Friday 23 July 2010

Homer & Alexandrine




The poet mustn't use every trick in the old books time and again. The poet should sometimes devise new tricks. How else are we to make progress?


Thank you for following Poet-in-Residence.





Homer & Alexandrine

Outside the resort Terza Rima
I met Homer and Alexandrine,
they had metaphored down to the strand,
quatrain in the air, he stressed a feminine

ending and pointed his iambic foot,
he was an anapest not to be beat,
then it was back to his stanza
for lines of trochee and to see the sonnet

set down, he enjambed his dactyl pentameter
but used a spondee to block verse, I must
acknowledge the fact, for many a scholar
turns out his yoked zeugma and inconsonantly

rhymes with dactylic cesura and metonomy;
an heroic couplet they made!

______
gw2010

Thursday 22 July 2010

Man With Many Faces


-"he being dead yet speaketh"
from spirit to Kate R Stiles -1891















Over the northern border
Man With Many Faces
is granted asylum.

Man With Many Faces
claims to be the keeper
of the proper path.

But Man With Many Faces is only
the jumped-up son of Jumping Bull
and a coward to boot; an enemy
of progress and a rabble rouser

and worst of all
a Savage.

The Chicago Daily Tribune
has a point of view. It costs
5 cents.

Now we are coming
to the end

of the Old Time

______
gw2010

Borachio

- the contribution of the horse is immense

Dan Tucker's brewery horse
Borachio was his name
was a happy fleabag of a sort
with a free and fancy mane
and a silver shaving brush on his head
-he worked along Drury Lane

droddum dancing in the shafts
dead eye grin
snorting snottle box
rolling pin on view
trotting on his trotter cases
his clip clops echoing
through the neighbourhood
his dlip dlops ripening in the summer sun
and hiccius doccius
he took a drink himself
especially when the day was hot
for all the ale drapers would
pull him one
or two at Freeman's Quay

but that was an eternity ago
and now Borachio's blind
as a brickbat
and croaks like a frog
and his sinews crack
and he's thin
- and he's been replaced
by a flatback truck
and put to the pin
of the collar strapped
to midnight's cold meat cart
going down and up the Gravesend Road
where he draws a bier
for Peter Grimm

______
gw2010

Wednesday 21 July 2010

International John Lennon poetry contest

This is a free to enter poetry competition to celebrate the life of John Lennon. The competition is being organised by The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool. The final judge will be the UK's poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. There are various categories but the one that concerns Poet-in-Residence readers is the category Paper Poet. Poems must not exceed 40 lines and may be submitted by e-mail. Full details including downloadable Terms & Conditions can be found by clicking BEATLES STORY in A-Z LINKS >>>

The closing date for competition entries will be 10th September 2010. The first prize in the Paper Poet category will be 100 GBP. Selected poems will be published in a Beatles Story anthology. Competition winners will be announced on 6th November 2010. Donations from the event, which will include live poetry performances in Liverpool during October/November, will be made to the Linda McCartney Centre.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

the cross

tells where you are
in space and time

the two lines
are endless

for time has no beginning
and no end

and space has no beginning
and no end

and where the lines cross
is where you are

at this very moment
that is already past

for the point is fixed
and yet always moving

hanging on your neck
it is invisible

you can never nail it
down no matter how

hard
you try

______
gw2010

Monday 19 July 2010

R S Thomas and The Other

The Other is a poem inscribed on a slab of Snowdonia slate in the seaside village of Aberdaron (Wales) where the poet served as priest.

When I visited Aberdaron many years ago I bought a picture postcard of the poem.

I subsequently lost, or more correctly thought I'd lost the card, the card which I had trimmed so that I could carry it about with me in my wallet. But just now, sorting out my books, I've found it. It was inside Heinrich Heine's Eine Auslese, a book which had disappeared long ago behind a pile of old papers that I'm now going to throw out. The Other is as a matter of interest one of the few poems I've memorised. I'd like to share it.

