Kisses in the Train - D H Lawrence

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I saw the midlands
revolve through her hair;
the fields of autumn
stretching bare,
and sheep on the pasture
tossed back in a scare.

And still as ever
the world went round,
my mouth on her pulsing
throat was found,
and my breast to her beating
breast was bound.

But my heart at the centre
of all, in a swound
was still as a pivot,
as all the ground
on its prowling orbit
shifted round.

And still in my nostrils
the scent of her flesh;
and still my blind face
sought her afresh;
and still one pulse
through the world did thresh.

And the world all whirling
round in joy
like the dance of a dervish
did destroy
my sense - and reason
spun like a toy.

But firm at the centre
my heart was found;
my own to her perfect
heartbeat bound,
like a magnet's keeper
closing the round.

D H Lawrence 1911

Pivot = a short shaft on which something turns, swound = swoon, Dervish = a member of a Muslin fraternity vowed to poverty and austerity, Magnet's keeper = a metal bar joining the two poles of a horseshoe magnet, preventing the loss of flux. One of the early love poems taken from the book - The Love Poems of D. H. Lawrence edited by Roy Booth.

The rhyme scheme involves the second, third and fifth line. Marvellous metre such that it mirrors that iambic clickity clack of the railway track giving a distinct feeling of train travel. Apparently the woman in question was D H Lawrence's fiancee Louie Burrows (not the woman he eloped with and married.) The text implies she may have been a blonde, white sheep are more common than black.

I was really taken in from the first stanza for train travel was a feature of my school days. There are two great pastimes on a short journey when paper and book do not feature as distraction. They are - looking out through the window - or studying ‘interesting people'. If you are a regular commuter you get to know the people and some of their habits.

Love throws life off the tracks! (if you forgive the pun) ... except for the heart of course which finds its true fuel. whether or not it misses a beat.

Footnote ...

Wikipedia reference on DHL ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence ... source to the following text ...

In defence of critics, long term friend Catherine Carswell said this of Lawrence ... In the face of formidable initial disadvantages and life-long delicacy, poverty that lasted for three quarters of his life and hostility that survives his death, he did nothing that he did not really want to do, and all that he most wanted to do he did. He went all over the world, he owned a ranch, he lived in the most beautiful corners of Europe, and met whom he wanted to meet and told them that they were wrong and he was right. He painted and made things, and sang, and rode. He wrote something like three dozen books, of which even the worst page dances with life that could be mistaken for no other man's, while the best are admitted, even by those who hate him, to be unsurpassed. Without vices, with most human virtues, the husband of one wife, scrupulously honest, this estimable citizen yet managed to keep free from the shackles of civilization and the cant of literary cliques. He would have laughed lightly and cursed venomously in passing at the solemn owls-each one secretly chained by the leg-who now conduct his inquest. To do his work and lead his life in spite of them took some doing, but he did it, and long after they are forgotten, sensitive and innocent people-if any are left-will turn Lawrence's pages and will know from them what sort of a rare man Lawrence was.

He came to Australia and wrote a least one novel based on that experience - Kangaroo 1923.

Dead Poets Dinner 24 July 2012 - Readings

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The following is a list of the readings at the Dead Poets Dinner held on 24 July at 'The Gods' cafe ANU Canberra (co-ordinated by Geoff Page as best as could be reconstructed from people's handwriting!) ...

John Berryman  2 'Dream Songs'

R.S. Thomas 'The Garden'

*   Rosemary Dobson 'Captain Svenson'

Margaret Scott 'Grandchild'

Oscar Hammerstein II 'If I Loved You'

Hone Tuwhare 'Statue'

James McAuley 'Because'

Ern Malley 2 poems

Niedecke 3 poems

David Campbell 'Two Ways of Going'

*   Rosemary Dobson 'The Three Fates'

Hopkins 'Pied Beauty'

Saigyo several haiku

Chaucer 'Prologue to the Legend of the Good Woman'

* Rosemary Dobson translations from Mandelstam and  Akhmatova 

Salvatore Quasimodo 'Lettera' in English and Italian

Tennyson 'The Eagle'

