https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/books/review/what-is-poetry.html

Language that is coherent enough

Rather than letting a certain structure define the poem, the poet lets the poem structure itself through the interplay of language, sound, and literary devices.

Wait a minute—poetry doesn’t have to have a form? Definitely not! While schools expose students to highly formal poetry (sonnets, villanelles, haikus, and the like), there are countless free verse poem examples equally delightful and intriguing.

While my husband kissed me in our bed
Our cat would  lounge on top and lick his head
No matter what gyrations that cat saw
All he did was pat us with his paws
The happy days of learning  how to feel
How to entertain with spicy meals
Of walking by warm rivers hand in hand
Watching coots and moorhens ,washing pans
Buying an old kettle, then a house
Driving  out to Ongar ,stubble fires
Smokey Essex cornfields, insects’ pyres
Driving  down the Saxon Cliffs at Hythe
Soft teal Sea,Capel le Ferne, men’s eyes
Happy  in a cottage in the wilds
I sang like some  small bird, we walked for miles
Kersey where the ducks bathe in the street
Kissing in the hedges was so sweet
Getting  our own garden, growing beans
Growing spinach, lettuce and snap peas
Picking  our blackcurrants, making tea
Making jam from raspberries. yes please
This proves that when you marry you need pans
Cooking  dinners  talking with our friends
Wearing jeans and  hair so long it flowed
My husband liked to brush it till it glowed
I dream some nights my hair is still like that
And how  the cat slept with his paws in it
How his father died and mother grieved
Life is not all positive, we see.
On we went and love  was what we grew
Though anger  did rise up and strain the glue
First the cat died, then my man went too
Can’t I adopt a beast  from Whipsnade Zoo?

Mary was sitting in her coral and teal kitchen  wondering if she needed some new clothes.The weather had been unusually warm  and she  had forgotten where she had
put her summer dresses.A “special place” is easily forgotten
A crash in the hall  meant the post had come.Here was Lands End   sale catalogue
Mary began to look through it though there  not many summer clothes and shorts did not suit her
Then she  found a   lovely blue dress with a draped front
Annie, her neighbour, tapped on the door and came in, a very lovely sight in her orange striped shift dress with matching lipstick and shoes
Hey, Annie, what do you think of  this  blue dress?
Annie had lost her contact lenses so she peered at the description

Elegant 3/4 sleeve dress with
Exposed statement back zip

The zip sounds weird,hard for a woman to so up,Annie said
Is it to attract men, she coninued?
Well, if a man undid it while I was at a dinner party I would be embarrassed,Mary cried
So would the man,said Annie, when he saw you were not wearing a camisole nor a bra
I suppose it’s a kind of flirting or teasing. Mary murmured softly.
She was ignorant of such things since studying Schrodinger’s equation and his dog.
But it’s not an invitation to bare  me to the four winds
Well,  this is the problem,Annie enthused.To some men it would be preciely that.Not to mention gay women
The most odd thing is that Lands End sell more sporty casual clothes
If it were made of towelling you could swim in the river and then put it on, Annie rambled like an old lady who drank too much brandy
I could put it on anyway but would you like a zip on your naked flesh, asked Mary
in her jocose yet feminine way?
No,I like soft fluffy things on my naked  flesh
Well, please don’t mate with a rabbit,Mary ordered
I only want a merino wool or cashmere cardigan and I can’t mate with that.
Don’t you know I am 103?
No, you are 73, Mary said correctly.I think we should call 999 and see what Dave the 
 skilfull  paramedic thinks about the dress
What a waste,mewed Emile who was hiding inside a  large copper pan.With so many people ill it would be wrong.
Since when have you studied  Ethics,Annie asked him
You don’t need to go to Magdalen College to know wasting NHS money is wrong
Well, he keeps us sane and that saves money, she retorted.
You can’t  grumble, the vet is expensive and he doesn’t call to make us tea,
Nor  does he drive to Barnard Castle to test his hearing aids.
So true
Soon Dave ran in wearing a new sundress made of gingham
That looks stunning,Annie told him
I made it myself, he said, smiling
Well,we would like some.Mary haa mislaid all her dresses.
I’ll bring some patterns round.Dave answered shyly
Maybe  when Boris Johnson resigns
We can’t wait.Look at this dress Lands End are selling
It looks uncomfortable Dave repied.Why not wear a sheet with a leather belt to keep it secure?
Why not indeed?
You may get complaints from the neighbours
And so say all of us

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/22/dreamland-insomnia-sleep-cbt-drugs

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/health/resilience-relationships-trauma.html

https://thequietus.com/articles/25109-john-burnside-interview

As for separating out the forms, I have to say that things come as they will – ideas, images, rhythms. I compose poetry ‘on the lips’ (or to put it less lyrically, in my head) then write the lines down when they have formed (though not before). Prose, I get ideas while on the move, but I have to jot down notes, scribbles, impatient doodles, maps – just to try things out before I am ready to start writing. This means that I draft prose stuff on paper, but not poetry. So what separates the two mostly is the method. In prose, I’d say the ideas that interest me get tangled up with  ..

