Thursday 24 April 2008

Haikuing around with Jack Kerouac (200 posts and time for a metaphorical cigarette - ps: don't smoke, it's bad for you)

The beat poet Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), best known for his novel 'On the Road' is, believe it or not, the poet mostly responsible for reinventing or more correctly redesigning the haiku, in the USA at any rate. He certainly invested the form with some much needed energy; his haiku won't be sending many to sleep!
In a lengthy introduction to Jack Kerouac's 'Book of Haikus' (sic)(pub. 2003 Penguin Books) the widely published researcher Regina Weinreich speaks of 1,000 haiku found in notebooks, blocks of prose, jottings, scribbles and recycled in other ways. The pocket size haiku book resulting from Weinreich's editorialship contains about half this number and gives more than a broad overview of Kerouac's 'range and styles'.
Poet-in-Residence is not one to engage in 'electronic piracy' of copyrighted materials and therefore publishes the following 'short quotations' in the spirit of the copyright laws as defined and applied by UNESCO (see World Book & Copyright article immediately below).
Kerouac's style and 'new rules' are that more or less anything goes, within the 3-line limit, provided the resulting haiku makes a little picture, is airy and graceful and free from poetic trickery. The first haiku is for the creator of the wonderful cool green space known as the zenspeug haiku site. The rest, the once youthful Poet-in-Residence can these days vaguely seem to recall! Perhaps he was even there? It certainly sometimes feels like it.

Barley soup in Scotland
in November -
misery everywhere

Birds flying north -
where are the squirrels? -
There goes a plane to Boston

Dawn - the tomcat
- hurrying home
with his tail down

Peeking at the moon
in January, Bodhisattva
takes a secret piss

The cow, taking a big
dreamy crap, turning
to look at me

Drunken deterioration -
- ho-hum,
shooting star

Well here I am
2pm -
What day is it?

Wednesday 23 April 2008

UNESCO World Book & Copyright Day

To mark UNESCO's World Book & Copyright Day Poet-in-Residence will visit the special exhibition held in the centre of town near the Vienna University. His reading choice for today is one of his favourite poetry books 'the horizon is far away' by the Czech poet living in Canada, Ivan Schneedorfer. The 'copyright' notice in the front of the poet's book, published in 2005 by Shoreline, allows for 'brief quotations embedded in articles and reviews'.

The book takes its title from the poem beginning -

the horizon
is far away

it is quite
inaccessible


In Poet-in-Residence's opinion the 1937 born poet whose work has been published in Czech, French and English is one of the most intelligent and articulate poets writing today. His spare words, always in touch with nature, are full of sense and wisdom. A particularly wise poem is the one beginning -

the grass
is green and
indifferent

deep
and blue
is the ocean


. . . (and going on to end...)

the shell on the beach
parts her lips

as if she has
something
to say


Enjoy the world of books on this special day, also the day Cervantes and Shakespeare died. Find your own favourite book. It's that special one on your shelf you always meant to read again. Enjoy it and spread the word...

Friday 18 April 2008

Poetry evening in sight...

Poet-in-Residence is planning to go to a poetry & music evening. The last time he went to this annual event he won a water-colour painting in a raffle. It's all done in aid of a worthwhile charity and so its a good thing for P-i-R to support. The poet in attendance may be, it's not clear yet, a particular favourite of Poet-in-Residence's; and although he doesn't pretend to understand a word that she recites he is very much taken with her strong and confident delivery. The first poem below is about this particular poet. The second poem is about the English, Welsh and Irish poets Tennyson, Wordsworth, Thomas and Brown. The third poem imagines the relaxing atmosphere of New Orleans before the flood.

Attending a Poetry Reading

Nobody understood it really
understood what it was
really all about
although some of us had heard it
once or twice before
and one of us
had even read it several times
but still
nobody understood it

and when I pressed her
about it
pinned her
to the bar
with a kind of pathetic poetic gaze
she held forth

that it was all a stream
of consciousness
and that I should have known
that

what went unsaid
was meant
and was indeed
more
than implied -

since
you're something of a poet
too

or so I've heard

she said


Walking with the poets

When Tennyson tramped
by Freshwater Bay
and the wind off the Channel
soaked him with spray
he mentally noted the lines
in his mind
and wrote them up later
after he' dined.

