https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/27/robert-mccrum-books-walt-whitman

“In the absence of an explanation for Whitman’s creative leap forward – was it, perhaps, the fruit of his service in the civil war as a hospital orderly working in terrible battlefield conditions? – most biographers have retired, baffled. Even Whitman’s champion, the sage of Boston, RW Emerson, seems to have understood that this extraordinary new voice had undergone a mysterious and secret gestation. “I salute you at the beginning of a great career,” wrote Emerson, acknowledging Leaves of Grass, “which yet must have a long foreground somewhere.””

“But the ruthless cut-off of 40 does not address the complex trajectory of creative growth: for every novelist or poet who explodes skywards with a first or second book, there are many who only achieve mastery as they reach the shady side of the slope. The onset of middle age, or the approach of oblivion, is perhaps as sharp a spur to literary effort as the intoxicating self-belief of youth.

Daniel Defoe completed Robinson Crusoe just before his 60th birthday, after a turbulent life as a journalist. Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn aged 49. Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov in his mid-40s. Closer to home, Mary Wesley launched The Camomile Lawn at 70. Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn, this year’s American literary sensation, a Vietnam novel of astonishing power and insight, worked on his manuscript for 33 years and finally saw it published in his 60s. He now enjoys rather more recognition than the Oxford poet Craig Raine, who has just published his first novel, Heartbreak, aged 65.

The artistic provenance of these late bloomers will be as complex as Whitman’s, but I think Dr Raine’s title gives a clue to one common thread: these books are invariably love stories, in the broadest sense, inspired by a person or a memory – in Twain’s case, of the Mississippi – for whom the writer calls up one final surge of creative energy.

Dear Madam

Your poetry is disgusting in parts and feeble in others.I  have read a load of rubbish in my time but yours takes the biscuit and the cake too.To coin  a phrase at this moment in time
I regret I have wasted five years trying to understand it and you,  for when I read a book about post modernism  I realised understanding is very bad and there is no absolute reality at all,So you don’t exist and neither do I.
So you need write no more.
And as stamps are so expensive I can’t afford to post it except here on your blog.I must be you and you am I.
Otherwise I could not do this at all.But logic is not so useful now.Telling lies is the latest fashion,Well, when was it not?
Yours sincerely

The lady in the shed with the candle.

PS Why don’t we have electricity in this shed? I can hardly see with the honeysuckle all over it,I need to see the Light

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/triolet-poetic-form

The sky was tinged with children’s ecstasy
The  well iced cake with candles lit and paid
Unknown, the mother’s kind perplexity
The sky was flushed with children’s ecstasy
But she prefers the blue ,the rhapsody
The poem of love, the verses strictly made
The sky was blessed with children’s ecstasy
The  well iced cake,balloons ,lost serenades

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.agorafinancial.co.uk

In dark rain, our boundaries ached and blurred
The colour from our coats wept into air
As solid being was  most times deferred

The scraps of wool made street grids get all furred
The colour of the water was unfair
In dark rain,our boundaries ached and blurred

Some wear  nylon coats as they prefer
Non-leakage despite nylon  fabric tears.
Solid being;indefinable, deferred

Our coats and then our skin shed  leaving core
In heavy rain  our organs displayed bare
In the rain,our boundaries shook and blurred

If we had a choice, we said no prayers
We did not speak and no-one seemed to care
The right to be, definable, deferred

What is human when we  choose to wear
The watercoloured raindrops in our hair?
In dark rain, our boundaries softened, blurred
Solidity  and being thus deferred

What strange selection have those parties made
That Trump and Clinton are the chosen two.
In disbelief ,we stumble, thinking frayed.
Such strange selection have the people made
Their Presidential choice ,discussed, displayed
The Reign of Night,Oh Hell, what can we do?
With strange dejection, people stare dismayed
For neither Trump nor Clinton was the clue.

