A visit to Scheveningen – Van Gogh

  I came across this letter from Van Gogh to his brother, a few days back.  The process he goes through as a painter is very similar to mine (and probably many others) as a poet. I loved the detail in is observations.

DEAR THEO,

A day or two ago I paid another visit to Scheveningen, and in the evening had the pleasure of seeing a fishing smack enter the harbour. Near the monument there is a wooden hut on which stood a man who was waiting. As soon as the smack sailed into view, this man appeared with a large blue flag, and was followed by a number of little children who did not reach to his knees. Apparently it was a great joy for them to stand near the man with the flag. They seemed to think that their presence contributed largely to the successful entry of the fishing smack. A few minutes after the man had waved his flag, another man came along on an old horse, who was to heave in the cable. Men and women, and mothers with their children, now joined the little group, in order to welcome the vessel.

As soon as the boat had drawn sufficiently near, the man on horseback entered the water and soon returned with the anchor.

Then the boatmen were carried ashore on the shoulders of men wearing jack-boots, and happy cries of welcome greeted each new arrival.

When they were all assembled on land, the whole party walked to their homes like a flock of sheep or a caravan, led by the man on the camel—I mean on the horse—who soared above the little crowd like a huge shadow.

I naturally made the most frantic efforts to sketch the various incidents. I also painted a little, especially the small group, of which I give you a thumb-nail sketch herewith…. From the accompanying drawing you will be able to tell what I am endeavouring to do—that is, to represent groups of people pursuing this or that occupation. But how hard it is to make things look busy and alive, and to make the figures take their place and yet stand out from one another! It is a difficult thing to render the swaying of the crowd and a group of figures of which some are head and shoulders above the rest, though they all form a whole when seen from above. Whereas the legs of the nearest figures stand out distinctly in the foreground, the coats and trousers behind and above form a most bewildering muddle, in which, however, there is plenty of drawing. And then right and left, according to the point of vision, there is the further expansion or foreshortening of the sides. Every kind of scene and figure suggests a good composition to me—a market, the arrival of a boat, a group of men outside a soup-kitchen, the crowds wandering and gossiping in the streets—on the same principle as a flock of sheep—and it is all a matter of light and shade and perspective.

I like the last comment  and it is all a matter of light and shade and perspective. These words apply to poetry too don’t you think?

Thanks to project Gutenberg for this extract from Van Gogh’s letters to his brother. Have a great week and do pop over to Tuesday Poem, delve into the sidebar full of poetry from a variety of Tuesday Poets and check out the hub where this week’s editor is Mary McCallum with a poem called Palmy by Jennifer Compton.

SPAIN: FLAMENCO By Dolores de Leon

 

MARIO: Guitarist

Pineapple on a window sill
In the early a. m. of Spain.
(Sun by Matisse).

I hear the shimmer of trills,
High grass, and river flowing with shawl fringe.

Water rippling through guitar strings,
Giving promises that God is a Lady
With a rose in her hair and perfume
At her breasts.

CHENIN: Singer

The coarse edge to his big voice.
The whole land, like moldy earth,
Held in his closed hands.

(I taste Spain under my tongue)

His sound shapes itself around the words
And they fall away from inside, leaving
Empty, crying, spaces.

LOURDES: Dancer

Beyond her heels, the click of details:
Head, hands, eye, skirt, fan, shawl, shoulders,
hips
Ripple from her center, touch on each other,
Never overlap.

Or she pauses, holding stillness in her body.
Then bends low,
In a long curve, shawl outstretched behind her,
A great bird’s wing slowly turns.

(c) Dolores de Leon

Dolores de Leon
flamenco dancer

Many thanks to Dolores for permission to publish this beautiful poem.

Dolores says

‘I had been a flamenco dancer performing in San Francisco for five years when I met a pure-blooded Spanish Gypsy, himself a flamenco guitarist. He convinced me to go to Spain and study with his family in Seville. It has been the joy of my life to know this clan, study their art of flamenco, and perform with them. It was after returning from Spain that I began to write poetry, short stories, and my book, Gypsy Flamenco, based on my time studying and performing with this clan of Gypsies.’

For more information and to read some of her stories and poems please go to Dolores’ website here

The world of flamenco poetry is a new  one for me.  A few weeks back I was inspired to research it when I  came upon a BBC article and video on you tube.  To quote the article ‘Flamenco flash mobs – seemingly spontaneous dance and song performances – have been taking place in banks not just in Seville, but all over Andalusia, causing short, if amusing disruptions to the working day.’ To read the article and watch the stunning video of modern day flamenco in everyday Andalusian life click   here.   NB the accompanying words are embedded in the video. Enjoy and have a happy week.

And now please return to Tuesday Poets and read the variety of poetry from this enthusiastic and dedicated group of poet bloggers.

Tuesday Poem – Ozymandias By Horace Smith

IN Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
“The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.–

 

The four colossi, statues of Ramses II (aka Ozymandias) 1290-1224 BC
are more than 20 meters high and about 4 meters from ear to ear.

Thanks to Mary Ann Sullivan for this photo of the Temple of Ramesses

If, expecting another poem, you are doubting your memory…fear not. This poem by Horace Smith was called Ozymandias in the beginning and later had a name change to “On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below”   I discovered this on wonderful Wikipedia.   Countless people, myself included, have been inspired by the poem Ozymandias, and I am talking about the one written by Shelley.  Why? For me it’s the rhythm of the lines.  But it’s also the arrangement of the words.

‘My name is Ozymandias King of Kings’ ….

It’s quite a statement that…mostly nouns too, which make it more powerful. And that name…Ozymandias. If it was Bill that line would have a lot less impact. But note the corresponding line (below) in the  poem by Horace Smith.

‘”I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings;

It doesn’t have the same dramatic impact does it?  Have a look at Shelley’s poem below and see what you think.  Is it a better poem or just more memorable?

OZYMANDIAS  by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 

Shelley and Smith were friends and wrote the above sonnets in competition. Their inspiration was the forthcoming arrival to the British museum of the head of Ramsses 11 from Egypt.  The name Ozymandias comes from a Greek transliteration of the throne name of Ramesses 11.

If you want to know more about Rameses 11 and the amazing events which inspired the above,  I recommend this excellent link from the BBC.

Please return to the Tuesday Poem Hub here and enjoy this week’s offerings.  The topic of my next post will be Flamenco poetry. Until then I’m off to Auckland.  Have a great week!

Tuesday Poem – And then we speak by Cliff Fell

And then we speak
of Buenos Aires
and the publisher there
who makes his books

with a slowly-fading-to-invisible ink
though not as a comment
(as many might think)
on the emptiness of the e-book at sleep

with its singular unlit e-reader page
that looms like a dark age
seen through a cavern

but simply so Blind Boy Jorge Luis Borges
can read a few stories
in heaven

(c) Cliff Fell

Cliff Fell

‘And then we speak’, comments Cliff, ‘ is one of those poems that arrived fully-formed one morning when I turned on the computer, as you do, and went trawling through Facebook posts. I was taken by Ashleigh Young’s response to

this blog post:

(Helen’s note: Do check out the blog post link above given by Cliff. It’s quite fascinating!)

– or  maybe it was some other post, but definitely about the same story – and her query as to why a publisher would put stuff out in ink that will soon fade to nothing.  I thought it obvious. To me, Buenos Aires means only one thing, and that is Jorge Luis Borges, who went blind in later life. Obviously the stories were being published for his eyes, and so the poem pretty much popped into being. I didn’t post it up as a Facebook comment or reply, because, well, I didn’t . . . so here it is. Oh, in fact, Buenos Aires means two things to me – Tango’s in there, too. And I really must get a gaucho hat.’

Cliff Fell is the author of two collections of poems, The Adulterer’s Bible (Victoria University Press, 2003), which was awarded the Jessie Mackay Prize for Best First Book of Poetry, and Beauty of the Badlands (Victoria University Press, 2008).  His work has appeared in the online anthology Best New Zealand Poems and he can be heard regularly talking about poetry on Radio New Zealand National’s Nights programme. He lives near Motueka and teaches in the writing programme at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.

Thank you Cliff for permission to post this unpublished poem

If you have enjoyed this poem, and/or are intrigued by it I recommend you click on the links included above and when you’ve finished do return to Tuesday Poem’s hub page where Elizabeth Welsh, a freelance academic editor and poet from New Zealand, is this week’s editor.

Tuesday Poem – Fly Amanita – and the importance of fungi in literature

It always delights me to come across a fresh toadstool, as below, stunning in its bright red and white. Unfortunately they never last long here…too much wild life, so  I snapped it quickly and here it is, a poem in itself.

toadstool
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita,

And then, being fungally inspired I got thinking about the place of toadstools in literature and was excited to find all sorts of information on the topic, including whole books, treatises and  poems.

One writer here, says of the toadstool genus above, that “it was one which would become the immediately recognisable symbol for fairyland: the unmistakable red-and-white fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), which remains the classic ‘fairy fungus to this day in modern survivals of the Victorian fairy cult such as garden gnomes. The fly agaric is the most spectacular of the generally spectacular agaric family….”

Academic and expert on fungi. Frank M Dugan traces their history in folklore and fairy tales back to the middle ages and further in a fascinating treatise called Fungi, Folkways and Fairytales: Mushroom & Mildews in Stories,Remedies & Rituals, from Oberon to the Internet. This is well worth a read and is available here.

I think the poem below provides some of the reason why toadstools have always been a centre of literary attraction. Toadstools are magical…they appear and disappear.  This poem was written by Madison Cawein who was known as the Keats of Kentucky and is believed to have influenced T.S. Eliot.

The Toadstool

I.

Once when it had rained all night
And all day, the next day, why,
In our yard, a lot of white,
Dumpy toadstools grew close by
Our old peach tree: some were high,
Peak’d, like half-shut parasols;
Others round and low, like balls,
Little hollow balls; and I
Called my father to the tree:
And he said, “I tell you what:
Fairies have been here, you see.
This is just the kind of spot
Fairies love to live in. Those
Are their houses, I suppose.

