https://www.reference.com/art-literature/people-write-poetry-7355b6227245bd3d#
Rhymes can be memorized easily, so poetry was originally an oral means of transmitting laws, stories, history and other ideas that cultures wanted to preserve. ”
I went to the doctor.He said I’d pre-flu..
I said, “My dear doctor what shall I do?”
Next time I went, he said “It’s pre- shock.”
And then I had pre measles, pre mumps and pre-pox
I ran to the doctor ,he said ” You’re pre-well”
I said, “Are you sure it’s not just a pre-quel?”
Next time I turned up, he’d gone out for a walk
It’s hard for a doctor who wants to pre-talk.
I went to the optician, who said I’m pre-blind
I thanked him for being so intensely unkind.
I went back to the doctor, and these words I said
“I’m pre -blind, pre-deaf,pre-ill and pre-dead!
They lay down to gaze into
the eyes and soul of one who’s true.
They gazed until, when overcome,
They were united into one.
Their souls and bodies were conjoined,
And thus their hearts were well entwined;
As honeysuckle on the walls,
In joy’s sweet arbours does grow tall,
Their loving lips and eyes and hands
Gave pause to time’s soft flowing sands.
and as they touched and gazed and longed,
The birds sang out in glorious songs.
Which is me and which is you?
Are we one or are we two?
I give you all myself today,
So this shall be our way
Pray, Father, give me a good blessing.It’s ten weeks since my last decision.
What was that, my dear?
To lose my Catholic Faith, Father!
Why are you here in that case?
I can’t manage to lose it!
Well, you are not trying hard enough, my child.
My wife says I’m very trying.
Your wife?I thought you were a woman yourself!
Yes, I’m a lesbian now.
Do you practise it?
I don’t need more training, I’m really good at it all.
That’s a sin for a lesbian…
Thank God.I have a sin to confess…I was lost for words
More than one sin if you are married.
Why, does marriage make one more sinful?
It gives you more temptation
That’s why you get married ,so you can be tempted and give in
Catholic lesbians are not allowed to marry
You mean we should be living in sin?
No, you should be chaste
I am often chased by men.Does that count?
You know I don’t mean that… you are teasing me.
Well, I saw you running after me last week
It’s not my fault if you are running in front of me.
I was walking till I saw you coming!
Well, at least I’m normal.
Is it normal for a man of 89 to run after women?
Don’t worry, I have not caught one yet.
But it’s the principle of it.Well, anyway, I went to Holland and married a blonde poet.
Are there any left?
Look here, I am the sinner tonight!
So am I.
This is not a competition
Yes, it is!
Oh, no.Please give me absolution now
Right, your penance is to stop hailing Mary and whatever else you do in bed with her.
She’ll be so sad… is that a good idea?
Well, I don’t know.Life is confusing.Giving up one sin causes another one.What am I to say?
I believe if you love anyone properly it is never a sin
Well, that’s worth musing on amidst the News of war and murder.
I stole a lemon pie from a shop.Now that is a real good old fashioned sin.
MMmmmmmm give me half and we’ll say no more.
No more.
No mor
Was this the apple then, your mother’s breast
Which father thought was his to oft caress?
And when, in deprived rage, you bit to test
In rage, he vowed to ever you harass.
The small black cat is sitting on my chair
Two cushions warm with sun provide a nest
Its little face is happy, its plate bare.
This is easier than a love affair
This is sweet , it is a needed rest
The small black cat is sitting on my chair
I don’t think in my grief that I can bear
A man whose love might put me to the test
The cat is happy and its plate is bare.
Could I start again to cook and care
For anyone with hairs upon their chest?
The small black cat is lounging on my chair,
Yet cats can’t run their hands through my fair hair
Nor hold me in their arms when feeling blessed
The cat is happy and its plate quite bare.
And if I mention Wittgenstein’s great flair
That will be the end of the affair
The small black cat is sitting on my chair
Its little face is happy, why want more?
“But if we take a wider view we see that people exhibit extraordinary self-control in a whole range of ways in many different areas of their lives. It’s just that these different modes of self-control are not equally valued or celebrated by society. And society expects different people to exert different types of self-control. Gender is an obvious example, with women often expected to be particularly self-controlled in how they express their sexuality, how they control their weight, and how they suppress anger and assertiveness. You only need to look at media coverage of the drinking habits of young New Zealanders to see a highly gendered idea of self-control at play. Inevitably the media uses images of rowdy, out of control young women as the symbol of our youths’ “drinking problems”, even though their behaviour is similar to that of young men.
