Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

Old cookery books and happy memories

When I became who I am now,I didn’t realise that all aspects of my life would be affected.When I got married in the 70s women might be working but they still were expected to cook and give dinner parties etc..I admit I loved cooking despite a few  failures.Nowadays people meet in coffee shops.Women and men may have hard jobs and there are other ways to keep up with friends.
I realised I don’t intend to cook for  lot of people now so I have to go through the pans and the pots and the cookery books
This has brought both sorrow and joyful memories.The titles of the books above show you how much effort we women put into producing good meals despite our work.Some people cooked a lot at the weekend and froze it.Others used quick methods.Not many ate ready meals.
I remember being amazed when a friend said she bought a quiche in Marks and Spencer and also people buying sandwiches.However I now do that quite often.
When a partner goes,you have to define or find  yourself again.But I think I shall keep these books.Just holding one makes me remember how happy I was looking for new recipes and having a table where  people could join us for a meal.

 

 

Angels

You might say,he died in a holy place
Tended by angels
Or  you might say,he died on a trolley in And E
Both are true.
Also that he spent some days in a rehabilitation centre
Being made to exercise
Until his heart stopped   and he  was resuscitated by paramedics
Before being sent to die again
In a more suitable setting.Namely
A & E,Lovely Hospital
But no bed!
Nice nurses.
I didn’t even realise it was A & E until they apologised.

What the hell

What the hell,a villanelle!
It looks too hard for such as me
Still I will write ,yes,I write well

I have a story I can tell
It’s from the English who love tea
What a hell,oh villanelle

I saw a man with a sea shell
I asked him for a pod of pea
I write well.yeah super Nell

I often wonder if I smell
As I drink so much  greenish tea
What’s s to tell ,my villanelle?

But worry makes life into hell
And it’s bad for those who see
I write well,but who can tell?

I must take much charity
If you ask, what is your fee?
What the hell oh villanelle
I write well but   life is hell.

Yet fear surprise

The point of living is to feel alive
Not caged  by  too high walls or steely fence
We want to love,be taken by surprise.

Our  wounded mangled self we can’t deride,
Recalling  fights and  struggles lived  through once.
The point of living is to feel alive.

We dither to and fro in puzzled ways
We feel the anguish, still and quite intent.
We want to love,be taken by surprise.

The self’s spontaneous, not a thing contrived;
Formed with love and  hate,with all intense.
The rage of living is to be alive.

When washed away by feelings glad,immense
That cross our borders without our lament
The  hope,the need of living is  our life
We want to  give and take  yet fear surprise

 

Reading receptively

 

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Thrush

They say that if you want to write you must read as much as you can.I found reading Seamus Heaney useful.But there is more than one kind of reading.The kind I find best is to read as if you are looking at a picture.To open your mind and let  the sentences flow in like water.I don’t find  reading in a critical way helpful.If I read  in this open way them my mind will choose what to remember,what matters.When I ws young I read a novel every day.Almost.But reading some fiction one is always rushing ahead looking for the answer if it’s a thriller.
One might say that reading the way I describe is “feminine” that is it is receptive like a woman is to her man.Maybe you don’t like that way of  describing it.After all men are receptive to ideas, in conversation etc.And mystics are receptive towards God

Dresses

9078526803998I prefer dresses in hot weather but so far  we’ve only had one week when I could wear one,or in fact two.One is very thin cotton voile.The other is a bit heavier.I think I look better  in a dress but it’s regarded as eccentric now unless it’s a sleeveless maxi-dress.
There are 2 things wrong with those
1 They have no sleeves hence display a part which is better covered
2 They trail around ones feet getting dirty and also possibly one might catch a foor aand fall over.
Killed by maxi-dress?
A hardworking internet writer fell over the hem of  her dress while  getting onto the  downward escalator at Warren St  tube station.

