Thought, the vision of the inner eye,
Peers behind the mask of mundane view
A choosing of the best of what comes by
Not the monsters on the Daily News
Thought to me is vision without words;
Needs silent presentation and review.
The words translate the images that surge
Then fall back to the ocean where they grew.
Like coloured visions of the deep seabed
Where fishes reel and dance, where life is new.
What we mean with difficulty’s said
Yet evocation summons it to view.
Let my words evoke my love of you;
And answer me with many kisses new.
An agnostic yet I need my God
For many parts of life cannot be voiced
Without the sacred language, I learned of.
More a place and less a cruel Rod
Willing us to have the rights of choice
An agnostic yet I need my God
Lesser than both lower and above
Neither is he man, nor girl nor boy
In the sacred language I learned of.
Greater than the mountain tops of love
Smaller than the pebbles drowned sea moist
Me, agnostic, yet I need such God!
Wilder than a stallion newly shod
Quieter than that little, still, small voice
In the sacred language I learned, read.
As by our own science, we are hoist
There’s humour in that secret, still embrace
I agnostic, need to walk with God
And use the sacred language I learned of.
Does it matter if I cast my vote
The polling station is a common ground
Will it make a difference what I write?
If our writing’s good it should throw light
On whether politicians are unsound
Or if it matters, should I go to vote
Today the atmosphere in Britain’s not too bright
We are from chaos just one single bound
Will it make a difference what I write?
Ideas like shadow’s on the walls of caves
Need capturing immediately they’re found
Does it matter if I use my vote?
In our country, all our nerves are taut
A little noise will wantonly resound
Will it make a difference what I write?
The politicians strident still abound
The agents of derision lead their hounds
Does it matter if I cast my vote
Will it make a difference that I wrote?
Plato wanted to banish poets from his Republic because they can make lies seem like truth. Shelley thought poets were “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and Auden insisted that “poetry makes nothing happen.” This collection of poems point to the many different kinds of political poems, and the reasons for writing them.
Ushering In: U.S. Inaugural Poems
JFK requested Frost, Clinton invited Angelou and Miller, and Obama asked Alexander: read the four poems that have been read at presidential inaugurations.
The Five-Minute Nonstop. Write for five minutes, first thing in the morning if possible, without stopping to think about what you’re writing. No correcting. Just write.
The Page-Long Sentence. Choose something to describe (a room or a character) and write a page-long sentence about it, not pausing to edit and instead going on whatever tangents present themselves.
The List Maker. Whenever you’re stuck for an idea to pursue, make a list. Brainstorm ideas without assessing them. Turn off your filter. Get lots of ideas, then pick the best one.
Writers who have dulled the inner critic don’t worry about getting the words right. The only thing they worry about is getting the words written.
“The people” have chosen to exit
The Europe to which we belong
My husband is fuming
His identity’s human
We’re not English cos our name is too long
My big head is a gift from the Vikings
The bones in my feet are all Celts
My blue eyes are Irish
My lips are quite smilish
So being European was a help.
The man who delivers the parcels
Puts Mary down as my surname
For even the Londoners
Hear it with wonderment
It’s Danish, I say, try again
Thwaite is a puzzle to many
Like Hebrew names might be to me
For vowels are guessed at
Just how brilliant is that?
You just have to believe it to see
I have got three odd shoes in my bedroom
Though all of them seem to be black
Where have their partners gone?
What on earth have I done?
I must be distidy, what luck!
When I take them off in the late evening
I should peg them together right then
They like to go wandering
Leaving me wondering
If I should really be a stray man.
For women used to do all the housework
Being tidy should be up our street
I f God made a mistake
Why can’t he remake
My brain and recreate me more neat?
1, This is for women- have your hair cut short in May in a decent hairdressers.You will be cooler in the summer and by November it should have grown about 3 inches.Have it trimmed but keep long so your head will feel warmer in winter
Savings: The minimum charge here is £35.A new place opened where it is £52.If you only go 2 or 3 times a year instead of 8 you will save £175.
