Veer - I totally agree about tge 'call' of some poetry - I wouldn't worry about the word 'defectives' though as it was written over 70 years ago when such words were part of our common language now no longer, thank heavens, politically correct.
What first drew me to the poem? I found it by accident some years after I had been worked at a (yes) 'Mental Hospital' as they were once called and I was struck by many incongruous and confounding sights, sounds, and thoughts.
This poem immediately recalls the day I watched a 'gang' of mentally ill men having been working in the fields walking back, under supervision to their ward - one of them was strikingly beautiful, a young golden skinned, flaxen haired, god of a man and he was carrying a bunch of daffodils - this vision remains with me. (There are also many other instances such as this that I remember).
It seemed to me when I read the poem that Blackburn had put into words my own thoughts and I love the language he uses to express that never to be answered question - Why does God allow such things?
"Lord of the Images, whose love
The eyelid and the rose
Takes for a metaphor..."
And What exquisite metaphors for perfect creation - and a reminder that..."God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them".
I also often hear in my mind's ear the hearbreaking sound of a woman echoing down those endless corridors in the hospital as she sang - at least once a day -

"Thou, whose almighty word
chaos and darkness heard,
and took their flight;
hear us, we humbly pray,
and, where the Gospel day
sheds not its glorious ray,
let there be light!

Now then, the social occasion 'the barbecue' - Oh dear I confess that while I love to gossip and small talk sometimes it's wonderful when there's an opportunity to speak of things other than 'cabbages and kings' and fortunately there was a great mixture of people - so I was indulging myself with an old friend a philospher and a theologian.

There is another wonderful poem by a welsh poet (I forget her name) who was visiting a psychiatric hospital talking about poetry to the patients when a man, previously silent and agape stood up and recited Wordsworth's 'Daffodils'

(By the wayI follow no religion but I still know my Bible!)

I found the Rilke epitaph on the Internet and have decided the mention of the rose and the eyelid is pure coincidence, not a reference to the German poet, although I bet Blackburn was familiar with the works of Rilke.

As I read this poem again and again, it seemed to "grow" on me and I find it beautiful. Thanks for sharing it, Jankin. Sometimes pc gets in the way....

So glad you find 'something worth while' here.

Here is the poem I mentioned in my last post

Miracle On St David's Day by Gillian Clarke

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude
The Daffodils by William Wordsworth

An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed
with daffodils. The sun treads the path
among cedars and enormous oaks.
It might be a country house, guests strolling,
the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.

I am reading poetry to the insane.
An old woman, interrupting, offers
as many buckets of coal as I need.
A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens
entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic

on a good day, they tell me later.
In a cage of first March sun, a woman
sits not listening, not seeing, not feeling.
In her neat clothes, the woman is absent.
A big mild man is tenderly led

to his chair. He has never spoken.
His labourer's hands on his knees, he rocks
gently to the rhythm of the poems.
I read to their presences, absences,
to the big, dumb, labouring man as he rocks.

He is suddenly standing, silently,
huge and mild but I feel afraid. Like slow
movement of spring water or the first bird
of the year in the breaking darkness,
the labourer's voice recites "The Daffodils".

The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients
seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
Outside the daffodils are still as wax,
a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
unspoken, their creams and yellows still.

Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,
the class recited poetry by rote.
Since the dumbness of misery fell
he has remembered there was a music
of speech, and that he once had something to say.

When he's done, before the applause, we observe
the flowers silence. A thrush sings,
and the daffodils are flame.

I like that one much better, Jan. The first one I didn't care for because it seemed rather shallow, and also I don't think God has much to do with physical and mental frailties. So it never really touched me, which I suppose is what good poetry is all about. (I have also met attractive people who have turnips for souls and I think a poem about that would be more meaningful to me. ;-) )

Now the second poem could be a home for people who are mentally ill. It could also be a home for the aged, where a good many of us might be ending up. Here I go on another one of my tangents: Last night was a beautiful warm evening and we were driving home with the car windows down to enjoy the breeze and the sea air. The radio was playing Deep Purple, Rolling Stones etc and my husband and I were singing along. It suddenly occurred to me that the Old Folks Home administrators might be playing this kind of music for my generation when we are sitting in chairs, staring vacantly, with blankets in our laps. Toes tapping, of course. I wouldn't be able to recite "The Daffodils" but I could probably manage "Satisfaction." This is a somewhat disturbing image....

it becomes a matter of personal experience or some other kind of affinity whether some little bell rings or not.Anyanka, that must be the answer for the resonance of most poetry. I can't really say, most of the time, why I like a certain poem; so it must be the "little bells," as you say. Truth is, I like individual poems but I don't love poetry as a whole -- not like some folk, including ones who post in this forum.