Some people perform jobs that require immense resolve and patience in handling challenging scenarios and pressures. Flight attendants, nurses, teacher aids for kids with behavioral challenges, to name a few. These professions must practice self-control, perseverance, and self-discipline in often testing situations. But they are rarely deemed worthy of an inspirational article about self-control. Watch carefully the work these people do. It’s often a masterclass in self composure and restraint.””
Do cats feel proud of their unique access
At any time they need a loving touch
On the laps of humans whom these cats possess?
They may stalk off or lingering caress
Then bite the hand that gave to them so much
Do cats feel proud of their unique access?
When cats are lost it gives immense distress
To owners who by loving them feel rich
Theirs the laps that these dark cats possess?
Evolution’s brought to them success
As proud, they eye the world where they insist
They are owed their full, unique access
In a home, a cat will miaow, God bless
While rubbing on our ankles with odd nips
Asking for the laps that they possess
I have even known a cat to kiss
As if to total intimacy pushed!
So cats feel proud of their unique access
To the laps of folk whom these brave cats possess
The images we carry in our minds
Created by us in our early years
To new realities may make us blind
For early happenings get us into a strong bind
Visual, kinesthetic, blend with care
Into the images within our adult minds
Even if our parents appear kind
Some babies are unhappy with their fare
To new realities, they make us blind
And if I cut my cloth to my design
To change what I take in to vision fair
I fix the image in my latent mind
But we can change with friendship and sight hind
These ancient pictures into ones with lesser glare
Then to reality become less blind
From a new perspective, we compare
Our prejudice to what is present here
The images we carry in our minds
To new realities may make us blind
http://www.positivityblog.com/how-to-stop-overthinking/
1. Put things into a wider perspective.
It is very easy to fall into the trap of overthinking minor things in life.
So when you are thinking and thinking about something ask yourself:
Will this matter in 5 years? Or even in 5 weeks?
I have found that widening the perspective by using this simple question can snap me quickly out of overthinking and help me to let that situation go and focus my time and energy on something that actually does matter to me.
2. Set short time-limits for decisions.
“The power of the metaphor, simile, parallel… figurative language is not only a good way to put things into perspective, but metaphors are easier to remember than a complex set of interactions. This is a way to grasp deeper meaning from perhaps a very mundane, or complex identity.
It builds an understandable identity with which to contrast that is easier to grapple and engage in, in the process building pathways in your brain that would have been stopped cold otherwise.
And poetry exercises this muscle by encouraging figurative language providing a sounding ground for your ideas, feelings, reminiscences
https://www.britishcouncil.org/cubed/science-breakthroughs/poetry-brain
They also discovered a clear difference in how people responded while reading a favourite passage versus reading any of the other texts, in that it activated a section of the brain associated with recognition and recollection. ‘If you are reading a favourite poem you more or less know it by heart,’ explains Professor Zeman, ‘so you’re not going to need very many cues from what’s written on the page and most of what’s happening is going to come from within.’ There was a strong correlation between emotionality and favourite passages.
There were other more tentative findings that Professor Rylance was curious about. ‘When we compared poetry with prose we got more information in some regions that are linked in a network that is called the Default Network,’ explains Professor Zeman, ‘a network of regions in the brain that is particularly active if you just rest. These areas seem to be associated with things we do with our minds when we are resting, like thinking about what’s happened to us recently, thinking about what’s going to happen in the near future, about other people, and that network seems to be more strongly associated with poetry than with prose. I think to be sure about that finding you would want to do a better-controlled study than ours. It was an interesting indication as far as it went.’
http://www.famousliteraryworks.com/carroll_jabberwocky_funny.htm
| ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. |
The wonder is that marks upon a page,
Letters made by ancestors long gone,
Create the symphonies of peace and rage.
Untutored genius of primitives afraid;
To whom their many gods were never one
We wonder at the marks upon this page,
Let us not their memory degrade
Nor criticise them worshipping the Sun
We ‘plait together all our love and rage.
And if our growing up has been delayed
If we fear the Good as yet unwon,
We can leave our writs upon the page.
For we are often lost in shadowed caves
And effort may by shock be quite undone
We make embroidered cloths of wisdom aged.
Own our guilt so sinners are not shunned
Own our joy if happiness is won.