R.S. Thomas 'The Owl'

Frost 'Acquainted with the Night'

Louis MacNeice 'Bagpipe Music'

Two Bad Poems

Norman MacCaig Two poems

Three Aboriginal songs

A Sea Shanty (sung)

Shakespeare (excerpt from Twelfth Night)

Gwen Harwood 'Barn Owl'

Rilke 'Spanish Dancer'

Pound 'The River Merchant's  Wife: A Letter'

Eliot portions of 'Burnt Norton'

Shelley 'Ozymandias'

*   Of particular note were the readings in memory of Rosemary Dobson who died in Canberra in June.

Frustrated

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afternoon tea, then of course it was much more than just tea and cake

old Mrs Bridger tries to eat the flower-pattern from her plate

you, on best behaviour, sit silently watching this funny sight

waiting, waiting for someone to help her do things right

coming round a country corner unwittingly, it was fate

the last of Hewitt’s herd stumbles out the open gate

an obstinate brown-eye stare quite oblivious to our intent

waits for the farmhand’s stick-switch before the slightest movement

old age and the doctor have been quick to define

rest, total rest, you must now take your time

no garden, no car-clean, no walking the dog

you’re told to sit tight by your fire, put on a large log

an empty chair, a painting, the sun dusts the blind

time to recover, to reflect, at least journey the mind

Richard Scutter 15 June 2012

Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice

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   It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,

   All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.

   Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,

   Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with head of bison.

   John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,

   Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,

   Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,

   Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.

   It's no go the Yogi-man, it's no go Blavatsky,

   All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

   Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,

   Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.

   It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,

   All we want is a Dunlop tire and the devil mend the puncture.

   The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,

   Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.

   Mrs. Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,

   Said to the midwife "Take it away; I'm through with overproduction."

   It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh,

   All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

   Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,

   Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.

   His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,

   Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

   It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,

   All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

   It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,

   It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,

   It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,

   Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

   It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;

   Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.

   The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,

   But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather

Louis MacNeice (1907 - 1963)

You might consider the title an oxymoron unless you come from Scotland of course. Louise MacNeice was born in Northern Ireland and spent most of his life in England. Written after a vist to the Hebrides in 1937 at the time of the Depression. Simply a must as a poem to be read.

Blavatsky - Madame Blavatsky (1831 -1891)- Russian scholar of ancient wisdom literature, founder of the Theosophical Society

Ceilidh - pronounced caley -  a party with dancing and live music

Cran - a measure of the quantity of just caught herrings

I found this poem on the following Site ... http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com.au/1999/02/bagpipe-music-louis-macneice.html#comment-form

Best-Selling Poetry in Australia

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Best-Selling Poetry and other Oxymorons

Bronwyn Lea has recently put up a post on the above topic …

http://theconversation.edu.au/poetry-bestsellers-and-other-oxymorons-8164?

But first what is an oxymoron … see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron
… basically a contradiction in terms  … FUN run immediately comes to mind

But I was interested to see what poetry was most popular in Oz (based on sales) … the following text was taken from Bronwyn’s Post…

Neilsen BookScan, which records book sales in Australia since 2002, reveals twentieth-century Lebanese poet, Khalil Gibran, as the clear favourite.

Born in 1883 in Bsharii in modern-day northern Lebanon, Gibran died of liver failure at the age of 48 in New York. The Prophet, his first book, was published in 1923. Its fame spread by word of mouth. By 1931 it had been translated into 20 languages, and in the 60s it was a hit with American youth culture. It’s been popular ever since.

In the fictional set up for The Prophet, Almustafa has lived for 12 years in the foreign city of Orphalese and is heading home when a group of people stop him. He offers to share his wisdom on an array of issues pertaining to life and the human condition: love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, crime and punishment, beauty, death and so on. The chapter on marriage is perhaps the best known, as it’s a regular in wedding ceremonies. A testament to love (and an argument against co-dependence), it concludes:

Give your hearts but not into each other’s keeping.

And stand together yet not too near together:
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and they cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Thinking about bestselling poetry, there’s one more quality worth mentioning.

