“There’s something else in my past that I only recently realized contributed to my perseverance in writing poems, and that is my love of chess. I was taught the game in wartime Belgrade by a retired professor of astronomy when I was six years old and over the next few years became good enough to beat not just all the kids my age, but many of the grownups in the neighborhood. My first sleepless nights, I recall, were due to the games I lost and replayed in my head. Chess made me obsessive and tenacious. Already then, I could not forget each wrong move, each humiliating defeat. I adored games in which both sides are reduced to a few figures each and in which every single move is of momentous significance. Even today, when my opponent is a computer program (I call it “God”) that outwits me nine out of ten times, I’m not only in awe of its superior intelligence, but find my losses far more interesting to me than my infrequent wins. The kinds of poems I write—mostly short and requiring endless tinkering—often recall for me games of chess. They depend for their success on word and image being placed in proper order and their endings must have the inevitability and surprise of an elegantly executed checkmate.

Of course, it is easy to say all this now. When I was eighteen years old, I had other worries. My parents had split up and I was on my own, working in an office in Chicago and attending university classes at night. Later on, in 1958, when I moved to New York, I led the same kind of life. I wrote poems and published a few of them in literary magazines, but I didn’t expect that any of that activity would amount to much. People I worked with and befriended had no inkling that I was a poet. I also painted a little and found it easier to confess that interest to a stranger. All I knew with any certainty about my poems is that they were not as good as I wanted them to be and that I was determined, for my own peace of mind, to write something I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show my literary friends. In the meantime, there were other more pressing things to attend to, like getting married, paying the rent, hanging out in bars and jazz clubs, and every night before going to bed baiting the mousetraps in my apartment on East 13th Street with peanut butter.”

Why I Still Write Poetry

 

Nine years since my sister died
Eight years since getting a computer

Eight years living with my Father also alive.
Seven years of writing poetry
Seven years in grammar school
Six years in primary school
Five years for GCE study
Four years piano lessons
Three years  doing my degree and three years being at home before entering nursery school
Two years doing A  and S levels and in Nursery school [ not at the same time]
One year plus studying cello
Less than one year of being unable speak in sentences and hence being allowed or able to be a baby.

 

 

 

http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/nonsense/english/e_nons

 

“See-saw, Margery Daw,
Sold her bed and lay upon straw.
Wasn’t she a silly slut
To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?

It may be that there was once a real person called Margery Daw, and perhaps there was even a Dobbin who somehow came into the story. When Shakespeare makes Edgar in King Lear quote “Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill”, and similar fragments, he is uttering nonsense, but no doubt these fragments come from forgotten ballads in which they once had a meaning. The typical scrap of folk poetry which one quotes almost unconsciously is not exactly nonsense but a sort of musical comment on some recurring event, such as “One a penny, two a penny, Hot-Cross buns”, or “Polly, put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea”. Some of these seemingly frivolous rhymes actually express a deeply pessimistic view of life, the churchyard wisdom of the peasant. For instance:

Solomon Grundy,
Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday,
And that was the end of Solomon Grundy.

which is a gloomy story, but remarkably similar to yours or mine.

Until Surrealism made a deliberate raid on the unconscious, poetry that aimed at being nonsense, apart from the meaningless refrains of songs, does not seem to have been common. This gives a special position to Edward Lear, whose nonsense rhymes have just been edited by Mr R. L. Megroz, who was also responsible for the Penguin edition a year or two before the war. Lear was one of the first writers to deal in pure fantasy, with imaginary countries and made-up words, without any satirical purpose. His poems are not all of them equally nonsensical; some of them get their effect by a perversion of logic, but they are all alike in that their underlying feeling is sad and not bitter. They express a kind of amiable lunacy, a natural sympathy with whatever is weak and absurd. Lear could fairly be called the originator of the limerick, though verses in almost the same metrical form are to be found in earlier writers, and what is sometimes considered a weakness in his limericks — that is, the fact that the rhyme is the same in the first and last lines — is part of their charm. The very slight change increases the impression of ineffectuality, which might be spoiled if there were some striking surprise. For example:

There was a young lady of Portugal
Whose ideas were excessively nautical;
She climbed up a tree
To examine the sea,
But declared she would never leave Portugal.

