Patrick, you put me in mind of Virginia Woolf's wise appraisal of Conrad, in whom she recognises that tension between a writer who finds there is everything to say, and the seafarer who knows there is nothing to be said. Hopkins troubles me, his occasional jump off the page genius, and his profound understanding of sound, I follow at... more than a pace or two. For the general crisis, here's a favourite, one of his quiet pieces, i'm sure you know it.
Heaven-Haven
(a nun takes the veil)
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Comment is about Poetry and the Affirmation of Life (article)
Original item by Mike Took
<Deleted User> (18980)
Sat 1st Dec 2018 09:51
It's life isn't it Taylor...learning to bounce back from disappointment.
Comment is about First One Last (blog)
Original item by Taylor Crowshaw
<Deleted User> (18980)
Sat 1st Dec 2018 09:49
A lot of responsibility on his shoulders! I'm sure you are great parents.
Comment is about My first-born (blog)
Original item by Becky Who
<Deleted User> (18980)
Sat 1st Dec 2018 08:01
It's a conundrum Don...wife or WOL.answers on a postcard please.
Comment is about 12.01 All Done, All Said (blog)
Original item by Don Matthews
This kept me hooked. What beauty, longing and hope is expressed in this wonderful poem. It is worthy of praise and acknowledgement..??
Comment is about Anatomy of Longing (blog)
Original item by Tom
Nice bit of humour Don..?
Comment is about 12.01 All Done, All Said (blog)
Original item by Don Matthews
<Deleted User> (18474)
Sat 1st Dec 2018 06:56
Thank you to everyone who posted comments.
Well done to Jennifer with her acute observational skills. I guess I don't have a particular style because it depends on which one of me is writing the poem that day. I was really drunk when I answered the Q and A's Jennifer. ?
Really like that you liked my poem Mr Braddock. Coz your work is very special and I am a great admirer of it.
Kate G your comment was very clever. I loved it.
Not sure what big Sal meant.
Thanks again Anya.
Mr Sherwood, I blushed after your comments.
Ray, I always enjoy your comments RE my work. It's great your enjoyed it. Made me proud of myself, which isn't normally my thing or objective but it felt nice.
And thank to everyone else. Lovely.
Beno.
Comment is about Our Poem of the Week is ‘Scooter Club and the Lost Boys’ by Beno (article)
Original item by steve pottinger
Sat 1st Dec 2018 03:08
thank you Jennifer for your comments on
"Eat This Poem". was it tasty?
Comment is about Jennifer Malden (poet profile)
Original item by Jennifer Malden
Big Sal
Sat 1st Dec 2018 00:39
The last line of your sample is great.?
Whole piece really flows well by inserting three words per line. . . Really shines.?
Comment is about Madalyne (poet profile)
Original item by Madalyne
Big Sal
Sat 1st Dec 2018 00:33
Each line could be dissected and from that, it's own poem would spring up from nowhere.
This is much like a starfish or underwater treasure in its durability and enduring value or merit.
Well done again, Keith. No weak beams here.?
Comment is about A Rush (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Nice one, Jennifer. You're up on me there, but I saved some heads in September to dry as pot pourri and they've sort of gone a bit grey! Thanks for liking it.
Ray
Comment is about LAVENDER FIELDS FOREVER (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Wilde's wit and his way with words saw him achieve literary fame
in his own time. It was his titling at windmills - against the social
limits of "acceptable behaviour" of his time and social status that
caused his fall from grace. The Victorian sexual underworld was
unhindered until it intruded very publicly into the wider domain,
causing consternation and fearful (and fearsome!) responses.
Writers like Frank Harris were adept at portraying "the time and
place". Hypocrisy is a plant with many shoots, but bending the
knee to respectability in a class-ridden age was certainly expected
by the middle and upper classes of that time. L.P Hartley's novella
"The Go-between" succeeds brilliantly in its depiction of the
frowned on and socially ruinous affair between a young woman
with potential as the bride of an aristocrat and a local young farmer.
The theme of social rejection and the maintenance of the securely
guarded "status quo" in the face of sexual behaviour that was seen
as a threat to a well-ordered society, in which people knew their
place and were frequently very willing to accept and retain it, was
certainly not restricted to the homosexual milieu.
Comment is about A History of Gay Poetry, 2: Two Giants (article)
Original item by Mike Took
I just wanted to thank everyone who has read this piece and particularly those people who have commented and shared their own stories and thoughts, which can't have been easy.