The Other

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.
___

On the other side of the trimmed postcard there are some scribbled words from another R S Thomas' poem. These made a strong impression on me some time ago:

prayers like gravel flung at the sky's window ... I would have refrained long since but that peering once through my locked fingers I thought that I detected the movement of a curtain

a solitary heron as a diptych


______
c gw2010

My grateful thanks to Jim Murdoch at 'The Truth About Lies' for the diptych suggestion and for doing the technical stuff. Image: a bridge in Stratford-upon-Avon.

gwilym williams

Sunday 18 July 2010

the original solitary heron

a solitary heron
stands in the reeds
and addresses the brown
depths of the pond
with a silent question
which he must answer
himself
if he strikes
and catches the fish

the answer is
yes

a bespectacled man
stands on the bridge
and addresses the brown
depths of the pond
with a silent question
which he must answer
himself
if he strikes
and catches the flame

the answer is
no

______
gw2010

the turkeys

when I was a boy
and my mother walked with me
to school
I'd go ahead
and stand and wait
beside some turkeys
penned-in
beside a brook
in a stand of trees

and there I'd listen
to the turkey-talk,
their glottal glug and guttural gobble,

but then one morning
those turkeys were gone
and part of the fence was down

and there in the gloam
it occurred to me
that the trees
were furious
for they clacked
their branches
and rustled
their leaves
and tossed
their heads
and waved
their arms
and threw
their twigs into the air
and made great moans

and so I said
that the wind
was made by the trees
and that was how
they spoke to us and
then
my mother
told me how it was
that I was
wrong

______
gw2010

Saturday 17 July 2010

Poetry bus, once again in space

For me, the weekly Poetry Bus challenge is a welcome break; a measure of light hearted fun and banter. Last week I contributed a haiku about a UFO. For this week's challenge, which is to write a humorous poem or a poem about unrequited love, I've remained with the heavenly bodies, as you will discover. The limerick form seemed appropriate.


An astronomer from Rangoon
Pointed his telescope to the Moon
He then turned it on Mars
And the Milky Way stars
And then on a room in Kowloon

slugs recycled

two overblown slugs
reluctant to leave
stayed under the apricot tree
when the kindly sun rose
to ripen the fruit

and the quicksilver rose
in the tube by the door
they were cooked
on their silvery trails
grilled to black crisp
on hot stone

in the hush before dawn
more slugs crossed the lawn
and recycled the dead
a la carte

the apricots blushed
where they lay

______
gw2010

Friday 16 July 2010

abroad before dawn

when the long grey cloud
curved into the far horizon
into the grey promise of light
before the first garden birds
had tried their first light
notes the slugs were already here
for the windfalls, the fallen
apricots of the night

and embracing the fruits
with the lengths of their bodies
they chomped through skin and flesh
choosing only the fruitiest globes
now stained with their slime
and then heavy laden and sated
they slipped slowly away, long grey
ships on a still and silent sea

______
gw2010

Thursday 15 July 2010

we are waiting

we are waiting
for the thunder
it will come today
they said on the radio
but then they said
that yesterday
and also the day before

but maybe
the ants know something
for tonight they've come
out of the walls
and into the rooms
where they are
making for the windows
which are tight shut
against the torpid heat
against the heavy heat
of the night
the heat of
the heavy breathless night

earlier
the anvil cloud
full of fluffy white promise
suddenly evaporated
and the thunder didn't come

perhaps
it will come tomorrow
or the next day
or the day after

so now we are waiting
for the thunder
with the ants

the ants
they know something

______
gw2010
snow geese in migration

W S Merwin is the new Poet Laureate for the USA. He will serve in this post for only one year and will receive, it has been reported, the sum of $35,000 for his troubles and that is as it should be. The English laureateship, or the office of Queen's Canary, as Dylan Thomas dubbed it was originally for life, but with the appointment of Andrew Motion was reduced to 10 years. The incumbent is rewarded with a few cases of wine from the royal cellars. And that is not as it should be. A laureateship should not be lightly undertaken. There is much more to the job than composing royal birthday rhymes for bottles of plonk. Or there should be. And one year in the gilded cage is long enough. Or it should be.

Migration is a selection of W S Merwin's poetry spanning the period 1952 - 2001. In addition there are several new poems (from 2004) in the back. The book's New & Selected Poems subtitle is slightly misleading. The selected number more than 500 pages and the new a mere 9 pages. But that little deception aside it is a good book. A good selection let us say.

