http://inventingrealityeditingservice.typepad.com/inventing_reality_editing/2015/08/five-great-quotations-about-the-writing-process.html

From Rob Bignell’s Blog

For three years I’ve not seen the apple tree
Although it must be there, I cannot look.
It’s full of blossom in its industry

My heart  has faltered,  memories besiege
I cannot escape into  my  books
For three years I’ve not seen the apple tree

I might pray for life  or be deceived
By guests who want to sample what I cook
It’s full of butter, cream  and poignancy

When will my watch be over, when my plea?
I hate to read the papers.see the crooks
This year I shall  see my apple tree

Can I  be consoled in my deep grief
In meadows full of poppies and corn stooks?
Apple blossom  shows the trees’ belief

When he died,  the pillars  marble shook
We bent down and kissed the Holy Book
For three years I’ve not seen the apple tree
Eve is  weeping  in deep mystery

The gold forsythia gleams like  holy fire
Deep within its heart  rest  nesting birds
Sun so bright is free and not for hire

We need new Spring when  human  tongues turn liars
As politicians  prance  with gun and sword
The gold forsythia gleams like  hellish fire

The natural world is  breath and so inspired
But where is God and where the sacred Word?
Sun so bright is free and not for hire

Sleeping Beauty lay within deep briars
Yet  silent bombs destroy    the heart unheard
The gold forsythia gleams like    warning fire

For the risen God, we join the choir
Singing for creation with  new words
Sun  delights, is free and  makes no pyre

Glory in the little nesting birds
Singing blackbirds, love is everywhere
The gold forsythia gleams like   undreamed fire
Sun so well endowed  makes well our eyes

The sun  enfolds me  in its wealth of  light
Caressing eyes and making  love seem right
Forgot,the  lonely darkness in a trance
When spring begins its equinoxal dance
Forgotten too is  how the frost can bite
And how warm lethargy  turns day to night
As we lie indoors like parasites
Into  lighted windows, I will glance
A minor crime when  brightness   draws my sight
Here’s a drying rack with clothes  mutant
Here’s a sill entirely filled with plants
Imagine you’re  a spy and see our plight
The mirror crackles, full of long-held spite

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69080/the-politics-of-poetry

“Many objections can be made to these assumptions, but it’s important to note first that poetry and politics are both matters of verbal persuasion—that is, both have strong connections to the art of rhetoric. Admittedly, poets and politicians are typically trying to persuade us of very different things, yet the two worlds have far more in common with each other than either does with, for instance, the world of Brazilian jujitsu. In light of that, one would think poets might get a little more respect from political speakers, and that political speakers might refrain from comparing their purely verbal existence to the decidedly non-verbal world of physical violence.

But they don’t. Instead, the relationship between American poetry and American politics is confused and confusing, with politicians sometimes describing the highest moments in political life as “poetic” (“I have a dream”), and other times offering up poetry as a symbol of empty talk. And of course, American poets are even more conflicted. Rare is the poet who doesn’t view himself as deeply invested in political life, and yet the sloppy, compromised, and frequently idiotic business of democracy—which is, for all its flaws, the way most political changes occur in this country—rarely attracts the attention of our best poets. Is this the inevitable order of things? Or are all the talkers simply talking past each other?

* * *
We might first ask: Why are they talking about each other at all? We don’t spend much time wondering what poetry has to do with neuroscience or television writing or college basketball, yet these are important areas of American life that involve assertions about truth, form, morality, and the nature of culture—all subjects regularly claimed as poetry’s turf. Yet the connection between poetry and politics interests us in ways that the arguably more obvious connection between poetry and linguistics does not. Why? ”

Read the article

Random apples
Fall silently
On unknown Newtons

The lamp here has caused me pain because I loved it.My husband fell over and broke it just before he died.It snapped off and the neck is very narrow so I can’t remove the fitting to replace it

After all this time, I have decided to keep it just as a  piece of pottery  to show the fragility of life

I
told the teacher I was very tense so I can’t learn puncturation,She said I might be schizophrenic so I offered her my largactil but she grows her own
You get put into a psychiatric unit if you  annoy or frighten a lot of people.It’s easy to do it so how come the FB chap Zuckerman is still at large?
You have to give people what they want otherwise they put you out with the cat
For success in life , keep  dreaming
My mother took me down a peg or two but my coat has no hanger up loop.
The teacher gave me some sweets and I said,I hope it’s   contextual wrecks for both  of us
I never resented  his advances.I thought it was a disability
If men like women, why do they  trespass onto them?
Forgive us our trespasses, that’s for men only

He emits sin daily
Go to Expression
What,Amass?
Can sin be mortal and where do I die after it?
Convenient sin is not as bad as Borstal
Menial sin is lowering to the pride of the  sinner
Remedial sin classes on Fri 8 pm weekly
Agreeable sin list £5 this week
Undeniable sin is public
Unreliable sin is when the other person won’t join you.
You are liable for sin tax if you are of working age.
Did you know God permits sin so we can have  free wills
Do not omit a sin on Sundays before Mass
Confirmation bias is worrying the Bishop
We’ll confirm you  unless you use tampax,Then we will throw you out!You little bleeders
They say the Bishop is more humble than I am and after greeting him I think that is  the clue
He  sexually abused the mop in the kitchen as its head reminded  him of women’s hair.Is it legal?
He  never watches porn as  he can fantasise, you see.Well, you can’t actually see it but you do understand my dreaming?
Isn’t the alphabet great? It helps us to mate daily