Laughter - in terms of sales for an individual poetry title, the second ranked poetry title in Australia is Michael Leunig’s Poems (Viking 2004).

Which goes to show that while Australian readers like thinking about god, they have retained a sense of humour.

My comment …

My copy of ‘The Prophet’ contains illustrations … and Michael Leunig books rely on illustrations for effect … perhaps another important consideration for success is to consider multi-medium work.

 … and in that regard I have just come to understand a new term –

 ekphrasis … a verbal or written description of a visual presentation … see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis

Sylvia Plath - Birth, Statues and Museums

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Sylvia Plath defines birth in terms of a museum and statues ...

Empty, I echo to the least footfall,

Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.

SP (Barren Woman 21 Feb 1961).

Museum ... a building used for storing and exhibiting objects of historical, scientific or culture interest.

A woman is a museum in that she carries the history of humanity. A barren woman is like an empty museum. Any noise echoes the tragedy of such a state. A museum is of little value if has no exhibits?

Statue ... a sculptured, cast, carved or moulded figure of a person or animal - especially life-size or larger.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

SP (Morning Song 19 Feb 1961)

The echoes now have a sense of joy but the nakedness and fragility of birth is in stark contrast to the solid structure of the surrounds. And of course a new baby is very much on exhibition. How is the new statue going to fit into the historical context?

Here is the memorable first line from Morning Song ...

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

What a strong positive statement on birth that only a mother can truly understand. Babies are fat, gold is pure and you may, or may not, believe that love generates life. A watch is an apt analogy not only to the link to the heart beat pulse tick, but to time. Birth and time are inextricably connected.

Note ...

Morning Song was the first poem of SP's self-chosen set of poems called Ariel (named after the horse she rode in Devon). A memorable first word to open the collection. … love

Ode to Melancholy - John Keats - analysis

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Ode To Melancholy

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
    Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
    By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
    Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
        Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
    For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
        And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
    Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
    And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
    Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
        Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
    Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
        And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
    And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
    Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
    Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
        Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
    Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
        And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

John Keats (written 1819)

Stanza 1

Lethe – Greek mythology, one of the five rivers of Hades
Wolfs-bane- poisonous plant (Aconitum)
Proserpine - Greek goddess Persephone, queen of the underworld

The message is clear – do not consider suicide and of more import accept the experience of melancholy  - experience to the full the anguish of the soul (today we use anti-depressants)

 Stanza 2

Look to beauty in nature and focus on that … and the beauty of woman (ignoring other side issues in this regard) … glut thy sorrow by drinking deep into this form of antidote

Stanza 3
Your melancholy is a measure of your appreciation of the world (sensitivity) the two must go hand in hand … joy and sadness goes hand in hand …
In the very temple of Delight
    Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

Here is an internet link to more detailed analysis on this Ode … including an initial stanza that was removed prior to publication

http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonmelancholy.html

The removed stanza below would have been an good introduction …

Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
    And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
Stitch creeds together for a sail, with groans
    To fill it out, bloodstained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a Dragon's tail,
    Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
        Your cordage large uprootings from the skull
Of bald Medusa; certes you would fail
    To find the Melancholy, whether she
       Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.

... you can’t find or pinpoint melancholy down in any physical sense on any journey into Hades

Medusa – Greek Mythology  … gazing on her would turn you to stone … using her head as a weapon see … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa

… and an Internet link to the life and works of John Keats …
http://englishhistory.net/keats/marilee.html

Spike Milligan and Poetry

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Spike Milligan wrote some very moving poems apart from the frivolous ... the following are some very personal poems …

Oberon

The flowers in my garden
grow down.
Their colour is pain
Their fragrance sorrow.
Into my eyes grow their roots
feeling for tears
To nourish the black
hopeless rose
within me.

Nervous breakdown, Bournemouth Feb 1967

Many of his poems concern humour and children and here is a more poignant poem ...

Growing Up II from The Mirror Running 1987 ...

