The poet Alan Shapiro

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/alan-r-shapiro

 

“Poet-critic J.D. McClatchy observed in a review of Shapiro’s Dead, Alive and Busy(2000), “Mr. Shapiro is a shrewd and sympathetic moralist. He never trivializes his subjects with high-minded flourishes or stylistic gimmicks.” Shapiro’s later collections address the loss of his two siblings to cancer, the aging of his parents, and the strains on a marriage. In describing the domestic details and loss portrayed in Shapiro’s Tantalus in Love (2005), poet Joshua Clover commented, “Such tightly framed tales of domesticity offer a sense of control parallel to Shapiro’s formal facility, reducing and clarifying the poem’s field of action in defense against an abysmal multiplicity of things.”

In his memoirs The Last Happy Occasion (1997), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, and Vigil (1997), Shapiro has written about the death of his sister and the role that poetry has played in his life. Shapiro is also the author of a collection of essays on poetry, In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination: Essays, 1980–1991 (1993).”

How poetry can change lives

 

Sudeleyhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/poetryandplaybookreviews/9020436/How-poetry-can-change-lives.html

 

“So, at the most basic level, poetry is important because it makes us think, it opens us up to wonder and the sometimes astonishing possibilities of language. It is, in its subtle yet powerful way, a discipline for re-engaging with a world we take too much for granted.

When the purveyors of bottom-line thinking call a mountain or a lake a “natural resource”, something to be merely exploited and used up, poetry reminds us that lakes and mountains are more than items on a spreadsheet; when a dictatorship imprisons and tortures its citizens, people write poems because the rhythms of poetry and the way it uses language to celebrate and to honour, rather than to denigrate and abuse, is akin to the rhythms and attentiveness of justice. Central to this attentiveness is the key ingredient of poetry, the metaphor, which Hannah Arendt defined as “the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about”. It’s that power to bring things together, to unify experience as “the music of what happens”, that the best poetry achieves.

Is Stan politically correct?

