https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/30/how-poetry-can-light-up-our-darker-moments-mental-illness

Sorry I can’t answer the phone

I thought I was dead
I speak an unknown language.I can’t even understand it myself
I hate talking too much
I am in a bad place.The  Bank……..
My bed has no legs on it and I am  making some

The cat is dying
The dog has eaten my handbag
My  late husband is angry with his mother, who is dead
I went out and  have not got back yet
I am sure I am not here
I am  synthetic
I love God  but not  the Pope
I want my husband to  be resurrected
Why not write  me a letter?
No, I am not a Government aide
I am not alive till 11 am
Leave your phone  number and I’ll work out your horoscope
I am dumm and can’t spill
If you are deaf please  hang up now
If not, play Suzanne to my answering machine

How to pack a suitcase when  you never wear a suit
However did we pack ,when we had no kindle books?
How to go on holiday on the perfect route

I sometimes wore a sandal,  my  sister liked a boot
We were not so worried  by  perfection and our looks
Nor how to pack a suitcase when  we never wore a suit

If you play a cello then never take a flute
Don’t take any sandwiches unless you have a cook
How to go on  field trips  when the  your  anger  is acute

If you feel  the stress of life,  why not become mute?
If you have a caravan, is it overlooked?
How to pack a  suitcase when  you never sawed a suit

If you only take one bag,, you  seem to me astute
Don’t take any rifles it’s illegal  to shoot rooks
How to go on holiday on the perfect route.

Make  sure you wear your wellingtons if you walk through a brook
Take some stolen credit cards  if you are a crook
How to  wear a suitcase when  you never wear a suit
How to   grow on holiday on the perfect route

This is well worth reading

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69080/the-politics-of-poetry

Extract

It’s also how democratic politics is sometimes thought to work, at least when we’re thinking of “politics” in its more abstract incarnations. Here, for instance, is how Franklin D. Roosevelt viewed the job to which he devoted much of his life:

The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.

To say that you’re personally necessary in order for “certain historic ideas in the life of the nation . . . to be clarified” is only a few hyperventilating breaths short of calling yourself “a mirror of the gigantic shadow which futurity casts upon the present.” The link again is the concept of totalizing vision. And this concept—dramatic, romantic, wildly generalizing—is one that politics and poetry don’t share to the same degree with activities like neuroscience (which focuses on particulars) or television writing (which tends to emphasize craft). Indeed, the only other areas of American life that have similar inclinations are probably religion and philosophy. Religion is no longer attractive for many poets for reasons that are historical and beyond the scope of this essay. Philosophizing remains a popular endeavor in the poetry world, but only so long as it’s a poetic sort of philosophizing (Nietszche, Heidegger) and not complicated, logic-y stuff that involves formulations like ◊∃xφ→∃x◊φ. Since Anglo-American philosophy has been dominated by the latter sort of thinking for decades, it’s no surprise most poets don’t go in for it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/06/adam-phillips-interview-attention-seeking

Extract

You suggest that attention might be a form of madness or addiction. Why?
There’s a part of us that wants to attack our own development and the way we do this is by actively narrowing our mind. And that is what a phobia or an addiction is: it’s the overorganising of attention, because it solves a lot of problems in a certain sense.

So the reason we might want to narrow our attention is for fear of the unknown consequences of its promiscuity: we really don’t know where it will take us. And that’s exciting and exhilarating, but it’s also troubling.

Attention-seekers generally have a bad reputation, but you say that “attention-seeking is one of the best things we can do”. Why?
Because we need attention and we don’t usually know what it is in ourselves that we want attending to, but we know we want something from other people. And this is why celebrity culture is interesting. Because it appears that there’s a whole swath of people who know what they want: it could be called fame, it could be called wealth. But I think it’s much more enigmatic than it looks. Because the risk is you get a huge amount of attention and no engagement.

when words are not enough
to give our feelings form
music is the language
which many find gives calm

when words sound too clumsy
a look may be enough
a glance of compassion
may pull us from the Slough

when words don’t come easy
when music fails to charm
then come to me and tell me;
I’ll enclose you in my arms

gestures, touch and glances
are a language in themselves
words are not enough for us
We need  to see as well.

• 

  The Pilchards.

  23,Sweetnames Avenue

  Knittingham

  Near Nottingham.

  England

  email: doubledutch @lovemail.com

  Dear Jane

  Hope you are keeping well in this unusually cold spring weather.

  Stan has had flu.It made him so bad tempered and waspish

  that I took up the Duraglit polish and got him to polish all the brass,

  except the front door knob, as that doesn’t come off.

  Mind you,it made the bedroom smell odd… a mistake,perhaps…

  so I sprinkled lavender oil around.

  He seems to get thinner and I seem to get fatter.

  So our average weight remains constant.

  What a relief.I’d like to be weighed as a married woman.

  Can you believe this..

  I’ve got chilblains! It’s those dratted blood vessels of mine.

  Still,I polished some old plum colored leather and wear them in the house.

  We seem to be doing polishing frequently here.. boots,furniture,apples.

  How is your new book “Nonsense:A.N.Whitehead and Lewis Carroll” coming on?

  Hope it’s progressing….to a nonsensical ending.

  I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out in April

  [from Polar bears publishers]

  It’s called,”An unpolished performance.”

