The Blog Tour -writing

Thanks to Sue Moules for tagging me with some questions about my writing.

What am I working on?

Too many things!  I am currently promoting my latest poetry collection, The Thought of Fresh Rain.  I am really pleased with the poesm in it and as an object.  I am also trying to find opportuinities to read poetry in public- this is something I have only been doing for a couple of years and I want to improve.  I've written a few poems that will be going in my next collection.  And I keep thinking about a short novel about lost love which I want to write.

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

A lot of poetry is about creating stories using techniques to add drama and interest to the sound of the words.  I don't really do this - to me, poetry is a kind of speaking thoughts out loud, and I like to try to capture that single moment of insight, using a few simple words.

Why do I write?

I'm not driven to write, but on the other hand, it's not hard.  I find that I can move quickly from having a thought, recognising that it is interesting, and then putting it on paper.  I suppose my mission is to show that even a quiet and gentle life can produce work which speaks to others.

Writing prose, I do find tough.  I like outlining but hate the filling in.

How does my writing process work?

I'm opne tpo ideas at any time.  I find driving and walking to be activities with the right combination of new things to see and lack of dictarions to set me thinking, and every now and then I encounter something that strikes me as interesting or profound.  I write quickly into a notebook, not worrying about the words, just trying to get the thought down; often I have no clear idea of how the poem will develop or end.  Then once it's finished, I set to work on editing it down to the pure essence, chopping out unnecessary words and lines, and trying to make the phrases sing.  Rewriting is quite brutal - a 10-line poem I wrote in January is now down to a haiku.

Downtime

Fallow days

between years

time to pause

I'm passing on this Blog Tour to Caroline Gill  and Madeleine Sara Maddocks.

The curious mathematics of professional poker and its application to poetry competitions

The poker boom of the last couple of decades has led to the re-emergence of the stock Western character of the professional poker player, but this time relying on skill and mathematics rather than cheating.  Thousands of pounds is won by the stars of the circuit.  What is odd is that these players, who, by definition, are statistically expert, have not noticed the key point: that poker is a zero sum game.   On balance, those involved in the circuit will break even, less their expenses - there is no extra money coming in.  At best, then, this can only work as a system if money flows from the mediocre players (paying into the pot but not winning) to the better players.  They may as well run it as a raffle.  Still, it keeps them happy.

The business model has another application: that of the modern poetry competition, following the model of the Arvon competition.  Typically, entrants are charged a modest fee (£5 or £10) with the prospect of a large prize, and perhaps more importantly fame, for the winner.  Again, if those involved are happy this seems a reasonable scheme.  However, this has become in many cases a money-making scheme (as with Arvon), where thousands of hopefuls submit their work.  And like the poker games, this means that mediocre poets are effectively subsidising the good poets* and the host organisations.  I believe it would be much healthier if competitions intended to broaden participation and raise awareness were run for free (or at least at cost), and those who wish to support poets and organisations should be encouraged to buy and subscribe to poetry publications.

That's just me, of course.  But would-be competitors should ask themselves seriously whether they have heard of any past winners, if they are likely to come anywhere near winning, and whether there are better ways of spending their money.   Good poems are published by publishers who pay their poets.



 *Poets who write the sort of poems judges like, that is. See an interesting discussion of this here.http://www.academi.org/cipc/i/134400

Poetry reading: Angela Gardner and Keri Finlayson, 10/11/09, National Library of Wales

Keri Finlayson and Angela Gardner's poetry reading was held under the title 'Other places'. 

Keri read poems from her collection Rooms, exploring an incident  in her grandmother's past in which she had fallen in love with one of a visiting cinema crew.  The poems are rooted firmly in the place and landscape of a Cornish fishing village, while playing with concepts of freedom, art and reality.  The between poem narrative was  simpler and clearer than the poems, which at times became exercises in polysyllabic reference.

Angela drew her poems from Views of the Hudson, and art gallery notes (from  Foame ) and new poems from a recent stay in Ireland.  Lacking the strong narrative of Keri's work, these proved more diffuse in effect although more perceptive and analytical.  Her re-told fairy tales from Perrault are deeply troubling - a Freudian nightmare.

Poetry reading: Patrick Jones, 4/2/2010

Patrick Jones is not T S Eliot, nor was meant to be.  His forebears are the punk poets and ranters of the early 80s, bringing a passion a political agenda to their poetry, more suited, as Patrick said, to the pub than the National Library of Wales.  There is little room for nuance in his work: his views are clear on his ex-partner (bad), current partner (good), religion (bad), tolerance (good)  and Tony Blair (bad).  One of the problems with this black-and-white approach is that if you don't agree with his stance there is little to enjoy in his words.  Technically, he relies mainly on repetition and alliteration to elevate his words above prose.  He has a tendency to use out-dated rhetoric - when he argues that we close hospitals but pay for wars, he echoes the Thatcherite era of major cuts in public services.  Whatever New Labour has been guilty of (discuss), it must be admitted that the only reason it has closed hospitals is to open new PFI-financed ones down the road, and while this may not have been perfect it is not the attack on people's welfare he implies.  His best poem by far was a simple, quiet poem about his father's shed, that managed to illuminate the man and the poet's relationship to him, in a moving way.  As he rightly says, we modern fathers have done lots of things better than our elders, but we haven't got sheds.

