https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/aug/07/mahmoud-darwish-poetry-palestine

Extract

For the last 12 years of his life, Mahmoud Darwish was my neighbour. He was a shy, private man who was rarely ever seen in public events unless he was reading his poetry. I served with him on the board of the literary magazine, Karmil, which he edited. Except for these work meetings, I rarely saw Darwish. Sometimes I would come across him taking a walk around the hills of Ramallah; sometimes at the house of mutual friends, but never in public places, restaurants or cafes.

The opportunity to find out more about my neighbour came when we were both under curfew during the invasion of Ramallah by the Israeli army in 2002. It was then that I got a call from the aptly named Bomb magazine in the US to conduct an interview with Darwish. I readily accepted hoping that through an intimate one-to-one discussion I would get to know my famous neighbour better.

We just had a few hours in the morning when the Israeli army lifted the curfew to allow people to shop. I asked Mahmoud to come to my house for the interview and he agreed. As always, he was immaculately dressed but, like all of us, he looked tense and concerned that we finish on time so that he could make it back to his house. We ended up spending three hours together, where I was able to find out how he was managing to write under these conditions.

He described to me his poem State of Siege, which he wrote in response to the Israeli invasion. It was “a poet’s journal that deals with resisting the occupation through searching for beauty in poetics and beauty in nature. It was a way of resisting military violence through poetry. The victory of the permanent, the everlasting, the eternal, over the siege and the violence.” Hearing him speak, I realised how fortunate I was to have found a kindred soul who was struggling with the same difficult issues I was having in my attempts to write about the invasion.

He was adamant that Palestinians “cannot be defined by our relationship, positive or negative, to Israel. We have our own identity.” In his diaries, A River Dies of Thirst, just out from Saqi, under the entry entitled “If We Want” Darwish writes: “We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying, ‘Our country is loftier and more beautiful.'”

http://forward.com/culture/books/382028/how-poets-and-novelists-are-mourning-john-ashbery/?attribution=articles-article-listing-17-headline

Quote:

“John Ashbery was among the very greatest poets of the postwar era, one of the most imaginative and accurate chroniclers of what he called “the experience of experience.”

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David Lehman, a poet and the editor of The Best American Poetry series, included in his remembrance for The American Scholar a mention of sharing an office with Ashbery in the 1970s. He noted that “It was also fun to observe as things JA said in interviews entered the general discourse. For example, ‘Often people don’t listen to you when you speak to them. It’s only when you talk to yourself that they prick up their ears.’ And: ‘I am aware of the pejorative associations of the word ‘escapist,’ but I insist that we need all the escapism we can get and even that isn’t going to be enough.’”

Reflecting on him in the Times, poet Rae Armantrout reflected on how Ashbery’s down-to-earth humor manifested within his poems. “He is one poet who can somehow be simultaneously elegiac and playful, even goofy,” she wrote. “If you could find the impossible space where Franz Kafka overlapped with the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, John would be sitting there happily, grinning like the Cheshire cat.”

In a piece for The New Yorker, poet and novelist Ben Lerner imagined Ashbery inserting some jokes into his tribute in an august periodical, like Tom Sawyer spying on his pomp and ceremony of his own funeral. “I’m dizzied by my luck at having overlapped with John Ashbery, one of the good things about being born when I was,” Lerner wrote.

Then he channeled Ashbery in paranthetical: “(here he would probably make a joke: ‘Television is pretty good, too,’ or ‘Antibiotics can come in handy’).”

Read more: http://forward.com/culture/books/382028/how-poets-and-novelists-are-mourning-john-ashbery/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/09/08/depression-physical-illness-could-treated-anti-inflammatory/

“Current treatment is largely centred around restoring mood-boosting chemicals in the brain, such as serotonin, but experts now think an overactive immune system triggers inflammation throughout the entire body, sparking feelings of hopelessness, unhappiness and fatigue. “

Whereas the eastern hinterlands of Norfolk, north of King’s Lynn, do have relief features in the form of cliffs at Hunstanton which reappear near Wolferton village within Sandringham Estate. There is a gentle undulating landscape that is predominately farmland but of a more intimate scale than the open landscape around the corner of The Wash towards the west. Trees and woodlands feature much more greatly here, and the church spires are lost much more easily amongst the hills and woods. In part, this area has been nationally designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is a landscape based designation which includes placing statutory duties on relevant bodies to ensure it maintains its character and beauty. Remnant sea banks do not tell the story of the land here, but Norman Keeps make a hint towards past landscapes.

Uplands of the eastern Wash coastal line that feature inland further south within the entity. © Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk

By the Wash, the estuary of the Ouse
And three more rivers adding to the swell
We saw the seals pass murmuring the Blues

Nature opens up if we read clues;
The giant sky, the sound  of a church bell;
By the Wash, the estuary of the Ouse.

A dangerous place, where currents catch the loose,
Old Hunstanton, white sands,cliffs with frills.
We saw the seals pass, shimmying the Blues.