I hear terrible asylum stories regularly in the course of my work, but the stories from Congo stand out as being particularly brutal and horrific.
Congo is a beautiful country, with incredible natural resources which makes the situation even more bitter.
I hope the asylum poems I have shared will encourage other people to write about mans inhumanity to man and hopefully change the world one attitude at a time. We could all write about the beauty of the natural world and the joy of the festive season etc but life is both bitter and sweet and everyone's stories deserve to be heard, so please join me in telling how it is.
Comment is about Congo Childhood (blog)
Original item by eve nortley
Thanks for your comments as follows:
Poemographic - thanks for landing on my offering. I take that as a compliment! I like it.
Kate, always nice that you read me. Glad you liked it, even though it is saucy.
Wow Mark. That is really a tongue twister.... !
Eric, your comment made my day. Really its nice to be analysed in that way. It had me thinking about the elements of writing.
Thanks so much.
David, Shostakovich is often shocking, Rachmaninov is enrapturing, but either way tempted by that hint of stocking(sorry Stockhausen). Glad you liked it mate. I was thinking of you as I wrote it.
Thanks Brian, Anya, Jon and Taylor for your invaluable support.
Cheers and love to all.
Comment is about MAGIC MOMENTS (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Big Sal
Fri 30th Nov 2018 18:50
Big Sal
Fri 30th Nov 2018 18:43
I only eat my poems out of sheer jealousy for others' work.??
Comment is about Eat This Poem (blog)
Original item by d.knape
Seconded. A clever and well written poem with a superb ending.
Thanks
Keith
Comment is about Red and Green Christmas (blog)
Original item by eve nortley
Jan,
Thank you for your comment which cannot be disputed. However, had Wilde been more prudent in his behaviour then we would never have realised his wit, intellect and genius which is a gift, particularly to the literary world.
Thank you again,
Keith
Comment is about A History of Gay Poetry, 2: Two Giants (article)
Original item by Mike Took
Lovely Ray - as usual. Found out recently that there is purple, blue and grey lavender, as well as French - the tassled stuff.
Jennifer
Comment is about LAVENDER FIELDS FOREVER (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Nice - loved it. Unfortunately too true. Jennifer
Comment is about Yes There Is Always (blog)
Original item by Paul Brookes
Hi Beno, just thinking, the language you use in the Qs and As seems to have no relation to the beautiful words in Raven Beauty, for example, but neither to the gripping and brilliant 'heavy metal' use of words in Scooter Club?!!!!!
Fantastic writing anyway. Jennifer
Comment is about Our Poem of the Week is ‘Scooter Club and the Lost Boys’ by Beno (article)
Original item by steve pottinger
This poem says so much by suggestion, working on multiple levels from one line to the next, complex characters living complex lives, yet you make it accessible. This poem is so complete and information-dense, it's like the mathematical equation of a person, distilled to their most basic.
Sometimes I find your poems lyrical, sometimes poetic, but always enjoyable. Thanks for sharing
Comment is about MAGIC MOMENTS (blog)
Original item by ray pool
loved - "Minds of the better off"
Comment is about Yes There Is Always (blog)
Original item by Paul Brookes
jan oskar hansen
Fri 30th Nov 2018 14:40
well, Oscar Wilde was wild he had no discretion
Comment is about A History of Gay Poetry, 2: Two Giants (article)
Original item by Mike Took
Thanks as always folks. Sorry life is usual madness at the moment, I'm painfully aware I'm not taking the time to thank everyone individually. BW xx
Comment is about Liar, liar, pants on fire! (blog)
Original item by Becky Who
Yes I liked this mysterious piece of poetry. Thought provoking. ?
Comment is about Underwater (blog)
Original item by Pagan Poetry
Clever poem Randy. I know where you are coming from ?
Comment is about Twenty Ways to Ruin a Poem (blog)
Original item by Randy Horton
Big Sal
Fri 30th Nov 2018 12:55
This read very much like a story or a film script. Each line held the keys to the next (scene) before by the time the reader is ready, the piece ends.
Well done on the structure and imagery.?
Comment is about Yes There Is Always (blog)
Original item by Paul Brookes
Big Sal
Fri 30th Nov 2018 12:40
That repetition and rhythm is subtly entrancing. Well done on conveying such a theme and carrying it in each stanza until the end.
