Birds and poetry (3 Viewers)

[scampo]

I used to teach this wonderfully simple but so very sad poem by Wendy Cope but had long forgotten its title. Thanks to Google, I managed to find it - straight into the collection!


Tich Miller

Tich Miller wore glasses
with elastoplast-pink frames
and had one foot three sizes larger than the other.

When they picked teams for outdoor games
she and I were always the last two
left standing by the wire-mesh fence.

We avoided one another’s eyes
stooping, perhaps, to re-tie a shoelace,
or affecting interest in the flight

of some fortunate bird, and pretended
not to hear the urgent conference:
‘Have Tubby!’ ‘No, no, have Tich!’

Usually they chose me, the lesser dud,
and she lolloped, unselected,
to the back of the other team.

At eleven we went to different schools.
In time I learned to get my own back,
sneering at hockey-players who couldn’t spell.

Tich died when she was twelve.

Wendy Cope (1945 - )

 

[Mickymouse]

Titch Miller, that one hurts doesn't it? As I was reading it I was thinking, aah that was me when I was at school then the last line is like a punch in the face.
Thanks for editing the Ageing Schoolmaster, I wondered what those asterisks were for.

Mick

 

[christineredgate]

Amazing selection of poems.Many thanks.

 

[scampo]

Titch Miller, that one hurts doesn't it? As I was reading it I was thinking, aah that was me when I was at school then the last line is like a punch in the face.
Thanks for editing the Ageing Schoolmaster, I wondered what those asterisks were for.

Mick

You know - I hate censorship! It's so infantile. Ah well - c'est la vie!

Tich Miller is a wonderful little poem. So sad - and, you know, Mick, that goes on still today, I'm sure. How it must affect some kids we'll never know.

 

[Tanny]

Tell yer what Steve, that poem you posted, called, Rhyme-Time reminded me of one I wrote ages ago, so I hunted it up and hope you find it interesting.
I haven't contributed to this thread for a while but I don't miss coming in and reading what is posted even though most of it goes over my head, not being "edumakated" like.

----------ANALYSE
I never realized how fast time flies,
Till I had a fishing trip to organize.
It was four in the morning when I rise’
“Don’t go today I strongly advise”
Said my wife who likes to patronize.
I looked at her with mock surprise,
And said, “Why do you always dramatize,
You never agree with my enterprise,
And everything I do you criticize.”
After all the persuasion I could utilize,
We ended up with a compromise.
Launching my skiff was some exercise,
And I sailed to a spot I memorized.
Where fish were caught of enormous size.
And with the first cast I got my prize.
But the laughter within me soon dies,
The fish was too big and we capsize.
I crawl back home after my baptize,
To my wife I courageously apologies.
With her tongue she sure did chastise.
But the twinkle in her eye she couldn’t disguise,
It’s wasn’t her nature to despise.
Although it’s a serious attempt she tries.
But soon breaks down and openly cries,
And her salty tears on my collar dries.
The moral of this story we can surmise,
If the truth be known but don’t advertise,
I’me stubborn and foolish and not very wise
Tanny.

 

[scampo]

Lovely Tanny. I bet your wife was impressed, too. Was it a true story? Did you know there are rhyming dictionaries on the Internet now!

 

[Nerine]

Lovely poem, Tanny, I loved reading it especially these lines:

"But the twinkle in her eye she couldn’t disguise,
It’s wasn’t her nature to despise.
Although it’s a serious attempt she tries.
But soon breaks down and openly cries,
And her salty tears on my collar dries."

I do admire all you folks who can write poetry, I wish I could but I can't!

Many thanks Tanny.

Nerine

 

[Nerine]

Nettles Wonderful poem Steve and a new poet for me. I'll have to look up Vernon Scannell and also Wendy Cope. I feel for Tich Miller! Great poem, thanks for those.

Nerine

 

[Nerine]

Great poets seem to make you feel part of the something special that they are telling us??? Or is just me?

You're right, Merlin. I sometimes dream and wish I could go back in time and stroll in the countryside with some of these poets: Robert Frost, W H Davies, Edward Thomas. Edward Thomas said of his walks with Frost:

"The sun used to shine while we two walked
Slowly together, paused and started
Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked
As either pleased."


