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[imaginarylove]

Thank you for the villanelles, tf. To be honest, I don't think any of them were entirely successful, but seeing so many together made me appreciate the form more.

[PolyPam]

Thank you all for the poems.

I really love this thread.

[taciturnfriend]

[imaginarylove]

Maybe as a reaction to the narcissim and solipsism of so much modern verse, I love 18th century verse, which is more reliant on "wit" than emoting. Here's an extract from Pope's Essay on Criticism. Here the poet reflects on various types of critics and their fallacies:

Others for Language all their Care express,
And value Books, as Women Men, for Dress:
Their Praise is still — "The Stile is excellent":
The Sense, they humbly take upon Content.
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found. [310]
False Eloquence, like the Prismatic Glass,
Its gawdy Colours spreads on ev'ry place;
The Face of Nature was no more Survey,
All glares alike, without Distinction gay:
But true Expression, like th' unchanging Sun,
Clears, and improves whate'er it shines upon,
It gilds all Objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the Dress of Thought, and still
Appears more decent as more suitable;
A vile Conceit in pompous Words exprest, [320]
Is like a Clown in regal Purple drest;
For diff'rent Styles with diff'rent Subjects sort,
As several Garbs with Country, Town, and Court.
Some by Old Words to Fame have made Pretence;
Ancients in Phrase, meer Moderns in their Sense!
Such labour'd Nothings, in so strange a Style,
Amaze th'unlearn'd, and make the Learned Smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the Play,
These Sparks with aukward Vanity display
What the Fine Gentleman wore Yesterday! [330]
And but so mimick ancient Wits at best,
As Apes our Grandsires in their Doublets treat.
In Words, as Fashions, the same Rule will hold;
Alike Fantastick, if too New, or Old;
Be not the first by whom the New are try'd,
Nor yet the last to lay the Old aside.

But most by Numbers* judge a Poet's Song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;
In the bright Muse tho' thousand Charms conspire,
Her Voice is all these tuneful Fools admire, [340]
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear,
Not mend their Minds; as some to Church repair,
Not for the Doctrine, but the Musick there.
These Equal Syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the Ear the open Vowels tire,
While Expletives their feeble Aid do join,
And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line,
While they ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes.
Where-e'er you find the cooling Western Breeze, [350]
In the next Line, it whispers thro' the Trees;
If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep,
The Reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with Sleep.
Then, at the last, and only Couplet fraught
With some unmeaning Thing they call a Thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the Song,
That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.

(*Numbers = prosody, verse, Lat. numeri).

That last line is a brilliant example of sound imitating sense, and it is, of course, an Alexandrine (12 syllables).

[Haru]

[Harry]

Matthew Fitt is one of the most prolific figures in modern Scots writing; this was sort of his break-through poem. Re-read Tam O'Shanter if you don't ken it well; this is much, much better.

Kate O'Shanter's Tale
by Matthew Fitt

Who'er this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother's son take heed,
Whene'er tae drink ye are inclin'd
Or cutty sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o'er dear -
Remember Tam O'Shanter's mare.

Ye
ay, ye
ah waant a wurd wi ye
juist poppt in, duid ye
oan the wey hame fae wurk, wur ye
juist poppt in
fur a wee blethir, wus it
a cheerie chinway, eh
a quick hiya boys tae the smithie an the millar, eh
an a wee hauf o hevvie juist
tae keep juist
tae keep ye gaun, lyke

ay
but juist the ane tho
ay juist the ane
an a wee ane, mind
juist the wee, wee, wee, weeist ane
an then ye'r awa hame
ay
sulky sullen dame an aa that ken
ay
gaitherin hur broos, sae seh is
ay, juist the ane
gaitherin stoarm, ken
nursin hur wrath, whit
ay, juist ane bit
ay, nae bathir
ay
oh, ay
well, dinnae geis it, Shanter
juist dinnae geis it

ye cam in heir
fowre in the bliddy moarnan
an ye wur buckled
cuildnae staun
cuildnae speik
haverin a load ay keech, sae ye wur
tellin us hou ye'd juist
goat bak fae a ceilidh wi the deevil
an hou come ye'd seen viv lumsden's belly button
a bletherin, blusterin, drunken blellum, sae ye ur
whit a state tae git intae
voamit stens
doon
the bak o yir jaikit
werrin sumbiddie else's schune
how cuild ye be werrin sumbiddie else's schune
an of coorse
yir knoab wis hingin oot
the tap ay yir breeks
nae schemm, huv ye
an sei if ye'v byn oot wi yon hoor
kirton jean again
sae help me
ah'll chap it aff
an ye hud tae be seik
aa owre
ma bran new, deep layered
haun-med bi crippilt weans in kilbarchan
tender pyle carpit
duidn't ye
whit a state

ye wur that pischt
that yir ain voamit
goat aff the flair
an ran ben tae the cludgie
an spewed its ring
ah dinna ken