On Saturday afternoon after luncb , or midday dinner as we said up north before winning places in posh universities
which stole our native language, Mary began to feel very nervous, as she was going to the hospital with Stan on Monday for his next appointment with Dr.Range Rover.
Mary was puzzled.She felt almost happy last week about seeing this kind hearted and gracious well dressed female doctor.However she had been shunted sideways onto a male doctor who was almost totally silent.. so much so that he seemd to absorb Mary’s questions into his sponge of a brain without feeling the need to respond, just like many British husbands do… and it may be aa universal trait in men world wide.
Why do I feel so apprehensive this week? Mary asked her dear black cat Emile.
After all.I was happy to see her or to even have a biopsy last weekend.Why have I changed in my feelings so much in a week?
Does it matter? purred Emile.
Maybe your mood is affected by something else.. like fatigue or housework or the ravages of age… [he was well read]
We don’t always know why we feel a certain way but I feel it’s good if we are willing to accept these negative moods.Even I have my moods when the fish you get me is not the right sort and you don’t give me my cat’s handkerchief neatly ironed.
You are so wise, Emile ,especially as, being a cat, you never have to endure these interviews with consultants in horrible outpatients clinics.So you must have a wonderful empathy for humans
This lady doctor tomorrow is exciting me, cried Emile loudly.May I come in your Grace Kelly handbag.
What’s wrong with my shopping bag?Good grammar, by the way..
Well, she wil be surprised if you take a heavy shopping bag even if it has a Mondrian design on it… she may get suspicious.. even paranoid.If I am in your handbag she will not realise.
Not unless you miaow, mused Mary benignly as she smiled down at him her singular eyes gleaming like the headlamps on a Roller.
I like to know the reason for things, she continued somewhat frantically.I think therefore I might be eventually.I am not yet, for sure.
Does everything have a reason, shouted Stan querulously from the hall…
Well , it does, but it might be beyond human understanding like the Burning Bush.
We can only perceive what our language permits unless we are poets, mystics or artists and even then it’s tough to venture into the unknown , unthought or unknowable..
languages develop in societies and learning your language embeds you in many cultural assumptions without you realising it.You think it’s reality when it is just one perspective.
How true, screeched Annie their neighbour from outside the open patio door.She stopped there in her teal velour tracksuit with matching eyeshadow and trainers.
You seem to be overthinking, she said to Mary.
Are you sickening with the heat?It’s like loving too much, which may be co-dependency.
That’s a very silly pc word, said Stan rudely.We are all dependent but men can hide it until their wives run away with the milkman and they get a shock not knowing how much they’d miss her changing the sheets and buying their underpants and socks.And ironing their hankies
Surely that’s not the main reason a man might miss his wife, cried Mary as she carried in the tea tray with a big white insulated teapot.
Well, you can go on the web and find a virtual sex partner or even buy a dummy woman. but it’s tough to find a devoted woman who knows what you need to function.
Why don’t you buy your own underwear and use tissues?,asked Emile
Well, Emile, I put out the rubbish and wash the heavy Le Creuset pot.I see to the car and bikes.I paint the fence and even bake cakes.
Mary washes the clothes and changes the sheets unless she has an idea to write down.She kindly does all the worrying for both of us and I remain calm like a lighthouse.We complement each other ideally.. and we love each other and a few others as well..without giving away our secrets
That’s one waay of describing it, thought Mary without commenting out loud
Anyway, I am still wondering why I feel nervous about Dr Range Rover….
If you accepted the nervusness it might ease, said Annie wisely in her high voice like a car siren going off at night
Just then the doorbell rang.It was Dave the bisexual transvestite paramedic.
Emile phoned 999 saying Mary was having kittens, he said rapidly.This really must stop; inter species sex is not allowed here like most sexual activity is.
He was speaking metaphorically or is it metonymically, Stan groaned.
Now you are here go and make us a fresh pot of tea and admire my new tea caddy.I bought it for Mary last week in that new shop in town.
At your service, sir,Dave said politely, his flowered dress waving in the breeze.
Do you know anything about Dr Range Rover, Dave? Annie murmured
What is her reputation etc
Some people like her, Dave said, Usually men.she’s not so good with women..
Well it’s too late to change thought Mary so I shall have to willingly endure the agony of meeting her again as I cannot leave Stan on his own with her…
Why who knows what might happen? She might become his mistress as he likes several nowadays. despite nearly being too thi nto live…
God only knows, a little voice said.
Hello,  said Mary.I’ve not heard from you lately.
Well, I am still here looking after you
Thank you, Lord, I love you, Mary shouted joyfully to the surprise of Stan and Annie, not to mention the cat Emile who was unlearned in the religion of his owners.
I thought you were an atheist, Annie said with horror.
I am an atheist and I believe in God.It’s what we call a paradox,Mary cried graciously….
What would Wittgenstein have said?
Whereof one cannot understand,therof one must be patient and tolerant,.
Why does Mary need to understand all her feelings…Stan wondered
When it’s raining she doesn’t spend hours wondering why and similarly if it’s raining in her heart she must take it like parched grass…she thinks too much.
Too much for what? Her sanity perhaps which has at times been doubtful but that has made her very understanding to those who find life hard.Everyone has value, even mad, nervous half blind, supersensitive, vulnerable ,stout arthritic female mathematical geniuses like Mary.She enriches the tapestry of life in a very real sense as someone once said
And so say all of us, she’s a jolly good Fellow of All Proles College,Oxenford..you know how famous  that is!

I saw your soul in your transparent face.

The sparrows sing as if to draw me to
The present moment’s gravity and grace
Our contemplation of life’s nature new

What  other attitude is worthwhile now
That I no longer see your loving face?
The sparrows sing as if to greet me too

Eden is still here, we miss the clues
We miss the  ardent touch,  the lost embrace
Our contemplation of the world renews

On my face, the tears are jeweled dew
In my body, I feel well enclosed
The sparrows sing as if to greet me too

Now the blackbird sings as if on cue
Inside my swollen heart, I feel its grace
Contemplation of  life’s nature new

I saw your soul in your transparent face.
And crisscrossed lines from struggle left their trace
The sparrows sing as if to draw us to
The contemplation of the  wildness true,

Unless there is a space where we can doubt

Fashion plays with symbols unconcealed
The trench coat, Breton sweater, leather boots.
But sometimes “fantasy” is too near ” real”

We cannot play nor allow art to reveal
Unless there is a space where we can doubt
Fashion plays with symbols unconcealed

We must not  just with  demons do a deal
For we also need the angels who’re about.
Nowadays , our “fantasies” blur ” real”

 

The biker jacket’s modish in appeal.
The leather  has its Fascistic  clout
Fashion plays with symbols unconcealed

If we cannot waken, dreams will  fool,
As on our monstrous war horses, we mount
I feel it now : our “fantasies” blur ” real”

 

We never can have everything we want
So we learn that other peoples count
Fashion plays with symbols unconcealed
But fantasising may lay waste to all

l

 

Which of us desires to dress for war?