His poetry collection Darkness Is Where the Stars Are  achieved notoriety on publication as a result of extreme Christians (an oxymoron, as Patrick said) protesting against blasphemy.  He noted the thorny question about freedom of speech; to me the best position is that people can say what they like, as long as their audience can say what they like too.  The audience at the Library reading was good-natured and mainly positive, responding with greater warmth to the personal poems and story-telling than to the polemic.  Poetry with strong politics is hard to get right, and it may be that his views (however strongly expressed) are no more coherent than mine, or anyone's.  If he wants to say that Wales has a moral duty to welcome and care for refugees from torture and repression in their homeland, which needs little argument, does that not also imply endorsement of intervention in their homelands to protect the whole population?  In which case shouldn't he be supporting action in Afghanistan?  I don't have any simple answers, but then I don't make my political musings the core of my poetry.

How to name a poetry collection

I've been thinking about marketing and poetry books, and was interested in monitoring my reaction recently browsing in a bookshop about what led me to pick one up and what didn't.

Vague names are useless

Titles like 'Poems' aren't helpful.  This isn't really surprising - otherwise there would be a lot of novels called 'novel', 'story', or '50,000 words'.   (examples: Dylan Thomas Six Poems, Philip Larkin XX Poems, T S Eliot Four Quartets)

Poem names may not help

Wendy Cope's collections 'If I don't know' and 'Serious concerns' are named after good poems which feature in them, but as something on the spine of the book they sound unappealing. (examples: Philip Larkin High Windows, The Whitsun Weddings) 

Startling phrases are best

An unknown poet needs to demonstrate that they have some facility with words, so ideally you should choose a characteristic example.  (examples:  W H Auden Look, Stranger!   Wendy Cope Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin The Less Deceived).  if the collction really doesn't contain one phrase which arouses curiosity, maybe there's something wrong.



Incidentally, price and cover art didn't figure as relevant - the one I bought was the one whose words seemed worth exploring.

Belonging: author's notes

My poem "Belonging" has been found by a string of students undertaking an assignment on, I guess, poetry and belonging, and I thought it might be helpful to them to expalin a bit about why and how I wrote it and what it means (or what I want it to mean, which may not be the same thing). If you are writing an assignment, before reading any further, check your instructions: you may find that you are forbidden from looking at any contextual information, in which case: stop now, you're on your own.

Still here? Ok. Although I had thought a bit about the nature of belonging, it was only when it was set as a subject for a competition that it crystallised into a poem. The competition was part of an eisteddfod (an annual literary and musical competition held in Wales); one of the best things about Welsh culture is its acceptance that poetry is a normal activity for normal people, devoid of the class warfare and exclusivity common in England, where I grew up. I predicted, pretty accurately, that such a topic would inspire a good deal of maundering about hwyl a hiraeth (joy and longing), on being at home or being away. But I was in a different situation. The whole question of Welshness has become politicised and polarised, with careful distinction between those Welsh by descent (Welsh parents, born in Wales or elsewhere), Welsh by birth (born in Wales, with non-Welsh parents), and Welsh by choice (incomers who considered themselves Welsh). I fall into the latter category: I had never been able to summon much enthusiasm for the land and folk of my birth. I remained interested, or perhaps fascinated, by those for whom nationality and loyalty had required no choice or thought. I explain this at some length to suggest where my sympathies may lie in the poem; the text is understated in the weight it places on each group.

The form of the poem is driven by two constraints: the abab rhyming pattern for each stanza, and the self-imposed rule that the word order should be natural and stresses should fall naturally at the end of lines. The technical skill involved is trying to seem as if the words were those that would be chosen in any case, but just happened to rhyme. There is one weak line which I dislike: the last line of the first stanza, where 'recedes' isn't quite the right action.

In the third stanza, the last line's 'shout' was suggested by the rhyme, but I'm happy enough with the opposition of love's seductive whisper and fame's more overt and aggressive shout.

The final stanza is intended to suggest the feeling of peace and calm that greets a restless traveller once they have found what they are looking for. There remains some ambivalence in the poem about the power and positive and negative effects of the feeling of belonging, a sense in that it is viewed from the outside, for better or worse.

Some people are born where they belong,
Their home and family supply all needs:
The glow of hearthlight waxes strong
The call of the wider world recedes.

And some search long but never find
A spot where they can set up base
At last they must become resigned
To moving on from place to place

And some again, the lucky few
Are urged to leave, and to seek out
An individual rendezvous
With love's whisper or fame's shout

Belonging is a state of mind
Tranquility its foremost fruit
Sought by all, but many find
It cannot grow without a root

Belonging is published in the collection Carefully Chosen Words published by Carreg Ffylfan Press.

Notes from a poetry reading

Although I have never attempted to hide the fact that I write poetry from my colleagues, their indifference and lack of curiosity had until recently kept work and poetry firmly separate. Things have changed now, and so when someone suggested holding a lunchtime poetry reading to celebrate National Poetry Day I was asked to take part. There is something quite special about working at an institution that can say 'some of its poets will be reading their work'. I gave some though to choosing poems, but it's hard to work out what would work. I have never been to a reading before and had little idea what to expect; in the event, there were 30 people in the audience. The pattern of the readings was that a poet read as many as he wanted (they were all male), and then the audience woudl applaud at the end. The quality of attention was astonishing; I suddenly realised how poorly most people listen.