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/smarter-living/the-upside-of-feeling-bad.html

D

Feeling bad can increase our ability to communicate strategically and our likelihood to avoid errors in judgment, according to pair of studies.Credit…Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Tim Herrera

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9654fee1-d2ad-4da4-ad2f-e32082086f5f?shareToken=7fb47abf7b2786e25aabdb1d704b

Th is my goodbye and thank you after almost two years of writing my Times poetry column. I have loved reading the piles of poetry books – thank you to all the publishers who sent them; I have also loved reading your e-mails and letters. You demonstrated how a poem in the column could go off and have another life; comments, discussions and readers’ poems abounded. And I have loved writing about the poems, trying to relate them to our hopes and anxieties as human beings in my belief that there is a poem for everyone – even a trucker on the M1 who reads nothing more challenging than his sat-nav. Because to say “I don’t like poetry” is like saying “I don’t like music”. It’s a case

https://www.google.com/search?q=meaning+of+the+word+pudding&client=ms-android-motorola-rvo3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8&chrome_dse_attribution=1&inm=vs#tts=0

This could be useful to people learning English as a second language

In our quest for unbridled economic growth, we continue to destroy our natural world while inequalities are widening, both within and between countries. It is time to recognise the signs of societies that are under immense stress and redefine what progress actually means.” 

The report, New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene, calls for greater solidarity across borders to tackle the disconnect between development and perceived security.

The leaves are clinging on despite the rain

They block my light I thought I had made that plain

But god does not obey me when I ask

It’s not so match a message, it’s a fist

• The color of the flowers
• touches my eyes
• more softly than a raindrop
• Yet with the intensity of the sun

While my husband kissed me in our bed
Our cat would  lounge on top and lick his head
No matter what gyrations that cat saw
All he did was pat us with his paws
The happy days of learning  how to feel
How to entertain with spicy meals
Of walking by warm rivers hand in hand
Watching coots and moorhens ,washing pans
Buying an old kettle, then a house
Driving  out to Ongar ,stubble fires
Smokey Essex cornfields, insects’ pyres
Driving  down the Saxon Cliffs at Hythe
Soft teal Sea,Capel le Ferne, men’s eyes
Happy  in a cottage in the wilds
I sang like some  small bird, we walked for miles
Kersey where the ducks bathe in the street
Kissing in the hedges was so sweet
Getting  our own garden, growing beans
Growing spinach, lettuce and snap peas
Picking  our blackcurrants, making tea
Making jam from raspberries. yes please
This proves that when you marry you need pans
Cooking  dinners  talking with our friends
Wearing jeans and  hair so long it flowed
My husband liked to brush it till it glowed
I dream some nights my hair is still like that
And how  the cat slept with his paws in it
How his father died and mother grieved
Life is not all positive, we see.
On we went and love  was what we grew
Though anger  did rise up and strain the glue
First the cat died, then my man went too
Can’t I adopt a beast  from Whipsnade Zoo?

It’s not in the interest of the government today

To make us all more literate for they would have to pay.

I don’t mean the money,thr teacher and the schools

I mean to give the adults more literacy tools.

The reading age is measured from 4 to 16 years

Put the average in our great country is only 9, I fear.

So we cannot read the Times the Guardian just the Sun.

Before a new Election, the reading is no fun.

To make it very plain if the people cannot read

Someone else will give them what they think they need.

Breaking it all down into babies kind of food,

Writing little articles and photographing nudes.

Running reading lessons would be political indeed.

Then we could read anything and get our mental foodm

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/well/mind/anxiety-benefits.html

Fields in Essex shrivel in the sun

Dry and dusty longing for the rain.

The harvest half destroyed, the crops are done

Fields in Essex shrivel in the sun

No hiding place for hares,for birds no crumb

Lack of water causes creatures pain.

Fields of Essex shrivel in the sun

Baked to dust while waiting for sweet rain

The suffering of the old is hidden from view

None so blind as those who can not see

How cruel the world indifferent yet to me

My face is frozen killing any clue.

The colours of the heart are mainly blue.

Sister, sister do you not agree.?

The suffering and the dying not on cue

From the desert of the aged flee.

I wonder whether God asks who are you?

God has got dementia yet is free

The suffering of the old enrages few

A play on words amusing I shall sue

What a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive

Hilaire Belloc

When Jesus Christ was four years old The angels brought in toys of gold

https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=2366#:~:text=When%20Jesus%20Christ%20was%20four%20years%20old%2C%20The%20angels%20brought,Tu%20creasti%2C%20Domine.

Academic and psychotherapist. Refugee from Holland when it was invaded by the Nazis.

As a child she had been a refugee, and in 1999 she founded the Refugee Therapy Centre in London, with Aida Alayarian and others. There they established a course to enable refugees to become counsellors, in line with Josephine’s conception that therapists and counsellors should share language, culture and experience with their patients and help them better to contribute to society.

Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, Josephine was the daughter of Simon Klein, a salesman, and his Dutch wife Marie (nee Norden). The family were of Jewish origin but largely secular. They were living in Amsterdam at the time of the Nazi invasion in May 1940, and fled shortly afterwards, in an open boat. After six days at sea with little fresh water, they were picked up by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Malcolm, and Josephine never forgot the warmth of the captain and crew. Many of her relatives who did not flee did not survive.https://f87183ff05e2a4bafd6963d396c3a84f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html?n=0

The family moved to Chester in the hope of travelling to the US by ship from Liverpool, but were unable to do so. Josephine did well at the Queen’s school, Chester, which, together with some local people, provided the support necessary for her to go to university. In four years, she gained two degrees, simultaneously, a BA in French at University College London and a first in sociology at LSE.

After her period in youth work, Josephine was a lecturer in social studies at Birmingham University (1949-62), then had three years as a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and went on to Sussex University, as reader in social relations (1965-70). For the next four years she was director of the course at Goldsmiths’, and then undertook 30 years’ private practice as a psychotherapist. Even after that she continued to supervise trainee psychotherapists.

Friends and colleagues valued her wisdom and warmth on walks and at concerts, sharing highs and lows in other people’s lives and helping them overcome adversity.

She is survived by two nieces and a nephew.

• Josephine Faniella Henny Klein, psychologist and psychotherapist, born 17 October 1926; died 13 November 2018