My polyester trench coat  looks real swell
But inside it, I feel as hot as hell.
And when the storm hit, I found out
It is no raincoat, I have no more doubts.

Which of us desires to dress for war
This is what the trench coat was made for.
British soldiers  on the battlefields
Died in mud locked trenches for what yield?

Do we want to know the Middle East
Was divided by the conquerors at their feast
France and Britain split the old Empire
We see from that the rise of Herr Hitler.

The war to end all wars is on stage yet.
Go hang these trench coats  round the scapegoat’s neck

On war by Ezra Pound

https://ticer-swim.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/war

 

E.P. ODE POUR L’ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE (1920) Ezra Pound

II

The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the “sculpture” of rhyme.

Ezra Pound in 1913
IV
These fought in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case. . .
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,
non “dulce” non “et decor”. . .
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.
V
There died a myriad,
and of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered book

Keats’ letters 2

Photo0335 2

http://ticer-swim.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/john-keats-1795-1821-here-lies-one.html

“When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated ­ not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children: I know not whether I make myself wholly understood: I hope enough so to let you see that no despondence is to be placed on what I said that day.”

The most read post in June

P1000268

There was a young lady from Ealing
Who slept upside down on the ceiling
When she was asked how
She said I don’t know
I stood on my head and I’m reeling

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.

 

There was a young lady from Ealing
Who kept   cats of all kinds on the ceiling
When they asked her if
It was where she’d  like to live
She said, I’m bereft of desire and need healing

Keats’ letters

DSCF0024.JPG

‘Moods of my own Mind’: Keats, melancholy, and mental health

On mindfulness: “The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing — to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”

To George & Georiana Keats 1819

Negative Capability

 

“… – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”

 

Photo0315

“Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!”

To George & Georgiana Keats, May 1819.

Precognition by Margaret Atwood

IMG_3629
Drawing by my sister

https://www.poeticous.com/margaret-atwood/precognition

 

Precognition

Living backwards means only
I must suffer everything twice.
Those picnics were already loss:
with the dragonflies and the clear streams halfway.

What good did it do me to know
how far along you would come with me
and when you would return?
By yourself, to a life you call daily.

You did not consider me a soul
but a landscape, not even one
I recognize as mine, but foreign
and rich in curios:
an egg of blue marble,
a dried pod,
a clay goddess you picked up at a stall
somewhere among the dun and dust-green
hills and the bronze-hot
sun and the odd shadows,

not knowing what would be protection,
or even the need for it then.

I wake in the early dawn and there is the roadway
shattered, and the glass and the blood,
from an intersection that has happened
already, though I can’t say when.
Simply that it will happen.

What could I tell you now that would keep you
safe or warn you?
What good would it do?
Live and be happy.

I would rather cut myself loose
from time, shave off my hair
and stand at a crossroads
with a wooden bowl, throwing
myself on the dubious mercy
of the present, which is innocent
and forgetful and hits the eye bare

and without words and without even love
than do this mourning over.

Why do people dress as if they are going camping?

7886391-1-washedblack
Posted in error

https://www.thecut.com/2017/05/new-fashion-trends-normcore-gorpcore.html?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=Paris+Review+Daily+Roundup+20170626&utm_term=Paris+Review+Daily+Roundup+20170626&utm_content=Paris+Review+Daily+Roundup+20170626

 

“Of course, there may be one other reason these clothes fit our current cultural mood. It’s an overreaching journalistic impulse to attribute every micro-phenomenon to post-election malaise, but the rise of gorpcore — which exalts activities that, in their environmental consciousness, have always been considered hippie-dippie or tree-hugging — is a political act. “It’s crunchy,” says Schlossman. “And in this political climate, these brands we’re talking about stand for good. I’ve not necessarily been someone to vote with his dollar, but it’s the perfect marriage of ideas.” Mother Nature has been how liberals — one famously — have been licking their wounds, and celebrating it is a rebuke of the president’s planned $1.5 billion cutfrom the Interior Department’s budget. To wear Patagonia is to stand in solidarity with the brand’s environmental advocacy. It’s no accident that Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson has worn the same Patagonia vest for nearly a decade. Sporting brands that give voice to your value system is its own form of silent protest.

Ideas in fashion and food and design and travel don’t occur in isolation. You can trace the philosophical throughline — that maybe nature holds some secret to self-improvement or emotional deliverance — in the rise of grain bowls and Moon Dust, the comforting, naturalistic principles of hygge and lagom, and the Ranch. Gorpcore’s not fashion for the 1 in 7 billion, nor is it fashion for the one percent — it’s live-good, do-good, feel-good fashion for the ones who care just a little too much.”