2.Make a loaf of bread at home.You don’t need a machine.Quality bread here in a proper bakery is £2.50 for a large loaf.Buy dried yeast and strong flour… save maybe £60 a year
3 Become a supporter of your newspaper online.ThGuardianan asks for £5 per month.The daily paper costs £2, more at the weekend.So potentially large savings…
4.When you go out make sure you go to the loo before coming home.For people who work from home or are retired, it means your water bill is much higher.Go into Starbucks and use theirs! Or any other big chain.What a pity Amazon haveno coffee shops!
5 Don’t use toothpaste.It is not essential.Brush well.
6 Combine last year’s autumn clothes in different ways.Just buy a new scarf or knit one.Knitting is quite expensive nowadays though you can buy wool from places online….
7 Have only 2 meals a day.Plus fruit or carrots.
8 Reuse every bit of paper you can.
9 Write letters.The stamps are expensive but phone calls are too.
!0.Borrow/share books.
The harsh truth, however, is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions; in fact, in some cases it might make your choices a little more foolish. Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto has spent the last decade building tests for rationality, and he has found that fair, unbiased decision-making is largely independent of IQ. Consider the “my-side bias” – our tendency to be highly selective in the information we collect so that it reinforces our previous attitudes. The more enlightened approach would be to leave your assumptions at the door as you build your argument – but Stanovich found that smarter people are almost no more likely to do so than people with distinctly average IQs.
People who ace cognitive tests are more likely to see past their own flaws
That’s not all. People who ace standard cognitive tests are in fact slightly more likely to have a “bias blind spot”. That is, they are less able to see their own flaws, even when though they are quite capable of criticising the foibles of others. And they have a greater tendency to fall for the “gambler’s fallacy” – the idea that if a tossed coin turns heads 10 times, it will be more likely to fall tails on the 11th. The fallacy has been the ruination of roulette players planning for a red after a string of blacks, and it can also lead stock investors to sell their shares before they reach peak value – in the belief that their luck has to run out sooner or later.
Members of high IQ society Mensa are not immune to belief in the paranormal (Credit: Thinkstock)
A tendency to rely on gut instincts rather than rational thought might also explain why a surprisingly high number of Mensamembers believe in the paranormal; or why someone with an IQ of 140 is about twice as likely to max out their credit card.
Indeed, Stanovich sees these biases in every strata of society. “There is plenty of dysrationalia – people doing irrational things despite more than adequate intelligence – in our world today,” he says. “The people pushing the anti-vaccination meme on parents and spreading misinformation on websites are generally of more than average intelligence and education.” Clearly, clever people can be dangerously, and foolishly, misguided.
Sometimes I am glad that you are gone
You would be startled to perceive the strange new scene
That a nation educated could choose one
A card to be their presidential meme.
Leonard Cohen hung on with his frail thread
But fell when dreaming of the latest polls
And you, too, are perhaps comforted in death
You don’t have to vote for shipwrecked fools
Yet we who’re strong must live and hope for good.
The virtues of the noblest minds aid ours.
We must cultivate the tender buds.
And not assume ourselves to be mere cowards.
For one good person, God would not destroy
The Sodom we’ve created in false joy.
If they ordered children to be good
We thought it must be possible and right
So virtue must by will power be oruled
We assumed that adults understood
Our feelings and our nature and our sight
When they ordered children to be good
Our selves were growing like the flowers in bud
Tender, wild and vulnerable to blight
When virtue was by will power harshly oruled
Yet school is a mere prison in the flood
Of growth towards the sun and its great light
Yet they ordered children to be good
By watching other people and their moods
We noticed how obsessively they cried
That virtue can by will power be ruled
They frightened us by saying when we died
God would judge us harshly in his Pride
If they believed that fear would make us good
Virtue must by terror cruel be ruled
I wanted to be good and thought that meant
I need only wish to make it so:
I was what I desired in my intent
I suffered from strange tortures throughout Lent
I dropped a boiling kettle on my toe
I wanted to be good and thought it meant
On my birthday I was quite absent
Any joy, I thought saints did not show
I was what I desired in pure intent
I thought God lived like Moses in a tent
I feared Hell and saw the rosy glow
I wanted to be good yet turmoil rent
As I grew, neurosis in me sent
The fires of hell to cause my overflow
I was by men desired though not fluent
I realised too late how I don’t know
Who I am nor whither I should go.