Of the two poems above, I'm likely to remember the first one because of the images it evokes and the peculiarity of phrases such as "What is the meaning to be found/In such dark vowels as these?" The second poem, I'm afraid, is too bland for me to remember past Tuesday.

No one answered my question about Thomas Blackburn, so I'm still wondering if he's well known. He must not be, because the online anthologizers don't have a lot of his stuff, but then he must not be too obscure for Jan to meet up with a fellow recognizer at a barbecue, of all places. But I suspect Jan knows poems and poets that most of us -- well, I anyway -- wouldn't even know where to excavate for.

Janalyn, I have to laugh at your "disturbing image" because it looms true. I think about me, as a rocking-chair sitter, suddenly declaiming: Sitting on a park bench
Eying little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
--"Aqualung," Ian AndersonOr, worse still because I would probably punctuate with my walking cane:
FAT black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
--"The Congo," Vachel Lindsay

Jankin, as always, you get me thinking; and I think that's a good thing. :-)

Poems - - the perfect poem for me is one that sounds and resonates like a beautifully toned bell - everything is right.
But not every poem that means something to me has this quality - many, like Blackburn's say something for me, something I have experienced but dont have the language skills to express.
I hated poetry at school; when I read for my degree we had to read the Romantics - BUT I suffered them -just to get the degree. IT WAS ONLY WHEN I STARTED TO TEACH POETRY THAT I BEGAN TO FEEL ITS POWER AND BECAUSE IT WAS ESSEENTIAL FOR ME TO KNOW, UNDERSTAND AND PASS ON LEARNING I HAD NO ALTERNATIVE BUT TO REALLY GET TO KNOW POETRY - BY THEN I WAS IN MY 50s! I realised that there was nothing frightening or intellectual or artyfarty about poetry and that poems are a superb medium for capturing moments in time, meditating on beauty, life, death, impartiing knowedge and wisdom. And it's not just serious poetry - poetry can be cynical, witty, just fun ?limericks!

Blackburn wrote so little poetry that was published and Freidag I wish I knew more about him.

Hospital for Defectives is a rhetorical question directed at the 'Creator' and Blackburn has used it, I think, to express his doubts. His acute observations - 'turnip head' used to be a child's insult to someone stupid. The 'dark vowels' the shape of mouths slack-jawed lacking the ability to express language; the 'unleavened bread' lacking the yeast of fulfilment, and the cruelty with which these men were treated 'under the warder's blows'. Cruelties that continue today in many of our 'homes' institutions for the mentally frail and elderly.
I particularly love Blackburn's choice of the eyelid - an exquisite crafted mechanism which guards our sight against harm, permits us to sleep,to retreat into our own private places; and the 'rose' a flower perfect in every way - visually perfect, offering us - free of charge - lovely perfumes etc etc. Both perect examples of creation - a sounding board for the crux of the poem - why?
Clarke's poem is the perfect companion as the old man 'remembered there was a music of speech and that once he had something to say'.

Hugh Arthur Clough is another lesser known poet although his 'Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth' was Churchill's favourite - but I quite like the cynicism of this poem always topical -

The Latest Decalogue

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipp'd, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt...

Jankin, I have also always felt that poems are a superb medium for capturing moments in time. The Clough above doesn't ring my bell though; my eyes just keep gliding off the words without taking in any atmosphere or meaning!

Frieda, same as you I like certain poems a lot, but wouldn't say that I like poetry in general. My 16 year old daughter recently introduced me to Gillian Clarke's poems, which are part of the GCSE curriculum; I found them very atmospheric and powerful. Below is a link to one we discussed a lot. - I also like the one posted above.

I could not find my favourite (not remembering titles didn't help), one that deals with the intense relationship between mother and daughter - a subject always close to my heart!

Here is a link that might be useful: Cold Knap Lake

Jankin, I'm in my mid-fifties, so maybe any day now poetry will take for me too. :-)

I'm not afraid of poetry, and I don't think it's only for intellectuals. Sometimes I do think it's "artyfarty," however. It can be a "superb medium" -- that I don't doubt. My problem with poetry is my frustration that for every, say, one hundred poems I read, I might get "bells" on one. Prose gives me a much better return.

