Now I know  what it is.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anthony-hecht

“George P. Elliott contended in the Times Literary Supplement that “Hecht’s voice is his own, but his language, more amply than that of any living poet writing in English, derives from, adds to, is part of the great tradition.” Though his early work was often slighted as ornate or Baroque, his collection The Hard Hours (1967) is generally seen as his break-through volume. In that book, Hecht begins to use his experiences as a soldier in Europe during World War II. The often unsettling and horrific insights into the darkness of human nature told in limpid, flowing verse that characterize the poems in the collection would become Hecht’s trademark. According to Dana Gioia: “Hecht exemplifies the paradox of great art. … He found a way to take his tragic sense of life and make it so beautiful that we have to pay attention to its painful truth.”

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2015/4/poetry-truth

Extract

The poet Mark Strand, who died this past November, once told Wallace Shawn in a Paris Review interview that “You don’t read poetry for the kind of truth that passes for truth in the workaday world. You don’t read a poem to find out how you get to Twenty-fourth Street.” In other words, poetic truth does not inhere ultimately in the denotative language of the poem. For facts, we have much more effective means of communication: the instruction manual, the brochure, the travel guide, or the public lecture. When Goethe takes “Poetry and Truth” as the title of his autobiography, what he is suggesting in part, I think, is that experience, in a work of art, may be rendered most clearly, and in a sense most truthfully, by attending to something beyond the verifiable facts. Fine, you might say, but doesn’t art, then, become, as Jacques Maritain wrote, “a world apart, closed, limited, absolute”—not the apprehension of reality but a replacement for reality, an illusion? This was a mote to trouble the mind’s eye of Plato.

Adefinition of poetry put forward by the poet Yvor Winters in his book Primitivism and Decadence (1937) sheds light on the question. A poem, Winters wrote, is a statement in words about a human experience—so far, so good, no?—a statement, he was quick to add, that pays particular attention to the connotative or emotional charge of language. Now, we all know where to find the denotative meaning of a word: we go to the dictionary. The connotative shades of a word, however, are harder to locate precisely. Take, for example, the word prison. The OED reports: “Originally: the condition of being kept in captivity or confinement; forcible deprivation of personal liberty; imprisonment. Hence (now the usual sense): a place of incarceration.” Clear, certainly, but a little dry. One could not say that this definition contains the complete meaningof the word.

The rosemary had a gap and a large hole
A blackbird made a nest there  where it sang
Startled people passing asked, who rang?
If I knew, I never would have told.

This gracious shrub was old and very wide
It made a home for snails against the wall
Near where  blackbirds busily might call
Yet wrongly pruned,eventually it died

One must not prune a bush into the wood
This plant is tender like the inside wrist
Where wanton lovers avidly do kiss
Thinking  they are  flagrant in their  good

Later we had placed a  beech  bonsai
Small and frail behind the red brick wall
Where the blackbird sang in Spring and Fall
Now the tree’s as tall as any lie

Small its leaves yet mighty is its heart
It pushes half the hedge off at a slant
Where the prickles fill with antic ants.
Hot the sun on leaves  that know no chart

Here the metal gate is open wide
The path is level but with spirit none
My heart is in the case with him who’s gone
I carry all my shopping bags inside

On the shelf, a little wooden tray
A butter dish perhaps or a cheese board
Too small for  any man who was a Lord
Here he left his  gold at end of day

One sad day, the picture on the wall
Changed from The Three Bears to Waterfalls
A  three arched bridge across a river blue
A cataract, a grave. a sailing crew.

For little children have a world their own
The symbols are constructed as are poems
Bears play a large part in infants’ lives
Their comforters, their babies, their right guides

Would it occur to me  that Mam and Dad
Had no interest in a bear fur clad?
What was me must surely still be them-
United in our love till kingdom come.

I saw the picture  shift and change its guise
With these blue coloured orbs that are my eyes

As winter sun  expands the length of days
And afternoons grow longer with its light
The  little bulbs are  flowering like a prayer

Snowdrops small and fragile ever gave
Their beauty and their presence to our sight
As winter sun  expands the length of days

But, discontented, we demand much more
As if controlling nature is our right
As  little bulbs are  flowering like a prayer,

If we heard them speak, what would we hear?
Complaints about the trees that rage incite
As winter sun  expands the length of days

Do such tender plants  live in great fear
That cats and mice may  snatch a greedy bite
While   the bulbs are  flowering like a prayer?