  My fourth book on Wittgenstein’s cats is almost finished.

  And the publishers can’t wait for the photographs…I’ll get a friend to do those for me!!

  It gives me a change from all that polishing.

  I’ve begun to talk to myself out loud…. in the street.

  Just seeing if I can still do my old Lancashire accent.

  I suppose it might worry people but no one has said anything as yet.They may be

  afraid.

  “That which is unsaid can,nevertheless,still be heard.

  Stan is still involved romantically with Anne, our next door neighbor.

  I can’t blame him as chilblains and Wittgenstein not very romantic.

  When I think of how we used to be,it makes me smile and feel sadness too.

  I wonder if I can find someone new for a romance,myself… someone with

  Asperger’s syndrome   possibly…as I’ve just been diagnosed.It’s quite common in

  mathematicians.It may be an advantage in concentrating a lot

  I need a boyfriend with weak eyes as my clothes are all full of moth holes

  and I’m damned if I’m going to buy new ones.

  I can’t see well enough to darn but I’ve sewn the holes up neatly thus

  giving a strange pleated effect to my clothes.

  On my merino wool knitted trousers, one hole was right on the ass.

  It looks now as if I’ve been shot in the rear…

  but I can’t see it.So it does not exist.

  Sometimes in the past I would iron on those motifs like

  butterflies…but

  I think it would look odd having a butterfly just there…. or indeed

  anything else like wild rose.

  I could make a little sign saying

  “Keep clear,from my rear.This is a hole where a moth scored a goal.”

  Still,not many people are going to look there now I hope….

  I seem to have stopped knitting but am still drawing.

  Meantime I’ve just ironed some of my winter clothes as it’s still chilly..

  and am planning to iron all my pink and blue knickers now

  as I believe it kills any germs left when you wash at 30 deg.I got those colours in

  case I should change sex or is it gender?

  I wonder if I should iron the sheets?

  Could I do it while they are on the bed?

  I don’t wash them much as it wears them out and me too.

  I am going to take up baking again because Stan is getting so thin.

  I fancy a Russian cheesecake as it had a lot of protein in it.

  I have a genuine Russian cookbook and also am waiting for a delivery of a

  Jewish cookery book as I have lost mine..no it fell down onto my head last week

  .God only knows where that came from.

  but I believe there were good cheesecakes as Jewish cooking has much in

  common with Russian,perhaps because once many Jews lived in Russia.I just

  made friends with one here….he is charming and like me he hates golf.

  I have got almost all the Penguin cookery books ever printed but mislaid a

  few.

  In fact it’s quite hard to get into the kitchen

  with all these books on the shelves.And a little food.

  I was comforted to read that the parent’s of John Burra,the artist,

  had books piled every where in their large house….

  and he was very untidy too.

  So all I need is talent and practice and I’ll be an artist.

  After all,anyone can be untidy but not everyone will practice their Art.

  I’d like to practice the arts of love.

  They say you should love your neighbor as yourself,

  but personally I prefer the neighbor or even the milkman to myself.

  Meanwhile I’m happy with Emile our cat

  and my 500 photos of Wittgenstein.

  I shall make Stan a lemon sponge pudding.

  That is the love he wants…Food.

  “If music be the food of love
  I’ll cohabit with a pure white dove.
  And while he coos and sings for me.
  I’ll try not to :fall out of the tree,
  Get stung by a bee,
  Have psychotherapy
  Make more enemies,
  Let my thought free,
  Hurt my knee.
  Let moths frighten me.

  Well,time for some tea.

  Now Jane, please write to me soon.

  I love to see your so strangely beautiful handwriting

  and to hear about Whitehead and Cambridge and all the weird dons.

  I hope it’s not too damp and cold there near that river.

  Keep warm and make a note of any intriguing happenings to relate to me.

  And anything beautiful you can see or hear.I hope Edward is writing

  regularly..where is he doing his research now… did you say Stanford?

  Maybe you should install Skype..then again,perhaps not as you would have to

  wash your hair too much… and comb it too…perhaps we could wear wigs.

  Do write soon,

  Love always,Hate now and then

  Mary

•  

https://www.economist.com/prospero/2011/01/12/on-haiku-and-the-invisible-hand

EXTRACT:

Even Adam Smith  might have approved. In exploring the links between poetry and economics, Mr Ziliak’s essay (a spin-off from a longer academic paper published in 2009) recalls Richard Holmes’s book, “The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science”. Holmes, a biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, sought to dispel the notion that romanticism and science always inhabited separate spheres. Instead, they shared “a common ideal of intense, even reckless, personal commitment to discovery”. Whether exploring a cranny of the mind or mapping the skies, the romantic poets and scientists were united in their ideas, and the feelings and language that framed them.

Mr Ziliak posits that a greater relationship between poetry and economics should exist, that it is “economists who can learn the most from poets about precision and efficiency, about objectivity and maximization.” This may be a stretch, but Mr Ziliak is more convincing with his larger point: that feelings and language play too big a part in our lives to not be used when considering the world around us—even something so dismal as economics.

Belloc’s Humane Defense of Personhood and Property

I saw a doctor.My temperature was 100 deg F
Hotter than  the hot day here
I only had to wait 5 minutes.
Now I am “resting”