I don’t know if anyone on here likes Poetry? Yeah, I know, it’s only for sissy’s.
I was always dismissive of English Language, mostly because of my lack of it, through my poor education, though I also had a part to play in that!
I’ve come to Poetry late in life and mostly through the London Buddhist Centre, they use poetry a lot but I’m grateful that I’ve now found it.
I find it incredible how good poets not only have the ability to connect on an emotional level with me but also how they can say so much, in so few words.
I find the below poem a good example and currently one of my favourites as it resonates with my life journey very much.
The Ideal by James Fenton.
This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.
A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.
This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard.
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Comments
Glad you've connected with it mate, enjoyment and interest come in all forms
Just Googled it and not much in the way of copies knocking about either - lol
not sure she ever had that many printed
For quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning
But laughter and the love of friends
so dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
or loved them half as much as I did.
Glad it had an emotional impact on you.
Thanks for sharing.
As i am quite organised, i will write them on a phone as the mood takes me, text them to myself and once a month put each one in a Word doc on my laptop and also on a memory stick for safe keeping. Have told my daughters that when i am gone, if they ever want to know about dads thoughts on life its ups and downs they are there to read OR bin, its up to them. The process is a therapy in itself and i now have nudging 3000 of them.
It has led me to an interest in reading poetry of all sorts, classical and modern. A passion that i wish i had always had.
Mary had a little lamb
She kept it in a bucket
Every time that lamb got loose
The dog would try to...
Also, it isn't as prominent an art form as it once was. I think it has been displaced somewhat in this day an age
I've also put in bold the last three verses again because of their poignancy.
Unwittingly by John Burnside
I've visited the place
where thought begins:
pear trees suspended in sunlight, narrow shops,
alleys to nothing
but nettles
and broken wars;
and though it might look different
to you:
a seaside town, with steep roofs
the colour of oysters,
the corner of some junkyard with its glint
of coming rain,
though someone else again would recognise
the warm barn, the smell of milk,
the wintered cattle
shifting in the dark,
it's always the same lit space,
the one good measure:
Sometimes you'll wake in a chair
as the light is fading,
or stop on the way to work
as a current of starlings
turns on itself
and settles above the green,
and because what we learn in the dark
remains all our lives,
a noise like the sea, displacing the day's
pale knowledge,
you'll come to find yourself
in a glimmer of rainfall or frost,
the burnt smell of autumn,
a meeting of parallel lines,
and know you were someone else
for the longest time,
pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist
lost on the one main square, and afraid to enquire.
Everyone Sang
Poetry infiltrates all our lives in ways we don't realise.
It astonishes me continually that the poets and poetry that is such a marginalised art form, creates people who 'live' longer than almost any other artists. Chaucer and Cicero and such like have the same impact today as they had originally, where other previous greats in whatever field can be soon forgotten.
Some recognise the value and importance of poetry, the very antithesis of the 'newspeak' thrust recognised by George Orwell.
When Seamus Heaney died the newspapers at least did him justice (as in full front page broadsheet obituaries) because the work of a poet can outlast almost anything else and to me it is stuff of immense value importance and enrichment.
I do wonder if a person has the right to describe their own work as poetry, or if it being called poetry or a person a poet is something in the gift of others.
Classic poets aside, I like a bit of everything: Saul Williams, Frank O'Hara.... even some Simon Armitage.
The latter is about the death of his four-year-old brother. The final line about the coffin being only four feet long 'a foot for every year' confused a pupil of mine who was lost in thought for quite some time before turning to me and saying. 'That's not very big. How's he going to move around in that?'
Faber & Faber publish Seamus Heaney, 100 Poems for £10.99, which gives you more prose per Pound including his most celebrated work.
The Guardian called him 'The greatest poet of our age.'
Check him out, I think he'd be right up your street.
Right, I don't think you solve town planning problems by dropping bombs all over the place, he's embarrassed himself there.
Spoken by the writer, not as good as an actor speaking it in my view, but authentic.
No moving pictures, it is an audio thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAO3QTU4PzY
Fun fact: "TS Eliot" is an anagram of "toilets", and his full name - Thomas Stearns Eliot - is an anagram of "loathsome train sets".
That said, I heard this Spike Milligan poem the other day, simple and twee but seemed appropriate and right for this moment in time when people are struggling and often miserable (or at least I am anyway!)
Smiling is infectious,
you catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today,
I started smiling too.
I passed around the corner
and someone saw my grin.
When he smiled I realized
I’d passed it on to him.
I thought about that smile,
then I realized its worth.
A single smile, just like mine
could travel round the earth.
So, if you feel a smile begin,
don’t leave it undetected.
Let’s start an epidemic quick,
and get the world infected!