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[Meg]

I did as well.

[taciturnfriend]

Love that little Merwin.

Letters from Minor Loves
Chelsea Rathburn

Perhaps we thought their authors incomplete:
dimwitted, slightly dull, undignified.
They might have laughed too loud, appeared too sweet;
it's harder to be loved than vilified.

Whatever words become love's epitaph,
their lines still call to us from musty drawers.
the wounded stumble through each paragraph,
spilling flowers and wine and metaphors.

Their quavering voices sound love's declarations,
singing praises that we've never earned,
and yet we keep these feeble accusations,
too beautiful, too clumsy to be burned.


And here's a humorous poem, largely without the serious subtext that Eliot's has:

The Hippopotamus
Ogden Nash

Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.

[imaginarylove]

I've posted this before, but before Darren joined the board, so he may not know it.

A Poem on War and Death and Futility
by Roy Fuller, 1940

Swift had pains in his head.
Johnson dying in bed
Tapped the dropsy himself.
Blake saw a flea and an elf.
Tennyson could hear the shriek
Of a bat. Pope was a freak.
Emily Dickinson stayed
Indoors for a decade.
Water inflated the belly
Of Hart Crane, and of Shelley.
Coleridge was a dope.
Southwell died on a rope.
Byron had a round white foot.
Smart and Cowper were put
Away. Lawrence was a fidget.
Keats was a midget.
Donne, alive in his shroud,
Shakespeare in the coil of a cloud,
Saw death as he
Came crab-wise, dark and massy.
I envy not only their talents
And fertile lack of balance
But the appearance of choice
In their sad and fatal voice.

I was tempted to omit the poem's title, as it doesn't add anything to the poem for me, although it probably says something about the circumstances in which it was written.

[imaginarylove]

*bump* This thread should always be on the first page!

[taciturnfriend]

That Fuller is great.

We had a couple of Wendy Cope poems in the last thread, here are some more. She's best known for comic verse and brilliant parody, but can also be sharply poignant. I love all of these.


After the Lunch

On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes,
The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black wooly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love.

On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. You're high on charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?

On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
The head does its best but the heart is the boss—
I admit it before I am halfway across.



Waste Land Limericks

I.
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyants distress me,
Commuters depress me—
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

II.
She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions—
Bad as Albert and Lil—what a pair!

III.
The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep—
A typist is laid,
A record is played—
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

IV.
A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business—the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he'd met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.

V.
No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
Then thunder, a shower of quotes
From the Sanskrit and Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.



Strugnell's Sonnets (i)

The expense of spirits is a crying shame,
So is the cost of wine. What bard today
Can live like old Khayyám? It’s not the same—
A loaf and Thou and Tesco’s Beaujolais.
I had this bird called Sharon, fond of gin—
Could knock back six or seven. At the price
I paid a high wage for each hour of sin
And that was why I only had her twice.
Then there was Tracy, who drank rum and Coke,
So beautiful I didn’t mind at first
But love grows colder. Now some other bloke
Is subsidizing Tracy and her thirst.
I need a woman, honest and sincere,
Who’ll come across on half a pint of beer.



Another Unfortunate Choice

I think I'm in love with A. E. Housman,
Which puts me in a worse-than-usual fix.
No woman ever stood a chance with Housman
And he's been dead since 1936.

[Haru]

[imaginarylove]

Those are great, Darren! Particularly the condensed Waste Land.

Here's another short poem by Wendy Cope I like:

The day he moved out was terrible --
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn't a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.

And when one critic wrote that she and certain other poets "write to amuse," she responded:

Write to amuse? What an appalling suggestion!
I write to make people anxious and miserable and to worsen
their indigestion.

And it's impossible not to love a woman whose first collection was called Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis.

[Meg]

I've been on a bit of a kick lately with poets using Greek and Roman myth/history in a modern context. Of course a lot of them do so. These are part of a longer work by Mark Rudman.

PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA

I. PERSEUS SURPRISED, ANDROMEDA UNBOUND

The gods have not created men.
Men have created the gods.
-HOLDERLIN

[ . . . ]

3. Perseus' Bout of Altruism

Andromeda feared that he could take her silence
as an admission of guilt and chose to answer
Perseus' questions while pretending to ignore
their source in his personal interest in her.
The monster circled the shore,
groaning, churning the waters.