The poet gives us some insight into how he sees the work of a poet such as himself. The poem ON THE SUBJECT OF POETRY (from THE DANCING BEARS pub.1954) begins:

I do not understand the world, Father.
By the millpond at the end of the garden
There is a man who slouches listening
To the wheel revolving in the stream, only
There is no wheel there to revolve.

And so Merwin, early in his career, takes his tools to the garden. This is what I'm going to be about he says. I'm going to listen to the wheel which is not there and see if I can understand the reason why I do not understand.

FOR A COMING EXTINCTION (from THE LICE pub. 1967) is one of a series in which Merwin explores how men are deceived by the appearances of things. In this poem we are deceived by our own inflated sense of self-importance:

Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

. . .

Tell him
That it is we who are important

I like the poetry of W S Merwin because it makes me think deeply about what I'm reading.

The title poem MIGRATION (from THE COMPASS FLOWER pub. 1977) is one of the shortest poems in the book. There are only 7 short lines. Only 32 wonderful words.

Prayers of many summers come
to roost on a moment
until it sinks under them
and they resume their journey
flying by night
with the sound
of blood rushing in an ear

MIGRATION is a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. With it W S Merwin joins an elite list which includes such names as William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, W H Auden, Robert Lowell, Philip Levine, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg and C K Williams. The NBA Judges' Citation reads: The poems in MIGRATION speak from a lifelong belief in the power of words to awaken our drowsy souls and see the world with passionate interconnection.

And almost finally a short extract from Merwin's last words on MIGRATION. They are on the back jacket:

TO THE WORDS

When it happens you are not there

O you beyond numbers
beyond recollection
passed on from breath to breath
given again
from day to day from age
to age

. . .

you that were
formed to begin with
you that were cried out
you that were spoken
to begin with
to say what could not be said

Poet-in-Residence congratulates William Stanley Merwin (1927- ) and Copper Canyon Press on this exceptional selection of poetry.

_________
Migration New & Selected Poems
by W S Merwin
pub2005: Copper Canyon Press
Port Townsend, Washington
www.coppercanyonpress.org

Sorcerers

they no longer come
and go in fiery chariots
- spin along time

______
gw2010

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Joan Cairns in Heptonstall

Joan Cairns lives in Yorkshire. A close friend describes Joan as: 88, without computer, and still going strong...

The poem that follows was sent-in by Joan's friend to the Poet-in-Residence Poetry2010 page. It appears here on the main Poet-in-Residence blog because, quite simply, it's brilliant. After reading it, I'm sure you will agree.

Heptonstall

This place returns to me
from lost childhood.
The valley,
dark as an empty sack,
coughs out a waterfall.
Pleated hills
bear down
with unimaginable weight,
tilting folk
out of the vertical.

I walk the stone flags
where once I could run,
remembering their damp sweat,
the ringworm lichen.

This place would wring your neck
if you let it.
Here, where the wind
splinters your bones
I see a harebell,
too frail to shatter.

_______
c-Joan Cairns
2010

Now read Joan Cairns' poem - 'Celebration' - via the Poetry2010 icon >>>

Tuesday 13 July 2010








THE GHOSTSPELL OF HOLEY KELVIN


In the very the beginning, before God, before anything, there was nothing
nothing that is except one black hole
one black hole full to the brim with nothing

and everything that was to be
was in the hole

and then slowly, so slowly at first, the hole, for want of balance,
began to gently wobble and wibble, the wobblewibble became an uncertain spin
slow at first, and then as the spin gained an unstoppable momentum it became faster and fastre and ef..s...wokijadvex...juoijikloop..,bwong hopola,, and got very warm under the collar
and suddenly disintegrated into induty non-existence
with an Almighty non-BANG!
that you can still not hear today
as dark and distant hummmmmbrummmmmmhummmmm...
or as a cathedralorgan wrmingupa on a dayofrets
or as a groan of wind pipes blowing over a pyramoidail sand dune on a redandrusty plaent orbiting a simliarsun in a smiliarglyxaly farararawaway
soon to be thy nxt OHMbase unless belief-contro-wise
and wherefore and therefore you may now tick the box that applies to you

[ ] [ ] [ ]

______
gw2010

Sunday 11 July 2010

the book is full of words...

arranged conveniently in lines of three
from left to right and topside-up
and all those words want me to read them

in my bed or with my breakfast
or through the windows to the air
or out of sight and such of mind:


carp in the pond
glide under the water-lilies
- slowly slyly muttonous

______
gw2010

Swizzle Stick Philosophy




things are

as they are

& this the essence




According to this week's Poetry Bus rules my words should be on the picture. Well they are, aren't they?