Likewise Will Wordsworth
our fell-walking friend
wandering and wondering
and rhyming no end
over the hills
and the craggy outcrops
down in the valleys
and up on the tops.

So it goes on; Dylan Thomas
you've read
how he rambled in Wales
around Laugharne
and Worm's Head;
a gill in the Crown
and a pint in the Brown's
a dart in the bar
and a card in the lounge.

Up on the moors
in his scarf and his bonnet
gritty Ted Hughes
was nowt but was honest,
and though they confess
he went on a bit
those true Yorkshire folk
thought Ted was a hit.

But the best walk of all
is in fair Dublin town
to the fine broken rhythm
of dear Christy Brown
who grunted and strained
on the lavatory pot*
and used the adjective
lugubrious a lot.


Old Times

the sultry southern air
is filled with lazy jazz
soft swing and reverie
old souls enjoying
an evening's chat
an anecdotal clink of ice

they face the chapel bell
muse on Sunday's hymns
and serious clothes

dogfish soup
is burbling on the hob


c)- Gwilym Williams

*Christy Brown wrote an amusing poem
about being disturbed by a curious farmer
whilst engaged upon a scatological matter -
the farmer disturbed by Christy's plight
(see Daniel Day Lewis film 'My Left Foot'
or read biography of same title)offered
to lend a hand!

Thursday 17 April 2008

William Wordsworth and the old Cumberland beggar

This is the concluding part of Poet-in-Residence's trawl through the poems of the famous Grasmere bard, William Wordsworth. The poetic journey began with the poet's 238th birthday celebration and now ends with his description of his encounter with an old Cumberland beggar. Cumberland was part of the 'English Lake District' which comprised the counties of 'Cumberland & Westmorland' and a small chunk of Lancashire. In bygone childhood days it felt rather exotic and special to enter the romantic and mountainous lands of 'Cumberland & Westmorland'. Nowadays the whole area is simply another English county and is known plainly as Cumbria.
Wordsworth's poem carries an introduction: The class of beggars to which the old man...belongs, will...soon be extinct. It consisted of poor, and, mostly, old and infirm persons, who confined themsleves to a stated round in their neighbourhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses they...received...money, but mostly...provisions.
The poem is a little too long to feature here in its entirety; but the following extract serves to give a sense of things and a glimpse of bygone times. Doubtless, the well-heeled Wordsworth, never without a guinea in his pocket, would always part with a small coin or two: ... please put a penny in the old man's hat, if you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do, if you haven't got a ha'penny God bless you!

from The Old Cumberland Beggar

I saw an aged Beggar in my walk,
And he was seated by the highway side
On a low structure of loose masonry
Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they
Who lead their horses down the steep rough road
May thence remount at ease. The aged man
Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone
That overlays the pile, and from a bag
All white with flour the dole of village dames,
He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one,
And scanned them with a fixed and serious look
Of idle computation. In the sun,
Upon the second step of that small pile,
Surrounded by those wild unpeopled hills,
He sate, and eat his food in solitude;
And ever, scattered from his palsied hand,
That still attempting to prevent the waste,
Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers
Fell on the ground, and the small mountain birds,
Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal,
Approached within the length of half his staff.

Him from my childhood have I known, and then
He was so old, he seems not older now,
He travels on, a solitary man,
So helpless in appearance, that for him
The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hands his alms upon the ground,
But stops, that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old Man's hat; nor quits him so,
But still when he has given his horse the rein
Towards the aged Beggar turns a look,
Sidelong and half-reverted. She who tends
The toll-gate, when in summer at her door
She turns her wheel, if on the road she sees
The aged Beggar coming, quits her work,
And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.
The Post-boy when his rattling wheels o'ertake
The aged Beggar, in the woody lane,
Shouts to him from behind, and, if perchance
The old Man does not change his course, the Boy
Turns with less noisy wheels to the road-side,
And passes gently by, without a curse
Upon his lips, or anger at his heart.
He travels on, a solitary Man,
His age has no companion. On the ground
His eyes are turned, and, as he moves along,
They move along the ground; and evermore,
Instead of common and habitual sight
Of fields with rural works, of hill and dale,
And the blue sky, one little span of earth
Is all his prospect. Thus, from day to day,
Bowbent, his eyes forever on the ground,
He plies his weary journey, seeing still,
And never knowing what he sees, some straw,
Some scattered leaf, or marks which, in one track,
The nails of cart or chariot wheel have left
Impressed ...