I started with Mr Eliot's Saturday afternoon service. I think this is one of my best parodies, but it didn't seem to go down particularly well. Thinking about it, it's probably a mistake to start with a parody, since it relies on the audience knowing both that Eliot wrote like that and that I normally didn't. I also adopted something of Eliot's reading style (as shown on various recordings), with its changes in tempo and heavy dramatics, which again would only be appreciated by those familiar with him. Finally, the poem (apart from its last line) is not funny in itself; its only humour derives from how far it accurately reflects Eliot's style.

Next was Experience. This worked much better, partly because it has jokes; partly because I used a less mannered delivery; and partly because, especially in a live context, the recurrent lines and rhymes of the villanelle give a shape to the poem. Readers can see at a glance whether a poem is long or short, dense or spare; an audience can only hear it as they go along.

In comparison A poetry of place worked less well. Although the rhymes are not excessively forced, the poem's mysticalisation of place is not in fact something I approve of, and there are a couple of weak rhymes. My liking for the poem is based mainly on pleasure at having managed to include 'the archaeology of ideas' in verse, despite the rhythmic challenges this involves.

I deliberately said that Peterstone would be my last poem, just to warn the audience that they ought to clap at the end (there's nothing worse than a speaker stopping and the audience having to work out if this is a dramatic pause or the actual end). 'Peterstone' is perhaps a justification for the argument presented in 'A poetry of place' that

"there is a sense becomes attached to ground /
the grammar of thought has a locative case"

, in that most Welsh topographic poetry tends to be about mountains, valleys or rivers, rather than dismal plains. Inhabitants of low-lying coastal margins tend to a pessimistic outlook; their experience is that things happen to them more than they make things happen, and I think that

"the prospect of distant hills /
mocking our ambition for purely local victories."

is a more general human truth.

Nerves before and relief after meant that I was unable to form a view about the poems read by others, but the event certainly seemed to meet with enthusiasm; maybe next time I won't have to keep changing stance to stop my knees from comically trembling.

Desolation Row: Bob Dylan's wasteland

Although he now disavows any studious intent in the construction his songs, Dylan's absorption of high and low culture and fashioning it into masterpieces of allusion is undeniable.

"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images" Wasteland, line 21


I had always thought Desolation Row was his best song in its glorious Highway 61 version, delicately punctuated by acoustic guitar breaks. But now it is bookended by the earlier take, with electric guitar, on the No Direction Home soundtrack CD, and the strummed acoustic Live 1966 version; each is in its way nigh-perfect, but the minor changes in the lyrics emphasise just how precisely right the rest are.

It is a commonplace that the overall shape and structure of the song parallels that of T. S. Eliot's Wasteland, but as I looked at each line possible references came flooding in. This isn't to say that they were in Dylan's head when he wrote it; but they are there in mine when I hear it. I have marked the parallels with ** where I believe they are close enough to represent conscious references, and * the less definite ones.

Lyrics are copyright Bob Dylan.

I

They're selling postcards of the hanging

The bleak thrown-away horror here is masterful. Without the anger driving overt protest, it is as if the commercialisation and celebration of execution were too expected to be worthy of note.

Wasteland reference: line 55 'the Hanged man' [Tarot card reference: tarot=postcard] *

They're painting the passports brown

This line is less clear, although it is notable that the emphasis in this line is on the 'they' at the start: in line 1, it's almost lost, just syaing 'postcards are being sold', but here it is a They who is doing the painting. Brown is associated with soil, shit and death, and 'means noone no good'. My image of this is of visas or identity cards being stamped 'cancelled' before being returned to the now trapped citizens.

Wasteland: line 208 'under the brown fog of a winter noon' and line 211: 'documents at sight'

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

What are the sailors doing there? Presumably being sexually transgressive. The world is turned upside down.

The circus is in town

I connect circus here with carnival and in turn to a feast of the senses, or debauchery, and with the 'freak show' cover photograph of the Basement Tapes.

Wasteland: line 56 "I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring" *

Here comes the blind commissioner

On first hearing, you automatically interpret this as a commissionaire, dressed up in hotel finery: a blind one might not be much good, but unworthy of note. Actually, thouygh, he quite definitely sings and writes 'commissioner', in which case he is presumably meaning some government official with quasi-judicial functions. The 'blind' then presumably relates to his powerlessness or unthinking fairness (blind justice with her scales).

Wasteland: line 46 "(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)" *

They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants

I connect this with walking the plank: justice is not only blind but imperilled. In the early take, his hand is 'nailed in his pants', perhaps a cricifixion reference, but in the final version it appears the commissioner is choose to keep his hand there, presumably masturbating. And you know that makes you go blind.

And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go

The 'mob' of riot police is another aspect of the overturning of authority, when those supposed to uphold the law are keen to breach it.

As the Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Wasteland: lines 49/50 "Here is Belladona, the Lady of the Rocks, / The lady of situations" **

II

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style

The narrative here starts in the midst of a scene: clearly the singer has just said something while flirting with her, and she appears to respond positively.

Wasteland: line 253 "When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smooths her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramaphone." *


And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong To Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave."

He's in the wrong place because love and sincerity of feeling do not operate on Desolation Row. The 'someone' who answers is presumably the singer.

And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go

Obviously Romeo declines to leave quietly, and a fight ensues.

Dylan, "Pledging My Time": "They called for an ambulance, and one was sent / Someone must've got lucky, but it was an accident"

Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Sweeping up the broken glass from the fight. No Prince Charmings on Desolation Row.