Only painters need to find new excuse
For watercolour blends into the cells
By the Wash, the estuary, the  Great Ouse.

My eye with radiant colour was imbued
Then it passed more deeply to my soul.
We saw the seals pass murmuring the Blues.

Nature can bring calmness,make us whole
And in its fierceness also make  us bold.
By the Wash, the estuary of the Ouse
We  heard the seals pass, stuttering the Blues

I have had a ludicrous day wondering if some wool trousers I bought could be washed despite the label saying not to.Then I learned you should only wear them 3 times before cleaning.I guess giving them away is the easy option.
Or I can

1.Put them on a hanger outside if  there’s a breeze as it will kill bacteria.
2 Steam them to kill germs
3 Buy a tumble dryer and a home cry clean kit
4.Buy some Febreze  to take away an odour
5.Steam them with a hot iron.
6.Brush them with  a hard clothes brush
7.Use them to send Morse code signals and hope the movement shakes   off the smell
8.Accept that we are too clean nowadays.
9.Never mix with other people
10.Give them to the Oxfam shop
11 Wear them as a shoulder wrap
12 Tie them round my head in winter
13.Cut them up and make a bed cover.
14.Let the cat wear them
15 Sell on E bay

OR

Wear six pairs of underpants underneath to be sure no evil female odour  gets on them

The silence seems more friendly than  before
It’s like a melody  felt in my ear
This love has taken from me, my own fear
When silence was an omen with dark door
The flowers and all of nature, I adore
Gone are paranoia and its seers.
The silence seems more friendly than  before
It’s like sweet silent music to my ear
I am drawn to love you more and more.
Hypnotic  like the sun on Windermere
A misty air arising as we peer
The silence is more friendly than  before

I meant to put the cyclamen outside
Their scent’s  so good, I may keep them near me
We walked through yellow gorse near the North Sea
Such perfume like a flowery, prickly bride
Flowers and their  small hearts can never lie
Nor can maples and the holly trees
I meant to put the cyclamen outside
Their scent’s  so good, I may keep them near me
I must be sure I don’t let them get dry
I   promise I will  listen to their plea
No longer can plants stand on our TV
I meant to put the cyclamen outside

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/22/losing-online-friends-same-as-real-life-relationships

“When we get close to people online, we run the same risk as getting close to people in the real world: that we will love them and then lose them. And yet, just like in the real world, we reach out anyway, because that’s the kind of creatures we are: ones who crave emotional connection, be it across cyberspace or right across the table.”

Why did Jesus walk on water?
They had no roads!

Why did Jesus have followers?
Because he had a blog in mind

Why did God  make us?
That’s what we all wonder

Why did Jesus love us?
Because he had not met us!

Did Jesus keep a diary?
Maybe the Red Sea Scrolls.

Did Moses like law and order?
Only on tablets.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/why-i-write

“What we take out of life is the luminous moment, which can be a bare branch against a morning sky so overcast it’s in white face, seen through a window that warps the view because the glass has begun to melt with age. Or it can be the face of a beautiful man seen in passing on a crowded street, because beauty is always passing, and you see it but it doesn’t see you. It’s the promise that beauty is possible and the threat that it’s only momentary: if someone doesn’t write it down it’s gone. The moment vanishes without a trace and then the person who experiences that moment vanishes and then there’s nothing. Except perhaps the poem, which can’t change anything. As Auden wrote, poetry makes nothing happen, which also implies the possibility of making “nothing” an event rather than a mere vacancy. Poetry rescues nothing and no one, but it embodies that helpless, necessary will to rescue, which is a kind of love, my love for the world and the things and people in the world.

In a graduate contemporary poetry class I took some twenty years ago, a fellow student complained that a poem we were reading was “Just trying to immortalize this scene.” I found it an odd objection, since I thought that’s what poems were supposed to do. One is deluded if one believes that one can actually preserve the world in words, but one is just playing games if one doesn’t try.

The world cannot be saved, in any of the several senses of the word. To save the world would be to stop it, to fix it in place and time, to drain it of what makes it world: motion, flux, action. As Yeats wrote in “Easter 1916,” “Minute by minute they change;/ …. The stone’s in the midst of all.” Poet and critic Allen Grossman is not the first to observe that poetry is a deathly activity, removing things from the obliterating stream of meaningless event that is also the embodied vitality of the world and of time’s action in and upon the world, which creates and destroys in the same motion. The stream of time is both life and that which wears life down to nothing. “Poetry is the perpetual evidence, the sadly perpetual evidence, of the incompleteness of the motive which gives rise to it” (Grossman 71).””