Nerine

 

[Tyke]

Nerine-Tall Nettles is a lovely poem-the more one reads of Edward Thomas, the more one likes him! His English countryside must have been so different from today's.I think we here would all have loved it.

Steve - Vernon Scannell is an interesting chap -described in the link below as a poet of life's ironies.

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=35

The last line in Nettles & the fourth stanza in Ageing Schoolmaster seem in that mould-they suddenly make you think twice.

Tanny-another nice poem.

Merlin- As with Nerine, I like your thought & agree with it very much:- "Great poets seem to make you feel part of the something special that they are telling us"

I have been reading some William Stafford -he shares a birth year with Dylan Thomas-though he lived much longer.Like those of DT, I find Stafford's poems very beguiling-but sometimes I'm not sure I have completely understood the message because it is so layered.
Stafford was an American poet-WW11 pacifist. A poet of nature and the ordinary and important things. I like these two :-

Security

Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.

Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven't let that happen, but after
I'm gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
you turn to the open sea and let go.


William Stafford 1914-1993


A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford
______________________________
Colin

 

[Merlin]

Colin,
Great poems from William Stafford, I am not familiar with him,

Nerine,
What a thought, to go birding with Edward Thomas.

Tanny,
Amazing poem,

Steve,
Vernon Scannell, what a interesting character, professional and fairground boxer, he was at the Normandy landings and imprisoned for deserting.
I know of many other stories from someone that was taught by him??

Changing the subject, today I watched part of a programme for Red Nose Day that I recorded. The telephone rang whilst the programme was on and it prompted this poem about an imaginary phone call from a young girl in Africa
Merlin

Don’t Hang Up

Hello, hello, it’s me again that starving child from across the sea
Please don’t hang up, just spare a moment for me

I know it’s all too often that I call on you
But I’m really desperate; I didn’t know what else to do

I know it’s the same old story, no crops, no food, no rain
You’ve heard it all before, I am sorry to bore you again

I don’t even know who or where you are
Just that you always help from a land afar

Please don’t stop sending your kindness to me
I don’t like to ask and I know its charity

What you sent last year, some did go astray
But what did get through, kept us alive another day

I’m just a child of Africa with no place in life
No special right to live, no right to be alive

Perhaps just for my little brother, send none for me
A boy is much stronger to support the family

So please! Please! Don’t forsake us
Don’t turn away, don’t hang up!

 

[scampo]

Nice poem, Merlin - you should send it to the BBC!

Thanks for the link, Colin - that's a fine poetry site. I enjoyed listening to Scannel and Larkin, too.

 

[christineredgate]

Merlin,yes,very good,why don't you take up Steve's suggestion and contact the BBC.It could be read out on the TV for Red nose day,and printed in advertising supplements for the same.

 

[sinan]

e.e,cummings

thanks for all the poems folks and the index Colin. I'm disappointed I missed the Thomas Hardy phase.

Shifting gears a little, I was looking in e.e. cummings for the Kingbird poem and I was struck by how important a symbol birds are for cummings so here's two poems:

'christ but they're few

all (beyond win
or lose)good true
beautiful things

god how he sings

the robin(who
'll be silent in
a moon or two)'


'for any ruffian of the sky
your kingbird doesn't give a damn -
his royal warcry is I AM
and he's the soul of chivalry

in terror of whose beak
(as sweetly singing creatures know
cringes the hugest heartless hawk
and veers the vast most crafty crow

your kingbird doesn't give a damn
for murderers of high estate
whose mongrel creed is Might Makes Right
- his royal warcry is I AM

true to his mate his chicks his friends
he loves because he cannot fear
(you see it in the way he stands
and looks and leaps upon the air)'

and finally:

'seeker of truth

follow no, path all paths lead where

truth is here'

 

[Tyke]

Thank you for those three Sinan.
e.e. cummings is an acquired taste isn't he?
His poems are like something glimpsed from a train window, which seemed really interesting.

Colin

 

[Nerine]

I have been reading some William Stafford -he shares a birth year with Dylan Thomas-though he lived much longer.Like those of DT, I find Stafford's poems very beguiling-but sometimes I'm not sure I have completely understood the message because it is so layered.
Stafford was an American poet-WW11 pacifist. A poet of nature and the ordinary and important things.

Mmmm, very deep thoughts in the two poems by William Stafford, Colin. I think I like them. I'll read them over a few more times. Haven't come across Stafford before. Thanks for those fine poems.