III

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide

Hidden by gathering doom-laden clouds.

The fortunetelling lady

Wasteland: line 43 'Madam Sosostris, famous clairvoyante' *

Has even taken all her things inside

The time to worry is when psychics panic.

All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain

Cain and Abel are too busy fighting; Quasimodo knows his beloved is dead. But sort of rain can be expected from such an ominous cloud?

And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Charity and good fellowship have been replaced by cynicism and hedonism.


IV

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

Because she has gone to the Nunnery.

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness

She chooses death rather than devotion only to God.

And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow

The rainbow is supposed to be a sign of God's ultimate forgiveness, so she hopes for redemption.

She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

But she is too aware of reality to succumb.


V

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk

Einstein presumably regrets the consequences of his genius.

Wasteland: line 362 "There is always another one walking beside you/ Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded" **

He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet

Einstein is reduced to an idiot savant.

Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Fame is transient; nothing endures.


VI

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up

The doctor's name hardly inspires confidence, and neither does the reaction of his patients. He sounds like a Nazi doctor in the death camps.

Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole

The medicinal use of cyanide confirms the interpretation.

And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy On His Soul"

Wateland: line 52 "And this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see". *

They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row


VII

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast

The Last Supper.

The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest

Judas.

They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outta Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Casanova is being punished by being crucified.


VIII

Now at midnight all the agents

Wasteland: line 232 "A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits"

W. H. Auden , 'The Fall of Rome': "Agents of the Fisc pursue/ Absconding tax defaulters"

And the superhuman crew

This wraps up Nietzsche's Superman and Shaw's 'Man and Superman', covering both left-and right-wing politics.

Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do

The hatred for educated people is a good indicator of tyranny, shared by the book-burning Nazis, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the lunacy of Pol Pot's victimisation of anyone wearing glasses.

Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go

Industrial evil: death factories.
Kafka (the insurance clerk): the Castle, the tyranny of bureaucracy

Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row


IX

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn

Wasteland: line 56 "Fear death by water" *

And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower

While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers

Wasteland: line 261 "The pleasant whining of a mandoline / And a clatter and a chatter from within / Where fishmen lounge at noon" *

Between the windows of the sea
Wasteland: line 47 "the drowned Phoenician sailor" *

Where lovely mermaids flow

Wasteland: line 96 "In which sad light a carved dolphin swam"
Prufrock: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each" *

And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row


X

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)

Wasteland: line 411 "I have heard the key / Turn in the door once and turn once only / We think of the key, each in his prison" *

When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?

Wasteland: line 115 "I never know what you are thinking." *

All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name

My reality is unique to me and we can't even agree on what to call things that are 'out there'.

Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

The letters here are a reference back to postcards at the start, making the song cyclical.

Hypatia's Loss: new poetry collection online

A collection of my poetry was available free from Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry under the title 'Hypatia's Loss'; the site has now closed, so I put the file somewhere else but that has closed too.

If you email me at mlocockATgmailDOTcom I will send you the file.

It is in pdf format, and can be viewed online or printed off; it is designed as a 38-page A4 booklet.

The contents include a parody of T S Eliot:
"Outside I hear the tramcar sound its mournful bell/
As night enwraps the street and tucks it in/
At half past four the dark descends/
Alas"

and limericks on philosphy:

"In the writings of Freidrich Nietzsche
Morality doesn't much feature
My classmate soon fell
Quite under his spell
And proved it by killing the teacher".

More seriously, there are retellings of Classical and Biblical stories which draw lightly on ancient sources to explore contemporary moral questions.

It takes its title from Hypatia, one of the witnesses of the burning of the Library at Alexandria , and is structured to bring out the message that the preservation and use of past knowledge is essential to the enjoyment of present freedoms.

In keeping with my declared passion for clarity, the poems are written in a spare and simple style, with only rare excursions into mystical and lyrical language.

Enjoy!
(don't you hate people who say that?)

Adelaide Crapsey: The Warning

I have written about Crapsey previously , and that post has led to a steady trickle of readers who find that there are few other Internet references to her (partly because a lot of longer literary content can only be accessed by typing queries into the search pages of individual resources, which is therefore invisible to Google's crawlers which can only follow hyperlinks, and is part of the 'hidden' or 'deep' web).

Judging from the specific terms searched for, it appears that many of these searchers are doing so because they have been given an assignment to interpret her poem 'The Warning'. So I thought I'd have a go.

The warning

1 Just now,
2 Out of the strange
3 Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .
4 A white moth flew. Why am I grown
5 So cold?

It is a characteristic of Crapsey's work that she manages to condense a great deal of meaning into a very short form, and evokes very specific locales (as Alkalay-Gut notes about the poem 'Niagara'). To deal with practicalities first: it is dusk (l3), in autumn (moth in l4) she is indoors ("out" in l2), looking through an open window (moth flew in: l2). But this is not a single moment in time: there is an implied sequence of events, which goes: I dusk II moth flies into room III poet becomes cold.

This prepares us to look at the more mysterious elements in the poem. In l3, we have the fragmentary "as strange, as still", echoing the "strange still dusk" of l2&3, which requires as a complement "as strange, as still, as something", something like an autumn dusk, an ending, a quietude: Death. The moth is The Warning of the title, of the coming of death.

