Oh,steam iron how I love your heat
And how you make my clothes so neat.
A flat iron is no use to me
For  no open fire is here,you see.
And thought I liked the flickering coals
I feared those faces that looked droll.
They were in the flames and peered
At anyone who ventured near.
I wonder how the people past
Kept their trousers neat and pressed.
Now I’ve bought a hand steamer
To keep the germs  off my femurs
I didn’t like to say,my crotch
In case the devil is on watch.
I never ever used to think
My body perfume was distinct.
And yet it may appeal to men
I don’t want to try again.
One dear husband is enough
Though he did enjoy a cough
He had asthma and bad eyes
Looking out with wild surmise.
He saw my golden hair float by
As by his window it did fly
All at once he fell  for me
And we sat by an apple tree.
His clothes were wrinkled so I thought
I would iron them for a start.
He could darn and polish floors
Cook lamb chops and apple cores.
So my steam iron sees much use
I wonder if it’s self abuse
For  as a woman feminist
I’m not meant to iron vests
I’m not meant to  boil  mens’ socks
Nor their pants of interlock
I’m not meant to make them tea.
What a naughty person,me!
I must  confess these wicked sins
Then I’ll polish my cake tins.
Satan wants me down in hell
Don’t say he needs my  iron as well
As he was an angel proud
I’ll save him into One Drive Cloud.

A bird’s gifts are its vision and its wings
From eagles to the sparrow  on the lawn
Instant sight, then flight their safety bring

O little trembling robin ,shivering heart
I rescued you, the stray cat did no harm
But your predicament had made me start.

Then missing your sweet breakfast from my spouse,
How he loved to watch and hear your call,
You  hopped inside the kitchen and the house

After seeing no man was inside
You flew away as I stood in the hall
I had not seen you since the day he died

And now I do not feed birds  by the door
I place their water by the garden wall
And there are berries from the autumn’s store

As  on the tree high up a blackbird calls
A single apple from my tree shall fall
A bird’s gifts are its vision and its wings
Instant sight, then flight their safety bring

I try  to rule out cliches when I can
At the  exact moment they begin
For if I let one get in here
It will ruin my new career
And then I’ll be  once more an also  ran

“To be or not to be “is Hamlet’s thought
As if the doubting illness he has  caught
So don’t get scruples on the brain
Or you’ll be feeling sick again
And we know how it is when life is naught.

What the Dickens does my boyfriend think
He will not supply my pen with ink
He says handwriting’ s obsolete
We’ll soon be writing with both feet
Yet my old pen  creates no missing links

They told me I was so hypothroid I was going into a comma.More like a full stop, I’d say.
Anyway, what’s so bad about commas?
My anemia was so severe, I baptised myself and now my name is Holy Moses ,which  is odd as Moses predated Jesus.I should not have used hot water but my hair needed washing.
My migraine was cured by  detachment.I wanted to cut off my own head but my mother said she couldn’t live without it.So I disengaged.Then got harried.
It’s all one  to me.
I used to get pre-vestibule tension when I first menstruated.Would you like a vestibule in your body?
The Bishop forbade Tampax.He must have had shares in Dr Whites unmentionables.What was my hymen to him? I don’t believe I  ever had one.So there!
I never had flu till I  began explaining why  e is not an algebraic number.Don’t say ,it’s a letter! It was the lectures that made me ill.I don’t like the sound of my own voice
What puzzles me is I became mute when I was 17  and 5 years later I was  a tutor at a University.I never realised I’d have to talk till it was too late.Tell Freud that one!Still it was mainly:

For every number delta, however small there is a number epsilon ,which is less than delta.Maybe it’s the other way round but I can’t type it again.So it’s not as if I had to make small  talk about Wittgenstein and Serge Diaghilev.Or the weather.We never spoke to the undergraduates.They looked terrified already.Maybe they were mute

So to conclude, if you are mute, become a teacher.Or even a professor.That will make you talk again and again….but I’m still quiet I am told.When I stop talking.

It’s a bit late in the day for a poem
I’m only human you know!
but if you feel like a-knowing
Then to your bookshelf you go.

Take out a volume of Shakespeare
He was my ancestor too.
Then if you need a short break,dear,
A sonnet should do it for you.

Take out a clean piece of paper
And your pen and some ink.
Make up a poetic caper,
Then you can have forty winks.

