published Robert Steele NZ 2002

Glenn Colquhoun is a contemporary New Zealand poet and medical doctor. Here is a link to some of his poems … http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/backwards.htm

I had the pleasure of attending a workshop under his leadership a couple of years ago.

This could be regarded as a ‘pass-the-buck for advice poem’ the sequence of authority being – Surgeon-Priest-God … and of course we are going up the ladder.

The last stanza is where it all happens so to speak … after the build-up … and apart from a cynical response here is another interpretation and an interesting twist …

… and generalizing in the following to anyone with difficult decisions in life …

… a nice personification of God that when He is in doubt that humanity will do the ‘right thing’ He has faith at a very personal level that ‘We’ will know what to do. You could say God has great faith in his  creation … great faith in you and me. Usually we see faith flowing the other way so the reverse is an interesting change of thought … an emphasis on a two-way connectivity of the flowing of faith.

… and of course to what extent does any ‘God-connectivity’ aid us in our own decision making can only be answered by each of us at a very personal level … regardless whether or not we have to make difficult decisions akin to the work of a doctor

… and do we go up the hierarchy in that quest for working out what to do – and is God on the agenda … well that’s another question

… another thought if you are in the creation process do you likewise have faith in your own creations … and faith in your own children if you have any … well we always live in hope.