II.

“Yes, those surely are their huts!
Built of moon and mist and rain,
Such dim stuff as Elfland puts
In her buildings. Come again,
And, like castles built in Spain,
They are nowhere. But to-night,
Sliding down the moon’s slim light,
Or snail-straddled, in a train
You may see the elves, perhaps,
Clad in gossamer garments, come;
Some in morning-glory caps,
And in tulip bonnets some.
If you watch, I have no doubt,
You will see them all come out.

III.

“Long of leg as grasshoppers,
Or as katydids, oh, ho!
Here they’ll sit; the bachelors
By the spinsters, row on row,
Kissing when the moon is low:
You may hear their kisses sound
Faint as raindrops on the ground,
Dropped by flow’rs that overflow,
Flow’rs whose heads the rain weighs down.
Or, perhaps, to twinkling tunes,
Tiny as their tiny town,
See them dance wild rigadoons
Creaked by crickets; singing, too,
Serenades as thin as dew.

IV.

“Or hobgoblins here may rise,
Snail-faced, spider-legged, you see;
Eyed with glowworm-glowing eyes,
Lidless slits of flame. . Maybe,
Gnarled of back and knobbed of knee,
Tadpole-paunched, you’ll see the gnomes
Waddle from their toadstool homes;
While the frogs industriously
Twang their big bass-violins,
And the screech-owl’s bagpipes shriek:
While their eyes, like points of pins,
Glitter, great-nosed beak to beak,
Here you’ll see them squat and blink
Till it’d freeze your blood, I think.” …. .

V.

Won’t have any goblins here!
With their eyes like upright slits,
Parrot-nosed and flopped of ear,
And a grin that cracks and splits
Wide their faces, never quits,
Faces all one wart or wen!
So I got a stick and then
Knocked those toadstools into bits.
And my father said, “Well! well!
Now you’ve spoiled your only chance
It will never do to tell!
To behold the fairies dance,
And those grinning goblins, too.
Wonder what got into you!”

And here’s one for the children by Oliver Herford (1863–1935). Oliver was an American writer, humourist and illustrator who has been called “The American Oscar Wilde, ( quote from Wikipedia).

THE ELF AND THE DORMOUSE

Under a toad stool
Crept a wee Elf,
Out of the rain
To shelter himself.

Under the toad stool
Sound asleep,
Sat a big Dormouse
All in a heap.

Trembled the wee Elf
Frightened, and yet
Fearing to fly away
Lest he get wet.

To the next shelter–
Maybe a mile!
Sudden the wee Elf
Smiled a wee smile;

Tugged till the toad stool
Toppled in two;
Holding it over him,
Gayly he flew.

Soon he was safe home,
Dry as could be.
Soon woke the Dormouse–
“Good gracious me!

“Where is my toad stool?”
Loud he lamented.
And that’s how umbrellas
First were invented.

Please return to Tuesday Poem and check out the offerings of other Tuesday Poets. This week’s Tuesday Poem editor is Belinda Hollyer, a New Zealand writer and anthologist living in London.

Tuesday Poem – Fallen Roses

‘Time for one last picture’ says dad.
‘In the lounge against the rose paper’
says mum.  ‘So pretty.’
She plucks one 
and gives it to her daughter

Miranda
who stares straight ahead. 
I will not weep.
‘Sit up James look happy.’
This is the springboard to your life.
No you won’t miss grandpa
 and his pockets full of sweets

or grandma
and her warm  chocolate brownies.
Nor will you miss feijoas in the autumn
sweet and soft scented.
‘Sit up straight now.
Smile at the camera.’

And Alan holds the baby
little Jo, one hand on her knee
and her tiny one
draped across his.
Hope we’re doing the right thing.
The kids‘ll miss this place.
I’ll miss the Sunday dinners.
And little Jo her eyes squeezing
cheek muscles working, sucks her bottle.

James in the centre
wants to pee.
Should he make a dash
before they all converge
and flail
amid the roses
falling from the walls.

(c) Helen McKinlay 2005

I wrote Fallen Roses in response to the above painting.  This rather battered old print (above) came from a calendar and was one of many cutouts spread across the floor by Diane Brown.  Her intention was for us to choose a picture and write a poem.  I bonded with this one  immediately.  I would love to know its origin, who was the artist … but so far have had no luck. If you recognize it please let me know

And now do visit the hub page at Tuesday Poem,  where Andrew Bell is this week’s editor with a poem to be read and read again, by Christchurch poet Marisa Cappetta. And take time to delve into the wonders of the sidebar where up to thirty other poets from New Zealand and overseas post a variety of stimulating poems.

Tuesday Poem – Leaning on the Fact that We Were There

we were each so focused on ourselves

that summer

coming back to eat or

make confession

 

not  attending

one to another

but leaning on the fact that we were there

or rather that the others were

for us

 

yes we  had our own agendas

that summer

though sometimes we ventured out a little

puzzled to have missed

what one had learned

 

the fledgling to push beyond

safe boundaries

the feathered one

to shake her wings dry

 

and then there was

the foreign correspondent

who learned to skim the waters

his kite sail lifting in the  storm

 

and there was one with eagle eyes

who  arrived in fairer weather

and viewed the piled up dishes

with disgust

 

and the all the while the elders

trod the depths inbetween

and sometimes pulled the plug

or swam with dolphins

(c) Helen McKinlay

 

‘Stonehenge’
The stones leaning on the fact that each is there

I wrote this poem several years ago.  The joys of being with family and their friends in the summer are many.  And that was a good one…a time for us all to reassess priorities in a safe place…to have fun in the sun and for each to do their own thing and come back and share the results. Looking at this photo of Stonehenge I could see the parallells …some leaning into the group, others off on their own but all reliant on each other for their main identity…Stonehenge. The above poem was published in Boulder Writers 3 (Boulder Press Nelson, 2011).

You can return to the Tuesday Poem Hub here and don’t forget to visit the other Tuesday Poets in the left hand sidebar.

Tuesday Poem – TO A MAORI FIGURE CAST IN BRONZE OUTSIDE THE CHIEF POST OFFICE, AUCKLAND by Hone Tuwhare

 

I hate being stuck up here, glaciated, hard all over

and with my guts removed: my old lady is not going

to like it

 

I’ve seen more efficient scare-crows in seed-bed

nurseries. Hell, I can’t even shoo the pigeons off

 

Me: all hollow inside with longing for the marae on

the cliff at Kohimarama, where you can watch the ships

come in curling their white moustaches

 

Why didn’t they stick me next to Mickey Savage?

‘Now then,’ he was a good bloke

Maybe it was a Tory City Council that put me here

 

They never consulted me about naming the square

It’s a wonder they never called it: Hori-in-the-gorge-at-

bottom-of-Hill. Because it is like that: a gorge,

with the sun blocked out, the wind whistling around

your balls (your balls mate) And at night, how I

feel for the beatle-girls with their long-haired

boy-friends licking their frozen finger-chippy lips

hopefully. And me again beetling

 

my tent eye-brows forever, like a brass monkey with

real worries: I mean, how the hell can you welcome

the Overseas Dollar, if you can’t open your mouth

to poke your tongue out, eh?

 

If I could only move from this bloody pedestal I’d

show the long-hairs how to knock out a tune on the

souped-up guitar, my mere quivering, my taiaha held

at the high port. And I’d fix the ripe kotiros too

with their mini-piupiu-ed bums twinkling: yeah!

 

Somebody give me a drink: I can’t stand it

Hone Tuwhare
Small Holes in the Silence
Collected works

 

Hone Tuwhare(1922-2008) was born in Kaikohe, of Ngapuhi descent.  One of New Zealand’s best known and loved, he has been described as the people’s poet. The above poem is printed with kind permission from Hone’s son Rob Tuwhare.  Originally published in SAP-WOOD & MILK (1972)  it is taken from ‘Small Holes in the Silence, Collected Works, Random House NZ,  2011. (See cover photo above.)  Many thanks Rob.

I asked for permission to publish this poem because I really enjoyed it…on many levels.  Once I began to research it, I discovered a lot of other people felt the same.  It bursts with vitality and humour and also sympathy for the statue’s predicament. These factors give the reader pleasure,  apart from understanding and yet on a serious level the poem deals with  racial discrimination, political issues, and Maori land rights.

Hone’s author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998),  describes it  as ‘one of his best known poems,, remarkably rich in its edged allusions to the political, economic and class contexts of race relations in New Zealand, and in its imaginative play with formal and colloquial English and Maori idioms, and with the cultural meanings carried by particularities of location in urban and suburban Auckland. The assumption of a familiar context shared unselfconsciously with his New Zealand readership is crucial to the effect of this poem (as in all Tuwhare’s mature work); because of the density of local allusion and idiom almost every line would require annotation for overseas readers.’

For those who wish to better understand some of the references in the poem, click here for an excellent power point presentation which as well as giving details about Hone and his work shows pictures of the statue and the marae.

Go here for the Arts Foundation NZ biography of Hone.

And now please return to the delights of the Tuesday Poem Hub where Mark Pirie is today’s guest editor with a poem about the All Blacks.

Tuesday Poem’s 3rd Birthday Communal ‘Jazz’ Poem: Scratch

Eighteen Tuesday Poets have just taken turns to post  a verse each day as part  of a communal poem in honour of Tuesday Poem’s Third Birthday.  I had the pleasure of writing Verse 17. It has been a wonderful experience to take part in this collaboration. Please click here to view.  People have said it is as if one person had written it!

I am not posting a poem this week but next Tuesday watch this space for a terrific poem from Hone Tuwhare.

This week we had very sad news of the death of a brilliant young poet, Sarah Broom.  Take a moment to visit Tuesday Poet  Helen Lowe, who featured Sarah on the TuesdayPoem Hub Page a while back and read her lovely tribute to Sarah, here

For Sarah

My deepest sympathy goes  to Sarah’s husband and young family.