Take out a volume of Homer.
Read it instead of the News.
Then if you fall into a coma
We shall all be completely amused!
The Government will be bemused.
Do you hire one or have your own Muse?
This is all a very fine ruse.
I want to blow my own fuse.
I love to write in canoes

With his blood sugar and my thyroid gland
Not to mention gout and heart attacks.
Our marriage was   detested by the grand

Sometimes he looked  mad and could not stand
My feebleness in falling down the cracks
Between his  sugar and my thyroid gland

I held my soul together with a band
Elastic in its way thus not too slack
Our marriage was   arrested   by hot hands

Yet often we would saunter hand in hand
Go on the towpath feed the swans and ducks
Despite low  sugar and low thyroid gland

He loved the sea and loved the long white sands
But as for me I could not  muster luck
Our marriage was so trying it was banned

I lost my heart  and seemed to lose my luck
So kindly  he bought geese for me to pluck
With his blood sugar and my thyroid gland
Our marriage was  disfigured by demands

I am  not talking about accepting violence and abuse from partner’s or friends
Similarly to Gandhi’s peaceful resistance, I  think we need to avoid immediate retaliation when a person is angry while maybe removing ourselves from the scene for a while.
Because a number of health matters can make people fly off the handle.The one I know best is diabetes.But the angry person might not yet be diagnosed.Depression can make people irritable too.Fear can display as anger in men.A problem at work  can make people desperate
My husband was diabetic and at one time when we were eating, he would begin arguing or even shouting.After studying diabetes in depth I found he was having hypos; very low blood sugar.So I started giving him some light food at 4 pm.Then he was back to his usual self.But I do think doctors do not inform us.I bought many books and even a glucose monitor.I practised on my own hands for 2 weeks [ somewhat painful]  and then I began to test him.He said I was better than the nurse.
The little instrument with which you pierce the skin has a small sharp point.I got fed up with it being hard to work, so I took the needle out and just stuck it into my finger! That got some blood out to test,
Don’t do this unless you are desperate.

I wear red leggings underneath my dress
My legs are cold and turning slightly blue
So I dress like the Muslim ladies do
Is it sinful, must  I now confess?

You see, I don’t like wearing denim jeans
And yet the summer is not very warm
So to keep my legs and bladder calm
I’m brighter than a can of Heinz baked beans

I like to wear  bright colours like the flowers
But English summers are not trustworthy
And my weak bladder  is a curse to me
The germs get in and I go twice an hour. [or more!]

Antibiotics do their work slowly
And on the sofa, I lie with a book
It’s much too narrow as a lover’s nook
So with my Keats contented, I must be.

The post man looked a little bit surprised
But though I’m 89 I still like clothes
Does he think that I am one of those?
Or maybe I’m a mugger in disguise?

So see  me in your mind’s eye looking bright
And then like me, perhaps you’ll see the light

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/what-makes-poetry-poetic/377508/

sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

https://qz.com/896463/is-it-ok-to-punch-a-nazi-philosopher-slavoj-zizek-talks-richard-spencer-nazis-and-donald-trump/

“Quartz: So, is it OK to punch a Nazi?

Žižek: No! If there is violence needed, I’m more for Gandhian, passive violence……………

—while Gandhi really wanted to bring down the British state. But his violence was symbolic: peaceful demonstrations, general strikes and so on.

If a guy talks like that jerk [Richard Spencer], you should just ignore him. If he hits you, turn around. Don’t even acknowledge him as a person. That’s the type of violence I would call for. Not physical violence. Because, you know, people say symbolic violence can be even worse, but don’t underestimate physical violence. Something happens when you move to physical violence. I’m not saying we should greet everyone, embrace them. Be brutal at a different level. When you encounter a guy like the one who was punched, act in such a way that even hitting him, even slapping him is too much of a recognition. You should treat him or her or whoever as a nonperson, literally.

In other words, leftists should “go high?””