I don’t want to change myself for you
Who are you to judge me heart and soul?
If you don’t like me,it don’t make me blue

You can’t  take me over like you’re flu.
Who are you to think we make a whole?
I  refuse to change myself for you

You’re more  trying than a crossword clue
Your nature is like ice with a bad cold
If you don’t like me,it don’t make me blue

Don’t stick your hand to mine like superglue.
You’re lacking when  you think you’re being bold
I will never change myself for you

The cat is dumb,the parrot’s  stole its mioaw
My heart fees good,my spirits glow like gold,
If you don’t like me, it don’t make me blue

My heart is free,the blockages dissolved
My life  and mind have suddenly evolved.
I would never change myself for you,
If you don’t love me,it don’t make me blue

1.Wear fleece nighties or pyjamas.As it is a kind of polythene  or plastic  I find they dry quickly when I give them their annual wash
2.Get an electric blanket or an electric lover.
3 Put freezer bags on your feet in case you go to the bathroom.You must not leave footprints or they will know it was you in there 5 times in the night
4.Wear a hat. I’ve just bought a reflective one.I think a lot in bed,you see.
5.Put your coat  on the bed or on you.
6.Have a hot wink before bed
7.Count backwards in sevens from a thousand.A thousand what?I don’t know!

If you feel cold, the Independent suggests you wear a jumper.Or, why not put  cardigan over your shirt? This is just so useful I am struck dumb.~

More advice:
1.In winter wear a woollen vest and socks.
2 Why not wear your winter coat inside your home to be really original?
3.Sit in the public library all day for free heat and newspaper and  use their loo to save   your water and  toilet paper.Yes,it is wrong to steal their soap.
4 Go to bed in two pairs of pyjamas and a dressing gown.Then you can look original and stay warm.

 “What do you get if you leave two Jews alone in a room?  Three opinions.”
Why are Jews so intelligent? Because they have Jewish mothers
Why  do Jews  like arguing? What’s wrong with arguing?
Why did Jesus walk on water ?To keep his feet clean
To go by a  more direct route
He forgot  he was meant to be on Earth
For fun
To see if he could.
He  didn’t like running on it.
To see if it was hot or cold
He got  sea sick in boats.
He wanted to make us laugh
He couldn’t swim
He  was just showing off.

“How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one’s own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn’t this had some effect on my life as a militant–has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?”
― Antonio Gramsci”

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

• Quaderni del carcere, « Ondata di materialismo» e « crisi di autorità », volume I, quaderno 3, p. 311, written circa 1930
• English translation Selections from the Prison Notebooks, “Wave of Materialism” and “Crisis of Authority” (NY: International Publishers), (1971), pp. 275-276.
• Prison Notebooks Volume II, Notebook 3, 1930

Gently dancing in the sun
Small flowers grow;
they bloom,
are gone.

We are so near though yet so far apart
A wall of stone makes concrete all our fears.
For even if we change our minds and hearts
This wall and all its meanings will endure.

Even in suburban avenues
Men have knifed their neighbours in  red rage
We hate those people who have different views
And cypress trees too tall  feel like  a cage.

We long for closeness,yet we fear too much.
Invulnerable and strong we like to be.
Yet, without  open hearts, we fear all touch;
And into bright red flames , we  foolish flee..

No wall endures forever nor  does fame.
When we  reach our deaths we’re  all the same

1.Never wear your glasses  if you are myopic.If your vision is good wear someone else’s glasses so you become myopic
2.Use a white stick and  put a bandage over one eye
3.Wear a badge saying,I  have herpes and I’m ok~
4 Put some pine disinfectant on instead of perfume and walk sideways on the sidewalk.Ask questions rather than answering them.
5 Never reply to their emails and put the answer phone on
6. Run everywhere as fast as you can and look suspicious

1.Get drunk and propose to your partner.
2.Dig up the dead cat and give it a funeral.
3.Read Hermeneutics ,a short introduction
4. Make love not war
5.Drink two pints of  hot tea
6.Get suspicious and be kind to  the neighbours.If you have no neighbours then be kind to people here!

Now the Requiem precedes the war
And nobody knows quite what this war is for.
Unless it is to show the world contempt
From so called Christian leaders who’re hell bent

We talk about how great we are and fair
Yet  British soldiers roasted Kenyans over fires.
And who  has seen no burning child napalmed
Used in Vietnam  for peace and calm

We ,the warriors of Viking stock,
Conquered half the world  and natives mocked.
Now we claim we’re better than the rest
I wonder how the Holy One will test.

Judge  not all  by stereotyped ideals
When we ourselves have fractured what is Real

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/benjamin-britten-poetry-politics-and-sound

“But Britten’s most celebrated melding of poetry and music was the large-scale composition of six movements, War Requiem, performed in 1962 for the opening of the new cathedral in Coventry, built to replace a cathedral destroyed by bombs during World War II. Britten wrote the piece for three soloists, a chamber orchestra, a full choir and main orchestra, and a boys’ choir and organ. He used the Latin text of the Requiem Mass, or Mass for the Dead, along with nine poems of Wilfred Owen, the World War I poet who died just days before the signing of the 1918 Armistice. The somber and powerful work, which expressed the composer’s anti-war sentiments, was well received by critics and audiences alike.”