Tuesday Poem-’Ducks Ditty’ by Kenneth Grahame and the mysteries of rustling in the rushes

Below is a conversation between Mole and Ratty, a must read comment on poets and what we do, and DUCKS DITTY, the poem they are discussing. It comes from The Project Gutenberg EBook, The Wind in the Willows, written by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908 and much-loved ever since.

“I don’t know that I think so very much of that little song, Rat,” observed the Mole cautiously. He was no poet himself and didn’t care who knew it; and he had a candid nature.

“Nor don’t the ducks neither,” replied the Rat cheerfully. “They say, ‘Why can’t fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them? What nonsense it all is!’ That’s what the ducks say.”

“So it is, so it is,” said the Mole, with great heartiness.

“No, it isn’t!” cried the Rat indignantly.

 

“DUCKS’ DITTY.”

All along the backwater,

Through the rushes tall,

Ducks are a-dabbling,

Up tails all!

 

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,

Yellow feet a-quiver,

Yellow bills all out of sight

Busy in the river!

 

Slushy green undergrowth

Where the roach swim—

Here we keep our larder,

Cool and full and dim.

 

Everyone for what he likes!

We like to be

Heads down, tails up,

Dabbling free!

 

High in the blue above

Swifts whirl and call—

We are down a-dabbling

Up tails all!

This past summer I have spent a lot of time by a lake which would make an ideal substitute for the river in The Wind in the Willows.  No moles or ratties, no roach but plenty of rushes and ducks a dabbling. A wonderful exercise in whittling ones’s world down to the smaller but no less important things of life.  Great stuff for a writer. I have discovered that pukekoes swim, that dabchicks (the New Zealand grebe), look like miniature swans and that cygnets come in shades of brown. I have observed mallards, paradise ducks, herons, shags and have chattered with the tuis. And then their are the thrushes, the welcome swallows, the wax eyes, the dragon flies, the ladybirds and so much else and overall the hawks hovering.

a little black shag on the lake

I have listened to the rustling in the rushes, the dulcet sounds of ducks dabbling and the gentle night time quacking, as duck mothers call in their babies.

what lies hidden among the rushes?

Of course the dialogue with ducks was a large part of the whole exercise.  I can see that ducks have much to deal with, looking after a clutch of ducklings and keeping them safe from predators such as eels, hawks, dogs and humans. There’s a conflict here isn’t there…so many people get so much pleasure from feeding ducks, small boys love chasing them, adults gaze at them, soothed by their apparently peaceful life and duck shooters shoot them. And of course the regulars who come to feed them and be fussed over in turn regard them as their own. But whats not to love; the view of a duck’s arse as it takes off looking rather too reminiscent of something ready for the freezer, the way they skitter from the sky and skid across the water, their  greetings as if to an old friend… and the ducklings; watching them grow, the big webbed feet of the teenagers,  the sprouting of wings, the games….

mother duck and her thirteen ducklings

But there are joys apart from ducks so do fly on over to Tuesday Poem where our communal poem (in celebration of birthday number three) is just  jazzing along.

Tuesday Poem: The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes, jazz poet

Last week I talked about rhythm.  This week I am delighted to have found this poem by Langston Hughes, one of the first ‘jazz poets.’  If you want to get with the feel of the blues try listening to this you tube clip first or simultaneously.

The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway…
He did a lazy sway…
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

1936 photo by Carl van Vechten

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an African/American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry.  For a much extended biography see here.  The Weary Blues is one of only a small number of Langston Hugh’s poems available in the public domain.

To hear Langston himself reading The Weary Blues click here.

And now please go back to Tuesday Poem’s hub where our third birthday poem  is gradually taking shape, as day by day each of 18 of us around the world add a verse.

Tuesday Poem-Under African Skies-Paul Simon-and thoughts on rhythm

Rhythm, colour and poetry, put to music and combined into film. Wonderful stuff!

Below, is the chorus.  For all the words go here.

‘This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
After the dream of falling and calling your name out
These are the roots of rhythm
And the roots of rhythm remain’

These days poetry, music and art, are coming together in new and exciting ways.  I grew up thinking of rhythm as belonging to music and colour to art.  Yes we had rhyming poetry but it was different somehow.

Now I see that rhythm is a basic principle of the universe. Sure we can narrow it down to fit our own interests…anything from making beds, to running, to beating drums, or we can acknowledge the rhythms of the universe; day and night, the rumblings of mother earth, birth and death, the moon and the tides…

But when it comes to our own writing,  have we got a handle on it?  Does it come naturally to us as poets or do we need to look at techniques such as assonance, alliteration, enjambment.  I think back to my student days and that  little ditty I can’t remember about the internalisation of knowledge.  It taught me that experience, instinct/gut feeling  and practice are so very different to theory.

A few years back when I had the privilege of helping my daughter proofread and edit her PHD in physics I had an epiphany. I am not a scientist but some of the words and phrases she used are wonderful in their poetry…bathymetry, for example. The second part of this epiphany was that I realized that what ever one is writing about, the page has to have a natural rhythm, like musical phrasing. We soon get bored with language that is written/spoken in a monotone. And I realized that the most factual piece of writing doesn’t cut it unless it is rhythmically phrased.

Enough to conclude that it is a combination of all the above which gets us there. So, my dears, embrace the rhythms of the world today!

The interesting thing is that I started putting this page together a month ago. And coincidentally Tuesday Poems third birthday is to be celebrated with a communal jazz poem…18 poets out of the thirty starting today and finishing on the 23rd April.  Check it out daily here

Tuesday Poem – Why Are Your Poems So Dark? – Linda Pastan

Isn’t the moon dark too,   

most of the time?   

 

And doesn’t the white page   

seem unfinished   

 

without the dark stain   

of alphabets?   

 

When God demanded light,   

he didn’t banish darkness.   

 

Instead he invented   

ebony and crows   

 

and that small mole   

on your left cheekbone.   

 

Or did you mean to ask   

“Why are you sad so often?”   

 

Ask the moon.   

Ask what it has witnessed. 

(c) Linda Pastan

I discovered and fell in love with Linda Pastan’s poetry several days ago while searching for poems about bread.  I found a lovely one by Linda which you can read here.  And I spent a delightful few hours discovering and reading more of her poetry.  I chose the one above because there is also a great film on you tube of Linda reading the poem…and because I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It is so light and simple, yet so profound.

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?  is from her book QUEEN OF A RAINY COUNTRY. Many thanks Linda, for arranging  permission for it to be published on Tuesday Poem.

An extract from Linda’s page with the American Academy of Poets reads thus.

In 1932, Linda Pastan was born to a Jewish family in the Bronx. She graduated from Radcliffe College and received an MA from Brandeis University. She is the author of Traveling Light (W. W. Norton & Co., 2011); Queen of a Rainy Country (2006); The Last Uncle (2002); Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (1998), which was nominated for the National Book Award; An Early Afterlife (l995); Heroes In Disguise (1991), The Imperfect Paradise (1988), a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (l982), which was nominated for the National Book Award; The Five Stages of Grief (l978), and A Perfect Circle of Sun (l971). Click here for the whole page which also includes more of her poetry.

Return to Tuesday Poem when you are ready and read work from another American poet on the hub page; this week edited by Eileen Moller.

Tuesday Poem-Upper Class Sheep

One Tree Hill

The sheep on One Tree Hill

are really most companionable

don’t scurry away

listen

to what I say

with tolerance

and sheepish grin.

 

One can forgive

what passes through

the other end

as we chat.

It’s just their style.

Mind, these are upper class sheep

no quarter acre for them.

Plentiful grass

large spreading oaks for shelter.

No doggies dashing

helter skelter.

And well presented.

No daggy foot rot woollies these

not where tourists pass by

dispensing fervent admiration

leading to a sheepish

fluency in languages

especially Japanese.

But perhaps they are

a little overconfident.

 

Why the other day when I decided on

a cream tea at the café

it was full of ewes

no room for me.

There they all were delicately slurping

from bone china cups.

But of course with freedom

comes responsibility.

We’re bound to see them standing

for parliament quite soon.

‘Would the member for One Tree Hill

kindly not poop on the carpet.’

Or cries of ‘put them out to grass.

Too much woolly thinking.’

etc. 

(c) Helen McKinlay

These lines were indeed inspired by the sheep on One Tree Hill (an ancient volcano) in Auckland within a baah’s closeness to the city. Last year on a long sojourn in Auckland, I spent many happy hours walking in the hills there where people run, walk, push prams admire lambs and talk to the sheep.  I love it that even though there is a reasonably busy road through this area, the sheep run the show.  Traffic is held up by mother sheep arguing with recalcitrant teenage lambs who skit across the tarmac without care. And of course tourists from sheepless nations adore them.  For more about One Tree Hill and it’s fascinating history, see here.

I took the above photo last Spring. all was green and lush…but last week when I walked here…puffed actually…it was so hot and brown!  No sheep no grass.  However a friend who prefers to remain anon has just sent me the photos below, taken today.  Hopefully after the drought has broken, Note the few patches of green!  It’s been a wonderful summer for most of us here in NZ.  But flying back to the South Island over a brown North and a stark and brown Mount Taranaki makes one appreciate how lucky we are here in our usually green NZ.

One Tree Hill Sheep 18.03.13

Have a happy week and do read Penelope Cottier’s hub page edit back at Tuesday Poem …featuring a poem by Hal Judge…a poet ‘willing to take risks.’

Tuesday Poem-Careless Love

I want to tell a little tale

about the love life of a snail

whose parents said to take great care

nor look for love just anywhere.

But Henry knew not what this meant

’til Cupid’s barb on him was spent

and caused his love to reach a girl

who didn’t have a snail’s shell.

And neither was it worm nor fly

that caught the love light in his eye.