Merlin I like your poem!

Thanks for the two e e cummings poems, Sinan. Quite unusual but nice to read. Here is another one:



in time of daffodils

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

e e cummings


Nerine

 

[scampo]

in time of daffodils

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

e e cummings

Nerine

Deep, de-deep, or what? I like it. It took a few readings, but that's e e cummings for you. I like the structure, building up to the "beyond" and "mystery". Thanks for posting it.

 

[Bascar]

Many good poems in the last few days, including from Merlin and Tanny. I was interested to read the Vernon Scannell poems and to hear him reading others on poetry archive.

The e e cummings poems are definitely a shift of gear, sinan. I'm just not sure that they engage with me! But I did rather like 'in time of daffodils', Nerine.

I was also interested in the William Stafford poems posted by Colin. Another American pacifist poet was Robert Lowell, none of whose work has yet been posted here. The following is an extract from ‘The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket’, one of the poems included in his collection ‘Lord Weary’s Castle’ which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. The poem is an elegy for a cousin who was drowned while serving in the Navy during the Second World War, and has allusions to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the whaling activities of the New Englanders. The ‘Pequod’ is the name of Captain Ahab’s boat which was destroyed by Moby Dick. The imagery is powerful.

From The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

Whenever winds are moving and their breath
Heaves at the roped-in bulwarks of this pier,
The terns and sea-gulls tremble at your death
In these home waters. Sailor, can you hear
The Pequod's sea wings, beating landward, fall
Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall
Off 'Sconset, where the yawing S-boats splash
The bellbuoy, with ballooning spinnakers,
As the entangled, screeching mainsheet clears
The blocks: off Madaket, where lubbers lash
The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids
For blue-fish? Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids
Seaward. The winds' wings beat upon the stones,
Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush
At the sea's throat and wring it in the slush
Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones
Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast
Bobbing by Ahab's whaleboats in the East.

Robert Lowell


Andrew

 

[Tyke]

Wow Andrew-I like that Robert Lowell poem very much.You can smell the salt spray! It's a powerful evocative poem-sad man the poet though.

Nerine if you decide you understand Security will you PM me please!

Here's another William Stafford

Walking West

Anyone with quiet pace who
walks a gray road in the West
may hear a badger underground where
in deep flint another time is


Caught by flint and held forever,
the quiet pace of God stopped still.
Anyone who listens walks on
time that dogs him single file,


To mountains that are far from people,
the face of the land gone gray like flint.
Badgers dig their little lives there,
quiet-paced the land lies gaunt,


The railroad dies by a yellow depot,
town falls away toward a muddy creek.
Badger-gray the sod goes under
a river of wind, a hawk on a stick.


William E. Stafford


meant to say I liked your poem Merlin-though I get very uncertain & confused about the whole "Feed The World" thing sometimes.

Colin

 

[Merlin]

Colin,
Good one from William Stafford, as I mentioned before I am not familiar with him. Like you I am not sure about 'Feed the World', I was in Kenya/Tanzania birding last year and was impressed by the tenacity and even contentment of the 'ordinary' man/woman. Changing the subject rapidly, tomorrow is the birthdate of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1806, like many of the poets on this thread, her life story would make a reasonable soap opera. Surprisingly we have never had any of her poems before, I have submitted a few verses from a rather long poem called The House of Clouds.
In total contrast the 8th March marks the death of Stevie Smith in 1971, in honesty not really my type of poetry or just perhaps I have become too blinkered to appreciate it?
regards
Merlin

The House of Clouds ( Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Bring the dews the birds shake off,
Waking in the hedges,---
Those too, perfumed for a proof,
From the lilies' edges:
From our England's field and moor,
Bring them calm and white in;
Whence to form a mirror pure,
For Love's self-delighting.

Bring a grey cloud from the east,
Where the lark is singing;
Something of the song at least,
Unlost in the bringing:
That shall be a morning chair,
Poet-dream may sit in,
When it leans out on the air,
Unrhymed and unwritten.

Bring the red cloud from the sun
While he sinketh, catch it.
That shall be a couch,---with one
Sidelong star to watch it,---
Fit for poet's finest Thought,
At the curfew-sounding,--- ;
Things unseen being nearer brought
Than the seen, around him.