Saturday 12 October 2013

What I Like and Dislike About Poetry and Poets and Other People

I like:


Poets who invent new, exciting words, just so long as I have some idea of what is meant through the context in which they are used.

I dislike:


Pernickety people who say, "There's no such word!"

I like:


People who admit they don't know much about poetry, but they have an open mind, and are willing to see if they can get something from it.

I dislike:


People who just declare they don't like poetry, even though they've never bothered to try it.

I can live with:


People who are indifferent but who don't make judgements are okay. That's their choice and they have every right to make that choice. It's just the noisy detractors I cannot stand.

I like:


People who are open to trying different forms, and don't make certain kinds of poetry "wrong". 

I dislike:


People who insist they hate rhyming poetry or contemporary blank verse, or prose poetry, or humorous verse. There's room for everything, and one kind of voice doesn't prevail over all others.

I like:


Poets who are original and who write from their own experience.

I dislike:


Pretend-poets who steal other people's ideas, change a few words around, (just enough to avoid a charge of plagiarism) and present it as their own. 

I especially dislike:


Two poets who have played that trick on me!








Sunday 8 September 2013

A Poem Lovely as a Tree



Sheffield Park,Photo: Janet Cameron


I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
By Joyce Kilmer
    

Wednesday 3 July 2013

I Meant to Do My Work Today by Richard LeGallienne

Richard LeGallienne was a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and this simple but truly enchanting poem is one of my favourites. In a few sentences LeGallienne justifies his own longing to escape - a longing he indulges with utter and complete joy.  I have been, so many times, inside that experience, but usually I repress my longing to go and dance among the buttercups, and, instead, I press on with my work. I won't ever do that again.


Copyright: Janet Cameron



I meant to do my work today -
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree
And a butterfly flitted across the field
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went singing over the land
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand -
So what could I do but laugh and go?


Monday 15 April 2013

Keats' To Autumn





I am going to learn this poem. I think it's great to learn a poem. You can say it to yourself as a sort of beautiful meditation.  To Autumn contains the most sublime sentence structure - a twisty string of delicious words that seem to want to hang around inside your eardrum like an echo.  Soothing to the spirit and keeps the brain synapses sparking.

Every few days I will learn a few more lines until I can recite the entire poem.

Sometimes it's good to do something just for the hell of it.

To Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.



Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they? 
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Saturday 12 January 2013

Adlestrop



I just love this Edward Thomas poem. I think of it as a "minimalist" poem, because it's  short and simple, but it's so evocative in its very simplicity.

Adlestrop

Yes, I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat, the express train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

My copy of the poem has no full stop at the end, and I'm not sure if that's a printing error, or whether it was meant to be "left in the air." I'm guessing the latter. It's as though there ought to be more to come later. Or maybe the poet is indicating that would like to go on but somehow, everything tailed off in the mist as the train drew out of the station.

But maybe that's me just being fanciful.