Her last words:

“I should have gone to Foyles.” or “I wanted some foil”

But a doctor said that Tottenham Court Rd was also dangerous.She has left her money to a charity for the disabled to install  lifts in more underground stations

There, that’s a fantasy for you.Anyway they look like curtains!

Ostracised by the cat

I was ostracised by  my own cats
Who refused me the use of my mat
They sent me upstairs
With their fierce  amber glares
And refused to converse after that.

I went to Cambridge  with my new  little cat.
She’s been awarded a  degree, aegrotat
For being sick in the exam
And  having a fit in a pan.
She’s hysterical,how about that?

A cat can’t have any therapy
For they cannot speak human ,you see.
So how could they know
A neurosis ain’t so.
And moreover they can’t pay a fee.

 

Definition of stasis in the Oxford Dictionary

Definition of stasis in English:

stasis

Pronunciation: /ˈsteɪsɪs/

/ˈstasɪs/

NOUN

[MASS NOUN] formal or technical

1A period or state of inactivity or equilibrium:long periods of stasiscreative stasis

More example sentences
1.1Medicine A stoppage of flow of a body fluid.

Example sentences
2Civil strife.

Origin

Mid 18th century: modern Latin, from Greek, literally ‘standing, stoppage’, from sta- base ofhistanai ‘to stand’.

Words that rhyme with stasis

basis, oasis

For editors and proofreaders

Line breaks: sta¦sis

Definition of stasis in:

Ariel BY SYLVIA PLATH

Stasis in darkness.

Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning

Stanley Plumly

“Ariel” is, of course, Plath’s singular and famous example of the form completely at one with its substance, the language exactly the speedy act of its text. The point for the poet is obvious: “How one we grow,/Pivot of heels and knees.” The speaker thus becomes as much Ariel as the horse, and together they become the one thing, the poem itself, “the arrow,/ /The dew that flies/Suicidal, at one with the drive.” The run from stasis in darkness into the red eye of morning is a miraculous inhabiting, in which the natural and referential world dissembles, blurs into absence, to the point that the transformation of the horse and rider can become absolute. “Something else / / Hauls me through air . . . ” In seconds, she is a white Godiva, unpeeling dead hands and stringencies, then, almost simultaneously, she is foam to wheat, and at that freeing instant, in terror or in esctasy, the child’s cry melts in the wall. “Ariel” is as close to a poetry of pure, self-generating, associative action as we could hope for, as if the spirit, at last, had found its correlative, had transcended, in the moment, memory.

From “What Ceremony of Words” in Ariel Ascending: Writings about Sylvia Plath. Ed. Paul Alexander. Copyright © 1985 by Paul Alexander.

Words and feelings.

Words were spoken long before any alphabet was invented.Feeling into words can mean many things.But if we feel into an actual word,we feel into the sounds in the word when someone uses it.We say sometimes people’s voices have n o affect.Other’s have melodious voices,some speak as if they fire bullets.We might put more of our own feelings into our words or  try to hide how we feel.Possibly we pick up much more from each other than we realise.
But how do we put more feeling into a poem and how do we avoid it being a kind of longer cliche? I think the rhythm  is one factor.
Sometimes poems are savage like Sylvia Plath’s late ones

.We can imitate various sounds in nature… bird song,machine guns,feet pounding on the ground.Sometimes we plan it or ,more usually, we leave it to happen naturally.If it does not the poem may sound banal or dead even if it is  very good technically.

Ostracise from Merriam Webster

IMG_0064ostracize

play

verb AH-struh-syze
PrevNext

Definition

1 : to exile by ostracism

2 : to exclude from a group by common consent

Examples

Athletes who cheat risk being ostracized by their peers and colleagues—in addition to suffering professional ruin.

“Hateful speech is employed to offend, marginalize and ostracize. It’s replaced reasonable persuasion by those too lazy or ignorant to be thoughtful.” — Tom Fulks, The San Luis Obispo (California) Tribune, 26 Dec. 2015

Learn a new word every day. Delivered to your inbox!