Why would a moth fly into the room? To go towards a light or a flame. What was in the room that would attract it? Possibly a real lamp, but possibly not. In lines 4 and 5, stage III of the sequence, the poet's body is becoming cold in a way that is mystifying to the poet. What is happening? The spirit is leaving the body after death. It is the light of spirit that attracted the moth; the warning is not of approaching death, but of the start of the after-life.

*

It would be easy to read the poem as mundanely autobiographical; no doubt in her last year, dying of tuberculosis and writing cinquains, she did indeed often sit with the window open to the evening, despairing. (As an aside, in the 1930s it was discovered that TB bacteria could not survive in cold dry air, leading to the creation of "Fresh Air" hospitals where TB patients' beds would be wheeled outside during the day, and large windows would be left open whenever possible [ BBC story ]. Crapsey died before this).

But the poem is better than that. It is a warning to all that time is short, and a reckoning will come. Let that guide your life.

*

Virginia Woolf, probably independently of Crapsey, wrote about moths and death in The Death of the Moth :

Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.

*

A note to students. This is MY interpretation, not yours. And it might not get many marks, anyway.

The poetry of acceptance (Book review)

Poetic Acceptance by Erin Monahan (2005, Meeting of the Minds Publications , Pittsburgh PA, USA, $10, 30pp)

The term 'Internet poetry' sprang into existence as a pejorative, and is felt by some to be an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The explosion of post-anything forums, like the earlier vanity press anthology scams, has shown that the previous restrictions on publication by economics and reasons of space was keeping out not a small pool of competent but ignored poets, but a mass of would-be poets without either something to say or the means with which to say it. Interestingly, this has been recognised by the online poetry community, which is beginning to establish ground rules of literacy and coherence, to the annoyance of those who feel that poetry is self-expression which need take no notice of the views of readers.

But quality will prevail. One of the virtues of the internet is that it allows people's work to be judged on its merits, without preconceptions about whether it ought to be good or important. Another virtue is the possibility of fine-tuning from user feedback, so that confusions and complexities can be resolved dynamically before the poem reaches its final form.

Monahan is a beneficiary of both these factors. Her education was cut short by early marriage and motherhood, but she was inspired to return to writing poetry after the post-natal death of her child, and she has developed a distinctive style of allusive, emotionally-tough, short narrative poems, derived from her experience. The title of her collection reflects her moral stance: she realises that the world is not perfect, and there is no other, but aims for an equanamity of spirit through active engagement with it. This is not to say that her poems are doom-ridden or depressive; quite the opposite. Although she references the Beat poet Charles Bukowski and Sylvia Plath, she establishes a distance from despair and sorrow, through a forward-looking enjoyment of life in the moment. Thus "Saturday Morning Flea Market" describes a shopping expedition in simple terms, but manages to define a moment of luxuriating in the exotic appeal of foreign things and words; "Anchored" recounts a moment of reflection:

"Karma kills / like broken air conditioners and broken / hearts".

Other poems deal with love, sex, and lust: in "Absentia", she says

"There is an absence / in the room tonight- / it is the want / of your lips on mine"

, closely allied to her explorations of the connections between words and feelings (From "Permanent": "I suppose it's all about / being needed").

But the core of this collection is the series of poems addressing the death of her child. These display a range of approaches and responses, from her anger at her mother's Christian platitudes ("Mother's love", perhaps more shocking in the God-fearing USA), bleak despair ("Free": "There were: / no miracles/ in the desert"), to comfort in fantasy ("Fantasia": "She smiles in rock-crystal / and giggles on the breeze"), and closure ("Wisdom": "You were never in pain"). In 'Time: A study in grief', the longest, most ambitious, and best poem in the collection, she traces her reactions from (literal) speechlessness:

"Now there is nothing/ and it's too much, / everything, and not nearly enough / at the same time, and the words / come out wrong, because there are / no words at all."

through anger, to the acceptance of her title, shown to be not some unconsidered optimism but an accommodation of reality which allows for both grief and future happiness.

Monahan's work reflects the development of her skills as a poet to set out her responses to personal tragedy but is not limited to the ghetto of therapeutic writing. Her poetry is funny, sexy and clever, and deserves to reach a wide audience.

The naming of parts

Found this parody today:

Scanning For Viri (Peter Sheil, 2003)
(In the style of Lessons of the War, Part I. "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed - see below for the original poem)

Today we scan for viri.
Yesterday we did real work
And tomorrow, hopefully, we'll do real work
But today, today we scan for viri.

The wind blows the trees,
Waves of branches breaking against a metal fence,
And the clouds scuttle by.

First we run stinger.exe.
This removes the stinger virus
Which blocks your SQL servers
And distresses your children.

There are blue and red and silver and black
cars in the car park.
There were drops of rain, falling and blowing
whilst we scanned for viri.

And the Stinger program will find 30 other viri
When you run it on your PC;
But copy it to you C: drive first.
And if you don't have a CD drive here is a floppy disk
To scan for viri.

The car windows glitter as the sun
Moves - and clouds pass.
My eyes, blinded by reflections,
Peer at the screen
As I scan for viri.

And when you have run the Stinger.exe
You must run the FixWelch.exe
Which is found in the "Other" folder.

Sometimes, early, a white and black cat
Stalks the empty car park - owning the tarmac
And all small living things it sees.
It never scans for viri.

When the FixWelch.exe has finished
You must patch you operating system.
The patch files are in the folder with
The name of your version of Windows.

But not for Windows NT - I have to find
That patch myself, from when I patched my machine
Two days ago, before we started
Scanning for viri.