All of nature eats  with  ripe delight
And  then is eaten by a satellite
As winter sun  expands the length of days
The  little bulbs are  flowering like a prayer

https://www.writermag.com/2016/02/29/14969/

Tell me,dear cat, how do you keep stripes clean
And furthermore those  small bits in between?
How do you keep your whiskers all one length
And jump off walls with just the  ideal  strength?

I hear you have nine wives and so have I
If this is true,indeed it is a lie
Do you not think seven are quite enough
As some days serving two is rather tough?

How do you clean your nails without a brush?
Do lady cats when older ever flush?
Do you like to sleep in heaps like logs
Or wander in the night around our blogs?

Oh,cat, my darling, come and be my mate
For if we wait we may find  we are late

I lost my gender and my sex as well
Flying back from Glasgow on a plane
How I  fell in love,no-one shall tell

I saw   his eyes were shining like fire balls
But  much of him  is hidden, yet remains
I lost the bull, the cow, my  flocks as well

His collar was emblazoned with  cats’ tails
His trousers were  dark green and full of stains
How I  fell in love,no-one can tell

I  told him his two ears were like sea shells
To see him was enough to  cure migraines
I wish to wander and my stick is well

I worship him with love perpetual
To hear him speak is gladness unrestrained
How I   grew so happy, I done well

When we’re loved, we  humans feel no shame
If we’re hated, who shall take the blame?
I  grew so  wise I was a doctor’s  belle
How to  pass in love, I wonder still.

Do not destroy the  joy of  all we  had
The good need  not be lost when lovers part.
If you need space then take it and be glad.

Because I love you, I shall  now be  sad
But there’s no need to  stab me in  the heart
Do not destroy the  joy of  all we  had.

With your loving words I once was clad
Now naked to the winds, I must  depart
If you need space then take it and be glad.

The only constant love is that of God
No Eros is He with his arrowed darts
Do not destroy the  joy of  all we  had.

On these forlorn, faint tracks I have  once trod
In my mind I search for   ragged  charts
If you need space then take it and be glad.

I have my maps and now am fully clad.
With tenderness,farewell my dearest heart.
Do not destroy the  joy of  all we  had.
If you need space then take it and be glad.

I learned the maps of all the  counties here
The contour lines, the rivers   and  the meres
Then I learned  the street maps and  train lines
New golf courses built on old coal mines

I traced all of the A roads with my thumb
So I would  know the way  to kingdom come
I marvelled at  cross -Pennine Motorways
And   thought that our Lord God must be amazed

Then I followed coastline paths and cliffs
I gazed until my eyes became quite stiff.
Finally  the weather maps and clouds
And restaurants where cats are not allowed

At last I knew enough  to start to walk.
If only I had known I am  a hawk.

Made by Katherine from her photos.
Sir Anthony Eden confused deserts and launched a phoney war on the Bedouins.As they lived in  the Negev desert in  Israel  it was somewhat confusing because Israel had just invaded Egypt  via Sinai in collusion with France and Britain
Did they want their just deserts?
The Bedouin took their tents and went awol. Now they live in no man’s land.
The USA refused to help and Britain had to get her troops out.
Score:Nasser 17 UK 1

Meanwhile Prince Philip is in Antarctica wondering where to go next.
Princess Margaret has disappeared [ maybe with the Bedouins?] and Princess Diana has not yet been born.
Everyone is dressed  smartly as jeans have not been invented.

The Queen is lonesome but does not take a  lover as she loves  her husband and doesn’t want to cause a scandal.Still with  Suez,Israel and France and a new PM she is quite busy.And she can watch TV all night.
Britain realises it is no longer the Superpower of the world.
If only people had known that before Brexit 60 years later what a help it might have been
God seems absent but  he’s probably in the jungle with the wild animals.