The imagery is top notch as well.?
Comment is about A Day in the Life (blog)
Original item by Gordon Hoyles
And I usually just ruin my own verse. ?
Comment is about Twenty Ways to Ruin a Poem (blog)
Original item by Randy Horton
Hi Martin. I've got an open framed incinerator and a dustbin one; the open one is more fun and gives more of a buzz, but I always take a hose there just in case! The smell doesn't go down well, but I don't mind it. More appealing than ciggy smoke I suppose. Thanks for enjoying!
Ray
Comment is about THE INCINERATOR, ON A LATE NOVEMBER DAY (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Congratulations on telling this story so well, and maintaining the rhyme and rhythm so successfully over such a long poem. Bringing tales like this to life is one of the functions of poetry, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.
Comment is about Albert Edward Burrows (blog)
Original item by kJ Walker
I'm sorta known
For ruining verse
Of other poets
(What a curse)
See, Randy while
Serious they be
I interfere
With commentary
Just like I
Am doing now ?
Comment is about Twenty Ways to Ruin a Poem (blog)
Original item by Randy Horton
leah
Thu 29th Nov 2018 21:06
DOUBLE HEADER AT NOVEMBER WRITE ANGLE
John Davies, Shedman, invited James Brookes to share the stage with him at the November gig – two headliners with strongly contrasted styles. However, both James and John’s contributions to this Write Angle were suffused with their own brand of humour.
John’s work has been described as “mingling wry humour with sharp focus that will leave you wondering and questioning what really matters.” For him, it’s relationships, environment, people, animals and, of course, sheds!
So, Maximum Shed is most certainly about a shed, “somewhere to carve your name with pride - and enjoy a sneaky smoke. Or as he puts it, ‘a word of advice from me and the shed,... put a sign up: Women! Keep Out!” Yet the whole poem is redolent of friendship with his “old mate” and their shared experiences. Glove Compartment described life as constrained in cubicles, cars and bed; and in the smallest room, he thinks: ”...how pretty much all life ends up in some kind of box.” Then pure fantasy, A Gannet Discusses The View, a poem first recited in Ganesch (honestly!), then translated to English.
John is writing an alphabet of shed poems, starting with S for Shed - 'the only one written so far!' he says with a wry smile. This shed is full of the detritus of gardening but “The workbench has seen no work for years.” John wrote Two in One in response to a woman asking for a poem for her secret love. He describes a mundane space in which her lover becomes a different man, “where our obsessions culminated in bliss.” Whatever the poem and its subject, John always wears a charming, infectious smile that speaks of humour, but also a sense that he enjoys everything about the poem and performing it.
James’ work has been said to advance “a lyrical, frank and unsparing consideration of the England in which we find ourselves.” However, this reviewer found his poems to show a real affecton for where we’ve come from.
In Bloomery, he recounts the history of iron smelting in the Weald – the bloom being the orange flames from the furnaces fuelled by wood. Yet, “..by the time Blake pens Jerusalem, the view….is a green and pleasant land, iron work having migrated to the coke-fuelled Midlands.” Birthday Party, East Cicero, 1926 told how Fats Waller was kidnapped frighteningly at gun point and became “the surprise guest and the birthday boy’s face had a scar.” Pharisees was the Sussex way of saying fairies, since the dialect included reduplicated plurals (!) And, if it wasn't for that peculiar disease, The English Sweats, we might have had a King Arthur, but got HenryVIII instead.
Much of James' humour is straight-faced, relying on the sound and meaning of words, juxtaposing the past with the present and comes through very cleverly done!
Meanwhile, at the open mic, Ray Vogt rose to the challenge of a 'shed' poem, first reciting the lyrics of Garden Shed Blues, and then singing it as a song accompanied on his shiny steel, resonator guitar. Ray turned his shed with its ordinary gardening stuff into a rip-roaring hillbilly blues. In the Secret Of a Good Marriage, Leah told us to “shed expectations you carried in your head.” While your reviewer's Secret Of a Good Marriage was that “Every man should have a shed...for a safe and private place.” He also told about his failure as a carpenter in The Shed, describing how he built a chicken shed which “had four walls – only they didn’t meet.”
In MRI, Colin Eveleigh found the humour in a recently experienced, normally alarming, medical procedure. This was followed by Red Dot, about the angst of whether his ceramic work is sold – it was. Then his evocative Stillness: “Without words, without thoughts, ideas, images, without labels, names, beliefs.....”