Now, it's been pointed out to me that if I read more poetry, I will find more that I like. Well, yeah! But then I'm not willing to wade through all the stuff I don't like, and particularly not on my own. That's why I like threads such as this one, because I will read poems that people post in this format even when I don't care for the poems themselves. The difference? -- I think it's that I'm fascinated with people's likes and dislikes and how those are expressed vicariously through the poems they choose to post. And the various reactions to the three poems you've included, Jankin, illustrate that interest so well.

I appreciate your explanation of why you like "Hospital for Defectives," as well as the meaning of the poem itself. I'm quite pleased that I seemed to have "got" most of that one! I also understand, I think, why Vee doesn't like it.

Hmm, "The Last Decalogue" reminds me of Horn Book and McGuffey Reader-type couplets -- a lot of them based on the Bible -- but perverted with cynicism, of course. The cynicism I don't mind -- I even agree with much of it -- but the form is too singsongy for me.

Anyanka, if you hadn't keyed that "Cold Knap Lake" is about the intensity of a mother-daughter relationship, I would have focused on the ironic tragedy of the poor child: drowning, being revived by the narrator's mother, and then being carried home only to be "thrashed for almost drowning," though those actions are indicated by the last eight lines to be only part of the story.

Anyanka, I came back to get the link for "Cold Knap Lake" so I could read it to my sister-in-law. I then noticed that you were referring to a different poem about a mother-daughter relationship. But by misreading your post, I got the idea that the relationship between mother and daughter, here too, applies (though I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't misread). My SIL and I had a very good discussion about "Cold Knap Lake" because there were all kinds of bells going off for both of us -- she and I both questioned how the narrator, as a young child, viewed her mother's actions, if she really witnessed it, both at the time and later as an adult. My guess is that she (the narrator) wasn't actually there. What do you think?

Frieda, that is exactly what Kyra and I wondered! She does begin a stanza with the line 'was I there?', and speaks of the lake closing over all things lost. She may have been told the story and imagines herself in the scene; or she may have witnessed a drowning and added in her mother's actions in her memories - or the whole thing is a metaphor.

The line 'my mother gave a stranger's child her breath' made Kyra feel that the narrator was jealous, which is why she had to insert herself into the story; I wondered if it was about the birth of an older sibling, possibly stillborn...

The best poetry for me is again similar to favourite paintings - it contains many different things, not just one correct explanation. The reason I like Clarke's work is that she can be read at face value, but below the surface there are all these suggestions of other stories.

By the way, as you & I have a similar attitude to poetry in general, I would recommend the book 'Poems on the Underground'. Nothing political about it ;-) - London Underground used to put poems up among the advertising in the carriages. I found an above average number of bell-ringers in those trains (and the book which collected the poems) than usual.

I do have Gillian Clarke's GCSE Ppoetry Book somewhere on the shelves - I know the poem you mean Anyanka.
Clearing up any misunderstandings - the poems I posted - one has a particular resonance for me - which I explained - the other is there only to prove that a minor poet can write a line or tweo that stays with us today
"Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive" - I th0ough it might be recognised.
However only the first poem would make it into in my top 100 list.
I like poetry that tells us something about ourselves - for instance Browning's
Love In A Life - how much prose would one have to read to get such a sense of sinister obsession
I

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself!Ânot the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couchÂs perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,Â
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

II

Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortuneÂ
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,Âwho cares?
But Âtis twilight, you see,Âwith such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

or Atwood's comment on an abusive relationship

"You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye"

or cummings' observation of politico speak

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water"

My idea though of a perfect poem is George Herbert's 'Love'.

Freidag - leave a copy of Mary Oliver's poetry by your bed and just have a read occasionally - I'd be surprised if you were not seduced.

Ah, yes, "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
guilty of dust and sin....." ---This is one of my favorites, too, Jankin.

I think poetry, like any other art form, must interface with our own chronological age and life experiences to be meaningful so thus our personal likes and dislikes (stating the obvious).

Frieda, I want to second Jankin's suggestions for Mary Oliver's poems (she wins hands down as my favorite contemporary poet). Donald Hall had written some gems, also....

Hi, all,

Desperately short of time - I've only just come across this fascinating thread after having been away on various journeys and about to undertake another - but sad one.

Gillian Clarke is not only a wonderful poet (and Welsh), but she's a marvellous teacher too. If you want to know more about her and her poetry, here's her e-mail - no mystery or secrecy - easy to find if you know how. Lots of info there for you and all A-level students. Gillian's door is always open to everyone.

gillianclarke.questions@btinternet.com

Dido

Dido, I think there is a slight blip on that GC site.

