Today's poet

[Harry H Howgill]

Happy New Year Fell Poets.

I've been having a bit of a clear out today, so if anyone fancies one of the following books then drop me a pm. I'll not confirm who gets what until next weekend to give any stragglers the opportunity to put their name down. That way they can get shared round a bit. I don't want anything for them either; just do a good deed for someone else, or stick some money in a charity collection tin instead.

Simon Armitage - Xanadu
Simon Armitage - Zoom
Pablo Neruda - Twenty love poems and a song of despair
Hamish Ironside - Our sweet little time (a year in haiku)
John Barlow & Matthew Paul - Wing Beats (British birds in haiku)
Richard Asquith - Feet in the clouds

[Mossdog]

Somehow I don't think he meant 'tight' as in tipsy!... Well we are Spring bound now...are we not?

Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?

Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there i' the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?

I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
And I love your junkets mainly,
But 'hind the door, I love kissing more,
O look not so disdainly!

I love your hills, and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating;
But O, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!

I'll put your basket all safe in a nook,
Your shawl I'll hang up on this willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy's eye,
And kiss on a grass-green pillow.

-- John Keats

[Mossdog]

CERTAIN WORDS


Certain words never seem right in poems.
Like little—too inexact, too precious—
or death—redundant as grief

in most poems. We imitate voices
almost human in their longing for beauty,
the way a violin in nimble hands

can mimic the gypsy wail
of a mother’s loss, her daughter’s lips
still and cooling, the caravan rumbling on.

In poems, we allow ourselves to say
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday,
permit ourselves lines like

Tonight is Mardi Gras, the climax
of carnival, the farewell to the flesh.
What we really mean is

at seven, a daughter is still little,
though her grief is great
over the death of a little fish.

In the room where a fishtank stood
she scratches out Bach on violin,
everything natural a little flat—

the way we make poems
out of ash and wrong words
like certain and never and right.

R.G. EVANS

[Harry H Howgill]

Thaat sowns faablous wen red in a werst cuntree acksent. :-)

Somehow I don't think he meant 'tight' as in tipsy!... Well we are Spring bound now...are we not?

Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?

Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there i' the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?

I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
And I love your junkets mainly,
But 'hind the door, I love kissing more,
O look not so disdainly!

I love your hills, and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating;
But O, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!

I'll put your basket all safe in a nook,
Your shawl I'll hang up on this willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy's eye,
And kiss on a grass-green pillow.

-- John Keats

[Alf]

Somehow I don't think he meant 'tight' as in tipsy!... Well we are Spring bound now...are we not?

Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?

Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there i' the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?

I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
And I love your junkets mainly,
But 'hind the door, I love kissing more,
O look not so disdainly!

I love your hills, and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating;
But O, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!

I'll put your basket all safe in a nook,
Your shawl I'll hang up on this willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy's eye,
And kiss on a grass-green pillow.

-- John Keats

If you hadn't put his name on Mossy I would never have recognised that as Keats

[Mossdog]

Thaat sowns faablous wen red in a werst cuntree acksent. :-)

Rrrrrrrr! I'm telling eeee. You bee wrooght you do!

[Mossdog]

If you hadn't put his name on Mossy I would never have recognised that as Keats

Me neither Alf. I was totally taken by surprise when I read it was a JK.:w00t:

[freckle]

Happy New Year Fell Poets !

Thanks for that MachGirl, its a long poem so I have never posted it here but has some memorable verses taken in isolation as well. On the churchyard theme I was recceing the Haworth Hobble race route yesterday which takes you through Haworth where Emily Bronte is buried and also through Heptonstall where Sylvia Plath is buried.

The Night Is Darkening Round Me

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow ;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow ;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below ;
But nothing drear can move me :
I will not, cannot go.

Emily Bronte

Wow....funny to think of you running in such territory Alf...

A happy new year to all fell poets....hoping its a good one, personally I am hoping for a rather duller year! I am off to do some DIY in the form of bleaching my bathroom tiles (DIY appears to be my new hobbie tho i did manage to squeeze in a shabby 10 k on new years day!)...

Love's Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

PS Mossy I too liked the Keats poem, for some reason made me think of spring...

[Hes]

Happy New Year to all the fell poets!

I've ben catching up on all that I've missed in the past week or so and here have been some wonderful choices. I've been given the poems of Norman MacCaig for Christmas and there are some beauties so I'll be posting a couple of those. I ought to write something too. Managed to struggle up Ben Nevis yesterday despite a relentless cough/cold/lurgie and it was a frozen wonderland on top.

Anyway, wishing all of you a heathy, happy and adventurous 2011.xxx

[XRunner]

I've been given the poems of Norman MacCaig for Christmas and there are some beauties so I'll be posting a couple of those.

here is an appropiate poem :

The Gifts

You read the old Irish poet and complain
I do not offer you impossible things -
Gloves of bee's fur, cap of the wren's wings,
Goblets so clear light falls on them like a stain.
I make you the harder offer of all I can,
The good and ill that make of me this man.

I need no fancy to mark you as beautiful,
If you are beautiful. All I know is what
Darkens and brightens the sad waste of my thought
Is what makes me your wild, truth-telling fool
Who will not spoil your power by adding one
Vainglorious image to all we've said and done.

Flowers need no fantasy, stones need no dream;
And you are flower, and stone. And I compel
Myself to be no more than possible,
Offering nothing that might one day seem
A measure of your failure to be true
To the greedy vanity that disfigures you.

A cloak of finest silk in Scotland - what
Has that to do with troubled nights and days
Of anguished happiness? I had no praise
Even of your kindness, that was not bought
At such a price this bankrupt self is all
I have to give. And is that possible?


NORMAN MACCAIG (1956)