. . .

Few are his pleasures; if his eyes, which now
Have been so long familiar with the earth,
No more behold the horizontal sun
Rising or setting, let the light at least
Find a free entrance to their languid orbs.
And let him, where and when he will, sit down
Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank
Of high-way side, and with the little birds
Share his chance-gathered meal, and, finally,
As in the eye of Nature he has lived
So in the eye of Nature let him die.

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Free haiku and mini-poem competition

Poet-in-Residence, with his current link to the Spring2008 haiku site, is pleased to count many haikuists among his readership. For their information and other mini-poetry and mini-prose writers comes news of an interesting free competition with 3 x two hundred and fifty pounds in prizes. The competition, sponsored by the Arts Council of England and Charnwood Arts, is open to electronic entries from anywhere in the world. Work stored in open access online archives and community sites is acceptable so long as it is previously unpublished in a commercial or previous competition context. The place to go for full details, an entry form and the full rules is http://miniwords2008.sharedspace.org/faqs.php

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Genteel Messages - a sneak-preview

Poet-in-Residence's forthcoming publication 'Genteel Messages' has been assigned an ISBN number and has undergone a final scrutiny by the poet. It is now on its way to Martin Holroyd at Poetry Monthly Press, Nottingham, England, for some finishing touches and eventual publication. To mark this landmark step along the way Poet-in-Residence (Gwilym Williams) is pleased to publish here, for the world and his dog to read, the introductory poem.

Genteel Messages

The ostentatious
and their highborn canines
with old teeth in slack jaws
and loose mouths with oodles of flapping tongue
and twinkling diamante collars
around thin throats
seem suitably dressed
in un-chic coats and plastic bootees.

With ribbons
and gaudy accessories
in powdered curls, shampooed
and blue-pink rinsed,
they like to promenade and point
the way with sniffy noses;
toe-tipping over the common,
leaving here and there those
genteel messages that children
bring home
imprinted on their soles.

c-2008,
Gwilym Williams

Monday 14 April 2008

Robert Burns and the pet sheep Mailie

Robert Burns' poems concerning animals are charming constructions and full of poetic wisdom. Poet-in-Residence may not be able to appreciate the wonderful words on the zen speug (see P-i-R link to zen speug) level but he does his level best to do so. Poems like 'The Twa Dogs, A Tale', 'The Auld Farmer's New-Year-Morning Salutation to his auld Mare, Maggie, on giving her the accustomed Ripp of Corn to hansel in the New Year', 'To a Mouse - On turning her up in her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785', 'To a Louse - On seeing one on a Lady's Bonnet at Church' are a delight to the ear. The last mentioned poem contains those memorable lines: O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us! (O would some power the small gift give us / to see ourselves as others see us!). P-i-R has taken the liberty of 'translating' some parts of the following poem into a rough sort of English. He hopes that Robert Burns (1759-1796), the pet sheep Mailie and zen speug will forgive him this presumption.

Poor Mailie's Elegy

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,
With salt tears trickling down your nose;
Our poet's fate is at a close,
Past remedy!
The last, sad coping-stone of his woes;
Poor Mailie's dead!

It's not the loss of worldly property,
That could so bitter draw the tear,
Or make our poet, sadly wear
The mourning weeds:
He's lost a friend and neighbour dear,
In Mailie dead.

Through all the town she trotted by him;
A long half-mile she could descry him;
With kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran with speed:
A friend more faithful never came near him,
Than Mailie dead.

I know she was a sheep of sense,
And could behave herself discreetly:
I'll say it, she never broke a fence,
Through thievish greed.
Our poet, lonely, keeps indoors,
Since Mailie's dead.

Or, if he wanders up the valley,
Her living image in her ewe,
Comes bleating to him, as you'd know,
For bits of bread; it's all too much
And down the briny pearls roll
For Mailie dead.

She was no offspring of moorland rams
With matted fleece, and hairy hips;
For her forbears were brought in ships,
From beyond the Tweed*:
And finer fleece never crossed the shears
Than Mailie's dead.

Woe to that man who first did shape,
That vile, unlucky thing - a rope!
It makes good fellows twist and rage,
With choking dread;
And Robin's bonnet wave with crape
For Mailie dead.

Oh, all you poets on bonny Doon*!
And what on Aire* your chanters tune!
Come, join the melancholy croon
Of Robin's reed!
His heart will never get above!
His Mailie's dead!