I think you will find the one below is better.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gillian Clarke

Vee,

Thanks for that. You're right. The website you cite is absolutely marvellous and will give GC reading her own poetry, amongst other goodies. For A-level students it's a must - she takes you through allsorts of questions which enlighten you about her work.

For what it's worth, I didn't much care for the original poem that was put up here (sorry). I don't think the metaphor has been properly and effectively thought through so that it leaves you feeling as if you've got a frayed end, somehow, that doesn't go anywhere.

Dido

Many thanks Dido, and Vee - I'm sure I still have some of GC's poems that are not available online - it's taking me longer and longer to make sense of my disordered 'library' but I will post as soon as possible.
I'm so glad Welsh Poets have arrived in the discussion
(Dido, and everyone, I dont think there is any need to apologise if you dont like a poem - I like curries but they give a lot of people indigestion - no need for 'sorries' - as I said that poem has a special personal resonance for me)
Anyway onwards and upwards to RS Thomas. I'm looking forward to reading Byron Roger's recent biography.
His poems are uncompromising often bleak observations on landscape, seascape, and most of all the lives of the agricultural labourers as he experienced it first hand - he as a 'reluctant' clergyman. Other poems also explore more universal issues - childhood, marriage, religious experience. As a Welshman he hated the English but I love him anyway. And to move onto another topic Im posting his poem 'Children's Song' - here he captures that 'other world of children so strange and alien and inaccessible to adults - something that Blake's 'Nurse's Song' ( from Experience not Innocence) and de la Mare's 'The Little Green Orchard' attempt.

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

Thanks for the info about GC, Dido & Vee. I shall share that with Kyra when she's back tomorrow. Fortunately she does not lose interest in a subject just because the exam is done (she's not doing English for A-levels), unlike most of her mates who seem to see learning just as a tool for getting grades...

Jankin, I like that poem for itself, but also because it gives me the opportunity to put up my all-time favourite by e e cummins which also has childhood at its centre. Or does it?

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

Jankin,

I know and love RS's stuff (we just call him 'RS' here in Wales). Strange man: yes, he 'hated the English' as you say, but he seems to have a very ambivalent attitude to his own countrymen as well - seems to fee that recent generations have 'sold out'. And though a priest, his attitude to his god comes over as very odd...... But Oh how wonderful are things like the poem about that very odd family of Pughs, which starts 'There was Hugh Pugh. He was no good. they put him in the field to dock swedes'

The following, I'm reading at a funeral on Friday. Isn't it beautiful?

THE BRIGHT FIELD by R.S.Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

END

ON THE FARM by RS Thomas

There was Dai Puw. He was no good.
They put him in the fields to dock swedes,
And took the knife from him, when he came home
At late evening with a grin
Like the slash of a knife on his face.

There was Llew Puw, and he was no good.
Every evening after the ploughing
With the big tractor he would sit in his chair,
And stare into the tangled fire garden,
Opening his slow lips like a snail.

There was Huw Puw, too. What shall I say?
I have heard him whistling in the hedges
On and on, as though winter
Would never again leave those fields,
And all the trees were deformed.

And lastly there was the girl:
Beauty under some spell of the beast.
Her pale face was the lantern
By which they read iin life's dark book
The shrill sentence: God is love.

That last poem seems to me to connect us right back to the one that started this thread!

Dido I remember posting 'The Farm' here many years ago when I first found Paradise! The last three lines are MAGNIFICENT alone and in the context of the poem.
And Anyanka - cummings so often weaves the truth into an intricate, seemingly meaningless, pattern - we are always the sea - like so much of his work this is at the same time both delightfully light and deep.

Hmm, I have a couple of volumes of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems. I went through them, pausing to read the poems I had ticked previously (including "The Journey," "Black Oaks," "Egrets," and "When Death Comes") as well as several others that I apparently had not read or hadn't fazed me enough to mark. Jankin and Mary Woodnymph, could you, please, tell me which ones have stood out for you, because, frankly, I find her poems are all too much alike. I'm not going to say I am immune to nature imagery and philosophical ponderings, but those subjects do seem, to me, to have a tendency for triteness.

Hi Frieda
Some of MO's poetry doesn't really appeal to me - I often think that some should have their tails removed - just that bit too long - but she has written so much and I am convinced that many are so brilliant that they warrant her reputation. The poems that you mention 'Journey' and 'When Death Comes' are 'up there' - 'Wild Geese' (a masterpiece!)- 'August' - 'Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard' -Aunt Elsie's Night Music'. It is her acute observation of how we manage our animal lives alongside our rational minds, and our search for some spiritual 'other' that calls to me and expresses with precision and a sense of linguistic aesthetics ideas that I dont have the ability to articulate myself.
I think when you have a prolific poet like MO there are bound to be 'no-nos'. I'd be happy to discuss any of these poems more fully when Mary posts.
Frieda - it may be that you would prefer some other writing style - for you - if a poem is to be worth while what are its qualifications?