He said he’d like to see more of me,so I took my gloves off.
He said ,did I like music.I said I like to hear sharks singing. I
He said he’d like to get married so I asked him, who to?
He said he loved my eyes.I said,is that all?
He said I was like a cat,I howled all night after hearing that
He said would I like to see  his etching.I said most men have etchings,plural
He said he’d like to treat me.I said,how?
He asked me how old I was.I said I can remember being born but nothing later.So it’s indeterminate.
He said,did I have a degree.I said,yes, of caution.
He said which University did I go to so I said,at Cambridge we don’t ask questions like that.
He said he went to Oxford.I said,what for?
He said he did P.P.P so I said he should see a doctor.
He said I was very bright.I said it’s all due to washing myself in Fairy Liquid and then some lavender beeswax polish
He said would I like to get married.I said no-one has proposed to me yet.
He knelt down and kissed my feet.I said while you are down there you can cut my toe nails.
He said I was cute.I said,I can’t believe it. I’ve never been so insulted in my life
He said,I just can’t  say how much I love you.I said,why not.
He said,I’ve changed my mind.I said, this will be interesting.Where did you get a new one?
He said it’s a refurbished one.I said, that’s a bit dangerous.You might be Ghengis Khan or Moses.He said, that’s odd.I feel as  if I can fly.I’m an angel.So I said,well I definitely can’t marry an angel.He said,I have no gender now.
So that was it

1.Wear ugly.dull  greyish clothes.
2.Pretend to be very shy and inept,carry  red plastic handbags full of tampons
3 Tell people  you have periods every week but don’t say what sort
4.Never meet anyone’s eyes except for the police.Tell them they look arrresting
5.Never speak except to swear  and curse or mutter,I have no self esteem
6.Say your mother said never ever  talk to strange men, women or dogs
7. Tell people you have a dangerous or infectious skin disease.
8.Never go out socially
9 At work stay silent and strong.
10 Remember however horrible,boring,stupid ,ill dressed and ugly you are somebody is your  perfect match.So beware

Women must not give off natural scents
Deodorants,perfume,money spent
But men  can look dirty
Even when flirty
Is such distinction the sign of a gent?

Women   like wearing red frocks
As they tend to the sheep in their flock
For shepherds are handsome
They love to go dancing
Then you take them home  drunk in a box.

As for shoes, it seems heels have gone out
White trainers are in, without doubt
We all copy each other
But under the cover
We suffer from bunions and gout

I’m a secret agent,I’m a spy
I often will improvise lies.
I never let  men near me
As they may well fear me
I broke all the codes  in the guide.

I must not reveal my true  name
Or mention I voted,Remain!
I will be hanged,drawn and quartered
Illegally tortured
They’ll say I’m a Muslim insane

My photo is so stunning men rush
To entice me to hide in a bush
They   must want to  caress me
Or even arrest me
I’ll say no more now lest I flush

1.Look at yourself naked in the mirror before your partner arrives.Then be thankful someone fancies you.Then laugh at the humour of life and cry for the lost beauty
2. Put Maltesers under the pillows then scream when you hear them crunch.Then share them and another bag you keep in the drawer for emergencies
3. Let the cat lie on top of you both.He won’t need much persuasion.
4 Play “The Ride of the Valkyries” on your smartphone while you are in bed.Then play with each other.
5.Pray aloud for God’s help  to ne able to make love once more when your lover believes you are an atheist.Keep them guessing.
6.Leave a funny message on your answering machine  which is by the bed and ring your landline with your mobile.

A  new Word
There was no time to  think, to frame new  words
His breathing shallow as a gentle bird
It was the life force emptied,oh,this sign.
Although the doctors never tell their paradigms
Their eyes seem wise yet blind, they try to care

Behind my ribs, my heart was scissored, stirred
A Bach motet quite distant, softly held
A sacred image seemed to  be assigned
What  cruel word?

Oh, if he could have spoken, I’d have heard
If he should have wakened, I’d prepared
All our going’s are in nature’s reign
Down deep inside our hearts, we sense  God’s mind
Would that all sweet comfort  could be shared
And when  one Jew was sacrificed, we heard
The New,The Old.The  One, The Stuttered Word