Did You Know?

In ancient Greece, prominent citizens whose power or influence threatened the stability of the state could be exiled by a practice called ostracism. Voters would elect to banish another citizen by writing that citizen’s name down on a potsherd. Those receiving enough votes would then be subject to temporary exile from the state (usually for ten years). The English verb ostracize can mean “to exile by the ancient method of ostracism,” but these days it usually refers to the general exclusion of one person from a group at the agreement of its members. Ostracism and ostracize derive from the Greek ostrakizein (“to banish by voting with potsherds”). Its ancestor, the Greek ostrakon (“shell” or “potsherd”), also helped to give English the word oyster.

I’d be sent to buy mint

Do you remember squirming under the table
Banging your head on the corner
Or falling down    the stairs.
I broke my leg once.
Knees scabbed and bruised; we don’t see that now
I suppose they don’t do the dangerous things we used to do.
Mr Turner had an allotment where he grew flowers and herbs
I’d be sent to buy mint sometimes and a bunch of flowers
Then the council made the land into garages for rent.
And hardly anyone had a car.Until Beeching.
The Great Train Robber.

Red coals

The red coals glowed warming us like a mother
Faces and little men were formed and disappeared
In the back room,the kettle was always on
There was a special grate with a flat top.
Kettle  blackened  on one side was always simmering.
Before,we had a fireplace with an oven where our nightclothes were warmed
Or potato cakes baked.Why,it even heated the water for the hot tap
We didn’t have a bath,only the tin one
Coals  sacred  like the burning bush,bring
Memories of love and joy at Xmas
With smiling parents and brothers calmed for once
I think the next year he was ill.
I don’t want to forget they were happy for  7 years
And mother was a mother then

Feeling into words

heaney_2657154b.jpg

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10288645/Seamus-Heaney-putting-feelings-into-words.html

“His long and productive journey continued through half a century, with countless triumphs of language and sensibility, always compressed and brilliant, like a horseshoe hammered out on the anvil of his writing desk and dipped in water: an image given shape in “The Forge”, his fond recollection of an old blacksmith. The collected poems constitute a diverse body of work that calls to the ear and lightens the spirit, asking one to take seriously the work of poetry, which is to listen to “the music of what happens”. Poetry became, for him, what he called “a search for images and symbols adequate to our predicament”.

Requiem for the Croppies
Written in 1966, on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Printed in Door into The Dark, 1969.

“Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.”

 

 

 

 

 

These glasses are the cause of the poor summer

K123.pngThey say we should plan ahead for summer and so I got these UV protective sunglasses.But it’s the wettest summer for ages.Still they might come in useful in the winter when the sun is low in the sky..
I think soon the winter clothes will be on show and I find that a bit sad.I recall when M and S used to sell real winter coats made of wool.But now there are few about.I suppose it’s since more people got cars and they don’t need a long coat.But at the bus s  stop I need one.And padded jackets are too hot for the top half  of me and cold for the rest.Why do women dress as if they are going to climb a mountain or lie on the beach or chop wood.And why was I berated for baking my own bread?
As for men,I don’t like half length trousers very much.And where are the sports jackets in  tweed?What is so great about anoraks?
O f course some people look nice whatever they wear and  larger folk don’t have so much choice.I say go for the flowers,fruit or humorous T shirts/tops.Unless you are Leonard Cohen who dresses in grey and black and his house is decorated like that too.He has no pictures on the wall either.No wonder he’s been depressed all his life until when he was 70 he felt much better,

If I Could Tell You by W.H.Auden [A villanelle]

Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reason why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

WH Auden :

I am in a study brown

Oh,doctor I am in a flap
I cannot turn this childproof cap
I cannot take my medicine
So I shall toss it in the bin

The beta blockers make me down
I am in a study brown.
The mini aspirins make me bruise
And my mind is quite confused.

The ibuprofen hurt my heart
Yet without one I cannot start.
The thyroxine has no effect
So now I feel my life is dreck.