Jankin, I've scratched my head and pulled my hair trying to come up with the qualifications I like in a poem, but I really can't define them. Maybe if I tell you a few poems that I really like, you can make some sense of it.

You introduced me to C. Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and I like that one a lot. It was Woodnymph, I think, who turned me on to "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child" by G. Manley Hopkins -- I think it's the "sprung rhythm" that does it for me and the last two lines: It ís the blight man was born for,/It is Margaret you mourn for.

There are my old favorites:
If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft
And from thy slender store
Two loaves alone to thee are left
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.--Saadi

I looked up C. Rossetti's other poems, but except for "Who Has Seen the Wind?", I'm afraid none particularly appeal to me. Ditto for G. Manley Hopkins. Actually there are very few poets that I like more than one or two of their output. I have a list of about one hundred favorite poems, so I'm not a complete lost cause, I hope.

Frieda, again - me too. That's why I prefer poetry anthologies like the 'Poems on the Underground' over books by one poet only; ee cummins being one exception, John Hegley the other.

Oh, I also like quite a lot of Dorothy Parker's poems, and a lot of Rainer Maria Rilke.

Hegley is a strange cross between a comedian and a poet; he has obsessions with dogs, dads, and glasses; and he looks a bit like Elvis Costello.

Relaxing with Taxidermy

When their chihuahua got stuffed
they were really chuffed,
no need to feed her
or walkies on a lead her
no more poop to scoop
and doesn't she look smashing on the mantle piece?
She'll always look at the camera now.
I don't know why we bothered having her alive at all.

Here is a link that might be useful: John Hegley

Frieda and Jankin, sorry to be remiss about answering your queries. I've been limiting my time as to reading, and being on the computer, due to having eye problems for the last two weeks. I'll try to get back to you, as time permits and as the situation improves, hopefully.

Mary

Like Mary I have been extremely busy the past few days - looking after a delightful srudent from Moscow, my grandson, my dog, and my husband - now only husband and dog.
Anyanka I love your taxidermy poem - and Frieda - if you'd like to discuss Oliver's 'Owl' poem that would be great. I include one of Duffy's poems that reminds a little of your Herrick's 'Julia'. What do you think?

Warming Her Pearls

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm then, until evening
when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head...Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does...And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.
Carol Ann Duffy

Jankin: Hmm, I do see the resemblance in subject between the Herrick and Duffy poems. Both are erotically charged, I'd say -- the Duffy more so than the Herrick, though it is a much longer poem and develops the relationship of the mistress and her maid more fully. However, I find the Herrick more beautifully expressed: the first three lines flow as sweetly and liquidly as Julia's silks. Gosh! Can a word sound any more like what it represents than silk? Or liquefaction?

I must confess that I've never really understood the last three lines:
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!But it doesn't really matter to me because the choice of words -- cast, vibration and glittering plus the archaic taketh -- are enough to take me!

I guess the eroticism of the Duffy poem stands out most with the phrases:
Next to my own skin, her pearls.
my slow heat entering/each pearl.
my faint, persistent scent/beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.
And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.
Pearls have had a long history of being considered erotic, though not so much nowadays. Wasn't there a piece of Victorian erotica (pornography) called "The Pearl"? I don't know the time setting the poet intended to portray, but in my imagination it has to be Victorian.

I'll take a look at the "Owl" poem by Oliver and see if I can articulate something.

Okay, Jan, I've read "Little Owl That Lives in the Orchard" about ten times now -- I hope this is the "Owl" poem you referred to above; otherwise I've done a lot of scratching and gnashing in vain.;-)

Umm, I like the first line:
His beak could open a bottleI get an instant owly-image right off. Then:and his eyes - when he lifts their soft lids -
go on reading something
just beyond your shoulder -So far, so good. Next:Blake, maybe,
or the Book of Revelation.Well...good grief, an owl that reads Blake and the Bible. Yeah, I'm much too literal -- it's a horrid fault of mine -- but I'm afraid Ms Oliver is losing me.

Oliver reverts to proper (to my mind) owl attitudes with the eating of crickets, dragonflies, and the occasional festal mouse. The next two lines are:
Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear -Uhh? What can I say about that except follow her advice and "never mind" it?