Collage from sketches by Katherine

I saw he had a puncture in his self esteem
She was too depressed to benefit from the gifts of depression
I saw three ladies in the hall, so I said,Is this a public convenience?
Then there was a man in the kitchen with a gas mask.I said,I don’t speak Russian so how did you get in?
Secretly I believe I am so important that I am the only person here who the government are protecting,including themselves.I will feel lonely though.
He fell into the bog and learned to swim in it
“Make friends with your inner enemy.” the best book of 2018
“How to fool yourself “is a rather silly title for a novel,
I saw a sign:Please leave the grass. [But where?]
I thought Shakespeare was a sonnet
To sum up, algebra leads to  the atom bomb so what will geometry lead to?
How I married a maths-phobic and learned to love him anyway
Finally,self esteem is more easily punctured than humility

No  human woman  can be what he dreams

Nor can  they give comfort on the road.

Yet every night he plots and thinks and schemes.

And rarely does he ever go abroad.

No food he eats will satisfy his tongue.

The best wine is as naught to mother’s milk.

He grumbles and will not admit to wrong.

I‘ve known more men than him of this same ilk.

No bed can be the right one for his sleep.

No sheets and pillows suit his wary skin.

He often has made gentle maidens weep

Crying out they’re fat or boney thin.’

Beware the man who never can adapt

For in his own lone wishes he is trapped

I wonder what I would have said to you
Trivial,important or sincere
I´ḿ silent in the space where once dwelt two

One day I may find the sentence new
To speak about the one who was so dear
I wonder what I would have said to you

Many  mourners feel  bereft and blue
Pure panic  and confusion may appear
I´ḿ silent in the space where once dwelt two

The conversation cannot be renewed
Unless I make believe  or am a liar
I wonder what I shall have said to you

How many little incidents we rue
Self hatred can burn souls like a wild fire
I´ḿ silent in the space where once dwelt two

To happiness, we feel we should aspire
Like children singing in a Christmas choir
I wonder what we would be saying now.
I´ḿ silent in the space where once dwelt two

“

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sarcasm is bad for your relationships!
And don’t use it  with your partner,children  or siblings  just because you think that at home you can be  free to say whatever you like

by

Photo Mike Flemming

Well, stone the crows.You don’t need a Ph.D in psychology to work out that cruel remarks  or humour will not make you popular.These days you can get a doctorate in all sorts of  odd subjects.How to lose friends and irritate people might be one!

https://pinkmirror.com/blog/the-golden-proportions-and-facial-symmetry/I can’t yet draw a face

Click to access 9Lacey_2011_.pdf

“According to Volkan (2001), some ethnic groups have a major traumatic experience
that has become part of their cultural identity. This experience may have been a
defeat in battle, or a genocide, or a major loss of prestige or status. The humiliation
of this event lives on in the collective memory, and it becomes the job of the next
generation to either resolve the loss or reverse the humiliation. No attempt to set
the historical record straight will have any effect, as it is not the facts of the event
that are relevant, but its mythologized nature as handed down the generations. For
example, in Blood Lines, Volkan (1998) describes how the Serb obsession with their
defeat by the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 became conflated with
their war against the Bosnian Muslims. Mladic, Karadzic and Milosevic saw
themselves as bearing the responsibility of restoring Serb pride, lost centuries ago.
Mourning has been described as the psychological process through which an
individual learns to bear a traumatic loss through repeated and painful
remembering (Mitscherlich-Nielsen, 1989, p. 405). There are many ways in which
the mourning process can go awry and the final resolution phase remain
incomplete. Most common is chronic mourning (Herman, 1997, p. 86), where the
acute symptoms of separation anxiety persist interminably. There remains a
continual obsession with the loss, life gets stuck in a futile attempt to reunite with it,
and all other priorities become insignificant. There is also a sense that the loss is
very recent, though it may have occurred years ago”

https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 


Olde English Version
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne 

https://

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/nobel-laureate-seamus-heaney-poetry-and-politics

“Seamus Heaney has always had a complex relationship with the political. The author of such beloved collections as The Haw Lantern(1987) and Human Chain (2010) has from his earliest works taken a very personal view of the Irish conflict. Fast forwarding to his Nobel Lecture, ‘Crediting Poetry,’ more than forty years after his first poems were published, the poet lauds the capacity of poetry (Yeats’ in particular) to be both “equal to and true at the same time” (a reference to Archibald MacLeish’s dictum that poetry “should be equal to/not true). A great poem, for Heaney, can access truth, whether it be political or otherwise, through aesthetic beauty. Meanwhile, critic Blake Morrison suggests that Heaney has “shown signs of deeply resenting this (political) role.” For a Northern Irish, working class, mid-century family, the personal can become deeply political, but that doesn’t mean one has to like it.