Robert Bly probably liked Earnest Hemingway...

 ...nevertheless - 

The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog by Robert Bly

I never intended to have this life, believe me - 

It just happened. You know how dogs turn up

At a farm, and they wag but can't explain.

It's good if you can accept your life - you'll notice

Your face has become deranged trying to adjust

To it. Your face thought your life would look

Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.

That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.

Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.

Sparrows in winter, if you've ever held one, all feathers,

Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.

You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you,

But you can't quite get back to the winter sparrow.

Your life is a dog. He's been hungry for miles,

Doesn't particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.

...................................................

As I said elsewhere, it's not about you, it's about me.

National Poetry Month #31

 So, the last night by the Moonlit Campfire. Fittingly, there is the remaining "blue moon" from a couple of nights ago. The night is cool, but not cold. Frogs are loud all along the creek.

And here are the last poems. They're about poetry - well, about writing poetry, or not. Of course, the final one is the most significant for me.

But to begin, a paragraph of prose, taken from a short story, but infinitely appropriate for National Poetry Month, and every other month. You may know Henry Lawson's story "The Drover's Wife". Since then there have been a number of pieces written from the woman's point of view. This is from one of the more recent ones.

from The Drover's Wife by Barbara Jefferis

No-one knows what's coming after you die, or if anything's coming at all. Best you can do is stuff your head with words and poems and things to think about, just in case that's all you're going to have to keep you happy for ever and ever.

.................................................

I'm typing this "addendum" on the morning of 1st September, the morning after I typed all the other sections. You see, I'd forgotten to bring a certain book with me and I couldn't drive the ninety minutes to get it. I was in a tizz.

Technology and basic human nature to the rescue. I posted a plea for assistance on the amazing Chat10Looks3 Facebook community page. (If you don't know about it, you really should take a long, hard look at yourself.)

In a very short time, one of the more well-known members of that community had contacted her friend - THE ACTUAL POET! - who sent her a copy of the poem I needed. She sent it on to me.

Such kindness that makes me a bit sad that I'm surprised at such kindness.

So...

To The Children of Poets by Fiona Wright

To the children of poets,

on behalf of all poets,

I apologise.

I apologise for your obscure literary names

you'll spend a lifetime spelling out,

        or at the very least explaining,

        and helping people to pronounce.

I apologise for your vocabulary.

Your classmates won't find it endearing

or quaint.

I apologise for the unwanted help

        you'll get on your English homework,

and for the years of books as birthday presents,

when all you really want

is an X-Box,

        and how you might not have a TV

        or a microwave

        or be allowed to eat McDonalds.

I'm sorry for the evenings when you will have toast for dinner

        because your parents have been writing,

and the weeks where you'll eat nothing but black plums

        because they read about them somewhere

        and they sounded delicious.

I apologise for the nights

        their friends will wake you

with bad puns and arguments over a colon,

        and for the blue cheese left to fester

        on the table overnight.

I apologise for boring launches

        (even if you manage to snatch free wine),

and for the strange skin conditions

        you'll pick up in second-hand bookshops.

I'm sorry for the ugly boots

and textured jumpers

that will greet you at the school gates

        and for the endless cups of tea you'll be

so good at making.

To the children of poets,

I apologise

        for the imaginations you'll inherit,

        and hope you grow to be a dentist,

or a banker,

or a plumber

and will be able to afford good nursing homes.

................................................. 

A poem from an Australian poet, well known and respected in the poetry community. It is a poem that often surfaces, by different poets and in different forms, whenever poets collect poems.

The Poet Asks for Forgiveness by Fay Zwicky

Dead to the world I have failed you

Forgive me, traveller.

Thirsty, I was no fountain

Hungry, I was not bread

Tired, I was no pillow

Forgive my unwritten poems:

the many I have frozen with irony

the many I have trampled with anger

the many I have rejected in self-defence

the many I have ignored in fear

unaware, blind or fearful

I ignored them.

They clamoured everywhere

those unwritten poems.

They sought me out day and night

and I turned them away.

Forgive me the colours

they might have worn

Forgive me their eclipsed faces

They dared not venture from

the unwritten lines.

Under each inert hour of my silence

died a poem, unheeded.

.................................................

Dorothy Porter, on writing poetry. She has a way with words - simple, and to the point.

from Is it not the thing? by Dorothy Porter

...

Every poet wants to write the poem

that penetrates

with the ice-cold shock

of the Devil's prick.

The poem that will fuck you awake

or kill you.

.................................................