Well, I will abandon the line-by-line thing, though there are some that are quite descriptive, such as:
fluttering
down the little aluminum
ladder of his scream -
I would never have likened an owl's scream to an aluminum ladder, but then I'm not a poet.

The final stanza:
Somewhere in the universe,
in the gallery of important things,
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish,
sits on its pedestal.
Dear, dark dapple of plush!
A message, reads the label,
from that mysterious conglomerate:
Oblivion and Co.
The hooked head stares
from its house of dark, feathery lace.
It could be a valentine.I'm lost, definitely lost.

By now, Jan, you're probably shaking your head and pegging me with your most recalcitrant students. But I tried...I really tried.

okay the Owl one I DO get, I think....

"Blake, maybe,
or the Book of Revelation."

owls, when anthropomorphized in literature, are usually deep thinkers, educated-even in Pooh-so of course if an owl reads, he'd read something with substance....and Blake wrote:
"TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?"

and in Revelations, there are also illusions to wings, death, darkness...all Owl things.

"Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear -"

a little out there-but even the shadow of the owl passing over at twilight will send the animals scurrying-and the swish of wings coming out of the dark....reminding them of danger-like a memo...

and then the last part:

"Somewhere in the universe,
in the gallery of important things,
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish,
sits on its pedestal.
Dear, dark dapple of plush!
A message, reads the label,
from that mysterious conglomerate:
Oblivion and Co.
The hooked head stares
from its house of dark, feathery lace.
It could be a valentine."

Owls are endearing when sitting all fluffed up, but they bring oblivion to their prey, but their faces are heartshaped-
you could stretch it and say love can be deadly, but I wouldn't.

Ah! Cece, thanks for your delineation. It makes sense.

Blake's "The Tiger" is another of my favorite poems. Now that you've pointed out the contrast between the owl's appealing mien and its deadliness -- just as the tiger is both appealing and deadly -- I have a much better focus. Which reminds me of of these lines:
The rivers are full of crocodile nasties
and He who made kittens put snakes in the grass.
He's a lover of life but a player of pawns ---
yes, the King on His sunset lies waiting for dawn
to light up His Jungle
as play is resumed.
The monkeys seem willing to strike up the tune. -- "Bungle in the Jungle," Ian Anderson

Another 'Owl' poem; this time by Laurie Lee, as woodnymph 'Mary' was asking about his work.

Town Owl

On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade on a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our crumbling walls,
his blooded talons sheathed in fur.
Some secret lure of time it seems
has called him from his country wastes
to hunt a newer wasteland here.
And where the candlabra swung
bright with the dancers thousand eyes,
now his black, hooded pupils stare,
And where the silk-shoed lovers ran
with dust of diamonds in their hair,
he opens now his silent wing,
And, like a stroke of doom, drops down,
and swoops across the empty hall,
and plucks a quick mouse off the stair...

Laurie Lee

What a lovely poem! Vee, thanks for posting it. I truly don't think I've ever read any of Lee's poems before now. His prose, however, gives him away as a true poet.

I think the past heat has cooked my brain, somewhat, so still don't feel up to joining in the discussion above. Besides, I am away from home and have to access to the Mary Oliver books as the Univ.library is closed for renovation.

I am on Frieda's bench - I just can't get into most poetry. I read much in school, and even wrote quite a bit in Jr Hi and HS. But I often read a poem and have no idea what its trying to say. I'll grant you there are some specific poems that are near and dear to me: Pausing in the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, Annabelle Lee by Edgar Allen Poe, There Will Come Soft Rains, and the one by Auden that is read in Four Weddings and a Funeral. But usually they just leave me cold.

Whats funny is that I love poetry in writing as long as it doesn't over shadow the story. Marilyn Robinson and Laurie Lee are two very good examples of how you can make prose poetic without losing the reader. Otherwise, its almost like a poem has to sneak up on me to make me see it

BTW a friends daughter got a book for her birthday and showed it to me. By the time I finished it I was in tears. Its called Love That Dog. A young boy in school complains about having to write a poem. Later he finds that anything he writes can be poetic. There is a moment tho when a poem grabs him and doesn't let go. He suddenly becomes enthusiastic about the poet, and is thrilled that the poet agrees to visit his school after he wrote him an invitation. A lovely book about a child's budding love for the written word, and an excellent book for any teacher of writing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

Have just read the Oliver owl poem, and find that it's lacking rhythm. I am more than happy to do without rhyme in poetry, but I do like a poem to have rhythm or at least flow. Frieda's snippet from Bungle in the Jungle has both, but as it's credited to Ian Anderson, I'm assuming that it's actually a song lyric, which rather helps with the rhythm & flow.