I wanted to be good and thought that meant
I was what I desired with such intent
This life is just a film where we play parts
If you take a trip or bad luck hits
Choose the courage of the human heart
Love’s the root of all the good that starts
But power will hide in love until it’s hot
This life might be a film where we play parts
Love and power are sometimes both inert
Yet from real love, the human is begot
With what damage to the human heart?
In error then we falsely do deport
The souls whose ignorance is a woeful threat
This life might be a film where we learn art
In Stalin’s time, the people wrote reports,
Were spies in networks friendship made unthought
With death to courage and the human heart
Of the love of mothers, we forget
Before we spoke she was the heart we met
This life is a great play with many parts
To enhance the courage of our shuddering hearts
” Mohamed Enani, who translates the Bard into Arabic, actually admitted to the latter. In an interview with the “Al-Ahram Weekly he said, “it was not until … for five months I was practically incarcerated in a room in a French hospital — that I gave the matter serious consideration.”
You’ll understand Enani’s challenge if you’ve watched a performance of the storm sequence in Shakespeare’s King Lear, wherein you can hear the violence of the words—a violence which complements and heightens the meaning. To come close to effectively translating that effect, you would not only have to carry over meaning, replete with all the wordplay and metaphor, but also replicate the aural impact in the new language. No doubt a lot of this gets lost.”
You can’t have your iCake and eat it too.
Nokia,with tea, bread and butter
Nokia was a maiden fair who roamed with daisies in her hair
She looked through the Windows phone at me.
I had nothing on at all except a tampon.Well, it’s not exactly on, you know what I mean? It’s in there… you know.Why did we not learn the names?
I want a you-Phone.Or a superego-Phone
Sam will sung,Sam shall sing.Sam had singed.Sam had sang.Sam had sung.That sounds wrung.English, ain’t it splung?
Remember blind people can’t see you when you are glued to your phone…. so they will beat you.I have a white stick already… but I ain’t blind! Just blind drunk…. on air.
Hair on a G string… that means they still have their hair down below?
Preludes and fugues.I though fugues were when you forget who you are.Like married love.Or maybe adultery but I can’t commit that now.I’ll have to get married again
Dead and never committed effrontery!
He shall feed his flock?Did they have mattresses 2,000 years ago? Is flock alive? No wonder some folk can’t sleep.
It’s funny, you can lie on the sofa and drowse all day but go to bed and worry.Am I asleep? Will I go to sleep? When? Shall I get up and watch TV? No,we haven’t got one yet!How unfair is that? Will I stop thinking?Why not? OMG I wish it was tomorrow.It is tomorrow OMG I’ve ben awake all night.I should be a cab driver and do late shifts.Except I can’t drive.
Now a Conservative MP has been suspended for using the phrase “The nigger in the woodpile”.
As a child I heard people say when going shopping, Don’t let them dew you.I didn’t realise they meant “Jew.” I don’t know if adults did but I am ashamed to say it was used very frequently.As a woman, I know all who are not white men are considered defective is some way and even men don’t have it easy if they are poor, shy or nervous.
As a teenager my brothers refused to let me read the Sunday paper as ” women shouldn’t need to read about politics”, they refuse to let me put a record on the hi fi as” I would probably damage it”.I had to iron their clothes while I was doing exams at school.Of course an adult could have intervened but they didn’t and it does have a bad effect.I was 25 before I could afford a gramophone and play my own 2 records!
While we did homework in the front room one of my brothers played Wagner all the time very loud.I’ve hated it ever since.I was glad to be able to go to college where I was treated well by everybody.It was wonderful.
And it’s not as bad as what some go through but we don’t reflect enough.
The tent of shelter refers to the tents used by the Jewish people wandering for 40 years in the desert after leaving Egypt.This is now remembered at Sukkot,The Feast of Tabernacles.It is in the autumn so also links to the ingathering of crops
Watching Plato shining torches into blackness,
Wandering through the galleries,
Sepia paintings of pines,
Pain came to the emptiness once my heart,
I sat picturing screaming Popes and babies.
Eastward, looking for fresh instruction,
My mind unpleated, like a pair of curtains
~Hung out to dry in equinoxal gales.
The bells of Satan’s cell phone
Rang again, startling in this silence.
“You had your smear done yet?”
