Sometimes when bereft I’d love a snail

Though it might wet my bed with silvery trails

Would snails be lonely living in my house?

Shall I be but fit to love one louse?

Against  sadness:no new creator weeps
Nor lounges  in  black melancholy deep
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit  his muse.
For  even genius  ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair  but not his views
Nor his  mind where  learning made strange leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.

Happiness  or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News  lies  on our minds
Yet men are  cold  towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone  in old  face   lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men  kill thus?
In Syrian wars  the  innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the  frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We  hold our hands out, thinking we’ll  be nursed
Against sadness

My neighbours are so kind they share their dogs
They let them run quite free into my house
They blame me when  the dogs escape
Or when they swim in dirty lakes
Or frighten cows

The neighbour on the other side is cute
He cuts bits of my trees and throws them out
He threw a big pile over t’ fence
I can see through one eye lens
Fly tipping lout!

So here I am   trapped in between these saints
I am grateful for the topics  they  have lent
I shall not hate them nor despise
But neither will I close my eyes
It takes all sorts

https://www.groovypost.com/reviews/complete-guide-google-docs/

https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/home-garden/gardening/advice-tips/what-to-do-about-a-neighbours-overhanging-tree

uit.

What should I do with the trimmed branches?

Ironically, even though the branches belong to your neighbour, you cannot simply throw them back over his fence. That could be deemed to be fly tipping of garden waste. Advise your neighbour that you intend to burn them or take them to a recycling centre.

How far can I trim the branches back?

You can cut branches and/or roots back up to the limit of your property, your garden fence, say. There you should stop.

You are not allowed to go into a neighbour’s garden without permission to cut a tree back. Nor can you lean over into his garden to cut back the ‘offending’ branch – you will be trespassing. If you cut the branch back beyond the limit of your property, into the very trunk itself, say, you could be liable for damage or trespass.

I made this…

I wonder what rhymes with pedantic
Without being excessively frantic?
I thought of crazed wasps
Whose teeth I would floss
Yet that is  not really romantic

Pedantic seems related  to feet
In poetry that might be neat
Pedes obscuro
Might made a detouro
In search of a very fine beat

h

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/24/poetry-is-going-extinct-government-data-show/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2bac34a719fd

“The survey finds that the decline in poetry readership is unique among the arts — particularly the literary arts. “Since 2002, the share of poetry-readers has contracted by 45 percent—resulting in the steepest decline in participation in any literary genre,” the study concludes. Over the past 20 years, the downward trend is nearly perfectly linear — and doesn’t show signs of abating.

According to the latest numbers, poetry is less popular than jazz. It’s less popular than dance, and only about half as popular as knitting. The only major arts category with a narrower audience than poetry is opera — not exactly surprising, given the contemporary state of that art.

Of course the arts aren’t a zero-sum game, and they’re not a popularity contest either. But in general the arts community gets uncomfortable when you talk about declining numbers. I asked Bonnie Nichols, a researcher with the National Endowment for the Arts, who co-authored the latest SPPA, what she made of the poetry readership rate. She was less interested in talking numbers, and more interested in the things arts organizations are doing to counteract them.”

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http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

“MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry — when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech — it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregiousup in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.”

Sure, my blog is suitable for anyone to read,That is if they have actually  learned
Don’t you think you are showing off telling people what words mean?
Well,I didn’t know myself, that’s why I looked tbem up
Still you have managed to live your life without using them
But maybe it would have been a different life!
Like, what idiot put an empty kettle on the fire
Oh, it was me.I was in my mimetic mode trying to convey the pressure I am under in this hothouse place
Well, in future use diogesis
I am too nervous to tell my story so I just drop a few hints
If you don’t take that kettle off the fire your whole life will have been a hint
What do you mean?
Stop thinking and take the damn thing off
Do you mean my dress or the kettle?
I mean both!
It’s not very romantic to talk to me that way
Why don’t we  use the hot kettle to make some make believe tea and I will whisper in your ears while we mimetically drink it
OMG…. are you on the Spectrum.
Not yet but I am trying
You can say that again
Not yet but I am very trying
You can say that again

We seem to me in an infinite loop.Isn’t life wonderful

And that is the end of Women’s Hour for today

Mimesis is acting out rather than narrating.Is this why Freud wanted people to stop acting out their neurosis but construct a way of narrating it, that is making up your  life story  as a story that conveys better what your life has been and is.Linking together experiences and phantasies in a way that makes one feel it is a truer better  story than what we were partly acting out unconsciously

For a better story read below

From Britannica.com

• 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis

It means narrating a story which puts one as a spectator
as opposed to evoking or acting it out.

https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/make-it-new-using-surprise-to-make-poetry-come-alive-999.htm

“How do we teach students of poetry to avoid cliché, to use language that allows us (and them) to see things anew? In these four lessons, the poet Michelle Chan Brown offers an array of strategies for using surprise to subvert expectations and create a sense of wonder. Using the work of poets (and one songwriter), Brown walks us through the ways poets use surprise in both form and content, and presents writing exercises to help students incorporate surprise into their own work.