*Tweed, Doon, Aire - names of rivers

Sunday 13 April 2008

William Wordsworth poet, part 4

In 1798 the poet William Wordsworth combined with his friend and fellow-poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to produce a booklet titled 'Lyrical Ballads'. The publication features four contributions from Coleridge including his epic tale of disaster at sea 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere' (one of P-i-R's favourite poems it must be admitted). The remaining nineteen poems are from Wordsworth. In the introduction the poets write: It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics, but in those of Poets themselves. This thought is something well worth keeping hold of. It will stand the reader and poet both in good stead. The book's title 'Lyrical Ballads' is something of a misnomer for 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere' is the only ballad therein. This was the experimental poetry of the day! Here's an extract from one of Wordsworth's more interesting contributions. It describes an 'incident in which he was concerned'. Simon Lee, the old huntsman with one eye, is eighty years of age and lives with his wife, the stouter of the two, near a waterfall in Cardigan, Wales. They have no children to help them out. It's a case of scrape a living or die.

from Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman

Beside their moss-grown hut of clay,
Not twenty paces from the door,
A scrap of land they have, but they
Are poorest of the poor.
This scrap of land he had from the heath
Enclosed when he was stronger;
But what avails the land to them,
Which they can till no longer?

Few months of life has he in store,
As he to you will tell,
For still, the more he works, the more
His poor old ankles swell.
My gentle reader, I perceive
How patiently you've waited,
And I'm afraid that you expect
Some tale will be related.

O reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle reader! you would find
A tale in every thing.
What more I have to say is short,
I hope you'll kindly take it;
It is no tale; but should you think,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

On summer-day I chanced to see
This old man doing all he could
About the root of an old tree,
A stump of rotten wood.
The mattock totter'd in his hand;
So vain was his endeavour
That at the root of the old tree
He might have worked forever.

'You're overtasked, good Simon Lee,
Give me your tool' to him I said;
And at the word right gladly he
Received my proffer'd aid.
I struck, and with a single blow
The tangled root I sever'd,
At which the poor old man so long
And vainly had endeavour'd.

The tears into his eyes were brought,
And thanks and praises seemed to run
So fast out of his heart, I thought
They never would have done.
- I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning.
Alas! the gratitude of men
Has oftner left me mourning.

Saturday 12 April 2008

P-i-R's April poem of the month

Thomas Gray is best known for his very famous poem 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard', a classical meditation on th' inevitable hour and the graveyard of the rude forefathers of Stoke Poges in the County of Buckinghamshire, England. Gray, the only survivor of twelve children, died in 1771 at the age of fifty-four. He was himself buried at Stoke Poges. Poet-in-Residence's poem of the month for April concerns the fate of a favourite cat. A salutary lesson for the reader, but unfortunately not for the cat.

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers, that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream:
Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretched, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled)
The slipp'ry verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid* stirred:
Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard.
A fav'rite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters gold.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

*Nereid - (from Greek myth.)
the 50 sea nymphs who attend Poseidon.

P-i-R's April book of the month

The 'New Penguin Book of English Verse' edited by Paul Keegan is Poet-in-Residence's choice for the April book of the month. The anthology contains more than 1,000 pages of English poems, arranged in chronolgical order, from the year 1300 to 1994. It's a poetic pirates' chest of jewels, trinkets and golden guineas. Poet-in-Residence need do little more than agree with the remarks of the Observer's Helen Dunmore [the book] demonstrates that we have the good fortune to live in the English language, perhaps the richest, most supple, promising, sharp-tongued and rule-breaking playground for poetry. It's amazing to think that this 1140 page book published fairly recently, in fact in the year 2000, is priced at 9.99p (UK) or $18.00 (USA). That's roughly the same as you'd have to pay for the latest slimline Heaney collection 'District and Circle'. But Poet-in-Residence is guilty of digression. Here then, without any more ado, are a few gems and pearls scooped from an overflowing casket.

On a Cock at Rochester

Thou cursed Cock, with thy perpetual Noise,
May'st thou be Capon made, and lose thy Voice,
Or on a Dunghil may'st thou spend thy Blood,
And Vermin prey upon thy craven Brood;
May Rivals tread thy Hens before thy Face,
Then with redoubled Courage give thee chase;
May'st thou be punish'd for St. Peter's Crime,
And on Shrove-tuesday, perish in thy Prime;
May thy bruis'd Carcass be some Beggar's Feast,
Thou first and worst Disturber of Man's Rest.