Her Mom and Dad, timorous as always,
clung to their immobilized daughter
as if they weren't why she was enchained.
Lacking dignity or pride, they cowered.
Perseus sensed they would have consented
to any request as long as he "took care of matters"

but feigned respect and asked politely
for her hand in return for "taking care of matters."
"Anything, anything," they replied in unison.
Perseus cringed; their pernicious
selfishness and cowardice was a far greater
threat to the future lovers than this "monster."

[ . . . ]

6. Distracting Transformations

Where is the beautiful aviatrix
with a plumb bob haircut in homage to Amelia?
I am pursued, as Perseus pursued Andromeda,
by electronic machines, devices that appear
to bring the world near but do something very different.
I'd rather be in desperate pursuit, like Perseus,
than chained to a cliff and subject to every
conceivable assault,
or surrounded by fax computer phone
whose signals jar, demanding answers,
taking time away from time.

[imaginarylove]

Thanks for these, Meg.

[taciturnfriend]

Intersting, that. Here are three takes on Homer (the last quite subtle).

Christopher Logue has been writing his wild versions of the Iliad for more than forty years now. This is Anchises speaking to Hector about the Greeks:

"To them peace is a crime, and offers of diplomacy
Like giving strawberries to a dog.
.....Indeed, what sort of king excepting theirs
Would slit his daughter's throat to start a war?"

Depressingly familiar rhetoric. And this from War Music, his account of Books 16-19:

..Down on your knees, Achilles. Farther down.
Now forward on your hands and put your face into the dirt,
And scrub it to and fro.
..Grief has you by the hair with one
And with the forceps of its other hand
Uses your mouth to trowel the dogshit up;
Watches you lift your arms to Heaven; and then
Pounces and screws your nose into the filth.
..Gods have plucked drawstrings from your head,
And from the templates of your upper lip
Modelled their bows.
..Not now. Not since
Your grieving reaches out and pistol-whips
That envied face, until
Frightened to bear your black, backbreaking agony alone,
You sank, throat back, thrown back, your voice
Thrown out across the sea to reach your Source.


Irish poets have often used Homer to write about their wars. Longley's poem was written in 1994, the year of the IRA ceasefire.

Ceasefire
Michael Longley

I
Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

II
Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands Achilles
Made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,
Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

III
When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,
Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

IV
'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.'


Swineherd
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

When all this is over, said the swineherd,
I mean to retire, where
Nobody will have heard about my special skills
And conversation is mainly about the weather.

I intend to learn how to make coffee, at least as well
As the Portuguese lay-sister in the kitchen
And polish the brass fenders every day.
I want to lay awake at night
Listening to the cream crawling to the top of the jug
And the water lying soft in the cistern.

I want to see an orchard where the trees grow in straight lines
And the yellow fox finds shelter between the navy-blue trunks
Where it gets dark early in summer
And the apple-blossom is allowed to wither on the bough.

[imaginarylove]

I've got Christopher Logue's autograph!

[Meg]

[unremarkable]

Yes, there's an implied "the reason why". Don't worry, Clive, we'll keep you straight. As it were.

Here's some Simon Armitage:

Here is a name - it is your name for life.
Loop it around your ears and toes - it works
like puppet strings, like radio control.
Try it for sound - slide it between your teeth.

Stitch that name into your socks and vest.
Sketch the shape of your name with a felt-tip.
Will it float or fly, or should it be screwed
to an office door, propped on a desk?

Once we were known by our quirks and kinks,
known by our lazy-eyes, our hare-lips.
Once we were named by the knack of our hands:
we were fletchers, bakers, coopers and smiths.

Don't sell your name to a man in a bar!
Don't leave your name in a purse on the beach!
Don't wait for a blue plaque - get yourself known
with glitter and glue, in wrought ironwork;

sign your autograph with a laser-pen
on the face of the moon. Here is your name
and a lifetime only to make it your own.
Then the mason takes it, sets it in stone.

[Meg]

[imaginarylove]