“It’s me, hinny”
“I’m having coffee here in “Costa’s.”
Then I awoke, a man appeared.
How apposite,I need you, Ludwig!
I can’t fly my kite.
In the Science Museum, the mirror cracked
And from it stars flew out,
Adorning cars and bicycles and buses.
The building gently fell into its own reflection.
People flew out like gasping rockets,
Illuminating the blankness,
Calling “Is today the day?.”
After the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death by suicide people are still puzzling about her.Was she schizophrenic? Was her husband an hypnotically attractive demon who betrayed her.And her mother… was she too close and burdensome or too neurotic or too far away?
Well, I have an idea.. that it may be some of us work too hard, push ourselves too hard; value ourselves only if we achieve perfection in all spheres of our lives.And this can make us profoundly exhausted…. and then we get into a downward spiral.Sylvia Plath had 3 pregnancies in 3 years.~Her mother was far away in the USA and she had no family here.
She and her husband worked very hard at their writing and she produced many poems even during those childbearing years.And they also moved home several times.
We sometimes live as if we have no body; we get ideas of what we would like to achieve and e.g. get up at 4 am to write for 3 hours before the children waken up.And such women are unlikely to serve ready meals for dinner.It will be a fancy dish from Fanny Farmer or The Joy of Cookery.Then they decorate their own homes and entertain many visitors at the weekend.
To be blunt, in my view, the fatigue is the main problem and forgetting we need time for ourselves.You cannot usually have it all unless you can afford to employ servants of some kind.And they need supervising
We need to care for our physical well-being and defer that work that will make our name or the money we need to build a big extension on our house.
It’s quite ironical here that most people have fantastic large kitchens but buy ready meals and even MASHED POTATO in the supermarket.Better to have a small kitchen and less debt so less worry on your mind.And cooking, if not too ambitious can be a form of meditation if we do it slowly
You are probably not going mad… you need more rest and to learn to relax.I am not a doctor so these are just my personal views.If Sylvia Plath had not pushed herself too hard mentally she might be here today.And if you don’t have some time for relating to Nature and other people what’s the point of life?
For me the point of being alive is to live and be aware that we live; to savour the days ,the friends.the flowers ,the food.To perceive and to dream as well as to work in our jobs or in our homes.Otherwise we are like automatons
When love is offered loudly like a threat
When tact is missing from the offered words
It fills my heart with terror and with dread
We all need boundaries on our estate
But to a stranger, they look bare and blurred
Then love is offered loudly like a threat
Can we imagine, share a stranger’s bed
When all our fears of overwhelm are stirred?
That fills my heart with terror and with dread
Slow and caring is the way to meet
When humour and true dignity are shared
Then love is offered kindly to our sweet
Elusive is the path to the unsaid
A trip into the briars may leave us scared
The journey makes us stronger, eases dread
An unknown force within my soul has stirred
And to that mystery I am allured
When love is offered slowly, it’s no threat
It takes away my terror and my dread
Say, Father, give me your blessing.It is 40 years since my last confession
Well, it wasn’t your last, was it?
That’s rude
What do you want?
I’d like obsoletion for all my sins
Absolution?
No, I want all my sins to become obsolete.
What are they?
Adultery
Bad temper
Raising my voice
Sleeping with onion tarts
Telling the truth in Parliament
Well, the last is obsolete.But I can’t make acts obsolete.It happens when people lose interest in them
Well they are obsolete for me
Do you repent?
No, I feel deprived.
Repent or I can’t carry on
I didn’t know you did carry on!
Well,you do now!
“Garber: Do you think, given all that, we’ll see a continued rise in the public’s general interest in poetry—as people keep trying to make sense of the world’s turbulence?
Share: I do, except that I think all times are turbulent—it’s just that they’re turbulent in different ways, and for different people. Poets are always swirling around in the maelstrom, whenever there is one, and in a way we know there always is one. Take everything going on, for just one example, in Syria. Poets have been writing about that forever. And our problems in this country, long before they entered the debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton—the poets were writing about what goes on in Flint, and in Detroit. A poem we published a couple of years ago, Jamaal May’s “There Are Birds Here,” was saying that what the media show us is often the bad side of something, but poets are here to say, “There’s beauty here, there’s life here, there’s brightness, redemption, love for the landscape here—there’s potential here.”