Sir Charles Sedley (1692)


A Crocodile

Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking, merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy troculus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1851)


Magna est Veritas

Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world's course will not fail:
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.

Coventry Patmore (1877)


A Northern Suburb

Nature selects the longest way,
And winds about in tortuous grooves;
A thousand years the oaks decay;
The wrinkled glacier hardly moves.

But here the whetted fangs of change
Daily devour the old demesne -
The busy farm, the quiet grange,
The wayside inn, the village green.

In gaudy yellow brick and red,
With rooting pipes, like creepers rank,
The shoddy terraces o'erspread
Meadow, and garth, and daisied bank.

With shelves for rooms the houses crowd,
Like draughty cupboards in a row -
Ice-chests when wintry winds are loud,
Ovens when summer breezes blow.

Roused by the fee'd policeman's knock,
And sad that day should come again,
Under the stars the workmen flock
In haste to reach the workmen's train.

For here dwell those who must fulfil
Dull tasks in uncongenial spheres,
Who toil through dread of coming ill,
And not with hope of happier years -

The lowly folk who scarcely dare
Conceive themselves perhaps misplaced,
Whose prize for unremitting care
Is only not to be disgraced.

John Davidson (1896)


The Explosion

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face -


Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed -
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,

One showing the eggs unbroken.

Philip Larkin (1974)

William Wordsworth poet, part 3

Poet-in-Residence looking at the real William Wordsworth, addresses the poetry without the sentimental daffodils, comes to the real mud and boots bard tramping the Lakeland fells. The following extract from 'Michael - a Pastoral Poem' describes the life of a family barely scraping a living in the Grasmere area, that nook of Lakeland where the poet lived. It's not much like the tale of the nodding daffodils written on the banks of Ullswater, that trademark poem to which the poet's well-meaning sister Dorothy appears to have contributed more than a few lines - in Poet-in-Residence's humble opinion. Here in 'Michael...' we find something of the grim reality of Wordsworthian Lake District life, in this case we meet the hill farmer shepherd and his family.

from Michael - a Pastoral Poem

Upon the Forest-side in Grasmere Vale
There dwelt a Shepherd, Michael was his name,
An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength: his mind was keen,
Intense and frugal, apt for all affairs,
And in his Shepherd's calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone, and often-times
When others heeded not, He heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of Bagpipers on distant Highland hills;
The Shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him, and he too himself would say
The winds are now devising work for me!
And truly at all times the storm, that drives
The traveller to a shelter, summoned him
Up to the mountains: he had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So lived he till his eightieth year was passed.

. . .

He had a wife, a comely Matron, old
Though younger than himself full twenty years.
She was a woman of a stirring life
Whose heart was in her house: two wheels she had
Of antique form, this large for spinning wool,
That small for flax, and if one wheel had rest,
It was because the other was at work.
The Pair had but one Inmate in their house,
An only Child, who had been born to them
When Michael telling o'er his years began
To deem that he was old, in Shepherd's phrase,
With one foot in the grave. This only son,
With two brave sheep dogs tried in many a storm,
The one of inestimable worth,
Made all their household. I may truly say,
They were as a proverb in the vale
For endless industry. When day was gone,
And from their occupations out of doors
The Son and Father were come home, even then
Their labour did not cease, unless when all
Turned to their cleanly supper-board, and there
Each with a mess of pottage and skimmed milk,
Sate round their basket piled with oaten cakes,
And their plain home-made cheese. Yet when their meal
Was ended, Luke (for so the son was named)
And his old father, both betook themselves
To such convenient work, as might employ
Their hands by the fire-side; perhaps to card
Wool for the House-wife's spindle, or repair
Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe,
Or other implement . . .

. . .

Three years, or little more, did Isabel,
Survive her Husband: at her death the Estate
Was sold, and went into a Stranger's hand.
The Cottage which was named The Evening Star
Is gone, the ploughshare has been through the ground
On which it stood; great changes have been wrought
In all the neighbourhood, yet the Oak is left
That grew beside their door; and the remains
Of the unfinished Sheep-fold may be seen
Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Gill.

