On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H. L. Mencken
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_l_mencken_490503

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/jun/26/poem-of-the-week-in-no-strange-land-by-francis-thompson

“The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.”

“William Blake’s visionary transformations of London form the poem’s most important literary ancestry. In Thompson’s work more generally there’s also an occasional, probably coincidental, resemblance to Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), going beyond the shared faith to sometimes tortuous grammatical structures, vivid word-coinings, and unconventional rhythm. While Thompson’s achievements may be more modest than those of Blake or Hopkins, In No Strange Land is a poem I imagine either would have been happy to have written. A “many-splendoured” hymn, it catches more light than any of the Choruses from “The Rock”.”

Easter 1986 by Katherine

I saw, while half asleep,  her face was gone
She faded, like the mist does at the dawn,
From the gallery of my loved ones

Ungrounded by the loss, fearful, forlorn,
Skinless like a worm  picked off a lawn,
I saw, while half asleep,  her face was gone

Do not leave me, do not my love scorn
Lost and gone are my beloved ones
I  am human in both ghost and form

Heart constricted, lungs  pant out my pain
Haunted and bereft of human warmth
I saw, while half asleep,  her face was gone

I shall have no mother but that one
Now I have become a dried out corm
Lost and gone are all my beloved ones

Like a little leaf from its plant torn
Gnawed by slugs,  fragmented  till unborn
I saw, while half asleep,  all trace was gone
Of the gallery of my lost, loved ones

I saw the faded roses on the door
The brave reminders of the summer heat
I thought we’d  come again, but you’re no more

Nothing, no one can that love restore
For love like that, there is no swift repeat
I saw the faded roses on the door

Never ask a lover what love’s for
For love itself is inclined to swift retreats
I thought we’d  love again, but you’re no more

 And who is it that chooses this dark hour,
That offers sadness if not full defeat?
I saw the faded roses on the door.

My man,my love,my ease, my own sweet flower
For my illusions I am now contrite
I thought we’d  love again, but you’re no more

Within the deepest dark,I saw the light
And all this suffering was seen aright
I saw the faded roses on the door
I thought we’d  see and love another hour

Photo by Katherine 2012

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ambiguity/

“Ambiguity has excited philosophers for a very, very long time. It was studied in the context of the study of fallacies in Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. Aristotle identifies various fallacies associated with ambiguity and amphiboly^[1] writing:

There are three varieties of these ambiguities and amphibolies: (1) When either the expression or the name has strictly more than one meaning… (2) when by custom we use them so; (3) when words that have a simple sense taken alone have more than one meaning in combination; e.g. ‘knowing letters’. For each word, both ‘knowing’ and ‘letters’, possibly has a single meaning: but both together have more than one-either that the letters themselves have knowledge or that someone else has it of them. (Sophistical Refutations bk. 4)

The stoics were also intrigued by ambiguity (see Atherton 1993). Chrysippus claimed at one point that every word is ambiguous—though by this he meant that the same person may understand a word spoken to him in many distinct ways. Philosophers concerned with the relation between language and thought, particularly those who thought there was a language in which we think, concerned themselves with whether the language in which we think could contain ambiguous phrases. Ockham, for example, was willing to countenance ambiguities in mental sentences of a language of thought but not mental terms in that language (see Spade p. 101). Frege contemplated non-overlap of sense in natural language in a famous footnote, writing:

…So long as the reference remains the same, such variations of sense may be tolerated, although they are to be avoided in the theoretical structure of a demonstrative science and ought not to occur in a perfect language. (Frege 1948 [1892], p. 210 fn. 2)

Frege’s hostility to ambiguity in formal languages remains with us today. Frequently we use formal languages precisely so that we can disambiguate otherwise ambiguous sentences (brackets being a paradigm example of a disambiguating device).”

When knowledge  and our rituals are thin
The usual symbols’ meanings  seem all gone
Who will show us how to live again?

The emphasis was overtly on sin
The mighty were exempted every one
Now knowledge  and our rituals are thin

As the song says, don’t know where  or,  Oh Lord, when
The breath of angels’  staggers the rich man.
Who will show us how to live and when?

Uneasy murmurs through our conscience run.
Anaesthetics now our medium
Knowledge  and our rituals are thin

Like  swarm of bees, archangels pass the sun
Unseeing, we deceive with tedium
Who will show us how to live again?