The wonder is that marks upon a page,
Can bear indignities of peace and rage.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49001/ariel
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/laying-blame-legacy-sylvia-plath
“In Plath’s original version of Ariel, we see the creation of a persona that is at once ferocious, accusatory, and self-negating. The speakers in the poems (they are, of course, multiple) are capable of rendering both stark beauty and also of tossing out ugly racial and ethnic slurs. The voices are sometimes humorous and sly, often utterly unlikeable. Of course, the larger persona of the Ariel poet is an artistic creation, a part of the self and nothing like the self at all. When Ted Hughes altered Plath’s original manuscript, that persona was eroded, and a new figure began to take its place. That figure is not Plath the young poet, a person with an aesthetic and artistic vision that found form in poems, but Plath the suicidal destroyer. Frieda Hughes attempted to go back in time to restore and repair, but like similar efforts by characters in Shakespeare’s late romances, that restoration, though enacted, cannot recover all that has been undone.
It is, these fifty years later, nearly impossible to extract Plath’s poems and fiction from the life she lived, nor can we blot out what we have gleaned from the biographies that have mushroomed up from her grave. Reading and understanding poems is more difficult and requires a greater investment of time and intellectual generosity than does the consumption of a salacious biography. In the class I taught on Plath, my stated goal was to see if we could hold the work at some distance from the biography and see what the poems were made of. I think we succeeded, through care and attention, if only for a short while.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/07/cerys-matthews-poetry-and-music-closely-think
“The Welsh word “cerdd” can be translated as either “verse” or “music”. It covers both meanings, because, as we know from history, when the great bards were performing their poetry it would be accompanied by music. The two were always intertwined and music, poetry, spoken word and performance have been a part of our society for centuries. The festivals called “eisteddfod” combine literature, music and poetry. These cultural competitions were not just for the rich or educated, but were held in pubs and other meeting places and brought everyone together. They are part of an oral tradition entrenched in Welsh society as it is in many other cultures, as diverse as the Somali tradition of oral storytelling or praise poetry in India and Pakistan.
The Poet in the City festival of Poetry and Lyrics is another way of bringing people together and highlighting the idea that poetry and music are not, and have never really been, separate. The events will delve into the nooks and crannies of many different genres to draw out this connection and show how it lives in unexpected places. Take punk, for example: with the exception of artists such as Patti Smith, it’s not usually associated with poetry. But Steve Lamacq, along with the Adverts’ TV Smith, Pauline Murray of Penetration and Crass’s Penny Rimbaud, will consider a less celebrated side of the movement: the lyrics about tenderness, love and social commentary that articulated a generation’s experience of the world. It is work that fits easily into a poetic tradition.
Elsewhere we only have to go to children’s poetry and nursery rhymes for more evidence. The playfulness of poetic language makes much more sense to them and provides a highly imaginative means of connecting with the world – they don’t question it, and the music sticks with them. John Hegley will be exploring this in his PO-NG (poem-song) writing workshop for families.”
Leaves fly off so suddenly
Small birds float on the wind
Like boats astride a choppy sea.
Their swaying soothes my mind.
Wild geese fly past at dusk again,
They head towards the North.
The holly berries glow in sun,
Nature gives all birth.
I gaze intently at the sky,
The clouds hang dark and low.
If I too were a mere wild goose
I’d know which way to go
But I am left with only words
To find my destination.
Yet words do carry down to us
Wisdom of generations
We use old words in unique ways.
We structure them to form
A new design not seen before
A new sentence is born
I send my words with love to you
I hope you safely catch them.
Give me answers from your heart
And I’ll do my best to match them
The mundane is the main part of our life
We do not note the wonder of each day
And waste it when we cause unneeded strife
For then we in the dens of envy writhe
We could have peaceful hearts and live our prayer
The mundane is the greater part of life
Contemplated simply with the eye
The mundane changes when attention’s paid
We waste our life when we enjoy fierce strife
To do our work relaxed we might then try
Leaving violent effort to the crazed
The mundane is the greater part of life
Is it so hard to love that hearts reply
We shall not open up for we feel grey?
We waste our life when we provoke fierce strife
With the mundane, we look deep and cry
There is great richness in each little life
The mundane is the main part of our life
We waste it when we roam about unblithe.
With foresight, we may see where problems lurk
And root them out before they start to grow
Yet often life’s mysteriously dark
And what we reap is what another sowed.
In hindsight, this seems obvious and plain.
But some can pick the true out with no pain
Yet others choose their fantasy again
They amble down a cheerful sunny lane.
Though what is real may not be what we wish
Better truth that hurts than lies that charm
Reality is not an easy choice
Yet falsehood will mislead and even harm.
Insight grows with patient watching eyes
In the end, the truth is where love lies.