Instead he gave it to a bug

who sunbathed on a garden trug.

His mother said ‘this cannot be

and you can blame it all on me.

You’re not the man you thought you were.

You’re not a him. You’re not a her.’

‘We really need to set things right.

You see you are hermaphrodite.

So leave your bug however dear

and do not shed a single tear.

For ne’er in all your livelong days

will both of you a family raise.’

Now poor old Henry’s heart was broke

his happy dreams gone up in smoke.

And to his lady love he said

‘it isn’t right for us to wed.

We cannot make a family

so as from now I set you free.’

But she said, ‘no it’s not too late.

For me you’re just the ideal mate.

I’m sick of hatching little bugs.

We’ll just make do with lots of hugs.’

(c) Helen McKinlay

SNAIL

courtesy Jon Sullivan

pdphoto.org

This is a turn of the century love poem in the style of  gastropods, being of the order stylommatophora.
Sound good?   The writer …me… was doing a lot of gardening at the time.  I have no other explanation for its existence!  It was first published in Boulder Writers Two, Nelson 2008.

If you can still see through the film of tears which has glazed your eyes after reading Henry’s tale, you might feel able to master your emotions and return to the Tuesday Poem Blog where along with all the other Tuesday Poets, you will find Zireaux with a stimulating edit of a poem by Crane.  Have a happy week

Tuesday Poem – The Hare – Elizabeth Welsh

motes of dust whisp upwards like black pepper spilt in the kitchen /

Sid hung up the animal in the airing closet / it greeted her that

morning / she pulled elasticine dough / yeast rising, from the top

shelf / the shaft of bullet still lodged in its hindquarters / visible,

tinged the bread / gun-metal and the iron of blood was on her lips /

all morning, as the sun refused its trembling ascent / a poached egg

wobbling / with the unformed whites / she lifted the hare to the top

hook / met its satin mafia stare / tucked a bunch of caraway, black

mustard & liquorice leaves / to mask all / smacked the proving out of

the swollen dough / hearing the slump / she peered outside mid morning

/ there were still stars / quivering

ELIZABETH WELSH

I am delighted to post this poem by fellow Tuesday Poet Elizabeth Welsh.  The Hare was first published in Jaam 30, December 2012.  If I mention the sharp clarity of Elizabeth’s language and  the detail of her observations you may well think you have stumbled across a scientific forum but Elizabeth turns these skills into an art form. She also has an uncanny ability to relate the world of animalia to that of mankind in the most surprising ways.

ELizabeth says, ‘The Hare’ was written in late 2011 after a visit to Keats’ house in Hampstead. I am undecided about the act of recreation inherent in writers’ legacies, so the visit was fascinating. There were two things that really struck me – the death mask in a humidity-controlled cabinet in the corner of Keats’ bedroom, which emitted an eerie respirator noise; and a stuffed rabbit (courtesy of some ancient taxidermist) hung from a gigantic hook in the dank basement kitchen. These seem rather morbid, but really they just got me thinking about our relationship with small acts of creation – the bread rising – appetite and living.

Elizabeth Welsh

And this is what Anna Hodge, Senior Editor, Auckland University Press and judge of the Divine Muses Emerging Poets Award,  said about two of Elizabeth’s poems.
“I’m delighted to give First Prize to Elizabeth Welsh, the writer of ‘Water Buffalo’ and ‘Soft-shelled crab on Fridays’. Both of these poems are very impressive – confident, ambitious, successful at what they set out to attempt. One charts a specific time and experience with evocative but precise concrete details and language; in the other, poised and taut in its control of line and stanza, Elizabeth plays cleverly with some sophisticated poetic conceits and ideas. I liked both poems, but I was especially impressed by the achievements of ‘Water Buffalo’. My warm congratulations to her.”

Elizabeth Welsh is an academic editor and poet. Originally from New Zealand, she now lives in South London. She runs The Typewriter and blogs at http://elizabethwelsh.com

Please return to the Tuesday Poem’s hub where Helen Rickerby has posted a previoiusly unpublished and  thought provoking poem by Fleur Adcock.  And do check out the left hand sidebar for a wonderful selection of verse from other Tuesday Poets.

Tuesday Poem – Black Chalk – James Brown

In the room of doers, I tabled vague
ideas. I can’t believe
in a god,

which makes my dead
really sad
memories.

I have watched
clouds pull
my life

the way they
articulate
the land.

Don’t cross the line.
But I was nowhere
near it.

(c) James Brown

photo courtesy of US
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

A few years back I did a short online poetry course through Whitirea Polytechnic.  James wrote the material for the course and I enjoyed it so much I decided I would like to have him as my guest on Tuesday Poem. ‘ Black Chalk’ is a new poem, previously unpublished.  Thank you James for permission to use it here.

James says, ‘many of my poems are pursuits of particular styles or features currently holding my attention. In ‘Black Chalk’ I was interested in line-breaks, brevity, and being less explicit. Many of the poems in Warm Auditorium (VUP, 2012) are longer, narrative-based, and reasonably straightforward, so ‘Black Chalk’ is partly a reaction against that. The title hopefully suggests things that are hard to see (including, in the poem’s case, a single, definitive meaning), and also that the poem comes from a dark place. While it is certainly elusive, I hope it isn’t obscure, and that there is enough there to allow readers to engage with it in their own ways.’

James Brown

James Brown’s five poetry collections are Go Round Power Please (winner of the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award), Lemon, Favourite Monsters, The Year of the Bicycle, and Warm Auditorium. He is the author behind the useful, non-fiction booklet Instructions for Poetry Readings and, in 2005, edited The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape. He teaches the Poetry Writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, and is part of the Writing Team at Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum.

James’ first two collections were shortlisted in the 2002 Prize in Modern Letters and he has been a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards three times. He has held the 1994 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary, a 2000 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, and was Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2001 and Victoria University in 2004. He lives in Wellington with his partner and two children.

To read Patricia Prime’s Takahe review of Warm Auditorium go here.

‘Warm Auditorium’ by James Brown VUP 2012

I hope you enjoyed this post.  To read the Tuesday Poem hub page, this week edited by Catherine Fitchett of Christchurch, featuring  a poem called Fault, by TP alumni Joanna Preston. go here.

While you’re on the hub page, have a look at the poems in the left hand side bar where the other Tuesday Poets hang out. Enjoy!

Tuesday Poem – Statue

Have you ever stood

beside a statue

tentative, yet drawn

by some strange empathy?

 

And whose need caused you

to stroke a stone cold face

or wrap your arms around

sun warmed bronze?

 

And did you talk to it

this sculpted block?

Bound in time and place

no voice to say

don’t touch or please

I wish you would.

 

And did you wonder how

to say goodbye?

Then walk away

aware of eyes behind

and force yourself

not to look back.

(c) Helen McKinlay

 

Below is a photo of the statue that pushed me to write the above lines.   He lives outside the tourism centre in Timaru.

Captain Henry Cain

For more about Captain Cain’s interesting life and another perspective of his statue  see here.  And/or  to read Mary McCalllum’s editorial on CK Stead’s poem to Allen Curnow return to Tuesday Poem.

Tuesday Poem – Lunch at Springs Junction

       We lunched at ‘Springs’ one day
       the place where North and South
       meet West
       where outside smokers huddled
       in the damp

       and in the café
       travellers vied
       for cake and pie
       and slid their words
       across formica tables

       ‘It’s raining.’
       ‘How many times have you
       been here when it isn’t?’
       and then a light switch flickered on
       as aged bikies
       bubbled in

       bald headed babes
       in black leather rompers
       ‘Jees that bend was a boomer.
       Took it flat out
       like a greyhound racing.’

This poem was inspired by a cheerful bunch of older motorcyclists who brightened a wet day lunch at Springs Junction. It was published in The Lumière Reader, June 2008.

For those who don’t know it, Spring’s Junction is a very small place, made up mostly of a petrol station, cafe, and motels situated just before the turnoff to Reefton,  a well-known stop for travellers on the way to/from Christchurch through the Lewis Pass.  The cafe does a great kiwi lunch!

 

Energetic Motor-Cyclist. “Why the deuce don’t you sit still? You’ll have us over in a minute.”

The above image is from PUNCH or THE LONDON CHARIVARI, VOL 159, September 15th 1920.  Courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

And now that you’ve lunched  at Springs Junction you can return to Tuesday Poem.

Tuesday Poem – Hamnavoe Market – George Mackay Brown

They drove to the Market with ringing pockets.

 

Folster found a girl

Who put wounds on his face and throat,

Small and diagonal, like red doves.

 

Johnston stood beside the barrel.

All day he stood there.

He woke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.

 

Grieve bought a balloon and a goldfish.

He swung through the air.

He fired shotguns, rolled pennies, ate sweet fog from a stick.

 

Heddle was at the Market also.

I know nothing of his activities.

He is and always was a quiet man.

 

Garson fought three rounds with a negro boxer,

And received thirty shillings,

Much applause, and an eye loaded with thunder.

 

Where did they find Flett?

They found him in a brazen circle,

All flame and blood, a new Salvationist.

 

A gypsy saw in the hand of Halcro

Great strolling herds, harvests, a proud woman.

He wintered in the poorhouse.

 

They drove home from the Market under the stars

Except for Johnston

Who lay in a ditch, his mouth full of dying fires.

 

 

George Mackay Brown

George Mackay Brown (17 October 1921 – 13 April 1996), was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist, whose work has a distinctly Orcadian character. He is considered one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century.  To read more go to this biography from Wikipedia.

Several months ago, my friend Jane Carswell, sent me the above poem. Because I revere Jane’s ability to write the most beautiful poetic prose, I trust her taste…so I hastened to read it. The memories came flooding back. What Jane didn’t know was that I had once, met George briefly in his hometown of Stromness, main seaport for the Orkneys.   At the time, and together with two other young Kiwis, I was exploring Scotland and some of its outer islands.