fowre in the moarnan
ye cam in heir
duidnae waant yir tea, duid ye
(ah'v hud chips)
slavin away since six this moarnan
a ten myle hyke throu the snaa fur fyrewidd
fechtin aff wolfs an bears an lions
(ah'v hud chips)
slavin away
sooth o the boarder spanish meatballs
orange ginger
an tatties
(ah'v hud chips)
romanoff a la lila, wattir chestnuts
an custart
ah hud tae sen the bairns oot
tae bolivia fur the fukkin chestnuts
an ye cam in hier
but ah'v had chips
an a wee dona kebab

an juist whit
in the nemm o the wee manduid ye dae tae the horse
ma best brawest cuddie, puir meg
that wis the tocher aff ma ain faithir
ye'v went an broke it
ye'r an eejit shanter
a fukkin eejit
ah dinna ken whit ye wur playin at
bit ye better fynn that tail
pronto

Who'er this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother's son take heed,
Whene'er tae drink you are inclin'd
Or cutty sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o'er dear -
Remember, remember, remember whit happent tae ma fukkin horse.

[Lilypod]

This thread reminded me that I like MacNeice.

Star-Gazer

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those almost intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.

And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain.


Wolves

I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore.

The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.

Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and laughter.


Birthright

When I was born the row began,
I had never asked to be a man;
They never asked if I could ride
But shouted at me 'Come outside!',
Then hauled the rearing beast along
And said: 'Your charger, right or wrong.'
His ears went back and so did I,
I said 'To mount him means to die',
They said 'Or course'; the nightmare neighed
And I felt foolish and afraid.
The sun came up, my feet stuck fast,
The minutes, hours, and years went past,
More chances missed than I could count,
The stable boys cried: 'Time to mount!'
My jaw dropped and I gaped from drouth:
My gift horse looked me in the mouth.


Sports Page

Nostalgia, incantation, escape,
Courts and fields of the Ever Young:
On your Marks! En Garde! Scrum Down! Over!
On the ropes, on the ice, breasting the tape,
Our Doppelgänger is bounced and flung
While the ball squats in the air like a spider
Threading the horizon round the goalposts
And we, though never there, give tongue.

Yet our Doppelgänger rides once more
Over the five-barred gates and flames
In metaphors filched from magic and music
With a new witch broom and a rattling score
And the names we read seem more than names,
Potions or amulets, till we remember
The lines of print are always sidelines
And all our games funeral games.

[Fairyboy69]

[unremarkable]

MAN WITH A GOLF BALL HEART

They set about him with a knife and fork, I heard,
and spooned it out. Dunlop, dimpled, perfectly hard.
It bounced on stone but not on softer ground--they made
a note of that. They slit the skin--a leathery,
rubbery eyelid thing--and further in, three miles
of gut or string, elastic. Inside that, a pouch
or sac of pearl-white balm or gloss, like Copydex.
It weighed in at the low end of the litmus test
but wouldn't burn, and tasted bitter, bad, resin
perhaps from a tree or plant. And it gave off gas
that caused them all to weep when they inspected it.

That heart had been an apple once, they reckoned. Green
They had a scheme to plant an apple there again
beginning with a pip, but he rejected it.

_________________________________

NOT THE FURNITURE GAME

His hair was a crow fished out of a blocked chimney
and his eyes were boiled eggs with the tops hammered in
and his blink was a cat flap
and his teeth were bluestones or Easter Island statues
and his bite was a perfect horseshoe.
His nostrils were both barrels of a shotgun, loaded.
And his mouth was an oil exploration project gone bankrupt
and his last smile was a caesarean section
and his tongue was an iguanodon
and his whistle was a laser beam
and his laugh was a bad case of kennel cough.
He coughed, and it was malt whisky.
And his headaches were arson in Her Majesty's Dockyards
and his arguments were outboard motors strangled with fishing-line
and his neck was a bandstand
and his Adam's apple was a ball cock
and his arms were milk running off from a broken bottle.
His elbows were boomerangs or pinking shears.
And his wrists were ankles
and his handshakes were puff adders in the bran tub
and his fingers were astronauts found dead in their spacesuits
and the palms of his hands were action paintings
and both thumbs were blue touchpaper.
And his shadow was an opencast mine.
And his dog was a sentry-box with no-one in it
and his heart was a first world war grenade discovered by children
and his nipples were timers for incendiary devices
and his shoulder-blades were two butchers at the meat-cleaving competition
and his belly-button was the Falkland Islands
and his private parts were the Bermuda triangle
and his backside was a priest hole
and his stretch marks were the tide going out.
The whole system of his blood was Dutch elm disease.
And his legs were depth charges
and his knees were fossils waiting to be tapped open
and his ligaments were rifles wrapped in oilcloth under the floorboards
and his calves were the undercarriages of Shackletons.
The balls of his feet were where meteorites had landed
and his toes were a nest of mice under the lawn-mower.
And his footprints were Vietnam
and his promises were hot-air balloons floating off over the trees
and his one-liners were footballs trough other people's windows
and his grin was the Great Wall of China as seen from the moon
and the last time they talked, it was apartheid.