Wednesday 9 April 2008

William Wordsworth poet, part 2

The following poem speaks for itself. Esthwaite, in the Lake District, is a humbling and beautiful location; an ideal spot for a poet like William Wordsworth to dally and daydream; and maybe to engage in 'passive thinking' as he would likely call it.

Expostulation and Reply

'Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?

'Where are your books? - that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! Up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.

'You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!'

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

'The eye - it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

'Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

'Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

'-Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away.'

Tuesday 8 April 2008

William Wordsworth poet, part 1

Hard on the heels of the Grasmere poet's 238th birthday celebrations (see post immediately below) Poet-in-Residence begins a series of poems from the quill of Lakeland's favourite bard. Of course William Wordsworth, being a man of the world, didn't spend all his time in the English Lakes. Once, for some reason or other, he tramped up Snowdon - and this at night!
Under the great shadow of this bulky hump of sheep-cropped, turf-covered Cambrian rock, the highest mountain in Wales and probably one of the oldest mountains in the World, many years ago a certain Poet-in-Residence first glimpsed the light of day. It is therefore quite fitting that P-i-R begins the Wordsworth series with the great poet's nocturnal ascent of the great granite mountain.
Nowadays, visitors ascend and descend in relative comfort and ease via the good services of the Snowdon Mountain Railway which operates out of Llanberis. A small, expensive and rather shabby cafe´ may be found on the top of Snowdon*. Things aren't quite what they were in Wordsworth's day.

The Ascent of Snowdon

It was a close, warm, breezeless summer night,
Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog
Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky;
But, undiscouraged, we began to climb
The mountain-side. The mist soon girt us round,
And, after ordinary travellers' talk
With our conductor, pensively we sank
Each into commerce with his private thoughts:
Thus did we breast the ascent, and by myself
Was nothing either seen or heard that checked
Those musings or diverted, save that once
The shepherd's lurcher, who, among the crags,
Had to his joy unearthed a hedgehog, teased
His coiled-up prey with barkings turbulent.
This small adventure, for even such it seemed
In that wild place and at the dead of night,
Being over and forgotten, on we wound
In silence as before. With forehead bent
Earthward, as if in opposition set
Against an enemy, I panted up
With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts.
Thus might we wear a midnight hour away,
Ascending at loose distance each from each,
And I, as chanced, the foremost of the band;
When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten,
And with a step or two seemed brighter still;
Nor was time given to ask or learn the cause,
For instantly a light upon the turf
Fell like a flash, and lo! as I looked up,
The Moon hung naked in a firmament
Of azure without cloud, and at my feet
Rested a silent sea of hoary mist.
A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved
All over this still ocean; and beyond,
Far, far beyond, the solid vapours stretched,
In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes,
Into the main Atlantic, that appeared
To dwindle, and give up his majesty,
Usurped upon far as the sight could reach.
Not so the ethereal vault; encroachment none
Was there, nor loss; only the inferior stars
Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light
In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon,
Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed
Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay
All meek and silent, save that through a rift -
Not distant from the shore whereon we stood,
A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place -
Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
innumerable, roaring with one voice!
Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,
For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens.


*the old cafe and terminus has recently been replaced by something slick and silvery - possibly out of Star Trek.

Monday 7 April 2008

Happy Birthday William Wordsworth

Today is the 238th birthday of William Wordsworth the great hill walker, the ground breaking Lakeland Poet and, as Poet-in-Residence will demonstrate, environmentalist. Wordsworth would spin in his grave if he knew of the traffic thundering through his beloved Lakeland nowadays or of that monstrous radioactive edifice sitting like a cancer on its western shoreline.
William Wordworth's grave is not in Westminster Abbbey or some other grand place but suitably and appropriately in Grasmere churchyard. The village itself is a quaint Lakeland village with two youth hostels and several pubs. From there, decently shod, mapped, compassed and waterproofed you may tramp the fells in many directions, rather as Wordsworth was apt to do.
The world famous Wainwright's Coast-to-Coast walk from St. Bee's Head to Robin Hood's Bay passes through Grasmere and many an ambitious walker has got no further. Blisters being the main reason given, although a glance at the walk profile in this area may suggest other reasons.
The following poem was first published in the 'Morning Post' on 16th October 1844.

On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway

Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
Must perish; how can they this blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change bemoan
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright the Scene, from Orrest-head
Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance:
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,
Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong
And constant voice, protest against the wrong.