Garber: Are there any other particular poems that seem especially relevant to you right now?
Share: The work of Danez Smith has been shared a lot in the past couple of days. And the work of Ocean Vuong. And of Javier Zamora: He’s writing about how his family, basically, traveled through a desert to get to this country, to get work, and to become citizens, and to become documented. But are there so many more poets. And they are all coming from many kinds of backgrounds, and in a way, they are the fabric of the country. And they’re being heard from. And that’s in part because they’re speaking to what’s going on right now—and they’re good at it.
Garber: It strikes me how fluid, in all this, the lines are between “politics” and “everything else.” We have a habit, in our discussions and in our thinking, of segmenting politics off from the other realities of the world: Politics here, Art there. Politics here, Culture there. This isn’t a question specifically about poetry, but I’m curious: Do you think those categories offer a valid way of approaching things? Or do you think, given the world’s messiness, that it might be better to talk about political life in more holistic terms?
Share: I think we should. It’s interesting that you have that feeling, as so many people do, because it actually applies to poetry. Because if we think about politics as its own realm, and assume that it doesn’t affect us—we’ll soon find out that we are mistaken. And poetry is like that, too. Obviously, for people who don’t spend a lot of time reading poetry, they might think of it as something that exists in a kind of corner of experience—and that’s okay; it’s natural. But the reality is that poetry isn’t “somewhere else.” That’s kind of why it exists. And poetry and politics are inevitable, yet strange, bedfellows. Because they’re both trying to address this basic human question: Why are things the way they are? Why aren’t they different? Why aren’t they better?
People who are poets are often very political; they’re often activists. We talk about political poetry as if it’s a kind of effusion about something going on, but the truth is, the heritage of poetry includes politicians. I mean, Yeats was a politician. Our greatest poets, really, have been active in what goes on in the world. And great or unknown, poets are participating in what makes a difference in the world. If you perceive that politics is a way of making a difference, and you engage in it, then you can get something done. And the same can be said of poetry.
I think that’s why the Obama administration had Inaugural poets. It was very important for Obama to put a poet in front of millions of people. Because politics is one way for him to express his worldview, but he was aware that poetry is a worldview in a different kind of language, one that gets through to people in places that politics can’t always reach. Sometimes we feel alienated from our politicians, and that becomes itself a political issue. And poetry works through and around that—poetry gets to us without our even realizing it’s happening. But it also feels immediate. And that’s, I think, why it means something to people.
Garber: I’ve been thinking a lot, in the past months, about the basic idea of empathy, and the way it factors into (and also, sometimes, has explicitly failed to factor into) the American political system. I figure I know the broad answer to this, but: What role do you think poetry can play when it comes to encouraging empathy?
Share: What poetry does is it puts us in touch with people who are different from ourselves—and it does so in a way that isn’t violent. It’s a way of listening. When you’re reading a poem, you’re listening to what someone else is thinking and feeling and saying. It’s not a debate, where somebody punches back at it. You have to think before you speak. You have to think before you write. You have to think while you’re reading. And poetry keeps the intensity and the passion of a point of view, but in a forum where people aren’t hurting each other. It says, “Here’s what it’s like from my point of view.” All you have to do is listen to the poet.
And, in that, you don’t have to be anything other than what you are. The poem is a catalyst where you’re bringing two different kinds of people together. And at its best, when it works, there’s a kind of spark, and everyone comes away illuminated by what the spark has ignited.
If you’d like to write a villanelle
Try simple rhyming verse to start you off
You need two lines that rhyme and scan as well.
I like Dylan Thomas Celtic’ soul
Do not go gentle, go out very rough
If you’d like to write a villanelle
What’s the topic, whose the need to tell?
Penetrating words like bullets rush
You need good lines that rhyme and scan as well.
In your writing, do the words compel?
You need to read, then haunt a burning bush
If you’d like to write a villanelle
Reading feeds you words that shape and mould
While songs fine music time will never crush
You need good lines that rhyme and scan as well.
Who can see the fire in god’s real love?
Who decode the angels’ wings, now crushed.
If you’d like to write a villanelle
You need two lines that rhyme and scan as well.
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