The broad sands  of old Redcar were all bare
Dark ochre with  a touch of  lighter tones
Easter time we walked  to Saltburn pier

Cold  but happy  with my love right there
Hand in hand, I felt his long thin bones
The broad sands  of old Redcar  town were  bare

They say the perfect love casts out all fear
As if  a person’s found their rightful home
Easter time we wandered to  the pier

Loved and known who has not shed a tear?
Teesmouth is as wide as  winter storm
The broad sands  of old Redcar  town were  bare

As the river  must submit  to sea
So  loving does much more than keep us warm
Joyous days we walked to Saltburn pier

The river rushing downhill like a hare
Made  next a valley  fertile  with green charm
The broadening  river mouth ate sand like air

How  we laughed like children arm in arm
Smiling at the sky and tickling palms
From the  sands  of  Redcar,  rapt we stared
Saw North Sea   and gazed  at Saltburn pier

We think about big issues and  politics
Then are banjaxed by road works,pain in the foot
Or bad neighbours
I bet nobody in the government
sits on those plastic seats at the bus stop
Or on the stairs in Waterstone’s reading a book
Spoiling their red coat.
Nor cries when they fall into their hallway
After just managing to  turn the key in the lock
I even have a chair there now
Specially made for a wailing woman.
That’s my life and how I feel about it
It bit.

Photo EL 2018 copyright

phttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/women-writers-infographic_n_5675866

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/national-poetry-day-five-best-living-poets/

Extract

Alice Oswald

A contemporary nature poet every inch an heir to the Romantics, Oswald’s poems are steeped in landscape and history and show just as careful an ear for light and warmth as for darkness and cold. Dart, her TS Eliot prize-winning book-length poem about the river Dart(2002), is full of visceral mud and water exploring British people’s relationship with our natural world and our past. Another long poem, Memorial, is hugely ambitious in scope. It’s an atmospheric and accomplished sweep of a poem retelling the Iliad through an extended elegy for its war dead, a response to the ancient tradition of oral poetry and another take on poetry for performance.

Read this: Wedding (1996)

“…and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.”

Alice Oswald on how to read Homer

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/the-art-of-connecting-to_b_4310221.html?ir=Green

Extract

Facing “the Other”

I find a real resonance between Ishmael’s diagnosis of our species’ ills and the work of noted French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, specifically his notion of “the Other.” Tautologically, the Other is simply someone else, or, to use a term common to theology, “that which is not us.” Throughout history, otherness has triggered fear and violence and has been used as justification for slavery and imperialism.

But to Levinas, the Other provides a path to transcendence, a way to find meaning, indeed ecstasy. In Totality and Infinity Levinas writes, “Meaning is the face of the Other.” Face-to-face relations with the Other imparts knowledge, creates connection. As Levinas scholar Adriaan Peperzak writes:

“When Levinas meditates on the significance of the face, he does not describe the complex figure that could be portrayed by a picture or painting; rather, he tries to make us ‘experience’ or ‘realize’ what we see, feel, ‘know’ when another, by looking at me, ‘touches’ me: autrui me vise; the other’s visage looks at me, ‘regards’ me.”

From this notion flows a responsibility we all share for the Other.

Strictly speaking, Levinas viewed the face-to-face relationship as the purview of human-to-human interaction, which would leave Ishmael and his ilk in the Other category. But Ishmael is a special case — come on, the guy can communicate with a human, and there’s the whole parable thing. So, as other writers such as Barbara Jane Davy have done before, allow me to pull Levinas’s philosophy into the realm environmen

I broke my tooth on Christmas  pudding sweet
A silver coin had  steamed beside  dried  fruit
And after eating  sausages and beet
The pudding  tempted me from worried doubt

We had a goose and chicken  in a pot
Roasted carrots round potatoes dwelled.
I made the claim I  eat less than my   cat
Yet truly  has  my  super ego swelled

Then the pudding with its holly red
A jug of custard  and a pot of cream
I wished that I  had appetite  inbred
And all  the world was  an erotic dream

The dentist looked  with  care at my  clean teeth
Nothing broken,wonders never cease!

My friend had cystitis 3 times
Which made her face  grow many lines
She was so  struck by the blues
She was  on that night’s News
So fame made her feel  quite sublime.

The most anxious woman in Britain
Was cured by the love of a kitten.
It ran up her leg
And laid a new egg
It  had pinched from the hen  its  dad ‘d bitten

Schizophrenia  is caused by great shame
Humiliation, to give it a name
Oh, folk be not proud
For we are often too loud
As they tremble on the  cusp of our crimes

On the edge of the cliff of despair
Many of us  just hang on there
Throw us a rope
Help us to cope
Life is not  just,  so be fair.

In the  borders of sanity writhe
People with very tough lives
With no wealth or  home
With no brush of comb
They are waiting for us to arrive.