The new dictator is me

please-be-safe-sign

Black people living in Kensington will be painted white to make the rich white people forget black  folk exist and need homes.Poor whites will be given cardboard coats painted like mink.I know there’s  heat wave but they have to compromise.
Meanwhile in Tottenham white people can be painted black free of charge in the garage off Bruce Grove where the witch lives with the dentist.
People  who want to protest can be painted in black and white strips and given zebra to ride on.But not if they have red hair.
People with red hair have to move to Scotland or Northern Ireland.Or they could swim to the Irish Republic and ask for asylum.
[If you do this change your name to O’Smith,McJones   or O’Noah  etc before you leave]
All people who are light beige, yellow, green or light to dark brown can stay where they are.Do not put shoe polish or stage makeup on your face.It rains alot and it will ruin your clothes.Still that’s nothing to do with me,is it?
I’m only your new Dictator as foretold by Plato.Jesus wept!

As wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on graves

9100776_f520

My own photo

As wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves
We can love, despite our grieving hearts
Think not of the time nor of the place

Sorrow , opened up, creates new space.
Despite the pain  that comes in sudden darts
So wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves

A flower seed needs  little but its grace
Will help the heart that sees alas blank charts
Thinks not of time, just where there may be space

So an  Eden may  begin, embraced
Although our feet stand on this ground apart
For wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves

In love, the splits will heal at their own pace
And hatred held, contained will breed no shark
Think  of any time or any place

We look out today at visions stark
Yet  forever sings  the heavenly skylark
As wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves
There is no “right time” no “perfect place”

Saturday,my eye

Saturday , another film of war
Shall I read my manly palm instead?
I lost my glasses reading   tripe  on Blair

I see an actress easy on the eye
I’d like to cuddle up with her in bed
Saturday , another film of war

If I want  to marry I must  pay
To buy a house  before we are quite dead
I lost my glasses reading   tripe ,who cares?

I never read that book about things Grey
I hate to see pornography ill bred
Saturday , another film of war

In my youth we had such fantasies
About the kisses and the  marriage bed
I lost my glasses  seeking ecstasy.

Now I can see any act  or deed
Faster than an Eskimo can read
Saturday , another film of war
I lost my glasses,I need social care

 

 

 

Do you blunderstand?

Photo0555 b
Alice in Sunderland
Malice I understand
Alice in Blunderland
All is in, understand?
Walrus tinned under sand.
Sallies by guns unmanned.
Call us in Thunder Band
Phone is in Alice’s hand
iPhone in political scams
Trellis blows down in wind.
Four letter words gave me wind.
Before litter, we all must be banned.
Bellicose man in grandstand
I wish I could do a handstand.
Where was that Alice he stunned?
Algebra made me a man

God’s not on a map

cornfield_DAP_MAF

I bought a brand new A to Z.
I bought a map of Wales.
I roamed around the whole day long
Despite the snow and gales.
I bought the Ordnance Survey too
of all of the UK
I looked at maps on Amazon
and even on E Bay

 

I studied charts of Greenland
And Africa and France
I talked to expert geographers
Who looked at me askance.

 

Borneo or Burma?
Malaysia or Spain?
Where does Father Brown say..
I must read his books again

 

But giving up, I came back home
And lay down for a nap
Suddenly it came to me!
God’s not on a map.

We must look to find out what it is we lack

There is a serious earthquake in our land
From cyber crime to fire  or wild attacks
The tremor ‘s  greater than we understand

No more may we keep our  thick heads in the sand
We must look to find out what it is we lack
There is a serious earthquake in our land

No fairy queen can wave a magic wand
If the outlook’s really nighttime black
The tremor ‘s  greater than we understand

We assume the government has plans
But now we see they’re vying to be sacked
There is a serious earthquake in our land

The uncertain note of terror’s underlined.
Theresa May pretends she’s voted back
The tremor ‘s  greater than we understand

Where shall we observe the first bleak crack,
For it may lie way off the beaten track?
There is a serious earthquake in our land
The tremor ‘s  greater than we understand

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry and the subconscious

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Poetry and the Subconscious

Extract

Charles Simic: “Whatever the eventual subject of the poem is, it emerges in the process of fumbling around.”