The geese which I once loved no longer fly
In their unique geometry so fine
Above the school fields through the empty sky
Some locals think that “immigrants” came by
Trapped the geese and ate them with dark wine
The geese which I once loved no longer fly
In the morning I would hear their cry
Heading South in that great V shaped sign
Above the school fields through the empty sky
Onto fresh water , London’s first supply
The River New flows down the contour lines
But the geese which I once loved no longer fly
In the muddles of suburbia, we find
Conserved places lingering, benign;
Like the old school fields below the empty sky
Never must we humans be resigned
To living where there is no hint divine
The geese which I once loved no longer fly
But the school fields house wild birds beneath this sky
I wrote this when I was starting out and I noticed I was drawn to images of worms and beetles and life in the darkness under us.I was not aware of that when I began to write
Winter weather, frost, dark sky,
See white geese and silver stars.
Two cooing doves with collars red,
Are watching out for seeded bread.
From the sun, low in the sky,
Light falls slantwise to my eyes.
Trees bud, though invisibly,
Nothing that our eyes can see.
Bulbs shoot up from dark cold soil
Where worms and beetles quietly toil.
We take for granted air and sky,
Love the birds we see fly by.
But who can love the worms and slugs
And those creatures we call bugs?
So in our dark cold winter time,
Praise these creatures in the grime.
Without these worms, our crops would die.
No cornfields for us to lie,
Amidst the poppies’ wild red blooms.
So we forget all winter’s gloom
.
Praise the snails and bees and ants
For these and spiders, let’s give thanks.
As the lightness needs the dark,
From darkness come life-giving sparks.
Enrich darkness with our gifts.
Look not always to the swift.
Slow and patient like these worms,
Nature’s lowness is my theme
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/a-faith-that-crucifies-women/101241.article
Extract-
In Hampson’s worldview Christianity is on the scrapheap not only because it cannot possibly be true, but because it harms women. Since Christianity is anchored in a particular time, events from that point in history become a “benchmark” to which constant reference is made. “The circumstances of that past age are propelled into the present, influencing people, not least, at a subconscious level,” says Hampson. Obedience and worship are inescapably fundamental to Christianity. This, she says, must be a problem for feminists who have struggled to free themselves from patriarchal dominion. In her new book, After Christianity, she takes this argument a stage further: “I began to see that the very raison d’etre of the Christian myth was to support men as superior over women, that it served to legitimise how men see themselves in the world.”,
.
In After Christianity she acknowledges that the Christian myth is a symbol system “which has carried people’s love of God” – though “we need to reformulate what God is”. Like the 19th-century German Protestant philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher whose work inspired her and who talks of human beings lying “directly on the bosom of the infinite world”, she undertakes theology because she believes there is another dimension to reality.
The book explores case studies from the Oxford Religious Experiences Research Unit, one of them being the story of a woman who goes to the cinema with her husband. Part-way through the film she smells burning and has an irresistible urge to return home. On entering the house they are enveloped by smoke and manage to rescue their baby and babysitter just in time. “I don’t think one can rule out the possibility that something else is brought into play here.” She is at pains to point out that such an experience does not constitute a break in the natural order. “Such experiences always have been and always will be, they just have not been discussed in the annals of theological academia.”
http://www.readysteadybook.com/Article.aspx?page=daphnehampson
http://www.daphnehampson.co.uk/Daphne_Hampson_Homepage/Home.html
MT: In your Preface you movingly acknowledge your personal debt to Kierkegaard, saying how important he has been for your own intellectual journey (“a source of delight and edification”). If, God forbid, Kierkegaard hadn’t existed who would you turn to fill (some of) the gaps?
DH: This is a lovely question but I absolutely don’t know how to answer it! I simply cannot imagine who I should be or what conclusions I should have come to had Kierkegaard not been on the scene. I have read him, as I said, since a teenager – and I am now 70. He has been inextricably wound into my life in that he has been a constant dialogue partner as I have engaged with his thought. That is exactly what he desired his readers should do.
For myself, Kierkegaard allowed me, at an earlier stage and with far greater clarity than might otherwise have been the case, to arrive at an understanding as to what it is that Christianity implies and claims. I may have come down on the other side of the fence than he; but it has been important to think this out – and at least we should have understood each other as to what the issues are. So I’m grateful. I’ve also thought a lot about what is the difference in historical context between us: what is it that has changed more generally?
But also in other subtle ways – as I’ve indicated – he has been endlessly edifying. Kierkegaard has enabled me to think out what my values are or confirmed me in what I already thought. Last but not least I think it has sometimes encouraged me that Kierkegaard could keep going, all those hours working on his own, while receiving little recognition. Kierkegaard speaks to one as an individual in a way that few authors do. That is why one comes to care about him – however much one might think differently.
MT: Why and how is Kierkegaard still relevant? Why should we read him?