It is significant that almost no limericks since Lear’s have been both printable and funny enough to seem worth quoting. But he is really seen at his best in certain longer poems, such as “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” or “The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bт”:

On the Coast of Coromandel,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bт.
Two old chairs, and half a candle
One old jug without a handle
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bт,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bт.

After Mass on Sunday Mary decided to visit Stan, her elderly, gentle and frail husband in the Rehabilitation Unit where he had been sent recently by a strange physiotherapist…He was unhappy as the diuretics made him pee even more often than he used to do and he got very worried about it because his bad heart made it extremely hard for him to walk.
When she went into the small four bed ward she saw Stan sitting on his chair without any pyjama trousers on even though it was visiting time from 3 to 8 pm.
Why has he no trousers on? Mary asked a nurse angrily, her singularly blue eyes full of unshed glistening tears which almost washed off her turquoise mascara and made runnels in her honey beige foundation by Rimmel of London and Paris
He keeps wanting to go to the toilet so it’s easier for us all if he has no pants on, the nurse told her haughtily.He’s on diuretics, you see as he has water in his lungs and other inner organs and the water has to be removed from his body, Sheila ,the nurse announced in a cold voice
What about the lack of dignity in baring him to the world, Mary enquired softly yet piercingly her eyes dripping tears again.
Dignity ,what’s that? the nurse said insolently.He is just a pest. And old men don’t deserve any attention.We are tired of them.They should all die now.That’s government policy it appears
Emile who had hidden in Mary’s old, but good olive green Radley leather handbag let out a sound like a banshee in Cork or a demon in a nightmare.
The nurse looked quite frightened
What’s that? she whispered to Mary behind her hand.
It’s probably Satan coming to say ” hello” to you as you seem very wicked to me.Mary informed her politely yet honestly in her Northern way.
Oh my,what shall I do? the nurse asked in a trembling voice.I am so upset now.
You could try reading the Ten Commandments, Mary riposted jocosely… if it’s not too late.
Or recalling the Golden Rule………
I’ve never heard of the golden rule, said the nurse.Is it a measuring instrument of some unusual type?
Yes,in a sense it is, Mary said.It measures us by our compassion towards others.And you seem to have none for Stan.Can you not imagine what it’s like being a man sitting half naked in a public room with no recourse?
What’s a recourse, Sheila, the nurse, asked her thoughtfully,Is it a garment like a dressing gown?
No,it’s a a source of help in a difficult situation.It’s a remedy or an option
I have a higher degree in nursing,Sheila boasted stupidly.
I don’t care if you have a doctorate in nursing and philosophy,Mary cried.It’s what you do and say to the patients that counts.And going to an evening class in English would do you no harm.Your vocabulary is limited,to say the least.And words are useful whatever job you do.Or even if you are unemployed it helps you deal with bureaucrats
Oh,dear,said the nurse,I am sorry for being so thoughtless.I am always thinking about sex,love and clothes instead of the patients.I see now I have fallen into evil ways and hope I can improve a little.
You have been cruel, said Mary.And seeing my aged husband like this is breaking my heart.
She went over to Stan and sat by him.He fell against her bosom hungrily.Alas it was not for erotic reasons.His blood sugar was only 2 and his BP was 60/40.He was dying there with no trousers on and with no-one but Mary to help him… and Emile, their small intelligent black cat ,of course.Unfortunately Emile’s trousers were too small for Stan

.Mary wrapped a bath towel around Stan and held him in her arms.
Stan tried to speak but Mary could not make out what he was saying.Tears ran down her beautiful lined and wrinkled face and dripped onto Stan’s head.I suppose one might say it was a kind of baptism by love.Now Stan will soon be entering a new dimension and will be given a new and better name by One who cannot be named here.But you catch my drift?

Judgement is mine says the Lord.

Stan collapsed, his face went black.Only then was he sent to a real hospital with full equipment.He died, looking happy, the next day.His last words
“So many lovely friends”
Emile was crying on Mary’s lap.
Don’t worry Emile.He was very unhappy.
So am I, Emile wept
Then Mary wept herself.What a pity Emile is a cat and so cannot embrace the person he calls “Mother”