“It’s much more complex than that. I think that’s their biggest mistake. Isn’t is sad that the best left-liberal critique of Trump is political comedy? People like Jon Stewart, John Oliver and so on. It’s nice to make fun of him, but you laugh at him and he wins. My God! There is something terribly wrong with playing this game of ironically making fun of Trump. You know, in medicine they call it symptomatic healing when you take some things, they just neutralize the effects, like you have this pain, but they don’t heal the disease itself. Criticizing Trump is just symptomatic healing. Trump is an effect of the failure of the liberal-left. Everybody knows this knows this now. The only way to really beat Trump is to radically rethink what does the left mean today. Otherwise, he will be getting ordinary people’s votes.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69384/selections-from-keatss-letters

“Tell George and Tom to write.—I’ll tell you what—On the 23rd was Shakespeare born—now If I should receive a Letter from you and another from my Brothers on that day ’twould be a parlous good thing—Whenever you write say a Word or two on some Passage in Shakespeare that may have come rather new to you; which must be continually happening, notwithstand that we read the same Play forty times—for instance, the following, from the Tempest, never struck me so forcibly as at present,

                                                       ‘Urchins
Shall, for that vast of Night that they may work,
All exercise on thee—’

How can I help bringing to your mind the Line—

In the dark backward and abysm of time—

I find that I cannot exist without poetry—without eternal poetry—half the day will not do—the whole of it—I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan—I had become all in a Tremble from not having written any thing of late—the Sonnet over leaf did me some good.  I slept the better last night for it—this Morning, however, I am nearly as bad again—Just now I opened Spencer, and the first Lines I saw were these.—”

‘The noble Heart that harbors virtuous thought,
And is with Child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest, until it forth have brought
Th’ eternal Brood of Glory excellent—’”

https://qz.com/1054694/a-philosophical-principle-coined-in-1945-could-be-a-key-us-defense-against-white-supremacists/

“White supremacists are really, really hoping that you don’t keep reading this article. They don’t want you to learn about the Paradox of Tolerance, because then they’d lose a powerful weapon in their fight to make society more racist. Ready to make a white supremacist mad?

Fortunately for us, the Paradox of Tolerance, a concept coined by philosopher Karl Popper, is easy to understand and remember. The “paradox” part makes it sounds complicated and hard, but it’s really just a rule with one exception. It goes like this:

1. A tolerant society should be tolerant by default,
2. With one exception: it should not tolerate intolerance itself.

To give a specific example, a tolerant society should tolerate protest marches in general, but it shouldn’t tolerate a white supremacist march advocating for the oppression and killing of people of color – like the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 that ended with white supremacists beating and killing people who were opposed to their message of intolerance.”

Do  we need the Evil Others, then
The” backward” countries we exploit for  oil
To take our badness, bear what is our sin?

For we are perfect, civilised, thinking
And they are children letting anger boil
Do  we need the Evil Others, then?

We ravaged the  whole world,  just to begin;
Created empires, stole the haul.
Where is not our badness, where not sin?

We demeaned their culture  and religion
Said that we were best and took their all.
Do we need an Evil Other, then?

We did all this with noble conviction
Forgot the lessons and the truth of Fall
Where is then our badness, where our sin?

Are we so sure that we  do sense the whole
And never hear the voice of God bewail?
We need the Evil Others,  our own twin
To bear our badness, our historic sin.

https://qz.com/938847/john-keats-theory-of-negative-capability-can-help-you-cultivate-a-creative-mindset/

“But while establishing a brand is good for business, it may be antithetical to the essence of real creative work. According to the Romantic English poet John Keats (1795-1821), artists of fixed opinions suffered from “egotistical sublime,” obsessing over singular truths to the point that they were unable to produce characters and storylines that convincingly diverged from their personal world views. He argued that the secret to being an artist was to cultivate a mindset he called “negative capability.”

Writing to his brothers in 1817, Keats introduced the concept of negative capability as he discussed Shakespeare’s creativity. “At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,” he wrote. “I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

Creative genius, according to Keats, requires people to experience the world as an uncertain place that naturally gives rise to a wide array of perspectives. This imaginative experience is what energizes and vitalizes literature, says Susan Wolfson, a Princeton English professor and author of Reading John Keats. Only when artists are able to stay open-minded can they write a wide range of characters and human experiences, from antagonists like Milton’s Satan and Shakespeare’s Iago to romantics like Keats’ Isabella. Holding too closely to one’s own view of the world is creatively counterproductive.

True poetical character, Keats believed, “has no self—it is everything and nothing—it has no character and enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the camelion Poet.” The ideal artist, it seems, is equally enthralled to inhabit the mind of a character who aligns with their personal beliefs and one who is antagonistic to them. For this reason, he made fun of poets who used poetry as a means of constant lecturing and haranguing, including William Woodsworth (Keats’ friend), who told readers how to read his poetry, and John Milton (author of Paradise Lost), who sermonized on the balance of good and evil. Such instructive writing, Keats believed, inhibited the writer’s capacity for nuance.