At lunch time some cars go;
Visits to the shops, the bank,
To buy tickets for the game
And cards for our loved ones.

If you are running Windows 2000
Then you must have Service Pack three or four.
The Service Pack disk is in the MSDN library
Locked in the third cupboard on the left.

There are no birds flying past today -
Too windy; too gusty to fly close
To a hard object that might
Give you a virus.

And if you are running Windows NT
Then you must have service Pack 6
But we don't have a copy of Service Pack 6
So you will not be able to patch your machine
Until you do find a copy.

A white van drives past, delivering something
From somewhere to somewhere else;
Unaware that we are
Scanning for viri.

And when you have patched your machine
You must change the administrator password
(which I will not write down here to keep it secret)
And you will remember it, and I will remember it
But the viri won't know it, for it is secret.

My hand rubs my chin, feeling the small bristles
And roughnesses that have come since the morning.
The sun dries the ground, the shadow of the building moves across the cars.
A blackbird hops among the grass at the foot of the trees
And a patterned brown butterfly flashes by.

And when you machine is finished we will stick a sticker on it
To show that you are now clean of viri and patched correctly.
And when every machine has been done and you are all clean of viri
We will allow you to reconnect to the network, a few at a time;
For we are cautious and do not trust these things electronic.

Today I've been busy; copying CDs and floppies, running programs, showing people what to do.
Yesterday we did real work
And tomorrow, hopefully, we'll do real work
But today, today we scan for viri.

Reed, Henry. "Naming of Parts." New Statesman and Nation 24, no. 598 (8 August 1942): 92.

LESSONS OF THE WAR

To Alan Michell

Vixi duellis nuper idoneus
Et militavi non sine gloria

I. NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

from http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/namingofparts.html

Almost famous

or "Some of these poems have previously appeared..."

Modesty is a natural thing, so much so that people assume that you are being modest when you are sticking to the literal truth. When I put in my Self definition in 30 statements that "I have published a handful of poems in very obscure places", readers instinctively interpret this as "I have published quite a few poems in a range of quite well known places but don't want to appear big-headed". And they are wrong, as I shall explain, by going through the list.


1. Ampersand

Although there have been several magazines of this name, the one to which I refer was published for two issues in 1984, in Cambridge, England. Each contained a poem by me, one worth forgetting, the other "Student Poet":

In the void before the nicotine dreams,
Noises and thoughts collide and merge
Until the random racket seems
Like a Muse's whispered urge.

Arise, young man, turn on the light,
Before the self-deluding moment goes,
Take up your fountain pen, and write
The sort of stuff too transparent for prose:

Of rain and night, love and aircraft noise,
Of barbed wire, holocaust and tanks -
Find again the self-important joys
Of borrowed woes and teenage angst.

Then lie back, turn the light off,
Dream of suicide and post-mortem fame,
To wake in the morning light, and cough,
And file the page with others, much the same.


The life cycle of the university arts magazine was a short one; essentially, a group of English and Art students would become frustrated at being unable to get their work printed by the cliques running the established magazines; those with rich parents would finance the upfront printing costs for a new one; it would appear, having disappointing sales, relying for distribution on its staff and contributors; the editorial staff would graduate, get bored, or have to start doing some studying; and then it would vanish. Although people often talk about the world of publication as a small gang where knowing the right people is an essential element in success or acceptance, meaning this figuratively, I think, in the case of these little magazines it is quite genuinely the case. So the only two issues of the magazine have vanished almost without trace- my parents I think have a copy somewhere, which now has some rarity value.


2. Gower Society Newsletter
This is perhaps a different sort of obscure. Members of the Gower Society wouldn't call it obscure at all, I suppose, but then the Society is for people who live in or are interested in a small part of Wales west of Swansea. The Society has an annual journal which publishes a range of scholarly articles. At one stage (in the 1950s) it printed topographic poetry about Gower to fill up the gaps at the end of articles, and this is what led me to submit a sort-of topographic poem about Gower (or rather about sin or the end of the world or something, but mentioning Gower) to the editor, who hastily passed it on to the newsletter editor as 'more suitable', and was duly published, sparking off a mini-tradition as subsequent issues included more conventional topographic poems written in verse.

Dead water, Oxwich Bay

The languor of a hot midday in June
Spreads to the sea, where slackwater waves
Slap ineffectually at the sand.
A moment of silence: the humid air unmoved,
All action countermanded by the heat;
And in that moment all the world stood still

A choice to be made: to start again?
Renew the tide of life and thought?
Or else to let it end, worn out
By one too many days and doubts.

My heart drummed out the seconds one by one,
Until at last an answer came -
A breeze across the water cooled the shore;
A Wind forgave the sinful land.
Gabriel unpursed his lips, lowered his horn.



So read things carefully: sometimes people say exactly what they mean!