Hamnavoe is the old name for Stromness and also refers to the bay on which Stromness is situated.

Stromness and Hamnavoe taken from Ward Hill on Hoy

I loved the vibrancy and clarity of ‘ Hamnavoe Market’ and set out to get permission  for its publication on TP. However, although I found the name of the literary executor for George’s poems I had no contact.  After much research I finally had an aha  moment and  a few minutes later was talking to  Elizabeth, the wife of George’s literary executor. I was busy explaining about my love of the Orkneys and my long ago visit, as a prelude to asking for permission, when  she surprised me by saying she remembered it. As  it turned out, they were the lovely folk who had given the three of  us hospitality, on our first night in Stromness and it was there we met George.  So thank you Elizabeth and Archie for your hospitality then and for permission to use George’s poem here today. And thank you Jane for reintroducing me to his poetry.

George once wrote (in Contemporary Poets, 1980) that his themes were ‘mainly religious (birth, love, death, resurrection, ceremonies of fishing and agriculture)’, that the verse forms he used were ‘traditional stanza forms, sonnets, ballads, vers libre, prose poems, runes, choruses, etc.’ and his sources and influences were ‘Norse sagas, Catholic rituals and ceremonies, island lore’ – Orkney is a magical place with a long history.  It’s what he does with these themes that makes him a great poet. For me it’s the clarity, the rhythm  and the power of his imagery.Go here for an excellent workshop on Hamnavoe Market (the above poem) published in The Guardian. I also recommend you read  his poem, ‘Work for Poets.’  A short read, I found it comforting and inspiring at the same time.

To listen to George himself reading Hamnavoe Market go here.

When you’ve finished  return to the Tuesday Poets Hub and read Claire Beynon’s excellent editorial on David Howard’s poem, Always Almost, Never Quite. While you’re there check out the offerings of other Tuesday Poets in the side bar.

Happy New Year

My last blog for 2012.  It’s been a great year for blogging and a big learning curve for me. Tuesday Poem will be back next year on January 29th.  Thank you for visiting me and supporting my blog in 2012. Hope you all had a peaceful Christmas. I spent mine relaxing with my family at Tata Beach, Golden Bay…golden sands…blue/green seas and the pohutukawa trees (New Zealand’s Christmas tree) in full blossom. See picture above…the view from the front patio. I wish you wherever you are, a bountiful New Year.

Tuesday Poem – A Soliloquy Of The Full Moon, She Being In A Mad Passion – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Now as Heaven is my Lot, they’re the Pests of the Nation!
Wherever they can come
With clankum and blankum
‘Tis all Botheration, & Hell & Damnation,
With fun, jeering
Conjuring
Sky-staring,
Loungering,
And still to the tune of Transmogrification,
Those muttering
Spluttering
Ventriloquogusty
Poets
With no Hats
Or Hats that are rusty.
They’re my Torment and Curse
And harass me worse
And bait me and bay me, far sorer I vow
Than the Screech of the Owl
Or the witch-wolf’s long howl,
Or sheep-killing Butcher-dog’s inward Bow wow
For me they all spite, an unfortunate Wight.
And the very first moment that I came to Light
A Rascal call’d Voss the more to his scandal,
Turn’d me into a sickle with never a handle.
A Night or two after a worse Rogue there came,
The head of the Gang, one Wordsworth by name,
`Ho! What’s in the wind?’ ‘Tis the voice of a Wizzard!
I saw him look at me most terribly blue!
He was hunting for witch-rhymes from great A to Izzard,
And soon as he’d found them made no more ado
But chang’d me at once to a little Canoe.
From this strange Enchantment uncharm’d by degrees
I began to take courage & hop’d for some Ease,
When one Coleridge, a Raff of the self-same Banditti
Past by, & intending no doubt to be witty,
Because I’d th’ ill-fortune his taste to displease,
He turn’d up his nose,
And in pitiful Prose
Made me into the half of a small Cheshire Cheese.
Well, a night or two past – it was wind, rain & hail,
And I ventur’d abroad in a thick Cloak & veil,
But the very first Evening he saw me again
The last mentioned Ruffian popp’d out of his Den -
I was resting a moment on the bare edge of Naddle
I fancy the sight of me turn’d his Brains addle -
For what was I now?
A complete Barley-mow
And when I climb’d higher he made a long leg,
And chang’d me at once to an Ostrich’s Egg -
But now Heaven be praised in contempt of the Loon,
I am I myself I, the jolly full Moon.
Yet my heart is still fluttering -
For I heard the Rogue muttering -
He was hulking and skulking at the skirt of a Wood
When lightly & brightly on tip-toe I stood
On the long level Line of a motionless Cloud
And ho! what a Skittle-ground! quoth he aloud
And wish’d from his heart nine Nine-pins to see
In brightness & size just proportion’d to me.
So I fear’d from my soul,
That he’d make me a Bowl,
But in spite of his spite
This was more than his might
And still Heaven be prais’d! in contempt of the Loon
I am I myself I, the jolly full Moon.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

To read about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote such well-loved  poems as The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Kahn, go here

THE FULL MOON-NASA

Prior to flying out of Nelson recently, I viewed a solar eclipse with great clarity. On my return I had an exceptionally clear view of Farewell Spit and the Boulder Bank. Two days later I went to an open night at the Nelson Observatory and viewed the moon and all its craters. (Thank you Nelson for a week of exceptionally fine weather!) A bonus on my observatory visit, was the sight of the international space station sweeping across the sky. It was such an inspiration to receive these reminders of  the earth’s curve; the curve of Farewell Spit, the curve of the Boulder Bank,  the curve of the sun (not usually visible,  unless viewed through protective lenses) and the curve of the moon.

The moon is multiply described in global literature, view this fascinating article on the topic.  Although the poem above has been described as one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s worst poems, I appreciated it for the rambunctiousness of its language and hope you do too.

The earliest moon poem  I can find, is this one from The Chinese Book of Odes dated between 5 and 1200 BC.  Here is the beautiful last verse.

‘I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed,

I saw him coming on the southern road.

My heart lays down its load.’

If you want to catch up with the  international space station and find out when you might view it yourself go here.

This is the last of Tuesday Poem until January 22nd 2013, it being the New Zealand summer holiday period, so make the most of it.  Helen Lowe is the editor this week and has posted a poem by Sarah Broome, a poem I enjoyed very much for its perception and clarity of style.  Read it here.

Tuesday Poem-My Grandma and the Bodgies

my grandmother

walking home on Sundays

wore a cotton dress

past the bodgies slouched by the wall

winter through summer

winklepicker shoes pointed

didn’t feel the cold

ready to flick

never stopped

quick snap

in her life on a back country farm

 

we focus on their ankles garbed in socks

took her sick child to hospital

ankles garbed in socks of shocking pink and lime

never saw her darling again

shocking pink and lime

except in a photograph

the colours of the words

imprinted on the love hearts

we buy from the milk bar

(c) Helen McKinlay

It is important to be bold as poets but not always easy.  Recently for fun, my poetry group decided to try writing three in one poems.  There are many ways to do this and we all interpreted the topic differently. Having had a busy week I was unenthusiastic and decided to take a short cut.    I made a random choice of two previously written poems and  taking the first half of each, I put them together.  The lines in italics are from a poem about my grandma who lived in the backcountry of NZ and lost a young child to meningitis.  The others are from a poem about my young self, walking home past a group of bodgies…

I am intrigued at how well the lines worked togther and added meaning, for me anyway.

Please return to Tuesday Poem , check out Sarah’s editorial and view the great selection of poems in the sidebar.

Tuesday Poem – The 0800 Man

won’t listen

wants to tell me

how things must be done

which way.

I‘d rather make my own mistakes

thankyou!

The 0800 man

is frightened of mistakes.

At knock off time

they chase him home

clown feet slapping

on the tarmac.

And when it’s dark

they dim the lights.

Enfold him

in pom pom embrace.

Deafen him                                                                  

with sloppy clown kisses.

Leave greasepaint

on his face.

(c) Helen McKinlay

 

 

I wrote this last year. I had become increasingly frustrated with communicating on 0800 lines  and receiving unsatisfactory answers. It was not long after the earthquake and it was a stressful time for communications people.

Please return to Tuesday Poem and enjoy the hub page.

Tuesday Poem – Osinagra

(i)

Elegies talk of endings and lamentation.

I can’t speak of loss.

It leaves me on my knees

looking down into nothing

and what good is that?

When I dream I dream upwards

of stairs higher and higher.

Loss does not exist.

Each particle is reabsorbed.

(ii)

When the world was flat

there was an edge to life

a fear of falling off.

The world is round now

and we can embrace it.

(iii)

I remember my first visit to Osinagra.

The wind songs drowned

the bat wings whirr

but it was there

reminder of the space

we place between

afraid of loss

unaware

that everything returns.

(iv)

An old woman or so I thought

her skin pleated

like a paper fan

held out her basket

saying

‘Fresh cherries.  Take some.

Eat and let the juice trickle

down through your life.’

(c) Helen McKinlay

‘when I dream I dream upwards of stairs higher and higher’

I wrote this poem eight years ago.  I had been reading another poem…an elegy.  It occurred to me then that while things change they remain, in the sense that ‘matter’ reconstitutes again and again. The name Osinagra came to me unbidden.  I like the fact that the letters for again are contained there.

Please return to Tuesday Poem and enjoy T’s editorial on the hub page.  When you are finished, take a look at the wonderful variety of other Tuesday poems in the side bar. Feel free to add a comment. It’s always great for us poets to get positive feedback.

Tuesday Poem – The Link Arcade by Craig Cliff

1.

I was not there when my father
acted out to Van Halen’s ‘Jump’
at his work Christmas party
in the Link Arcade.
                      I was probably
asleep at my grandparents’ house
in the bed he slept in as a child.
If not asleep, then reading
a Munch Bunch picture book:
Dick Turnip saving Suzie Celery from
an oncoming greengrocer’s truck.