Keats’ dwelling on the “chameleon poet”—one who “has no identity, [who] is continually filling some other body”—could be easily misinterpreted as a glorification of the weak-minded. But the imperative of negative capability isn’t about being indecisive or making blurry arguments. It’s about cultivating empathy. Artists do their best work when they learn to step outside themselves.

To artists with strong political dispositions, and in times of fierce political conflict, the concept of negative capability may seem threatening. After all, so much of art is driven by political beliefs. However, as Wolfson explains, Keats would not advocate applying negative capability to politics. “Keats was a staunch liberalist, against the monarchy, and a regular reader of The Examiner, a progressive and anti-monarchal newspaper,” says Wolfson. “He had no affection for political thinking on the right wing and viewed it as tyranny.”

Negative capability, then, is an artistic exercise: learning to entertain all sides of a question as a dramatist, poet, or creative thinker. Thus, perhaps the measure of a true artist and intellectual is the ability to embrace both negative capability and personal convictions at once—without letting one inhibit the depth of the other.”

The thoughts about the nature of human existence that we find
scattered and evolving in his letters, much of this theory and
speculation possesses a remarkable harmony or unity that
derives directly from certain basic qualities of his character.
Perhaps chief among these personal qualities is one easier to
name in negative than in positive terms: the usual and genuine
absence in him of self-assertiveness. The dogmatic tone or spirit
was not his, and he disliked dogmatic men and arguments,
believing that it was more blessed to listen, learn, and explore
than to preach in support of a pre-selected text. Thus we find an
unusual gentleness about Keats’s strength of mind. Because of
the basically explorative thrust of his thinking, he was reluctant
to reach closed-end conclusions.
131
J. Clubbe et al., English Romanticism
© John Clubbe and the Estate of Ernest J. Lovell, Jr

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08905495.2011.623846?src=recsys&journalCode=gncc20

• At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
  • Letter to George and Thomas Keats (December 22, 1817)

I can hardly believe this.A Swiss Hotel put a sign up saying Jews must shower before using the pool.And there was me, an English woman thinking  I could pee in a swimming pool, take some soap and have a good wash
Apparently, that is ok for me.But Jews have to shower first.Would Jesus like this? You Christian hypocrites start thinking before  acting
They could have put up a sign asking everyone to shower first.They must be dumb
I can’t imagine how horrible it still is for Jews in Europe.If it was me it would affect my self esteem a lot.

We are not afraid as once we were
In 1963 when fingers groped
To end the Cuban missile crisis there.

Do we feel unreal or don’t we care
That we are on the edge of loss of hope?
We are not afraid as once we were

Have we so much News we can’t take more?
We struggle in our day life just to cope
Who ends the nuclear crisis that is here?

Have we split off feelings of despair
In case this anguish  blocks our little throats
We are not afraid nor numb, it’s clear

Can we  find again or  now acquire
The dignity of worth, the consoled woe?
Who will navigate such wild desire?

The  envy we seem locked in does require
Destruction of the other as its foe
We are not afraid as once we were
Of  nuclear crisis and its dead dismay

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/dec/15/poetry-protest-politics

“But is protest poetry the preserve of the spoken word poet? In the 1970s, American poet Richard Wilbur, symbol of all things urbane and learned, offered “To the Student Strikers”, urging reflection and calm during the Vietnam war. In “A Miltonic Sonnet for Mr Johnson”, he suggests that Thomas Jefferson “would have wept to see small nations dread / The imposition of our cattle-brand, / With public truth at home mistold or banned, / And in whose term no army’s blood was shed.” However, Wilbur cautions that when “poets begin preaching to the choir, it takes the adventure and variety out of the poetry.”

So is this poetry’s role: to approach unrest and upheaval slant, and not head-on? And has poetry on the page been more effective in documenting the aftermath of great events? Both the late Ken Smith and Sean O’Brien have documented the intellectual legacy of post-industrial and rural communities recovering their identities after decades of decline. Ken Smith, son of a farm labourer, produced a poetry imbued with a melancholy sense of those like his father who, as O’Brien noted in Smith’s obituary, had “left / not a mark, not a footprint”.”