DH: I think I may have answered this question. Or perhaps Kierkegaard can best answer it when he writes: ‘I know what Christianity is. And to get this properly recognized must be, I should think, to every person’s interest, whether he be a Christian or not, whether his intention is to accept Christianity or to reject it.’ People need to stop faffing about and to consider the validity of what it is that Christianity maintains. Anything else won’t do.
But others will surely read Kierkegaard for the sheer joy of the beauty of his prose (which comes through even in translation), for his insights into human life (including its pain), and not least for his wicked humour and his joy. At the end of the day I have to say of Kierkegaard that read him on account of his tender love of God, which I in some sense and in some moments share, even though I may have come to judge Christianity otherwise.
We might have died in childbirth;
We might have died in war;
None of us imagined
Death in a grocery store.
We went out buying fruit and meat,
Fresh eggs and chicken breasts.
We wanted to make dinner
For this night’s Sabbath Feast.
But no-one knew that warm goodbye
Was to be our last;
A few shots and some bullets
Another life has passed.
What were our young children
going to feel tonight?
We should be serving love and food
As the candles give their light.
Candles burn in memory
Of all the innocent,
who are caught up in tragedies
That someone else invents.
Let young men delude themselves
And politicians too….
Don’t forget those murderers
Could be me and you….
We are not so different
But for circumstance.
The murderers and their victims turn
In a macabre dance.
God reached a position we can’t find
He moved astute and humorous through the air
Being human we are almost blind
A game beyond the games of Wittgenstein
The willing player has found a wondering flair
God’s position, nobody’s divined.
Impossibly the paths of nuclei wind
Cast a glance and upset the whole air
Being human we are violence blind
We cannot cast a light on his designs
Infinitesimal eyings push the photons where?
God’s position nobody will find
From unknown spaces, love and hate combine
The light divides ecstatic,pure,two,bare
Human , we survive by being blind
Love God if you will, it is a dare
Powerful, vivid as leaps a March Hare
God reached that position we can’t find
In the Arctic wastes of our own minds
At the edge of reverie and dream
In the dusk or dawn, the edge of life
We catch sight of images sublime
The fantasies, the daydreams, how they seem
Elusive yet eternal in their strife
At the edge of reverie and dream
Are they wishes, we’re too scared to deem
Part of our self, defensive how we shy!
We catch sight of images designed.
Prophecies of futures not yet seen
They tell a truth as they flow swiftly by
At the edge of reverie and dream
Life at these dusk times is slow and green
Aversive to the tempo of new times
We catch sight of images that stream
Can a writer catch this theme in rhymes;
Write it down in short and telling lines?
At the edge of reverie and dream
We fish our pictures from this image stream
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69479/the-poetics-of-disobedience
Extract
Over the course of her career, poet Alice Notley has aimed, as New York Times critic Joel Brouwer observed, “to establish or continue no tradition except one that literally can’t exist—the celebration of the singular thought sung at a particular instant in a unique voice.” Though at different junctures she has been associated with the second generation of the New York School, feminist and political poetics, and the Language poets, Notley has consistently reinvented her approach and formal structure with each new collection of poetry.
“The Poetics of Disobedience” was written for the Conference on Contemporary American and English Poetics, which was held on February 28, 1998, at the Center for American Studies at King’s College London, and was also presented at Naropa University on June 15, 1998. It was later published in the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (2004), edited by Anne Waldman.
In this essay Notley asserts, “It’s necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against . . . everything. One must remain somehow, though how, open to any subject or form in principle, open to the possibility of liking, open to the possibility of using.” Explaining her overarching desire to “blow away the gauze,” she articulates her belief that the essential disobedience of the poet and the reader are necessary for a fuller perception of the self and its connection to the world, concluding that “self means ‘I’ and also means ‘poverty,’ it’s what one strips down to, who you are when you’re stripped down.”
He saved me a past party tickle.
I missed his algebraic forms.
He’s only a number to me.I am numb all over.
He says he’ll give me peace of mind.Or did he mean a piece of his mind?
What tense are your muscles?
Is the past infinite?
The future is friction.
Can we split the indifferent?
Was the past subjective?
My eyes need besting
The subjunctive is Latin for may be.
How about the past, perfect?
What is the future when not dense?
Grimmer than grammar: the autolieography of a woman of many alarms.
Can a noun be irrational?
What about an infinite sequence of jumbles?
What is a transcendental word?
I hate logs but like rhymes.Log-o-rhymes is my next book.
Why do letters need indices?So we can locate men?
Dryden wrote poetry in Latin.Unfortunately he manslated it into Bringlish and renounced ending a sentence with” of”.
What was he thinking of?
Meet me at the end of the line to.
How my heart sings 