I love the lines Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear.

Woodnymph, no excuses - I found the poem online: here's the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mary Oliver's Owl poem

It doesn't matter whether or not you 'understand' or 'comprehend' a poem's meaning on first reading; or second, or ever, really. But if it makes you come out in goose-pimples and sends shivers down your spine (I mean that, literally), then it's got something for you. Emotionally, aesthetically, spiritually - I don't know. A line can do it: I quoted Shakespeare to someone last night - simply said,

'So quick bright things come to confusion.'

And found myself not just goose-pimply but almost in tears at the rhythm, sound, reverberations, je ne sais quoi of it. Part of it is the word 'quick' which might mean 'quickly' or 'alive' or (probably) both. Tragedy is encapsulated in that line: the whole of Romeo and Juliet, for instance; though it is actually from Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1 Sc. 1. Here's the context:

....or if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen unfolds, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up.
So quick bright things come to confusion.

Another couple of lines which crease me up, also Shakespeare's, are:

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

(Sonnet beginning 'Since brass, nor stone, nor earth' etc)
The action of beauty? And beauty encapsulates so much more than just the dictionary definition of the word, as Keats knew:

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

Must go. Posting here is a displacement activity to stop me from working - and I'm behind!

Dido

Having just read Mary Oliver's Owl poem: It swept me away by its beautiful imagery. I find so much to admire, here: the alliteration of "dear dark dapple of plush", for one example. What a perfect, descriptive opening line: "his beak could open a bottle."

And her closing line is marvelous, IMO: "it could be a valentine". To me the implications from the heart of nature, its core meaning, communication from worlds beyond, even. Let the reader make her own meanings here.

How lovely the image: "his wings open like two black ferns." Also, I like Oliver's matter of fact, conversational tone. I feel as if I were standing next to her in the woods, with my binoculars and camera, whispering about what we observe. In some of her other poems, she interfaces the everyday with the mystical, spiritual aspects of her deepest thoughts and feelings. And she does it so casually, yet so elegantly.

I do find a rhythm in this poem. I can appreciate free verse, as well as poems that rhyme. Both can be inspiring and thought-provoking.

Well,that's my personal reaction.

Anyanka, yes, the Ian Anderson lines I quoted are lyrics. I think the best lyrics are poetry.

And, as usual, you've put your finger on the thing that bothered me most about M. Oliver's "Owl" poem -- the lack of meter. Without it, a poem is pedestrian, in my opinion. Shakespeare always had rhythm; didn't he? -- see Dido's example.

Well, as I said above about Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes," I don't have to completely understand a poem to like it. However, I'm not fond of opacity. Perhaps I'm just not on a the same wavelength as Oliver right now, but all of her poems I've read are pretty much a wash, except for an odd line here and there.

Read out loud, using the punctuation and not the line breaks, Mary Oliver's poem does have a rhythm and musicality that I find charming.

Okay, I tried reading "Owl" out loud several times, as you suggested, Cece, following the punctuation and not the line breaks. I could almost develop a rhythm, but not quite. And believe me, I've been accused of putting rhythm into things that were not intended to have any. Yee! It's frustrating. I guess I should just chalk it up to the mystery of taste: There's not enough salt in this dish. Not enough salt! You're crazy. There's way too much salt.

Btw, why are the line breaks in the Oliver poem where they are? Some of them make sense to me; but others don't, particularly if the rhythm follows, as Cece says, the punctuation and not the line breaks. See why I'm not a poet. :-)

I have NEVER understood that-unless it is a visual trick, as in some poems where the actual outline of the poem as a whole reflects the subject-but that doesn't work here. I just know I was taught by my high school drama coach/English teacher extraordinaire, Miss Jean Baker, who had actually acted ON BROADWAY in her salad days, to always use the punctuation when reading poetry aloud.

The Owl poem doesn't have a pounding metric beat, more like an ebb and flow.

Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night.