Richard Hawtree's succinct look at war, Of Course, told of the assurance the chauffeur gave to those off to fight: “'You'll be all right, sir,' he said to officers in the Great War who of course, weren't- ” Just to add, Richard’s debut book of poetry, ‘The Night I spoke Irish in Surrey’ will be coming out in January.
Dick Senior's Vanity's Bonfire spoke of “The sun has just had enough” of all the politicians – a humorous take on those who misrule us. He took Audi Maserati's When Clancy Watched the Pub Burn Down, adding his own sixteen year old experience of the same pub in Cornwall ten years earlier, with “...all those flowing hormones.” Denys Whitley's Rainbow at Dungeon Ghyll took us to the other end of the country, on an autumnal walk in the rain in the Lake District: “A red stone path, thin-sheeted with chrystal overflow from the red tarn, staining it all year with rust as if preparing for this season when the colours match...”
Jezz, in sunglasses, gentle voice and total confidence on guitar, and Jack, his accordian and box drum accompanist, provided rousing versions of Recovering the Satellites and Cadillac Dream, ending another warm succesful evening. Colin, second month running, won the raffle, an £80 meal voucher from sponsor, Cote, Chichesters fine French restaurant.
We hope you’ll join us in December.. Jackie Juno’s a funny funny lady who’s won lots of poetry awards as well as being a comic/poet. Wait for Press Release! You won’t want to miss our ‘Christmas Special’!
Review is about WRITE ANGLE POETRY & MUSIC +OPEN MIC on 20 Nov 2018 (event)
Congratulations
Keith
Comment is about Our Poem of the Week is ‘Scooter Club and the Lost Boys’ by Beno (article)
Original item by steve pottinger
MC.,
Thank you for your comments and observations which I am in full agreement with. Wilde was his own worst enemy but still a victim whereas Whitman was someone who astonishes me in that he did not meet the same fate as Wilde. Two very different people in different parts of the world. Whitman comes across as man with a sense of humility and duty which Wilde did not possess.
Thank you again,
Keith
Comment is about A History of Gay Poetry, 2: Two Giants (article)
Original item by Mike Took
Thought provoking Don, so for me not too much of a departure from your usual style. Enjoyed it.
Comment is about Are You in a Dark Mindset ? (blog)
Original item by Don Matthews
Thank you so much, Sal! That is quite a compliment! I appreciate your careful reading of this piece.
Comment is about mothers (blog)
Original item by ha'azinu
Thank you, Taylor! Just like all humans, they have the capacity to harm and the capacity to heal. Thanks!
Comment is about mothers (blog)
Original item by ha'azinu
Well deserved Beno...congratulations..?
Comment is about Our Poem of the Week is ‘Scooter Club and the Lost Boys’ by Beno (article)
Original item by steve pottinger
Taylor, Don and Martin - thank you. Enough dead bodies! Ill try to be more cheerful for the coming season.
Comment is about One Bright Day (blog)
Original item by Hazel ettridge
Martin, Hannah, Ray and Po-thank you so much for the lovely comments.
Comment is about Life before death? 1 and 2 (blog)
Original item by Hazel ettridge
It never ceases to amaze me what simple and wonderful experiences lead to the creation of lovely art and this is no exception
Nice one Hazel
Comment is about One Bright Day (blog)
Original item by Hazel ettridge
There is something deeply satisfying about burning garden rubbish and waste. It bit like a bonfire on bonfire night used to be like. I even like the residual smell of smoke that hangs on my clothes.Or maybe its just me.
Anyway marvellous poem Ray
Comment is about THE INCINERATOR, ON A LATE NOVEMBER DAY (blog)
Original item by ray pool
An intriguing glimpse of "what might have been" in these lines, prompting the thought that similar situations, conversations and
silent thinking must happen all over the place.
Comment is about American Life in Poetry: The Girl From Panama (article)
Original item by Mike Took
Jeff Dawson
Sat 1st Dec 2018 11:40
Top stuff mate, took me back a bit, great rant great rhythm with some of my favourite music in there Beno! One of first poems I ever wrote was called Punks not Dead, its still at the very start of my profile, if you get chance to have a gander, enjoy all the best Jeffarama!
Comment is about Our Poem of the Week is ‘Scooter Club and the Lost Boys’ by Beno (article)
Original item by steve pottinger