She was a chair, tipped over backwards
with his donkey jacket on her shoulders.

They told him,
and his face was a hole
where the ice had not been thick enough to hold her.

_________________________________

*

I live in fear of letting people down.
Last Winter, someone leaked the blueprint for a plan
to put the town back on the map:
that everyone should stand and strike a match
at midnight on the shortest, darkest day,
then photograph it from an aeroplane. No way:

the workers wouldn't break bread with the upper class,
the wealthy wouldn't mingle with the mob,
the worthy knew a thing or two about sulphuric gas.

It came to pass that only one man struck; a man whose job
or game was civic unrest and civil dissent, but who claimed
to be lighting his pipe in any event,
a man whose face turned purple as he spoke.

I know very well that man doesn't smoke.

[Harry]

[Meg]

My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer
Mark Strand

1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from their cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands hear the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down through the sedges
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon's ash-colored coat
on the black bay.

2
Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we yield each night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that brought her to this.


3
My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small creatures --
the mouse and the swift -- will sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.

[taciturnfriend]

Lawrence, I don't think those Armitage poems really benefit from having the titles and author left off, especially the first one which is significantly less comprehensible if you don't know it's called Man with a Golf Ball Heart. And the middle one has the great title of Not The Furniture Game; they're important parts of the poems. Why, out of curiosity?

Lilypod, I like MacNeice. I once heard a recording of him reading Prayer Before Birth, which was very odd.

[unremarkable]

You're right, and they've been amended.

[Harry]

Here's a classic Scots poem, then. The Scots is a bit easier to read in this one, and less reliant on knowing the accent well, though it helps. I'd like to know if you lot can read these, and whether I should be providing translations all the time. I post a lot of Scots poetry because I think it's an incredibly good language for the genre.

The Freedom Come All Ye
Hamish Henderson

Roch the wind in the clear day's dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow'r the bay,
But there's mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o' the warld the day.
It's a thocht that will gar oor rottans
– A' they rogues that gang gallus, fresh and gay –
Tak the road, and seek ither loanins
For their ill ploys to sport and play.

And nae mair will the bonnie callants
Mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw,
Nor wee weans frae pit-heid and clachan
Mourn the ships sailin' doon the Broomielaw.
Broken faimlies in lands we've herriet,
Will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;
Black and white, ane til ither mairriet,
Mak the vile barracks o' their maisters bare.

So come all ye at hame wi' Freedom,
Never heed whit the hoodies croak for doom.
In your hoose a' the bairns o' Adam
Can find breid, barley-bree and painted room.
When MacLean meets wi's freens in Springburn
A' the rose and geans will turn tae bloom,
And a black boy frae yont Nyanga
Dings the fell gallows o' the burghers doon.

--

Rather than a translation, 'cause I can't be arsed, here's an explanation of all the important bits:

ll 1-2 A non-specific image of stormy weather, but especially familiar as a view from Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth.
ll 3-4 The local becomes the universal, and the ‘Great Glen’ (specifically an area to the east of Fort William) becomes the world. The metaphor of the wind is developed – it is the ‘wind of change’.
ll 5-8 Rottans are rats. The change in society will flush them out.
ll 9-10 The callants are the young men sacrified to war.
ll 11-12 Children (across the world) from both Highlands and Lowlands (the country and the city) lament as the ships take their fathers to war.
ll 13-14 The end of Scottish imperialism – ie, Scots as the soldiers of Empire as exemplified in another (martial) anthem to Scotland.
ll 15-16 The ecstatic image of races and cultures united destroys oppression.
ll 19-20 ‘Food, drink and comfortable abode’. The Scottish (Celtic) tradition of hospitality but also a universal virtue.
ll 21-22 John MacLean, the leader of the Red Clydesiders at the beginning of the twentieth century was a Scottish socialist hero. Here he symbolically returns to his home in Glasgow (the subject of another of Hamish’s songs, The John MacLean March). Freedom then, figuratively, ‘blooms’.
ll 23-24 The burghers (small town officials) but also the oppressors and opponents of freedom are, in this powerful epiphany, destroyed. The ‘black boy frae yont Nyanga’ could be seen as Nelson Mandela. However, the power of the final trope is in its anonymity – ie, freedom is not the preserve of heroes or revolutionaries, but of anyone, anywhere. This marvellous last line defies the common tradition of the Scottish ‘anthem’ and its deification of war-like heroes such as William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Scotland forsakes its colonial past and embraces freedom as an international, rather than national, and universal virtue.

[The Conquistador]

I hate scots,it makes me cringe but I'm holding that opinion not as rightful one- so don't hit me!

Oh and I also can't understand it,did anyone ever really talk like that?