But my mother told me the story
the next morning, and now,
whenever I hear
                      that song
I think of the scene with my father
climbing onto the handrail of the mezzanine
—part arena rocker, part suicide-to-be—
shaking his non-existent locks and
mouthing: “Go ahead and jump!”
to the shocked faces of his colleagues
who thought he might / the uneasy
conversations after he climbed down
and didn’t sound the slightest bit drunk.

Which he wasn’t. Not my dad.
Apart from a photo from his buck’s night
       (Andrew ‘Undies’ Cliff
        tied to a clothesline
        in singlet and undies,
        a sloshed St. Sebastian)
I can’t remember seeing him drunk.

Indeed, when I was approaching an age where
I might be offered a beer at family barbeques
he sat me down and extolled the virtues
of drinking from a can:
                           “You can
drink as slow as you like, set your own pace,
and no one can tell how much you’ve had.”

2.

Everything from that first stanza
is now defunct, deceased, or rebranded:
my father, Van Halen, the Link Arcade.

Though there was a decade between
his daredevil David Lee Roth and his death,
this reconstructed scene seems to me
—another          decade           later—
the point at which my father wandered off
into the ultramarine glow of the
                                 afterlife,
and if I could just get back inside that arcade
between Main Street and Broadway
he’d meet me there for the conversation
where I say everything I’ve bottled up
and he listens and nods and smiles,
ever-sipping from a can that never empties.

(c) Craig Cliff

The Link Arcade Palmerston North

Craig says

I usually take more liberties, or make up EVERYTHING, in a poem but the Link Arcade is all true. There’s an echo of Kurt Vonnegut in the line about the ‘ultramarine glow of the afterlife’ (Vonnegut referred to the ‘blue tunnel’) as I’d just read his novel ‘Galapagos’ prior to writing the poem.

Craig Cliff is a writer, columnist and public servant based in Wellington, New Zealand. His short story collection, A Man Melting, won Best First Book in the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his first novel, which features mannequin makers, strongmen and sub antarctic shipwrecks.View Craig’s website here.

Link Arcade was published in broadsheet/8 November 2011. Thank you Cliff for sharing this poem with us.  For permission to use the Link Arcade photo thanks go to  the Ian Matheson City Archives

Before you return to Tuesday Poem, edited this week by Harvey Molloy, do click here and watch David Lee Roth singing ‘Jump’ with Van Halen.

Tuesday Poem-Tomo by Helen Lowe

There’s a giftshop

and a café—buses parked close

to the limestone mouth.

Air gusts out,

cool—the crowd

breaks and eddies,

he moves with the current,

is borne

toward the dark—turns

for one look back:

She averts her face,

has no coin to buy passage

under the earth.

(c) Helen Lowe

Illustration showing Niels Klim with the tree-people of Potu, from the 1845 English edition of Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground.

Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer, and a 2012 Ursula Bethell Writer-in-Residence at the University of Canterbury. She emerged onto the NZ poetry scene in 2003 as an inaugural Robbie Burns Award winner and has since had over fifty poems published and anthologized, both in NZ and overseas. The Gathering of the Lost, the second novel in her The Wall of Night series, was published internationally in April, and she recently won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012 for the first-in-series, The Heir of Night. Helen posts every day on her Helen Lowe on Anything, Really blog and is a regular Tuesday Poem contributor. You can also follow her on Twitter: @helenl0we

Thank you to Helen for permission to use this poem. There is no author’s comment.  I chose the above illustration because  that is how the poem spoke to me…but you must draw your own conclusions.

To return to Tuesday Poem and view today’s selection click here.

Tuesday Poem-The Moon’s Pull

 

At Rototai I walk

to where the tide’s edge

chatters with the gulls.

Through the shelly rocks

past the river swans

cruising down.

Past the small dogs

cowboys galloping

in the salt sand.

 

On and out                                                                              

through the ocean bed

caught in the moon’s pull.

Ears tuned

to the sound

of a waveless sea

the oyster catchers

prreet prreet

and my own breath.

 

On and out

in the warm sun

eyes on the floating blue.

But the tide

stretches its tongue

licks my toes

and the land is distant.

 

Unsure I retreat

head down watching the water

and in the sand

the slither marks

of sea worms

and shapes

of stingray’s nests.

 (c) Helen McKinlay

Rototai Beach, Golden Bay, tide on way back in.

 Rototai, Golden Bay, is one of those very special beaches where the tide disappears into the horizon.  A wonderful peaceful place is that sandscape between sea and shore.  A place to lie and doze in the sun…to be on a distant planet…but there are the tricky bits…the incoming tide…the possibility of cuddling up to a stingray.

I am posting this poem because I am in the area-though as I write it is a wild and stormy night not conducive to walks on a seascape moon.

Please return to Tuesday Poem hub page edited by Helen Lowe and read Kathleen Jone’s wonderful poem.

 

Tuesday Poem-A Long Time Coming-by Karen Zelas

I watch you slide

through golden links hung

like a fly-curtain across the maw;

even the metal’s brilliance

can’t disguise the reality of your journey

 

perhaps he waits for you-

you’ve been a long time coming,

but then, he left too soon

and you like that devoted

duck, on and off the curb

exhorting her dead drake to rise from the gutter…

 

the lengthened shadow

of a cross

                      falling

                                   falling

 

never to touch

your flowerless box, no

six-pointed star to lead the way

the lick of flame

his gold ring

on your fourth finger still

(c) Karen Zelas

 

This poem is from Karen’s first collection ‘Night’s Glass Table’ (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd-2012). This is what she says about its origins.

“When my father died in middle age, my mother lost her soul-mate and endured another thirty-five years alone. It may seem strange to liken one’s parents to a pair of ducks, but the event seared a heart-breaking image on my retina. With reference to the cross and the star (of David), my mother chose not to have a Jewish funeral, but she would nevertheless have been mortified to know the shadow of a cross hung over her coffin during the farewell. Such are the vagaries of culture and religion.”

To read more about Karen and her work please click here.

And when you are ready, return to Tuesday Poets and read Saradha’s fascinating editorial selection.

Tuesday Poem-Paint Drizzled Poems

as Hotere can write across his art

and cause a splash

so shall I find fame

by hanging

paint drizzled poems

 

and as artists fill their foyers

with elucidating words

so I shall place a picture

or a hodge podge of buttons

straw cutouts beads etc.

 

and in a sunlit space

a skeleton

suspended upside down

to drain away the flesh

sculpted poetry

and the spare words

will be painted white

framed with heart rimu

poetic illumination

 

and there will be  

a dark poem

a wall of letters

black on black

in a room unlit

unlit so you

can flick the light

and check that there is none

(c) Helen McKinlay

This poem was inspired by art exhibitions which begin with walls covered in words. Also there is the added factor that paintings often contain words…Hmm. It has previously been published in ‘Splash,’ published by Airing Cupboard Women’s Poets in 2009.

At present I am in a part of  Golden Bay which gets infrequent reception which is my excuse for being late this week.
Do return to Tuesday Poets and read Leah’s editorial post. You won’t regret it.

Tuesday Poem-Beyond Horizons

I am sailing in a sea

beyond horizons

a pastel wash

the edges blurred

 

and like a child

I want to trail my fingers

and rub the colours

til they smudge

and tear

 

until the sea and me

drain down

down

through the paper hole

 

although I could weigh anchor

for a while

then take the wind

and skim

across the ocean

on a carven wave

(c) Helen McKinlay

La Voile Jaune-The Yellow Sail

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the amazing image above. The artist is Frenchman Odilon Redon.

This poem belongs to my ‘mystical period’    I wrote it about a decade ago.  I was partly thinking of those drawings one does as a child…and then there is the rub and smudge thing…and the big hole which would be a consequence and so of course the boat would fall down it or get rubbed out…but I seem to have found another way out which I rather like.

The hub page is edited by Cathy Bateson this week with a  wonderfully vital poem by Australian poet Samuel Wagan Watson.  Visit it here now.

Tuesday Poem-My Shadow-Robert Louis Stevenson-read by Billy Connolly

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india -rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;

I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me.

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Robert Louis Stevenson
1850-1894

This poem, is still one of the most popular short poems around.  Personally I love the detail of its observation. As adults I think we take our shadows for granted. I know I do.  But take a few moments to remember what an amazing thing a shadow really is!  This week I have made a pledge to become reaquainted with mine. Care to join me? If you are a tad unsure how…ask a young one to help you out. And if you are a young one and reading this…you can show mum or dad or gran and pops how! You could start by watching this clip of ‘My Shadow,’ read by Billy Connolly.

For information on Robert Louis Stevenson  click here.

And or to return to Tuesday Poem’s hub, click here.

Tuesday Poem-Hildegard of Bingen and The Thirsty Dog

Last Tuesday (Sept 4th), I went to Poetry Live at The Thirsty Dog  in Karangahape Road Auckland.  Karen Zelas and Sugu Pillay were guest poets, along with their publisher Dr David Reiter. This was the last night of a successful New Zealand tour promoting Karen and Sugu’s first collections.The night began with a zing and a bang as we were entertained by some great rhythms from the guest band.  A tad on the loud side for yours truly I must confess.  

On Tuesday I went to a quite different venue,The Mercy Spirituality Centre in Epsom, to hear a talk on Hildegard of Bingen. One of the most extraordinary women of the middle ages, Hildegard was a poet, an author of medical books, a healer, an abbess, a visionary,  an artist and a composer.   Like Archimedes and Aristotle she was also a polymath.

What has she in common with the Thirsty Dog and a modern day book launch? And what would she have thought of the band?  My answer…Hildegard could have managed a major gig herself for she was an extraordinary, self taught, composer, whose music is widely extant. Listen here  to her song The Vision.  The illumination shown, is one of Hildegard’s artworks. The sound is fantastic.  She understood creativity like few others. I think she would have thoroughly enjoyed the poetry of Karen and Sugu and the ambience of The Thirsty Dog. I did.