And now, dear Moonlit Campfire visitors, the last poem in this month of poetic offerings I've gently placed at your collective feet. You may have to work at this one. When you read it aloud, you must use your thickest, strongest Scottish accent. Ideally, perhaps, you should seek out a Scot to read it to you. It is a prayer, of course, so read it accordingly.

"...I'd have lived, once, like the gods, and once is enough." Ah me.

After reading this last poem prayer, we'll all raise our chipped cups of red wine and toast the health of each other and the written word. Bless!

Tae the Fates by Kathleen Jamie

(after Hölderlin)

Gie me, ye Po'ers, jist ane simmer mair

an ane maumie autumn,

that ma hairt, ripe wi sweet sang,

's no sae swier for tae dee. A sowl

denied in life its heevinly richt

wil waunner Orcus disjaiskit;

but gin ah could mak whit's halie

an maist dear tae me - ane perfect poem

I'll welcome the cauld, the quate mirk!

For though I maun lee' ma lyre

an gang doon wanting sang, Ah'd hae lived,

aince, like the gods; and aince is eneuch.

.................................................

OK, here's a rough translation and, like many translations, it loses some of the original's power. (Forgive me, Kathleen Jamie.)

Give me, oh Powers, just one summer more

and one mild autumn,

that my heart, ripe with sweet song,

will not be so reluctant to die. A soul

denied in life its heavenly right

will wander the Underworld dejected;

but if I could make what's holy

and most dear to me - one perfect poem

I'll welcome the cold, the silent darkness!

For though I must leave my lyre

and descend without song, I'd have lived,

once, like the gods, and once is enough.

.................................................

Keep on keeping on, and make the most of your day!

National Poetry Month #30

 ...I didn't realise until l just now, that choosing poetry for the penultimate night might be a difficult task. The next-to-last of anything its significant, after all. 

So much to say; so much for poetry to reflect. So many poems, so little time/space/inclination of Campfire visitors to persevere. Am I underestimating you? I really don't think so. After all, you probably have work tomorrow. At least skim read the titles.

Nevertheless, after another dose of Larkin's realism, I'll try to be positive.

Sad Steps by Philip Larkin

Groping back to bed after a piss

I part thick curtains, and am startled by   

The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie   

Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.   

There’s something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow   

Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart   

(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate—   

Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!

O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.

The hardness and the brightness and the plain   

Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain   

Of being young; that it can’t come again,   

But is for others undiminished somewhere.

...........................................................

Loft By Michael Dransfield

(for Hilary)

Sometime in the night I stir, rain

has been falling and darker than

evening is the sound of overspilling

water from the roof. two pairs of

jeans move slightly with a breeze

from the window. traffic. in the button

hole of my coat the yellow of a daisy.

thunder. lightning is a bruise of pale

havoc around my eye's coast, and my arm, or

hers, draws in under a blanket from

the first morning of winter.

...........................................................

Everything Is Going To Be All Right by Derek Mahon

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The lines flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

...........................................................

The day ahead by Thomas a Kempis

Who can tell what a day might bring?

Therefore, gracious God,

cause me to live every day

as if it were to be my last,

for I know not but that it may be such.

Cause me to live now

as I shall wish I had done

when I come to die.

...........................................................

from Darklight by Adrienne Rich

II

The heat leaves the walls at last

and the breeze comes

or seems to come, off water

or off the half-finished moon

her silver roughened by a dark blue rag

this is the ancient hour

between light and dark, work and rest

earthly tracks and star-trails

the last willed act of the day

and the night's first dream

If you could have this hour

for the last hour of your life.

...........................................................

I am learning to abandon the world by Linda Pastan

I am learning to abandon the world

before it can abandon me.

Already I have given up the moon

and snow, closing  my shades

against the claims of white.

And the world has taken

my father, my friends.

I have given up melodic lines of hills,

moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.

And every night I give my body up

limb by limb, working upwards

across bone, towards the heart.

But morning comes with small

reprieves of coffee and birdsong.

A tree outside the window

which was simply shadow moments ago

takes back its branches twig

by leafy twig.

And as I take my body back

the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap

as if to make amends.

...........................................................

I could go on, but it's time you began searching out poems yourselves. A few of you have passed some on to me. I have already ordered Jack Gilbert's Collected Poems, though it costs a fortune! it's all worth it.

Until tomorrow.

National Poetry Month #29

 Bruce Dawe. HSC. Footy or war. Sometimes Gladness.

Forget all that.

Read this:

Happiness is the art of being broken by Bruce Dawe

Happiness is the art of being broken
With least sound. The old, whom circumstance
Has ground smooth as green bottle-glass

On the sea's furious grindstone, very often

Practise it to perfection. (For them, death

Is the one definitive shrug

In an infinite series, all prior gestures

Take relevance from this, as much express

Sorrow for stiff canary or cold son.)