You get the point. Fumbling around. Feeling out. Following the trail. Listening for. To quote Robert Creeley, “I think the presumption that one knows what one is writing is pretty naïve, that it’s all planned and everything goes to some specific point of purpose or even understanding.” In other words, poetry isn’t an act of creation, it’s an act of pursuit. It starts with an itch—an image or a phrase, an idea stuck in your head. A poet feels a gust of wind, throws up a sail, and discovers where it leads.

This is why I prefer to use “subconscious,” rather than unconscious. The term subconscious appeared in Freud’s earlier works, but quickly grow out of favor for its ambiguity, yet I don’t think what we’re talking about can be described without ambiguity. Moreover, I feel like the word “unconscious” is inaccurate—we’re never completely unaware of these deeper thoughts that lurk below the surface of our understanding. We’re not randomly plunging our own depths like a trawler at sea casting its net; we’re fly-fishermen throwing our lines into the eddies where intuition and experience tell us a bass might rise. What many call “inspiration” is simply the soft pang of truth from below, a blip on the sonar telling us where to look.

If anything other than subconscious, it might be the preconscious impulse we’re chasing—not in the psychological sense of memories that we haven’t yet accessed—I mean preconscious in the truly precognitive sense—not necessarily seeing the future, but finding some harbinger of a future mental state. Poets press at certain material because they sense a broader understanding, a surprise, hidden beneath it.C

Serious art that is funny

Albatros_DAP_Intaglio [1024x768]

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/serious-art-thats-funny-humor-poetry

 

Carolyn Forché, someone who has never been accused of being a funny poet, has said “irony, paradox, surrealism . . . might well be both the answer and a restatement of [Theodor] Adorno’s often quoted and difficult contention that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” But what did the philosopher and critic Adorno mean by this fatuous statement? No poetry? Or just a very, very serious and earnest poetry? Because, let’s face it–earnestness is almost always bad art. Good art makes us think; it has more questions than answers. Often, but not always, satire does this too. But earnestness almost never does this–that’s not its job. Earnestness is comforting. It wants to hug us. And we want to be hugged sometimes. But sometimes we want to laugh while poking holes in self-righteousness and oppression, whether it be literal political oppression or oppression of a quieter sort – cultural and aesthetic oppression. Irony and satire are such a good antidote to oppression because oppression needs to be earnest (or at least look earnest) in order to be feared by those it seeks to cow. Oppression cannot work alongside irony because it believes in its own righteousness and a monolithic concept of truth that must be asserted to the oppressed with a straight face. Irony and satire are the tools by which the oppressed get to make fun of the oppressors without the oppressors getting it.

Paranoia

The sun has gone but heavy heat remains
The trees wave feebly  in the subtle breeze
And paranoia over us still reigns

Sullen on a diet of men’s brains
With fire and indignation the world screams
The sun has gone but heavy heat remains

The population by sharp fear restrained
The fires of hell  lit up the world of blame
And paranoia over us still reigns

 

As the leaders blame the poor again
Do they wish to kill the weak in flames?
The sun has gone but heavy heat remains

 

No need to imitate the Nazis and their trains
Austerity, a nightmare not a dream
So paranoia over us still reigns

The poor are weak and seen just as a drain
Those who work  may eat yet danger looms
The sun has gone but heavy heat remains

The victims lie,  just burning ash entombed
The firefighters work daily, search resumed
The sun has gone but heavy heat remains
And paranoia over us still reigns

 

 

 

Authors of the last Millenium

Beatlesrooftop-e1496665574846

Thomas Tardy
Thomas Bawdy
George Hill He Hott
Jane Frosting
Jane Testing
Plane Basting
Sylvia Wrath
Ted Bemused
Ted Used.
Philip Larking
Kingsley Hey-Miss.
William Wordsmith
Samuel Callsmudge
Matthew Mac-Hainault
Matthew O’Hour-gnarled
Simone de Bove-Wire
Jean Paul Martyr.
Princess Iambic- pentameter
Thomas Core.
Thomas Done-Well

Never bite

Do not knock on my back door tonight
Your face in dimness evokes dreams denied.
I only want to see you in daylight

I saw you on the town hall steps that night
Your makeup was too lush, though well applied
Do not  block  up both my ears tonight

I find your  touch gives me a rare delight
I said I hate you but, in truth, I lied
I only want to see you in moonlight

I have heard the signs and welcome any spite
My  goldfish ate my cat and then it died
Do not kick in my front door  when tight

My father told me men must never bite
When they lie in bed with their new bride
I rarely want to see you in daylight

The evidence is here that God has fled
He wanted us to think that he was dead
Do not snog alone with me tonight
I only have to touch you to ignite.