Scientists have found humor helps arthritis, instead of prescribing ibuprofen the doctor will tickle you with a feather duster.You’ll have to strip of course and if the nurse cam in it would look strange to have them doctor running around the room saying,”You need another tickle”
So he’ll give you a pack of cards each of which says:
This card entitles the carrier to one tickle today,two tickles tomorrow.Four tickles the day after, and so on.
If the number of tickles doubles each day,how many tickles will you have been entitled to in a week?
In a month?
On the last day of the year would the number of tickles you were prescribed be more than the number of seconds in the day?
You’d better tick off the doctor for not understanding the growth rate.Still if it gives you or her/him a laugh……..your pain will diminish.
Bring back the tickle,I say.It never did me any harm,though I say it myself.
If that fails to heal you,you could ask for Capital Punishment…. you’ll have to move to London for that.

Lord,it seems until recently we were able to move from summer clothes to winter ones without a thought.But now there are article in Newspapers advising us ho to manage it.It’s a sad moment when we have to give up our lovely light summer things into heavy dark winter ones
In general we seem to be offered a good deal of advice which might be insulting as it implies we are very dim

Well,I can offer you a few thought for women

1.Wear some lightweight boots with your summer dress but only if you already have some. or wear  tights
2.Wear more layers of underwear  like petticoats.Especially if you are thin.Like 2 camisoles, 3 pairs of pants and 2 waist slips.It may start a new trend as pyjamas are already worn in Tescos!
3 Put a lightweight coat on.Even indoors!It may be colder inside than out.
4.Wear summer trousers with wool socks and proper shoes.And a jumper.Wool socks are amazing
5 Do you have that wonderful thing,a trench coat with a removable lining? If not  just wear a long thin cardigan under a cotton trench.
Alternatively, get your warm clothes out because it will save you putting on the heating.And trying out some new combinations amuses some of us

I lay in a  sweet bed of flowers ,why?
I had to use a spray to help my heart
There was no wall or seat to use nearby

I have a kind of migraine,not my eye;
The artery  constricts and blood can’t dart
I lay in a  sweet bed of flowers ,was it dry?

Yes,  it seems the blood could not pass by
Although it is informed and has a chart
There was no wall or seat to use nearby

It started on the bus and I went grey
The pain  desired a knife to get real sharp
I lay in a  sweet bed of flowers ,would I die?

I  reflect and wonder if I’ll cross the bay
Where I long to sing with a Jew’s harp
There would be  lots of seats for all nearby

Jewish music  is a fearsome art
Yet Jonah’s whale  sings gently to the carp
I lay in a   neat bed of flowers ,aye.
There was no wall or seat to use nearby

I won’t go on the North Circular again
There are so many cars, it’s mayhem
My husband drove well
But this road is hell
You might as well turn  a sheep  to a hen.

When he was  more young he drove fast
If I wanted to pee, he was pissed
Then he got older
And his prostate was bolder
So he was sorry  he’d hurt me, at last!

I did not bear him any grudge
For his face was a sight much beloved
His voice caused much fear
When the doctor was here
She looked like she’d swallowed a smudge.

I know this may never make sense
But my feelings are always intense
I pray for  some news
But God is amused
So he wants my old man to stay hence.

He looked like a Peer of the Realm
So a barman said,overwhelmed
His grandad was a blacksmith
So he  covered up  his  nuts with
A piece of  old iron at the helm

There was a young lady from Kent
In whom wisdom was somewhat absent
She went to a zoo
She knew what to do
On the tiger’s cage she leant, now she ‘s went

My husband  lived near ICI
The air was so bad  they’d no  sky
They said, kill or cure
Or repent and be pure
So he just goes,”why, will I die?”

My husband was a very strange man
He  once fried an egg  on a pin
I said,I bought that in York
Why not use a fork?
He said,I pinked and so therefore I am.

He was on this diuretic for  a while
He had to pee into a vase or a pail
He had no desire
To eat or perspire
Nor did he break into a wail

I didn’t know he was going to die
He leaned over and smiled with his eye.
He winked at me laughing,
I  had a premonition
Before I could speak, he had sighed

I still think he’ll come back to me
So I put out a cup for his tea.
I see from the edge of my eye
He is there till I turn to espy
Well,at least up above, they don’t pee!

There was a young lady from Ealing
Who wept upside down on the ceiling
When she was asked why
She  said , well I cry
But gravity keeps interfering.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=32944&utm_source=Poetry+Foundation&utm_campaign=abbd14820e-PMAG_SEP_05_2017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ff7136981c-abbd14820e-185545637

• Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

  BY JOHN ASHBERY

Source: Poetry (August 1974)

Browse all issues back to 1912

page?

August 1974

Come live with me and be my helpmeet now
I’ll share my bed  if you can see I’m true
If you let me love you
I’ll darn your old gloves 4 you..
If you come and meet me brow to brow.

Poetry is images in words
And sentences that coil around the heart
Poetry, like love, is  called absurd
Yet  does not pierce our being like a dart.

Our first  language was song and not  bare speech
A melody  can move us and entrance
The  politicians would be other beasts
If singing was  their way to eminence.

In Westminster, the clock would chant, Amen
As silently the day’s work  was undone
In the morning,it would sing, Begin
Penelope would weave her soul again.

The image may strike deep into our soul;
Make live the voice that sings us into whole