Is that all there is? Goodbye!
After a million hellos
After all those bird-blessed mornings,
After the bubbling bath-time laughter,
After so many soul-searching Santa Claus,
After a million wild walks on the moors,
After the swing-swung laughing summers,
After the tear-drenched kiss-better bumped head,
After the new wear-them-in-bed red shoes,
After a tumult of timeless teddy bears,
After a delirium of dolls in prams,
After a rainbow of ice-creams,
After daddy I love you all the world -
Good-bye?

It is time to say goodbye, and a fitting goodbye, so finally from Spike ... an unpublished poem ...

How many good-byes?
When I was born
My mother took me from hospital
The nurses said good-bye
That was my first one.
I was too young to hear it
One day I will die.
Someone will say goodbye
And I still won't hear it

Monkenhurst
April 28 1987 0100 hrs

from The Compulsive Spike Milligan (Edited by Norma Farnes)

Men Shedding

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men shedding

he dies

a little every day

by the things he used to do

from digging

up the veggie garden

to tying up a shoe

while his children

tell him constantly

to behave and not to stew

he remembers

in his childhood days

of reaching for the sky

that burst

of first excitement

with each new thing that he would try

but now he’s brought

back down to earth

as the old tasks pass him by

and soon everything

that he once could do

he just can’t do again

and he’ll wake up

one sad morning

the final task upon his brain

then, sad to say,

he forgets that too,

it’ll be his last refrain

Richard Scutter 4 July 2010

Note …

This poem was motivated as a response to Geoff Page’s poem Cool Girls (from his book Human Interest) … woman and beauty transferring to men and tasks.

… written on independence day 2010 … long live independence day … let’s celebrate the things we can do … however small!

Bell-Birds - Henry Kendall - Analysis

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By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,

^            -        ^     -        ^   -            ^      -      ^  -

And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:

It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges

Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.

Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers

Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;

And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,

The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

The silver-voiced bell birds, the darlings of daytime!

They sing in September their songs of the May-time;

When shadows wax strong, and the thunder bolts hurtle,

They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle;

When rain and the sunbeams shine mingled together,

They start up like fairies that follow fair weather;

And straightway the hues of their feathers unfolden

Are the green and the purple, the blue and the golden.

October, the maiden of bright yellow tresses,

Loiters for love in these cool wildernesses;

Loiters, knee-deep, in the grasses, to listen,

Where dripping rocks gleam and the leafy pools glisten:

Then is the time when the water-moons splendid

Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended

Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning

Of songs of the bell-bird and wings of the Morning.

Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers

Are the voices of bell-birds to the thirsty far-comers.

When fiery December sets foot in the forest,

And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest,

Pent in the ridges for ever and ever

The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river,

With ring and with ripple, like runnels who torrents

Are toned by the pebbles and the leaves in the currents.

Often I sit, looking back to a childhood,

Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood,

Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion,

Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of Passion; -

Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters

Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest-rafters;

So I might keep in the city and alleys

The beauty and strength of the deep mountain valleys:

Charming to slumber the pain of my losses

With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses.

Henry Kendall (1838 - 1882)

The rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and iambic bounce give this poem a flowing musicality. For me it is a poem of reflective nostalgia on a childhood identified with the bush – enforced by the change in mood in the last stanza. A time remembered perhaps before Kendall went away as a cabin boy on a boat when 15 years old – and written when back in Australia and living a city life. (Interestingly he was born near Ulladulla, NSW - it would be very bush at that stage - and access by boat)

A good biography of Henry Kendall is on the following site: : Australian Dictionary of Biography

Comprehensive details on the life and times of Henry Kendall have been given by Judith Wright in her book ‘Preoccupations in Australian Poetry’.

Kendall was influenced and a friend of Charles Harpur and this link is explored in detail in the above book …

When Harpur died in 1868, the social climate in Australia had changed a great deal since his birth. With the colony no longer a rubbish-tip for England, but a promising young producer of wealth, with increasing population and increasing self-confidence as her isolation lessened, Australia seemed well on the way to becoming what Harpur had hoped she would be, a nation in her own right.