Power replaces insight with  a gun
Shoot as if the end’s already come
When knowledge  and our rituals are thin
Who might show us how to live again?

Both blinded  and enchanted by the light,
Sidelong like the glances of a spy.
I saw a flock of geese high on their flight

The Hebrew slaves from Egypt in their plight
Left with little but their infants wise,
Wandering in the desert’s heat and light

Oh, easy is it for the birds to reach the heights
While refugees can suffer, drown and die
I saw a  dozen swans pass on their flight

For the poor,  there are few equal rights
And mothers with their little children cry
Both blinded  and diminished in the light

Will the Lord enchant us with delight,
Or punish our false greed till hearts ignite?
I saw a cloud of  angels show His might

As we live on the earth like parasites
Forgot not that revenge may come by night.
Both wounded and entreated by the light,.
I saw  that we conformed without a fight

When your world cracks open and  throws your body down
When your world evaporates and turns you into steam
When your world disfigures you and you seem like a clown
Don’t be quick to build again, there’s value in these schemes.

Many worlds are possible and here’s the pattern book
Don’t be hasty in your ways, better far to look
Fearful on the precipice and fearful on the hill
Fearful of the loneliness, yet cold lovers can kill

Stand alone on trembling legs and see  a different view
When you find your destiny, you feel renewed.
Everything is blurry now,  poor eyes cannot adapt
But when the legs get steadier, vision will correct.

No mother dear nor father strong can help you with their care
We must be quite separate for our new world to bare.
The world is new inside the gap where symbols grow and swirl
And across the sky above the stars dance all a whirl

Safety and security if taken on too soon
Lessen the alternatives and may lead down to doom
Courage to the child we are, courage in our hearts
In the forms now visible we will find new shape.

Less like armour plating,  more like pliant skin,
Fitting us externally and fitting the within

Life’s   for  strangers in the city here,
Who left their birthplace wanting  better pay
So many  people’s faces look afeared

The mass of crowds  brings on this paranoia
While Georgian buildings,  beautiful, decay
Life’s   an  alien in the city here

From the doorways ugly faces leer
Like evil children,  tantalised dismayed
Many people,  nobody is near.

The birds don’t sing, sometimes I hear them jeer
They fly in circles in a  bold display
Life’s as hot as Hades, living here.

My eye is dry, it lacks a single tear
While I become more static with despair
Many people,  nobody who’s near.

Why can’t I be merry, like cards say?
Why do thoughts so savage my heart flay
Life is  lonely in the city’s lairs
If you like kind and calmness, go elsewhere

Art by Katherine
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. Baruch Spinoza
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/scorn

Should we be happy and in pleasure thrive
Without a shadow, without grief and pain?
We suffer much because we are alive

Even birth itself, some don’t survive
Loss of love hits like the icy rain
Should we be happy and in comfort thrive?

Into the monstrous ocean, we must dive
And learn to swim without time for complaint
We suffer so because we are alive

If one flower is open to the eye
That is  quite sufficient for the saint
Must we be happy always, when death thrives?

A printed book does not ache  with its pride
And if it’s  lost its ghost will seldom haunt
We suffer so because we are alive

Our life  to that  of all is close allied
The leaves upon the tree are  our last guide
Should we be happy and in constant pleasure thrive?
We suffer much because we are alive

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/nov/23/beyond-black-friday-12-ways-to-care-for-your-clothes/

“It’s not just the fashion industry that has a massive waste problem. We all do. Our wardrobes are bulging with clothes, many of which we don’t wear. The number of garments produced globally has doubled since 2000 to more than 100bn items. If you are anything like me, you will feel as if you own a good proportion of them already.

As we approach Black Friday, which has now spread from a single day of splurge buying to an entire week, we are about to be bombarded with discounts and offers to buy everything from a new fridge to a cashmere jumper ( just you wait, there will be mountains of cheap cashmere).”

Choose a heap of words and make a form
The words may not be right but such is charm
Once you’ve made a heap of stones, of brick
You can shape it with your poetics

Treat it like a sculptress does her clay
Hit it, mould it, make it go your way
But, oh, beneath its hidden shape and  show
The poem knows such life you’ll never know.

Get it in your arms and so you twist
A pile of soft cement with woman’s wrist
Kick it, scratch it, bite it, sip its dew
The poem is having its own way with you.