Always the first fragmentation

Stirs us to fear... Beyond that point

We learn where we belong, in what uncaring

Complex depths we roll, lashed by light,

Tumbling in anemone-dazzled fathoms

Seek innocence in surrender,

Senility an ironic act of charity

Easing the agony of disparateness until

That day when, all identity lost, we serve

As curios for children roaming the beaches,

Makeshift monocles through which they view

The same green transitory world we also knew.

National Poetry Month #28

 Occasionally, very rarely, there is a night so dark, so cold, so deep, that to stand in isolation and silence seems like a transformation - human into immortal; care-worn beast into dragon-breath.  It doesn't last, of course, but for those brief moments...!

As rare as triple rainbows, yet I've experienced several such nights - alone in powerful solitude, and again with Esteemed Spouse. Just as any photo of spectacular landscape will always fail to do it justice, so this poem doesn't convey the full power of the experience. But it comes close...

Once in the 40s by William Stafford

We were alone one night on a long

road in Montana. This was in winter, a big

night, far to the stars. We had hitched,

my wife and I, and left our ride at

a crossing to go on. Tired and cold - but

brave - we trudged along. This, we said,

was our life, watched over, allowed to go

where we wanted. We said we'd come back some time

when we got rich. We'd leave the others  and find

a night like this, whatever we had to give,

and no matter how far, to be so happy again.

.............................................

Thinking about all that reminded me of the extensive travels I've done, alone and with Esteemed Spouse, and the soul-deep impact some places have.

Anna Akhmatova is a poet you might like to research. Just a quick read through Google or Wikipedia entries will be enough to begin with. Her life was one of terrible hardship, and yet, this...

On the Road by Anna Akhmatova
(translated by Jane Kenyon)

Though this land is not my own
I will never forget it,
 or the waters of its ocean,
fresh and delicately icy.

Sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,

and the air drunk, like wine.

Late sun lays bare

the rosy limbs of the pine trees.

And the sun goes down in waves of ether

in such a way that I can't tell

if the day is ending, or the world,

or if the secret of secrets is within me again.

..................................................

I've been at those sunsets. The end of the day or the world? And that secret of secrets... the first truth. Wow. Just wow.

National Poetry Month #27

 I've finished the Holmesian competition questions - except the final, 10-pointer. It's a deciphering question and I've gazed at it, full-on and slant, until the words glowed. Nothing. It's like those "old" 3D eye-puzzles, which everyone seemed to be able to see, except me. I'm resigned that such analyticality is beyond me. (Yet, I did the Maths question without any problems!)

Anyway, having finished, as best I can, one project, my mind turned to National Poetry Month and the question of inspiration. Just where do poets get their ideas to write a poem?

Think about the most unlikely topic to write a poem about - and someone will have written a poem about it. A lobster being weighed? Done. (Paul Muldoon, Something Else) A retired pig farmer? Done. (Ni Chuilleanáin, Swineherd) A tree with coins stuck in its bark? Done. (Kathleen Jamie, Wishing Tree) A pondering rock? Done...

Rock by Jane Hirshfield

What appears to be stubbornness,

refusal, or interruption,

is to it a simple privacy. It broods

its one thought like a quail her clutch of eggs.

Mosses and lichens

listen outside the locked door.

Stars turn the length of one winter, then the next.

Rocks fill their own shadows without hesitation,

and do not question silence,

however long.

Nor are they discomforted by cold, by rain, by heat.

The work of a rock is to ponder whatever is:

an act that looks singly like prayer,

but is not prayer.

As for this boulder,

its meditations are slow but complete.

Someday, its thinking worn out, it will be 

carried away by an ant.

A Mystrium camillae,

perhaps, caught in some equally diligent,

equally single pursuit of a thought of her own.

........................................

How clever, that ending!

And for those who need to know, Mystrium camillae is an Indo-Australian ant that has the fastest recorded animal movement - it can snap its jaws at up to 320kph. Fast enough to catch a once-was-rock-now-grain-of-dirt.

National Poetry Month #26

 My old Boss (ie, my Boss in days gone by and my Boss who is an old chap - much older than me) used to tease me about my inclination for Philip Larkin. This Boss, who would choose Lowell over many others! 

Anyway, he's in London and far from the Campfire, so I have no hesitation in indulging this particular proclivity. I'll limit myself to one poem though, chosen in response to a poem by Jack Gilbert, left by a person who joined us by the Campfire last night, beneath that terribly evocative Moon; a person I know slightly but deeply - yes, that's possible - whose too infrequent presence almost outweighs the intense, black-hole mass of her absence.