Self-denying ordinance

Message to self: get on with the other stuff

Namely:
radio play about a blogger sacked for blogging
translation of Alfred de Musset's Nuit de mai

Go on

Update
One down: see Complete and Utter Poetry. It is perhaps worth explaining quite why I ended up translating from the French a poem by a Romantic poet whose work is relatively little known in Britain. Well, I was discussing the biographical influences on the poetry of the Romantic tradition with an international literary panel, and it was suggested that.... NO, NO, NO, that's wrong! that's so wrong! I stopped studying literature formally when I was 16; since then I've only done reading. Early in my career as an archaeological fieldworker, a combination of location and finance meant that I spent a bitter autumn living in a tent in the desolate wastelands of Lincolnshire; our sole entertainment was cheap books from the secondhand bookshop. One was an anthology of French prose and poetry. A working knowledge of French was one of the few practical skills I derived from my education (I have rarely found myself called upon to describe the formation of an ox-bow lake), and so I idly leafed through it, and came across Musset's poem. Knowing nothing about him or his work, I was simply pleasantly surprised that some of it was intelligible to me without much work. After spending a short time playing with a verse translation, I gave up, feeling that it was too 'poetic' to be made relevant, and instead used it as the basis for a poetic poem of my own (Cri de couer). Twenty years on, sorting through old papers, I came across my poem, and thought that it was worth putting on the website. This led me to try to find out about the original poem, and, the volume having long since vanished, I trawled the web, and found, to my surprise, that there was no readily-accessible English translation of the full text. So I have sat down and done one myself. And now I can go to a conference on the biographical influences on the poetry of the Romantic tradition, if I haven't got a better offer, like being shot through the knees and fed raw pigs' brains.

Update 2:
Play done too!

Now, what's next- world peace? perpetual motion?

Taking a poem apart

As I say in my Self Portrait, I believe that writing poems is, or ought to be, a literary act (ie the application of critical thinking and reason) rather than primarily a creative act. I am aware that my poems run the risk of becoming bland and cerebral from lack of extravagant language, and so I thought it would be interesting to recount from the inside how a poem ended up in its final form.

Here's the poem:

Going back 1


The gate hangs open 2
I walk the mossy path 3
To the door: its paint is blistered
Blotchy with mould 4
The windows are cracked,
The chimneys nested 5

No fire warms the hearth: 6
The guardians have departed 7
They left the gate
Hanging open. 8


1 The title had started out as "An orphan returns to his childhood home" and the poem described the changes in perspective and scale, from a bereaved standpoint. This seemed both melodramatic and over-specific, and so I shifted the focus to the physical location, leaving the context more open and ambiguous. The new title derives mainly from the traditional advice "Never go back". It's a slightly odd bit of advice, and presumably could be clarified as saying "Never go back expecting things to be the same", reflecting the mental jolt that returning expatriates feel when they find that they are no longer 'at home' in their homeland, and therefore are cut adrift, and which everyone, to a lesser degree, feels when they realise that they are now officially grown up and that nobody will kiss their knees better when they fall over. The implication is that the adult is returning hoping for some form of shelter, support, or guidance (and therefore is currently in a damaged state).

The title also echoes two songs, on a similar theme: Goffin/King's Goin' Back ("I think I'm going back/ to the things I knew so well in my youth") which contrasts the troubled adult with a simpler younger self, and Neil Young's Going Back from Comes a Time (1978) which contrasts a happy past relationship with current distance and loss ("I used to build these buildings/ I used to walk next to you/ Their shadows tore us apart/ And now we do what we do/ Driven to the mountain high / Sunken in the cities deep / Living in our sleep/ I feel like going back /Back where there's nowhere to stay").

So although going back may be a physical journey, there are clear reasons for expecting it to be a mental journey too.


2 I used to visit a lot of derelict and deserted houses which were due for demolition in advance of development, and they seemed unbearably sad. The last occupants, knowing that there would be no successors, often left the building in a strange state, either in haste, in protest, or in laziness. Leaving a gate open is an admission that no visitors are expected or that there is noone to visit. This line is intended to create a feeling of unease as well as the straightforward image of a physical gate.


3 This line surreptiously imports agency and the writer/reader into the action: there is an I that is walking (the rest of the poem is passive description). The mossy path implies disuse, reinforcing the implication of lack of human traffic, and introducing evidence of neglect

4 The door confirms neglect and pushes towards actual decay: the house is no longer maintained, and perhaps hasn't been for some time.

5 The other details, as the visitor looks up at the house, confirm not only that there is neglect and decay, but that it has been active for some time. Cumulatively, this evidence leads to the suspicion that the house is deserted.

The first stanza is intended, therefore, to present a sequence of snapshots (you could film it precisely) of someone walking up to a house, but by the accumulation of details creates a lonely, distanced feeling. It seems unlikely that the visitor will get what they came for.


6 On a practical level, this follows directly on from the blocked chimneys. However, the use of the symbolically-loaded word 'hearth' moves the poem from observation into a more conceptual realm. "Warming the hearth" is a very different thing to "heating the fireplace": its neglect implies a failure to perform the key duties of familyhood, and thus focuses the unease of the first stanza on the absence of people in general and parents in particular.


7 The visitor realises the implication, and can no longer evade it. They are no longer there. (Departed is of course a euphemism for death, although simple absence could be meant)

8 In departing, they were presumably, as noted above, either rushed, reluctant or no longer interested. This is an abdication of their role, effectively their farewell to the visitor. There is a contrast with the expression 'leaving the door open' which means that a return is expected. The line is also an echo of the opening line, so that the poem can be read as a never-ending loop, a sort of limbo.

Thus without at any point describing the emotional state or history of the visitor it tries to imply very specifically the combination of unease, dread and despair that damaged adulthood encounters when trying to solve its problems by returning to what is remembered as a simpler, happier time. This meaning is compressed into 10 short lines. I'm sure it is poetry - whether it's good poetry is another question.