For more information about this week's Poetry Bus Challenge please visit Dominic Rivron via PiR's A-Z LINKS >>>

Saturday 10 July 2010

In the beginning by Dylan Thomas

"In the beginning was the secret brain..."


Dylan Thomas told the World War II recruiting sergeant that he was incapable of killing another human being. He spent the war working for the BBC.


Philosophers, theologians, scientists, historians, prophets, priests, poets, and Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, all have their various beliefs, opinions and theories concerning the beginning. Dylan Thomas too:

In the beginning

In the beginning was the three-pointed star.
One smile of light across the empty face;
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun;
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile;
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower;
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to the sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

____________
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
On St. David's Day 1982 a memorial stone to the memory of Dylan Thomas was unveiled in 'Poets Corner', Westminster Abbey.
images: courtesy bbc/arts&culture

Friday 9 July 2010

After Jozsef Attila's 'Only that the sea has come'

Thomas Bernhard said there is no such thing as a translation. Every translation, he said, is a new work. And he's right. Every attempt at translation, particularly with poetry, ends up as a new creation.

The following poem is my attempted translation of a Frischmuth and Racz German translation.

The original poem, Jozsef Attila's 'Czaka tenger jöff el' (1926) was written in Hungarian, and was published in the Lesebuch Der Ungarischen Avantgardliteratur (1915-1930) (Böhlau Verlag, Vienna & Argumentum Kiado, Budapest, 1996).

Only that the sea has come

The blue line between the poles of your breasts
- the tightrope-walker's dream stands on it.

The clouds have dissolved, now you can fly ahead
- how often I've searched for you.

My flight is as calm as the breath of deep water
- pine-cones drop from my lonely fir tree.

On the hillside the grass has already sprouted
- a beauteous green fire burns in its heart

Where tired beetles fly home
when dusk falls;

And it's there that the Lord stands
with his wide open hands,

Up to the knees in ripples
of peace
at the end of your path ...

I, my dear, am not tired
- it's only that the sea
has come to my threshold.

_______
gw2010
The reader might like to compare this poem with my Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes beyond the grave poem. It can be found 7 posts below.

Thursday 8 July 2010

The thinker



If at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

Soeren Kierkegaard



The thinker

and the truth.

O do not fear and tremble
for the proof!

Each thing now belongs
To the one who now has it.

The genii will obey
The fool with the ring.

Who holds the world's treasures
holds the world's treasures.

Why indifferent rules?
Why irrational fools?
Why imperfect world?

O do not fear and tremble
for the truth!


______
gw2010

Wednesday 7 July 2010

The Feedjit

Byron - Egyptian joker!

Now I'd completely forgotten about that old post. But fortunately a visitor from New Mexico via the Feedjit tool drew my attention to it.

When I read old posts, and they are so often ones that I've forgotten about, I'm amazed at how interesting and informative they sometimes are. And so this is a plug for the Feedjit Live Traffic Feed.

If you're a bardic blogger or a merely a surfer who likes to drop by on Poet-in-Residence I'd recommend looking at the Feedjit Live Traffic feed column. You may, like me, be taken to a world full of poetry surprises.

Simply keep an eye on the subject titles of what people are reading - these are written below their national flags in the Feedjit column in right margin. These flags change from time to time according to where the last 10 visitors to Poet in Residence have arrived from. When you see that someone has been reading a subject that you think might be of interest just click on that subject title. For example, a visitor from Australia has a short time ago visited a page titled "Charlotte Mew - Part 1". If you'd like to see what that's all about click on the line/s of text next to the appropriate flag.

Best bardic wishes,
Gwilym Williams

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Shakespeare's new sonnet: CLV


Today as part of the poetry from beyond the grave series Poet-in-Residence presents a new sonnet from the Bard of Avon's restless quill.