Jusr including these lines because I wlways think of them when I read 'the little aluminum ladder of his scream'.
I find MO's poetry very easy to read - the rhythm is gentle and subvervient, IMO, to the powerful imagery.
Has this discussion meant anything Frieda in whatever sense - especially if you've enjoyed it?
I love Vee's poem and am totally in sympathey with Mary's and Anyanka's intepretation. Also I can hardly tnink of one line in Shakespeare's work that doesn't point to his genius - as a poet, as a philospher, as a psychoanalyst, as an allusionist - requiring us to know something of our selves, our history, 'real' and mythological, and our literary background so I'm always prepared to be stunned by him.
It is, I think a sorrow to believe that loving one sort of poetry precludes us from loving other poems and poets.
How about offering some poems where imagery and meter and rhyme and rhythm are coexistent in quality - any ideas.
BTW Thanks for link to Dog book site - I have now ordered from Amazon

Porphyro - on hearing his name called by Madeleine in her sleep - and we remembering the lines in stanza 6 about what would happen "Upon the honeyÂd middle of the night,"

At these voluptuous accents, he arose,
Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odour with the violet,---
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window-panes; St Agnes' moon hath set

Imagery, sensuous delight, superb 'sound effects' - what more could a reader desire?

'The Dog' book arrived today and I thorughly endorse it for young and old would be writers.

Has this discussion meant anything Frieda in whatever sense - especially if you've enjoyed it?Oh absolutely, Jan! I'm drawn to poetry discussions...well, I must be because I'm always sticking my fat head in and exposing my ignorance. Truth is I love the idea of poetry, but I am less enchanted with most poems, themselves. But occasionally I discover a new one that smacks me up the side of my head -- such as "Cold Knap Lake" at Anyanka's link above -- and it's all worth it. I may even develop a liking for Mary Oliver. :-)

Now, the Keats: I seem to relate better to pre-20th century poets. I'm not sure if it's the quaint language (in the sense of being marked by beauty and elegance) or the imagery that I like best. Some 20th-century poets (don't know yet about the 21st-century ones) can pull off the feat and send me into "the light of other times" that I like best. Here's one that does just that:
Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind. -- Anne Sexton
I would give credit if I could to whoever introduced me to this poem -- I think it was in a thread such as this one and it may have been you, Jan.

Frieda, this is for you, since you seem to like Anne Sexton's work, as do I:

On The Dunes

If there is any life when death is over,
These tawny beaches will know of me.
I shall come back, as constant and as changeful
As the unchanging many-colored sea.
If life was small, if it had made me scornful,
Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame
In the great calm of death, and if you want me
Stand on the seaward dunes and call my name.

Just a thought:

Oh Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

William Blake

Mary, thank you for posting "On the Dunes." Yes, I do seem to like quite a lot of Anne Sexton's poetry. I'm not sure why because I have very little in common with her, individually. However, I do find her fascinating; and the way she used words is tantalizing (Her Kind) and, perhaps oddly, soothing (On the Dunes), especially since she often contemplated suicide and eventually carried it out.

Dido, I'm curious: Why did "The Sick Rose" come into your thoughts?

Another poet I have often admired is Elizabeth Bishop. Here's one of hers that I can relate to oh! so very well.
I Am in Need of Music

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Frieda,

The Sick Rose - I just wanted to share it, really. It seems to me to be an almost perfect poem. So short and such depth/width of metaphor even though it's just the one image. But what an image! Red on black, for a start. The 'worm' - is it a dragon? But I find it just as effective to imagine a tiny sort of insect; or maggot. There's this thing - this Rose - so beautiful on the outside but being secretly eaten away from the inside. It's life. The Rose is all things we see/observe - us, nature, the universe. The worm is Time itself, if you like - or anything else which causes total and inevitable destruction. Eight lines; one image; such simplicity of language. I love the rhythm. The rhymes are natural, not forced and both rhythm and rhyme are an aid to memory - I can carry this poem around with me in my head all the time and pull it out whenever I need it. The other one is the one I've quoted often on this site:

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
(Anon, 16th century)

great to know you enjoyed all this - I too love discussion - also love the extra poems quoted - Dido - 'The Sick Rose' in its simplicity (like so many of Blakes (SOIAE) is a source of pleasure in poetry - I think like 'Tyger' it can be interpreted in so many different ways.
I have been away on a loving but also duty visit to Manchester and include beloe the opneing lines of a poem that just about describes my experience!
Love to all

A Manchester Poem (George MacDonald)
'Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad.
The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold
The chimneyed city ; and the smoke is caught,
And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks,
A black precipitate, on miry streets.

Re the MacDonald poem: I do so love the thought of dreariness, especially since being browbeaten by relentless sunniness. Of course, if I had to live with too much gloom, I would whinny with gladness to see the sun, or to read about it -- I'm never completely satisfied with what is, for long, I suppose. Which is good enough reason for a place-transporting poem and being thankful to the person who wrote it.