I knew Gilbert's name, but that's all, so I looked him up and read of him and read some of his poems. That's what you're supposed to do during National Poetry Month (and other times). He got into uni because of a clerical error! Most of the other stories about him are false. He published sparsely and was defiantly unfashionable. In the first three of his poems I read tonight, I found these gems:

• "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" (- something my old French teacher often said and which I never understood, though most others in the class did.)

• "Icarus was not failing as he fell but just coming to the end of his triumph."

• "Teach me mortality, frighten me/into the present. Help me to find/the heft of these days. That the nights/will be full enough and my heart feral."

The heft of these days; my heart feral. Wow.

Now, buggrit, I must decide on Gilbert's Collected Poems, or the new Kaweco fountain pen. (Both extortionately but not quite prohibitively expensive!)

But, to Larkin. I love the rhyme here, and the way you have to emphasise certain words and pause before others, in order to have the poem read true and make sense...

XXV by Philip Larkin

Morning has spread again

Through every street,

And we are strange again;

For should we meet

How can I tell you that

Last night you came

Unbidden, in a dream?

And how forget

That we had worn down love good-humouredly,

Talking in fits and starts

As friends, as they will be

Who have let passion die within their hearts.

Now, watching the red east expand,

I wonder love can have already set

In dreams, when we've not met

More times than I can count on one hand.

Poetry Month #25

 Goodness me. Twenty-five sessions around the Campfire. Tonight seems colder than most previous nights here. Perhaps it's the spaces where there should be people; absence carries a surprising weight.

The half-moon tonight reminds me of an antique saki bowl I drank from once on my first trip to Japan.

Two poems, caught at separate times perhaps years apart; each randomly transcribed into a notebook, find themselves next to each other. And I turn to them, by chance, tonight. 

Slowly, Here in Essaouira by Matt Hetherington

a peace is descending upon me

the noisy children don't bother me so much

and things get done, one at a time

even the harsh northern wind

which dries the lips and makes the shutters shudder - 

even that passes over my discontent

instead of through and into my organs

on the second floor, in room no. 4

I eat my bread and honey and oranges

and drink the water and sleep

as much as my memories allow me

then I rise into the day

when finally I am ready

and the world gives a little and I give back

.............................................

(Essaouira is a port city in Morocco; a bit of a hippie hangout in the 1960s.)

.............................................

Missed Time by Ha Jin

My notebook has remained blank for months

thanks to the light that you shower

around me. I have no use

for my pen, which lies

languorously without grief.

Nothing is better than to live

a storyless life that needs

no writing for meaning - 

when I am gone, let others say

they lost a happy man,

though no-one can tell how happy I was.

.............................................

(Ah, the glistening wonder of ambiguity!)

.............................................

National Poetry Month #24

Plus ça change...

Reflection on the nature of contests
 
The blood of a million years seeps down to this —
one dark red fact, clot-thick,
congealed in time while evolution glaciers on:            
            a victory must be won.
 
Base beasts have followed the fittest,                      
the strongest, most virile,
along survival’s timeless path.                        
Though we take pride in our refinement,             
A Beast still stalks within,                
feeding on fears, deflated egos              
and the emotional entrails of those            
whose “weakness” proves there is no second prize.             
It prowls, red eyes glowing,             
waiting for the chance to prove again —              
be it in great conflict or mere race —                  
that, for all our cities, our politics, our religions,              
we’ve not come so very far from wildness.              
 
While ever our generations of walking upright                 
takes us into battle,                    
and our clever opposable thumb                
serves to form a fist;                   
while each comparison, contention and contest                   
must have winners and losers,                        
the Beast lurks,                                      
conflict breeds,                                   
and humankind never shall be so.        

...................................................                       

National Poetry Month #22

 I've only just met this poem and, though I don't understand it all yet, I find it provides something positive. Perhaps it's just my present state, or the storm outside, or worrying about the chickens.

From what I can work out, the "fugal" of the title refers to "fugue", which is a musical term, but also has a psychological meaning, along the lines of losing one's sense of identity. Titles of poems are always important. In this poem, the gaps and the lack of punctuation is important too.