Free verse: a warning from history

The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (1986):

For [the New Poets] poetic form was unimportant and they believed that the strict metres were unsuitable for the expression of great thoughts; it was the message and the sublimity of the content that mattered. Alas, the message of the New Poet was often far from clear: his work was vitiated by verbosity and empty rhetoric, by which means he sought to ask unanswerable questions about the meaning of Life and the essence of the Universe.

The curse of public poetry

Wales now has a national poet - Gwyneth Lewis (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4497491.stm ). In a way, this is only fitting, since the tradition of eisteddfod competitions and Welsh language teaching means that there is much more down-to-earth, anyone-can-do-it attitude that prevails in, say, England, where to say you are a poet is to label yourself immediately as either a teenager, an English student, or a pensioner with time on their hands. Personally, I think the pendulum has swing too far towards the demystification and deskilling of poetry, mainly through the emphasis of poetry as self-expression rather than communication, which means that you can't say a poem is no good because that is an assault on the writer, even if it is no good. Good poetry is supposed to be hard to do!

But aside from that, it goes with the job of public poet to write poems about public events. This rarely results in good work. Gwyneth Lewis' poem on the triumph of the Wales rugby team (scroll down to the bottom of the page to see it) is a case in point. Even though this was an event in which she no doubt shared the euphoria of the best result in a generation, poetically it is er...awkward, possibly because she was wary of appearing "too clever" or "too hard", so she chucked some rhymes in here and there.

Andrew Motion has similar problems as Poet Laureate.

Fundamentally, though, I think that they find it hard to get excited about many of their topics, as indeed any sane person would. Even if you decide you do have to write a poem about an event, you do need the space to decide what to say, which may not be entirely positive and celebratory: see my Millenium poem.

Self portrait in 30 statements

I've just posted this at the Moontown Cafe poetry forum:

I believe that biography is incidental: knowing what someone has done, where, and when, gives little indication of how they think or feel
I am British (English; I have lived in Wales for 10 years)
I am 43 and married and have three children, aged 12, 8 and 4, two boys, one girl
We have two long-lived goldfish, and a stray cat we feed but don't like because he attacks people at random
I was born in Northern England but grew up in various places in the Midlands and Southwest.
I went to Cambridge University, ostensibly to study Archaeology but spending a lot of time writing etc
I used to write a lot of songs (which still shows up in my poems where I will treat "mine/ time" and "home/alone" as if they rhyme), but gave up when I realised that I couldn’t sing
I still can't
I worked as an archaeologist for 20 years. This involved a lot of technical writing and editing. I spent all my time trying to make the reports clearer and shorter. This has rubbed off on my taste in poetry.
My favourite living poet is Wendy Cope
My favourite dead poet is Philip Larkin, despite his personal faults
I have some time for Eliot and Auden; I have no time for Dylan Thomas
I am now creating a website summarising all the archives in Wales. This also involves making sure text is short and clear
I hate unnatural word order to fit a rhyme
I don't like poems which tell me what colour the flowers are. It's usually padding.
I don't like poems that mystify pointlessly. If I want a puzzle I pick up a crossword.
I believe a poem should be readable in one attempt, even if you then go on thinking about it
I believe writing a poem is a literary act, not unfiltered self-expression. Or at least it should be, if the poet is doing their job.
I like poems that impart hard-won wisdom
I am interested in Greek and Roman mythology and use it in my poems but don't know that much about it
I try to write in very difficult forms and give the appearance of ease
I cut my drafts to pieces to get to a final version
I try to be funny if possible: there are enough serious poems in the world
I have published a handful of poems in very obscure places
I believe most poets find it helpful to be told : "this line doesn't work"
I believe that they find it more helpful to be told "it doesn't work because . . . "
I believe that most helpful of all is "what about this, or that?"
I accept that these beliefs may be wrong
My poetry is on my other blog, Complete and Utter Poetry.

Manifesto for a new poetry

Over at Monster Sarcasm Rally, sic explains she steered clear of writing poetry because she thought it was sentimental, self-indulgent, concerned with "nice thoughts" and feelings.

Perhaps it usually is, but why don't we re-define it to include the snappy, clever, witty and cruel too.


I've started a new blog to rant along these lines: How to write bad poetry.

A forgotten poet

I came across an interesting poet who seems to have dropped belowthe cultural radar since her death in 1914: Adelaide Crapsey. Although she sound's like she's got a made-up name (not that I'm one to talk), she is perfectly real, and included in The Albatross Book of Living Verse, published by Collins in the 1930s (and given as many poems as Wilfred Owen). Her claim for revival is that her use of a new verse-form, the Cinquain (sometimes spelled Quincain). The form is strangely effective in a halting way, a bit like a Samuel Becket speech: it comprises five lines, of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables.

These are hers:


Cinquain: Triad

These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow . . . the hour
Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one
Just dead

Cinquain: November night

Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisped, break from the trees
And fall.

Cinquain: The warning

Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?



She also wrote this:

On seeing weather-beaten trees

Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown?


Cultural values are always relative, but these certainly seemed to jump off the page as I flicked through the anthology.

(Oh, and if you're wondering, this is not a hoax or parody).


Update
Not as forgotten as I thought. There is a strong US tradition of the Cinquain (so spelled) as developed by Crapsey.

Her poetry book Verse is available in full at American Verse Project.

There is a journal called Amaze dedicated to promotion of the Crapsey cinquain.