Many Kendall admirers might suggest that Kendall became the ‘first Australian poet’. Judith Wright states that …

 … looked at hard and honestly, he is scarcely to be called an interpreter of Australia at all. He is, however, something quite as important, the poet of his own desperate struggle and final self-mastery.

A comment from Perry Middlemiss  (from … http://www.middlemiss.org/matilda/2009/08/100-australian-poems-60-bell-birds-by-henry-kendall.html ) …

By any criteria Henry Kendall's "Bell-Birds" must rank as one of the most popular poems written in Australia's literary history. Austlit, "The Australian Literature Resource", lists 32 entries in its publication history; possibly ranking only with Dorothea's Mackellar's "My Country", Paterson's "Waltzing Matilda" and one or two others in its universality. And yet it is not a poem I remember from my childhood - the Paterson and the Mackellar certainly, but not this one.

There is a lovely lilting feel to this work. The rhymes generally read as occurring naturally (though a query may be made against "sedges/ledges" in the first verse - I don't know why?), and the flow and rhythm are reminiscent of a warm, lazy spring day.

If, as seems reasonable, Kendall wrote this a year or so before its publication in his collection, Leaves from Australian Forests, in 1869, then he was probably living in New South Wales at his happiest. This was prior to his disastrous sojourn in Melbourne, the death of his young daughter and his descent into bankruptcy and mental illness. There appears to be no despair or despondency in this work, only the wonder of nature and joy of life.

A note on Bellbirds - according to Wikipedia, Bellbirds are so-called "because they feed almost exclusively on the dome-like coverings of certain psyllid bugs, referred to as 'bell lerps', that feed on eucalyptus sap from the leaves", and not because of their distinctive tinkling, bell-like sound.

Never Too Old - Janne Graham - Analysis

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NEVER TOO OLD

Fifty-four

And today I learned

Something:

Birds don’t urinate

They have no kidneys

Urine and faeces combine in one.

I knew, of course

The moistness of the white drops

In the budgie cage

The foul smelling softness

In the chook house of my youth

And only yesterday

I swept, cursing, from the front verandah

The berry-stained black droppings of the currawong.

And yet I did not know.

Knowledge

Caged in familiarity

Simply scratching at the surface of my mind

Or flying, high-glossed, before my eyes

Dropping its wisdom:

Just piss and shit

Telling me nothing

Till I am fifty-four.

Janne D Graham 1992

Analysis

Stanza 1 …

Fifty-four by itself has a certain command stating the importance of this age. A clear factual statement - and how many readers would know that birds do not have kidneys? The beauty of such short lines is in their direct concise nature.

Stanza 2 …

A clear illustration is presented in three observations that reflect different years … budgie (child) / chook house (youth) / verandah sweeping (54) … and each of these observations tells us something about the nature of the combined bird waste … that was known and obvious and lived with. Nice balance between the first and last lines of the stanza (knowing/not knowing)

Stanza 3 …

Again the power of the single word ‘knowledge’ … this is what it is all about … knowledge and ‘age’.

Caged in familiarity - such a clever way of saying that knowledge is latent in the context of the caged bird droppings … and that we can be so familiar with things that in many cases we don’t go deeper than at a superficial level … again the clever association with scratching and birds … followed by the vision of birds flying high-glossed (looking at the brilliance of the bird and not it’s droppings).

Then of course the dropping of wisdom in line with the bird’s dropping coming from the sky … as though after many years of droppings telling nothing there is this sudden realization (hopefully if hit in the face only metaphorically) …

And Oh shit - the discovery of something at the age of 54 … and something that has only just been thought about.

This simple poem has a clever and amusing take on ‘knowledge’, ‘age’ and ‘self-discovery’.

(Janne Graham is a local poet from Canberra)

The Queen Marches On

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The Queen Marches On

(The Queen leads Prince Philip during her visit to Canberra in November 2011, walking from the royal launch to the Floriade Flower Show – Commonwealth Gardens)

Diamond Jubilee

more than a nominal head

the Queen reigns mighty

while Prince Charles awaits

and as the years and years shed

his throne dissipates

Diamond Jubilee celebrations (June 2012)