Hildegard  once wrote,“Like billowing clouds, Like the incessant gurgle of the brook,The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.”

HILDEGARDE’S TUESDAY POEM

Hildegard of Bingen
Benedicitine Nun

O greening branch!

You stand in your nobility

Like the rising dawn.
Rejoice now and exult

And deign to free the fools we are.
From our long slavery to evil

And hold out your hand
To raise us up.

This poem may seem like a fragment but realise that it was written by a nun in the twelfth century and you will see how remarkable it is. Referring to her attitude to nature, scholar Ian Johnston says, ‘Hildegard is treading a fine line here, of course, because her celebration of the natural world comes close at times to suggesting the divinity of nature or a worshipful attitude to nature, something directly contrary to Christian teaching in which nature is God’s wonderful creation but not, in itself, anything divine (the realm of the divine is over and above nature).’

 The thing I admire about her most however is that her creativity was grounded by her practicality…a great gift for an artist of any description. Finally, Hildegard was known for her ability to make people happy.  Suffering does not appear to be part of her vocabulary.  As a healer she was known to reprimand those who practiced self flagellation as she treated their wounds!

Karen Zelas

Back to Karen and Sugu.  Two of Karen’s poems have featured on Tuesday Poem recently. One today on Helen Lowe’s blog. Karen reads with a quiet confidence that begs one to listen to her words.  Jeremy the MC for last Tuesday night thanked her for her beautiful poems. On the back of her book, poet, James Norcliffe describes her poetry as having  ‘meticulous  invocation of place, of nature and of the human heart…..’

It was great to hear Sugu read the poem ‘Abandoned Geography’  which had appeared on Tuesday Poem that very morning.  She told me of it’s inspiration… her house had been badly damaged in the Christchurch earthquake. She too reads with a confidence and assurance which captures her audience.  Peter Simpson, author and editor, says of Sugu’s poetry ‘ Cities, countries,cultures, customs, jostle in her poems from a mind well-stocked with images stories and quotations from myriad sources.’   She can be heard reading at this site.

Sugu Pillay

Karen and Sugu’s books can be obtained here.

 As for Hildegard of Bingen, on May 10th 2012 Pope Benedict XVI  formally declared her to be a canonized saint.

May she watch over all poets.

And now please go to The Tuesday Hub, edited this week by Orchid Tierney and check out the side bar full of international poets for a myriad of delights.

Tuesday Poem-The Wild Woman Cow

Have you ever wondered how

it really feels to be a cow?

And have you ever envied she

who seems to live indulgently?

 

At home on pastures green and lush.

No husbands kids or weekday rush.

In fact this is a load of bull

for Madam Cow is very cool.

 

Unlike us liberated chicks

she has no choice with whom she clicks.

There is no contraceptive pill

to let this lady breed at will.

 

She births a calf and gives it up

so we on tea with milk can sup.

So stop a while and have a think

what lies beneath that bovine blink?

 

She might not have a lot of choice

but boy she’s got a powerful voice.

She lets her female self hang out

her tits a swinging round about.

 

She shits a pile and flicks her arse

without a care for who might pass.

 She stares at you as cud she chews

and never does herself excuse.

 

So let us pause and celebrate

the one who made this country great.

The one who really shows us how.

The wild woman dairy cow.

(c) Helen McKinlay

 

 

 

This poem was inspired by the experience of  living next to a dairy farm. We grew very fond of the cows…they would often come to the fence for a friendly exchange of moos and gave us much entertainment and pleasure.

On a serious note, I have often watched cows walking to the milk shed, their udders  hanging low and heavy. Having worked in midwifery and been a breast feeding mum I know how uncomfortable this must be. And one of my least favourite sounds is the bleating of calves removed from their mums and the sound of cows crying for their calves… yet our whole dairy industry in NZ is geared around this practice. Food for thought. The Wild Woman Cow was first published in ‘Sleepy Hollow Stirs’ (Nucleus Publications,Nelson 2006)

Meanwhile, a toast to cows. Long may they  retain their attitude, strength of character and serenity!

For a great selection of poems from around the world please return to Tuesday Poem’s Hub

 

Tuesday Poem-Lake Isle of Innisfree-WB Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

To hear the author himself click on the video below. I left it until last as it is  not  good quality and I wanted you to get a better idea of the words before you hear it but it is marvellous to hear Yeat’s own  lilting Irish voice.

The following note on this poem is courtesy of Wikipedia.

“When Yeats was a child, his father had read to him from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and Yeats described his inspiration for the poem by saying that while he was a teenager, he wished to imitate Thoreau by living on Innisfree, an uninhabited island in Lough Gill.He suggests that when he was living in London, he would walk down Fleet Street and long for the seclusion of a pastoral setting such as the isle. The sound of water coming from a fountain in a shop window reminded Yeats of the lake that he had previously seen, and it is this inspiration that Yeats credits for the creation of the poem.”

For more information about WB Yeats click here.

And now please do visit Tuesday Poem and read Penelope Cottier’s stimulating editorial on a a poetic gem…’Piecemeal’ by Australian poet Sarah Rice.

Tuesday Poem-The Butterflew-and a visit to Storylines Christchurch free family day

Today I saw a flutterby

that buttered round and round the sky.

I went right in and told my mum

and she said ‘my and oh and um!

I didn’t know that butter flew.

I really have to phone the zoo.’

 

She phoned the zoo and they said, ‘Coo!

We didn’t know that butter flies

and melts and drips down through the skies.

We wonder, would you bring us some

that we may see and ho and hum?’

 

‘Of course,’ said Mum.

‘We’ll be right there.

We’ll even try to bring a pair.

It’s clear my son will be quite famed

for flying butter he has tamed.’

 

‘Oh Ma’, said I, ‘such a to do.’

Why did you have to phone the zoo?

I didn’t say that butter flies and

melts and drips down through the skies.’                             

 

‘I didn’t say that butter flew.

Why did you have to phone the zoo?

I said I saw a flutterby that

buttered round and round the sky.’

(c) copyright Helen McKinlay

I dedicate this week’s posting to Storylines Festival 2012.  The first version of this poem was published in ‘A Bedtime Poem For Every Day Of The Year  – Anchor Books 2006.’  This is the second version!   A late posting today because I have just come back from Christchurch, where I was lucky enough to be a guest author in the Storylines  Festival of New Zealand’s Children’s Writers and Illustrators free family day. This event took place in the Catholic Cathedral College hall. And what a beaut day it was.  It was a privilege to be among such an enthusiastic group of parents, children, volunteers and entertainers. It was great to catch up with old friends such as Leonie Thorpe who has just published another great read ‘How to Sell Toothpaste’. And to put names to faces I hadn’t met, among them Sandy McKay, Melanie Drewery, Tim Tipene, Jenny Cooper and Sarona Aionoo-Iosefa.

It was also special for me to go back to Christchurch. There are a lot of positive things happening down there in amongst the loss; of friends and relatives, of a previous way of life, of homes and of buildings. And while it is sad to see empty spaces where the latter once stood, I for one, would put people’s safety over bricks and mortar. Though I do sympathise with those  making the very tough decisions in relation to which buildings and houses to save or not.

One of my favourite heritage buildings would have to be  the Catholic Cathedral in Barbados Street and we had a clear view of this from the college staffroom at Storylines, as it is just behind the basilica area.

I have always loved the image of the cathedral as a golden edifice against the distant background of the Port Hills.

Not only that but its history and that of the old convent next door, a very special building, which became The School of Music. and is now a car park, I have wonderful memories of  events held in both buildings. Fantastic acoustics and atmosphere.  Let’s hope something equally great will be the end result. You can visit this site for some photos of the earthquake damage to the cathedral and more information on the building’s possible future.

Above all my admiration goes out to those still dealing with uncertainty over their housing situations.  If there is one thing which is certain in this life it is change.  I have heard it said that change is opportunity and I believe that…but extraordinary skill and patience is demanded of those in the midst of the events which have occurred in Christchurch over the last two years.

Please return to the hub page and check out the range of poems and poets in the sidebar for this Tuesday.

Tuesday Poem – The Railway Train – by Emily Dickinson

THE RAILWAY TRAIN.

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop — docile and omnipotent —
At its own stable door.

( XVII from Series Two, Life)

Emily Dickinson December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886

For all those aspiring to fame do read this second little piece…it has no title.

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ‘s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They ‘d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

(I. from Series Two, Life)

It was a surprise to me to find these two humorous poems by Emily Dickinson.  Although there are some gems of philsophy among her collection, this is the first time I have seen that extra spark!  Emily, known for the fact that she only published six poems in her lifetime is much discussed. Thank you for visiting me. Please return to the Hub page of Tuesday Poem where you will find much to intrigue and satisfy your poetic longings.

Tuesday Poem-The Duck and the Kangaroo-a nonsense drollery by Edward Lear

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo

“Good gracious! How you hop

Over the fields and water too

As if you would never stop!

 

My life is a bore in this nasty pond,

And I long to go out in the world beyond!

I wish I could hop like you!”

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

 

“Please give me a ride on your back!”

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

“I would sit quite still and say nothing but ‘Quack’

The whole of the long day through!

 

And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee,

Over the land, and over the sea;

Please take me a ride! O do.”

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

 

Said the Kangaroo to the Duck,

“This requires some little reflection;

Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck,

And there seems but one objection,

 

Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold

Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold,

And would probably give me the room-

Matiz.” Said the Kangaroo.

 

Said the Duck, “As I sate on the rocks,

I have thought over that completely,

And I bought a few pairs of worsted socks

Which fit my web-feet neatly.

 

And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak

And everyday a cigar I’ll smoke,

All to follow my own dear true

Love of a Kangaroo!”

 

Said the Kangaroo, “I’m ready!

All in the moonlight pale:

But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady!