As we wrestle in our clay stained cloth
We feel the rising of our hidden wrath.
So at the end, we  mould it with our souls
The poem itself has shaped the dual goal.

Thus master, mistress none can take the name.
For inner demons,  gods have swayed the game

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-everything-but-the-truth-while-sylvia-plaths-poetic-fame-grows-and-grows-a-new-book-shows-how-1441977.html

Digital art by Katherine

“Malcolm’s book is not really much concerned with Sylvia Plath, and not at all with her poetry. It is deeply concerned with the nastiness of biography, and with interviewing, and the impossibility of objectivity. There is a good deal of knockabout stuff, like the statement that biography is ‘the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world’. The biographer is a burglar, rifling through drawers, driven by voyeurism and busybodyism, and seeking stolen goods. Biographer and reader, each as despicable as the other, tiptoe down corridors together, ‘to stand in front of the bedroom door and try to peep through the keyhole’. Sometimes they do; but then again, not always. Biography may concern itself with the shape of a life, with its human, historical and cultural context. It may wish to do justice to one who has not yet received it. It may uncover aspects of history that have been overlooked, or examine the interaction between the events of a life and the work produced. And sexual secrets may legitimately be discussed: how could Andrew Hodge’s superb life of Alan Turing have been written without considering Turing’s homosexuality? You don’t have to be the slobbering voyeur Malcolm loves to conjure up to think that a complete portrait of a human being is better than a partial one.

Another of Malcolm’s fixed ideas is that the 1950s were a particularly low and dishonest period. Journalists love to fix labels on decades, but it is a lazy device. We are told that Plath formed part of an ‘uneasy, shifty-eyed generation’, always keeping up a pretence about something; and that she looked a thoroughly ‘vacuous girl of the Fifties, with dark lipstick and blonde hair’. There was also, it seems, a special breed of young men who flourished in ‘the Eisenhower Fifties’, ‘thin, nervous, little, moody, sickly’ young men, they were, but perversely attractive to women. Yes, I remember them well, but there are still some of them around in the Nineties; there are still shifty eyes, too, and people pretending, and even dark lipstick and blonde hair.

Sometimes Malcolm does hit the nail on the head. She is right when she says that the story of Plath is trapped for ever at the terrible raw moment of her suicide, whereas most people get through their marital storms into calmer waters. She is also honest in declaring that she has decided to take the Hugheses’ side against their critics, even though Ted Hughes refused to talk to her, and even though she puts in a stinging reference to how one ‘cannot help wondering about the emotions of the man for whom (Olwyn) is sacrificing herself, as he observes it from his cover’.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/from-the-archives-the-poems-sylvia-plath-predicted-would-make-her-famous/381946/

The poet….., originally intended the posthumous collection Ariel to close on a few poems about bees, instead of death.

• KATIE KILKENNY

I did not write a villanelle today
The sun was weak and dirty like dead moon
I have my selfish reason to delay.

If the spirit speaks, will love allay?
Will we be left for dead with fresh new wounds?
I never wrote sweet villanelles today

What the people want strikes hard as clay
Salvation for humanity has bounds.
I have seen the saints and their decay.

For our sins, we have  not been paid
Salvation for the tyrants came too soon
They did not write a villanelle that day

Logic is the frost that sears our wails.
Stalin, Hitler ,Jesus, what’s the tune?
In secret discourse, how can women pray?

In  November’s grey  and sunless ruin
Was the lost, eternal city doomed
I did not birth a villanelle today
I  once had my own reason, it is where?

I’m an immigrant and I’m ok
My mother was  Dutch and my dad was Gay
I play on the nerves of the Anglo-sacks
My dad was black  Irish and he slept on the coat rack

I’m an immigrant and I am great
I’m so  damned intelligent God made me my own mate
I ‘m a doctor in  the hospital and I heal the British folk
But they think I’m the devil,  so they look out for the smoke

I’m an immigrant, you’re an invader
Daddy was an Eskimo and he got paid in lieu
You came from Normandy and spoke to us in French
But now I am the Judge and  I ‘ll order us  some lunch

I’m an immigrant and I’m ok
My husband went before me so he tells me the way
He’s a Jew from Teesside  and you should hear them speak
I  could never understand it as Hebrew’s  worse than Greek

I’m an immigrant as I have crossed the Alps
Hannibal made history with his elephants
If he was my grandad, will you export me?
I’d rather have a biscuit and make us all some tea