The fourteen lines of verse were culled from fourteen different sonnets. Here they have been assembled to produce a new WS sonnet.

At Poet-in-Residence: Poetry to the edge of doom!

Sonnet CLV

Lo in the orient when the gracious light
And my sick muse doth give an other place,
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
Shall reign no dull flesh in his fiery race,
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
Be absent from my walks, and in my tongue
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song
Now proud as an enjoyner, and anon.

____
2010
gw,ws

Monday 5 July 2010

T S Eliot from beyond the grave

Continuing our dead poets series we come to T S Eliot.

Simple guidelines on how to construct your own dead poet novelty poem appear together with a Thomas Hardy poem from the beyond. It's just a few posts below this one.

T S Eliot's poem from beyond the grave

In the room the women come and go
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks
Under the twinkle of a fading star

Redeem the time, redeem the dream

In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells;
And woodthrush calling through the fog

The stubborn season has made stand

And you see the corner of her eye
Among whispers; by Mr Silvero
And other heroes of that kidney

Assured of certain certainties

A meagre blue-nailed phthisic hand
The lengthened shadow of a man
Letting his arms hang down to laugh

To keep our metaphysics warm.

___________
2010 gw/tse

R K Singh's Threat & Empty Shells


Poet-in-Residence is awaiting a review copy of R K Singh's Sense and Silence; a volume of collected poems. It promises to be something special; perhaps even a landmark publication in the genre: English poetry written in India.

Meanwhile for our consideration - THREAT and EMPTY SHELLS.


THREAT

We chase myths in self-made Amazon
fish turtles that change colour in new waters

we create landscape of nightmares and wade through
anacondas that threaten our confidence

lost in jungles of our own making
we beat about the thorny grasses now

look for the twin flames for convenience
cloud judgement and reality for control

challenge the Republic and divide
the defence that could never be


EMPTY SHELLS

Walking along the beach
they collect empty shells
that fascinate senses
in the salty air

feel the life now no more
but argue about the sex
of a conch ignoring
the fishermen's song

_______
c-2010
R K Singh

Sunday 4 July 2010

DMT or TSE?


This haiku is my single ticket for a short ride on the poetry bus. This week's driver is the blogger Weaver of Grass.

DMT or TSE?

the liner coming into port,-
it sails into the bar
& gently heaves-up in the sink

______
gw2010
image: free colouring pictures

Saturday 3 July 2010

Sylvia & Ted beyond the grave

The poem Sylvia & Ted beyond the grave is the next poem in a series of poems written by the dead poets on the other side. It's a fun game you can play at home, at college, or on the daily bus journey. It's a change from crossword puzzles.

The rules are very simple: only one line from any of the poet's, or in this case the poets', original poems allowed. There's not a great deal of bardic skill involved. The lines will almost pick themselves. It's a kind Ouija poetry without the board.

Simply flick through your falling-to-bits paperback of your favourite poet's 'selected' and choose the lines that appeal to your imagination. Underline them or make a note of them. When you have a few quiet minutes you can re-assemble them in some sort of logical order. A new poem, a poem from beyond the grave, will duly appear as if by magic.

Obviously when two dead poets are called upon to co-produce a poem from beyond the grave, it's theoretically at least, going to be a little bit more difficult. But, in the case of Plath and Hughes, the task was found to be relatively problem free. Here's the end result:

Sylvia & Ted beyond the grave

I am a miner. The light burns blue
Under the ancient burden of the hill.

Though for the years I have eaten dust
Of cockerels hung by the legs

The wind brings dust and nothing.
How long can I be a wall keeping the wind off?

I am as helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
It ruffles in its wallow, or lies sunning

Where the wireless talks to itself like an elderly relative
Till the whole sky dives shut like a burned land back to its spark

The sheep know where they are
That they are not afraid of the sun

A wet-footed god of the horizons
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture

And the fish, the fish -
Across the lightless filled-up space of water

Under the sweep of their robes
Tattooing over the same blue grievances

Under the ancient burden of the hill.
I am a miner. The light burns blue.

_____________
gw,sp,th 2010