And quite at the end of my tail!”

 

So away they went with a hop and a bound,

And they hopped the whole world three times round;

And who so happy,-O who,

As the Duck and the Kangaroo?

This whimsical poem from Edward Lear comes from The Project Gutenberg E-Book of Nonsense Drolleries. The other poem in this book, which can be downloaded free, together with the wonderful illustrations by William Foster,  is The Owl and the Pussycat.  Don’t you just love the word drolleries? The singular of this by the way is drollery.

Please return to Tuesday Poem and check out the hub page. Eileen Moeller, this week’s editor shares a poem which surprises and delights with its delicacy of style, considering its murky topic.

Also as well as all the other poems in the side bar you can read my poem Juice of Nelson Haven on Helen Lowe’s blog. Thanks Helen Lowe

Tuesday Poem-The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump-Rudyard Kipling

The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump
Which well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the hump we get
From having too little to do.

Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo,
If we haven’t enough to do-oo-oo,
We get the hump—
Cameelious hump—
The hump that is black and blue!

We climb out of bed with a frouzly head
And a snarly-yarly voice.
We shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl
At our bath and our boots and our toys;

And there ought to be a corner for me
(And I know there is one for you)
When we get the hump—
Cameelious hump—
The hump that is black and blue!

The cure for this ill is not to sit still,
Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,
And dig till you gently perspire;

And then you will find that the sun and the wind.
And the Djinn of the Garden too,
Have lifted the hump—
The horrible hump—
The hump that is black and blue!

I get it as well as you-oo-oo—
If I haven’t enough to do-oo-oo—
We all get hump—
Cameelious hump—
Kiddies and grown-ups too!

The picture below is a woodcut by Rudyard Kipling. It shows the Djinn magicing the camel’s hump.

Quote from Wikipaedia…A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back…

What marvellous words these are!

This poem goes with the story, How the Camel Got his Hump,  one of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories. Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay,lived 1865 – 18 January 1936. he was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling , who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907,  has a huge and fascinating writer’s history.

Please return to Tuesday Poets and enjoy the wide selection of poetry on offer.  And or be sure to check out Elizabeth Welsh a fellow Tuesday Poet who has done me the honour of publishing my poem Ode to Clothes Pegs on her blog this week. Elizabeth has just made us all proud by winning the The Auckland University Press /Divine Muses  2012 Emerging Poets Competition.

Tuesday Poem -Washing the Dishes-by Christopher Morley

When we on simple rations sup

How easy is the washing up!

But heavy feeding complicates

The task by soiling many plates.

And though I grant that I have prayed

That we might find a serving-maid,

I’d scullion all my days I think,

To see Her smile across the sink!

I wash, she wipes. In water hot

I souse each pan and dish and pot;

While taffy mutters, purrs, and begs,

And rubs himself against my legs.

 

The man who never in his life

Has washed the dishes with his wife

Or polished up the silver plate–

He still is largely celibate.

One warning: there is certain ware

That must be handled with all care:

The Lord Himself will give you up

If you should drop a willow cup!

by Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley, 1890-1957, was born in Pennyslvania, U.S.A. where he lived most of his life, apart from three years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he studied modern history. His varied writing career included editing ‘The Ladies Home Journal’. As well, he was the author of more than 100 novels, books of essays and volumes of poetry. His novel Kitty Foyle, became an Academy Award winning movie. Purportedly his last message to his friends when he died was…

‘Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity’

Please return to the Tuesday Poem Hub where you can read three poems, one each, from the three NZ Post Book Award  finalists, chosen by Editor this week, Andrew Bell. Before you leave, be sure to visit the sidebar where the Tuesday Poets reside. You might also like to visit The Aotearoa Affair. This is a Blog Fest and  collaborative web initiative in anticipation of the Frankfurt Bookfair in October, where New Zealand is the Guest of Honour.  I am honoured to have a poem in the Highlights section.

Tuesday Poem – Sedition in the ranks – by Vincent 0′Sullivan

I married so long back it seems now

like a not too bad novel I read at that stage

rather than a life I couldn’t put down

 

too quickly. A niece came by yesterday

bearing flowers I happily tossed out.

She leaned across me with her hot perfume

 

like a cat waiting to pounce.

I’m clearly one of her good turns.

There’s a Home chaplain who talks chess

 

at me, seeing God’s a touch heavy

at tea-time on a morning when summer

smacks off the harbour. ‘The pornography

 

of light,’ I tell him, out of the blue.

He smiles like I’m a smartarse quoting Aquinas.

I want to say but don’t, ‘Has anyone

 

bothered to ask whether resurrection’s all

it’s cracked up for?’ You make your own fun

in a place like this. I’m popular here.

 

The night staff slip me an extra biscuit.

The old ducks quack when I pull their legs.

The carpenter who sports a tattoo no more

 

interesting than the name of a soccer team

on his forearm, who’s putting locks on the windows

of those who’d prefer to scarper, says

 

to me-nudge a cobber sort of thing-

‘You’re a wily old bugger.’ ‘Language,’

I say later to Matron, ‘I didn’t come here for that.’

 

This copyright of this poem is owned by Vincent O’Sullivan. It is here by his kind permission. He had just stepped off the plane home from Europe when he gave it, so thank you Vincent.  ‘Sedition in the ranks’ is from his most recent collection-The movie may be slightly different -Victoria University Press 2011. I really enjoy the gently obstreporous humour of the main character in this poem. He’s a survivor!

Vincent is one of New Zealand’s best known writers. His writing includes numerous volumes of poetry, two novels, collections of short stories and the biography of Alan Mulgan and he has also edited and /or co-edited various anthologies and collections including The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield. He has been widely published, nationally and internationally and his awards, residencies and fellowships, are many.

For more wonderful poetry go to Tuesday Poem .  Check out The Hub, edited this week  by Mary McCallum.

Tuesday Poem – Should I tell the Dalai Lama that my shoes are in the freezer?

Why has he come here
the Dalai Lama
to talk to me of China and Tibetans?
What can I do about China?
I can’t even find my shoes.

I’m sure I left them in my friend’s car
but she says,
‘no they’re not there.
Try Shirley.’

I think they’re in someone’s deep freeze.
They are red.
Someone has peered in the bag
said ‘ah, mince,’
and tossed them among the beef burgers.

The Dalai Lama
he has a lovely laugh.
I could tell him about my shoes
deep frozen
waiting to be turned into goulash.

He would chuckle and gurgle
then peer at me and say,
‘better to keep shoes in freezer than dead cows.’

(c) Helen McKinlay

I wrote this poem in the 1990s.  I was living in Golden Bay and we had taken the girls over to Nelson, to see the Dalai Lama. Also I had lost my red shoes, so that much is true. This poem has been around a lot.  I love reading it to an audience. I read the title and then pause.  That’s probably all they need to hear.  It was published in Boulder Writers 2, (Nelson 2008).  To read more Tuesday Poems, please return to the Tuesday Hub where Elizabeth Welsh discusses a stimulating poem by Mary Cresswell.

Tuesday Poem – There Must Have Been a Reason

 for my presence at a meeting

the week before it happened

for me to dress in suitable attire

and move my winter legs

into the chill

 

past the fresh dug grave

in the churchyard to the  bus stop

by the café

where the sign still reads

‘Índian restaurant opening soon.’

Yes there must have been a reason

for my rush to be on time

a week early.

 

Perhaps it was that moment of acceptance

of autumn leaves squashed into the mud

half brown camellias dropped on greasy paths 

and the darkness of the river

beneath the dilute sun.

Or the once close friends

whose eager greeting

melted through my frozen thoughts.

 

It could have been

the way my glasses misted

in the warmth of the indoors

the lunch with me alone

at the long table.

 

I think it was the walking home

past the grave

taken now

and in the trees above

the buds which dared to fatten in the frost.

I hope this poem speaks for itself.  I would have stayed home on that day but the thought of meeting with writer friends at the Dux de Lux, in the Arts Centre,  Christchurch and enjoying discussion and jollility, drew me out.  I would have missed out on a poem if there had been a meeting. The above is the graveyard on a much nicer day.

This poem was published in the New Zealand Poetry Society’s 2011  anthology ‘Ice Diver ‘

Please return to Tuesday Poets and read Tim Jones’ editorial  feature on Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s beautiful poem,’Why Don’t You Talk To Me?’  And remember to scroll down the side bar to check out other Tuesday Poems posted for your delight this week.

Tuesday Poem – ‘People of the Water’- in memory of Joe Bell, Mussel Inn Live Poets Convenor

They have come from everywhere

these people.

They came for the water.

The water flows the valleys and the mountains.

It bubbles underground and out to sea.

 

They are the land between the waves

these people.

They paddle boats

toward each other’s shores.

And korero among the whitebait haunts.

 

Sometimes they disagree

these people.

But after storms they stand upon the bridge.

And watch the movement

of the ducks’ webbed feet.

 

Sometimes they stand and stare

these people.

Out to where the water meets the sky.

How did our forbears come so very far

in tiny sailing ships and carved canoes?

 

It is an old man’s thinning stream

the water.

And the tears that dribble

down a baby’s cheek.

It strokes the children of the people

the water.

And smooths the eels that swim

between their legs.

For the water is their ancestor too. 

And they are the water’s mokopuna.

I wrote this poem a few years ago. I wanted to capture the spirit of the community which is Golden Bay. Looking after each other, and the land,  is a vital part of that spirit.

Joe Bell, who died last week in Milnthorpe, Golden Bay, embodied this spirit to the max.   Joe was an enthusiastic and well-known live poet. He helped start the Live Poets’ group at Golden Bay’s famous Mussel Inn and chaired it for seventeen years.   He is and will remain greatly missed by his many friends.  The photo below shows Milnthorpe,  Joe’s turangawaewae.

Please return to Tuesday Poets and enjoy the fine mix of poets and poetry uploaded for your pleasure today.