Fugal state by Melinda Smith
 
Always returning upon the paths of time,
we are neither ahead nor behind; late is early, near is far
Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster
 
You are always beginning again —
it is only a matter of degree:
you walk into a room, forgetting
 
the book you came looking for, walk out
with a dirty glass     you lay down
another ring     without realising
 
like a tree     it doesn’t hurt a bit
You are always beginning again:
you walk into the forest, forgetting,
 
there is a storm, there is a morning,
you walk out, trailing possibilities
from your hands     they drip, like
 
snapped branches     There was a storm,
there was a morning     There was
a name, once, a specific and grievous
 
history, a mobile number, a particular sequence
of houses, an immunity to certain indignities,
there was more and more forgetting
 
Entering a room full of bonsai, you breathe
moss, and cypress, and the clean, bald smell
of long-dry river-stones     The air hums
 
with age, with what the trees have known
and have forgotten     and will know again
they are always beginning
 
you breathe, you dream     you have been
reborn     as a small ceramic deer
You sit under the momiji, the scarlet
 
baby’s hands of the Japanese maple,
in a forest small enough
to fit on a dinner plate
and begin
again

National Poetry Month #21

Like many, I keep a journal. Irregularly, though I've given it a good crack over the last few years.

Why? Well..., um..., I..., No idea, really. It serves no useful purpose, but I enjoy my time with it.

When I'm gone its several volumes will find their way to the recycling bin. 

Meanwhile, Esteemed Spouse, friends who've stayed over, other friends who've checked my bookshelves, strangers in cafés - might wonder what on earth I'm scribbling.

William Stafford had the same idea. It's as if he read my journals! Nothing new under the sun. And check his sensory images!

What's in my journal? by William Stafford

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean

things, fish-hooks, barbs in your hand.

But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.

Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous

discards. Space for knick-knacks, and for

Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.

Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected

anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind

that makes a genius. Chasms in character.

Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above

a new grave. Pages you know exist

but you can't find. Someone's terribly

inevitable life story, maybe mine.

National Poetry Month #20

I remember sitting on my adolescent bed, listening to Whispering Chris Winter on ABC radio. Next to me was a cassette recorder and occasionally, as soon as Winter finished introducing a track, I'd press the Record button. Often there was an annoying overlap of announcer and song. As the song finished, I'd quickly press STOP, hoping that Whispering Chris would not leap in with a back-announcement before the final chord had faded. 

Plus ça change, as they say. Now, out walking and listening to poetry podcasts, I'll sometimes be struck by a poem, often read by its poet. Back home, if I can't track down the poem on the internet, I'd play-stop-play-stop-play the podcast, transcribing as best I can the poem.

With prose, that's not so difficult. With formal, rhyming verse, it's possible. Free verse, though, presents some difficulty. Here are a couple of poems that grabbed me, then I tried to grab them back, before I lost them altogether. They "feel" right, but who knows? I may have stuffed up the transcription utterly. Still, I love the poems.

 
Out Walking by Adam Zagajewski
 
Sometimes, out walking on a country road
or in a quiet green forest,
you hear scraps of voices.
Perhaps they’re calling you.
You don’t want to believe them.
You walk faster
but they catch up quickly,
like tamed animals.
You don’t want to believe them.
Then later, on a busy city street,
you’re sorry you didn’t listen
and you try to summon up the syllables,
the sounds
and the intervals between them.
But it’s too late now,
and you’ll never know
who was singing which song
and where it was drawing you.
 
(Transcribed from a podcast,

so the scansion is a mere guess.)

................................................................

Now, the power of music to bring memories to life.

Here, at least, I had the rhythm and rhyme as a guide.

The alliteration and sounds of the words, especially in the last 

five or six lines, make it impossible to read the poem quickly.

This is important, because reading it slowly gives immense 

power to the words and images.

Gypsy Tune by Gwen Harwood

Szabolcska once in Paris wept aloud

in public in the Grand

Café when a gypsy fiddler played

a folk song from his native land.

When memory seems a field of graves

and youth impossibly remote,

some sobbing air will breathe to life,

pulse beat by pulse beat, note by note,

landscapes and lovers, fields and friends,

long lost, long dead. Their features glow

with light so absolute you'd think

they could not join the shades below.

(Szabolcska was a Hungarian poet.

This was transcribed from a podcast,

so the line breaks, etc are mere guesses.)

................................................................

OK, for this who like the idea of rebellion against editors who would not publish female authors, here is Harwood's sonnet. (Read down the first letter in each line - it's an acrostic.)

Abelard to Eloisa

Far above memory’s landscape let the fears
unlatched from thundering valleys of your mind
carry their lightning. Stare the sun up. Find
kinetic heat to scorch your mist of tears.

All that vision limned by night appears
loose in dismembering air: think yourself blind.
Louder than death in headlines the unkind
elements hawk my passion: stop your ears.

Deny me now. Be Doubting Thomas. Thrust
into my side the finger of your grief.
Tell me I am an apparition frayed
out of the tattered winding-sheet of lust.
Recall no ghost of love. Let no belief
summon me, fleshed and bleeding, from the shade.