Michelle Chan Brown 

The work of poetry is to render things new.  When we use language in ways that surprise we do just that. But what, exactly, is surprise and how do we teach it? Any attempt to define it is a suspect endeavor because spontaneity and unpredictability are an intrinsic part of what makes something “surprising.”

Take a birthday party planned in stealth, or a physical gesture intended to rattle: the tickle-attack, for example. Once the recipient of the planned surprise has any indication of what is about to happen, they begin to strategize how they will receive the (now non-) surprise. They may still experience pleasure or distress, but of a different variety.

Although many claim to hate surprises, I would argue that in life, and especially in art, we crave surprise. Let me clarify that I don’t mean shock, which is surprise’s sweaty, bombastic cousin. The elegant relative of surprise is wonder. And why make art but to enlarge our capacity for wonder?

When we demand that language surprise us we move towards more clarity and fewer clichés, away from what George Orwell, in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” calls “the slovenliness of our language [that] makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Although many claim to hate surprises, I would argue that in life, and especially in art, we crave surprise. Let me clarify that I don’t mean shock, which is surprise’s sweaty, bombastic cousin. The elegant relative of surprise is wonder. And why make art but to enlarge our capacity for wonder?

Here are four lessons on surprise that I have taught to high school students. The lessons introduce categories of surprise, look at sample poems that take different routes to surprise, and suggest approaches for writing poems that aim to surprise not only the reader but the poet as well.

Following the lessons, I offer several writing assignments that challenge students to explore these strategies for creating surprise.”

Read the rest  by clicking the link

On the first day of winter, my lover gave to me, 1 pair  tights and a pussy cat  without a single flea

On the second day of winter my lover gave to me,two woolly gloves, i pair ot tights and cat that had never had a flea

On the third day of winter ,my lover gave to me, three thermal vests. two woollen gloves,1  pair of tights and a cat with  its  very own flea

On the fourth day of winter my lover gave to me, 4 cashmere beanies,three thermal vests,2 woollen gloves ,1 pair of tights and a Manx cat completely tail free

On the fifth day of winter my lover gave to me 5 pairs  of knickers 4 cashmere bean,ies,3 thermal vests ,2 woolen gloves,1 pair of tights and a  Manx cat  now the mother of three

On the sixth day of winter my lover gave to me, 6 silken nighties,5 pairs of knickers, 4 cashmere beanies,3 thermal vests,2 woollen gloves, a pair of tights and a tiger to sleep  next to me

On the 7th day of winter my lover said to me

You do the washing
I’ll change the sheets
You make the coffee
I’ll buy some sweets
You make some tea
And we’ll see how the Manx cat stays  flea free

The heart of poetry is much too hard to master

make the syntax good and  entertaining
the  gruesome heart of poetry   brings disaster

 

a meter errant makes  the lines come faster
an oxford  thesaurus   gets the listeners   waning
the art of poetry  isn’t hard to master.

 

a genius woke and saw a verse rush past her
it only needed polishing and planing
the  gruesome heart of poetry brings  disaster

 

she left the oven on,it gassed her
ever since her folk  groan, paining
the art of poetry  isn’t hard to master.

 

she saw her selves as coloured shapes in plaster
and round her mind, were ghosts all craning
the  gruesome heart of poetry brings disaster

there’s not a lot of hope if we’re complaining
for criticism  from hidden ghosts is draining
the art of poetry isn’t hard to master
the  gruesome  heart of poetry brings disaster

The geese have changed their flight path to the lake
For further to the East  a river runs
Once used for milling flour for bread and cake
For making bulbs  for lights and wartime guns

The lightbulbs were  a fiction in the  War
Radar was the  secret  they researched
An old man in my Art Class once worked there
A physicist who worshipped still in Church

God and radar,guns and shells and tanks
Angels,demons,Jesus Christ we’re damned
Money lenders,presidents and Banks
Evil now seems normal in our land

We  rid the world of Hitler  but we died
What soul survives nuclear matricide?

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetry-101-resources-beginners