The codeine fails to make me high
I'm not addicted, though I try.
I'll have to take a shot of gin
And alcohol will make me sin.

I'll go to parties in a dress
That makes men's hormones more or less.
I'll take a big one home with me,
And give him poison in his tea.

And when I am in jail at last
I'll feel remorse for all my past.
For as I suffer dreadful pain
God has hit me yet again.

It's not enough that I am blind
And suffer terrors in my mind
Not enough that lovers cruel
Give me stick instead of jewels.

Or maybe life does not make sense
Especially when I feel so tense.
Maybe random are my days
and my life has gone astray.

I think that I shall buy a cat
And love it tenderly and chat.
But if my cat gives me a scratch...
I'll light its tail up with a match.

All the world must me obey
Else I'll be enraged all day.
I want my own way all the time.
Other people must conform.

I am here and full of ills
What do you think of these blue pills?
If they take away my heart
That at least will be a start.

Then they can remove my brain
To help me with this damned pain.
Why not kill me right away
Then I'll be from pain astray?

A crime

 

Ah,did you throw away the  ripened fruit,
Because inside it hid a hardened stone?
As anything not total does not suit.
Love’s ambivalence seems to you a crime

Don’t throw away my love when I  offend
For I am human too and lose my sense
As tension makes it difficult to bend
And sometimes even love is too intense.

Rather,see  the love there still may be
And balance that against my human faults
Instead,one mark ,one sin  one thought unfree,
Weighs more than years of love,binds me in guilt.

As panic  will grow less when we just wait
In such a way, real love can contain hate

Underneath the shadow in the dark

Underneath the shadow in the dark
Where viable  new thoughts dwell  all  alone
Invisible the moment when life starts

Overhead we hear a singing lark
But   beetles crawl   by all the dark grey  stones
Underneath the shadow in the dark.

We,the human,  travel with no chart.
Yet do not  pay attention to  a groan.
Invisible the moment when life starts

Like sailors crossing oceans in good heart
Enjoy the sensory  vastness all unknown
Underneath the shadow in the dark.

When    sound perceptions shelter us from harm
When a  flickering light to us is shown
Invisible the moment when life starts

 

When we build  from all the  shattered bits of stone
A home to dwell in till  we turn to bone
Underneath the shadow in the dark
Invisible the moment when life starts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The eye of truth

I have heard grass singing in the wind.

I have  heard  grass singing in  the wind.
I   have walked through poppy fields in  sun
I have  suffered  when dark rain descends

I have watched  trees’ shadows in the ponds
I have  known the  arctic wastes of pain
I have  heard  grass singing in the wind.

Another soul is writing  with my hand
Yet I have  wept  while loaning him  my pen
I have  suffered  when dark rain descends

I have known  the edges  of the mind
I ‘ve   sensed  hollow silence un-contained.
I have  heard  grass singing in  the wind.

I have sorrowed for  humans confined
I have  watched  the antics  of bad  men
I have  suffered  when dark rain descends

I have seen the storm by camera lens.
I have felt the   solar system bend.
I have  heard  grass singing in  the wind.
I have  suffered  when dark rain descends

 

 

 

 

 

Precision in poetry

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http://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/articles/detail/68419

“Poetry charts the changes in language, but it never merely reproduces or recapitulates what it finds. The lyric poem defamiliarizes words, it wrenches them from familiar or habitual contexts, it puts a spell on them. The lyric is cognate with those childish forms, the riddle and the nursery rhyme, with whatever form of verbal art turns language inside out and draws attention to its categories. As the eighteenth-century English poet Christopher Smart put it, freely translating from Horace’s Art of Poetry:”

It is exceedingly well
To give a common word the spell
To greet you as intirely new

In Smart’s belief, as Marcus Walsh observes in Christopher Smart: Selected Poems(1979), “every creature worships God simply by being itself, through its peculiar actions and properties….