Poetry

"Shake and shake the ketch-up bottle.
None'll come and then a lot'll!"

Is this poetry? 
Of course it is - and it's funny!
Brevity is the hallmark of great poetry, in my view. 
        I'm not saying that Ogden Nash's poetry is great - (this is by Nash? Isn't it? Somebody keep me right. Please! My memory is going) -  but it is funny, and short, and I just don't like long poems. They tend to be dreary, use a great many words that I can't remember, are possibly trite - and bombastic to the point that they carry with them an aura of moustachioed olde-world a-c-t-OR-S, in capes, declaiming. There are exceptions of course.  I'll try to think of some as I go along.... there are some ....of course there are ... is..... there must be .....
        Some say that poetry is the most superb way of communicating thought - capturing meaning as a glistening cobweb catches the sun.  They have a strong case: but one could also make a case for the overwhelming effect of caveman drawings, McLaverty short stories, Dickens novels, Bergman films and Mahler music.
        There is no doubt in my mind that poetry is the most difficult thing to write.  It can also be the hardest to read!   
        REAL poetry opens the mind to mysteries, to perceptions only dimly perceived - evokes awareness of things that one never dreamt could be expressed in mere words.  At its highest, images and words fuse together as if angels were responsible, and perhaps on occasion they have been. The poetic Muse and genius is a thing of marvel and wonder.
        Two superb examples, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, are quoted below.

In due course I intend to include one or two of my own little poesies, but apart from these the quality of poems will be high.

24 August 2005. Just looked out a few old poems, miraculously preserved from the past Click here, if you wish, to have a look.

   Here are two of my favourites: 

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
   It gathers to greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
   And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshest deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

           Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Pied Beauty

Glory be to god for dappled things -
    for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
    Landscape plotted and pieced - fol, fallow, and plough;
        And áll trádes, their gear and tackle trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                        Praise him.

                Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

I do not know why the central authorities of my church (Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic!) have not declared Gerard Manley to be a saint, i.e. someone who is in heaven.  
    Anyone who, on his deathbed, can say "I am so happy, so happy!" is surely taken by Christ into His Kingdom.  
    Perhaps church administrators, bereft of imagination, circumscribed by tradition and, to my mind lacking in creative courage, cannot imagine a poet to be worthy of canonisation!         Saints with a literary bent (except they write theological tracts) are a suspect breed.  
Thinking and writing are dangerous! Wow!  Even though you might be a Jesuit priest! 
    Wow upon wow! I wonder when prelates will begin to catch themselves on!

Then there's this - not of the great poetic standard set by Hopkins, but making a touching point.   It appears to be in memory of a little girl whose dying wish was to tell everyone to live life to the full - by slowing down and becoming more aware of each moment.

S L O W    D A N C E

Have you ever watched kids
on a merry-go-round
Or listened to the rain
slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

Do you run through each day on the fly
When you ask "How are you?"
do you hear the reply?

When the day is done,
do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
running through your head?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow
And in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
'Cause you never had time
to call and say "Hi"?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Thrown away...

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

- Anonymous - as far as I know.  
Abstracted from a mysterious email forwarded by Patrick McKenney, an Irish-American friend living in Brussels.  Thanks Patrick. I like the theme, and I love the last verse... .

.... more poems to come when I get time.   MO'S

This for example:

The desire for peace, for hiding away from a disturbed world, for the simple life? for escape to an earthly Nirvana? to Heaven?  Who could express it better?  
What beautiful use of  language: 
"bee-loud glade"  
"peace comes dropping slow" 
"I hear it in the deep heart's core."

Most Irish schoolchildren will have learnt this in primary school.  I certainly did, a snot-nosed 10-year-old in short pants cooking in the glassbrick monstrosity of St. Kevin's Public Elementary School on the Falls Road, Belfast ...... wafted away to another world ......

Lake Isle of Innisfree 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: 
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
 Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats

I'm not too sure that I like Yeats poetry all that much, but the simplicity of this is majestic, the total creation magic.  He was an unresolved soul, not sure of the beauty he wrote about but a master of the explosive phrase, such as - "a terrible beauty is born."

However, as a schoolboy John Masefield's Cargoes was, without doubt, my favourite poem. Marvellous use of words! (Thirty years later it dawned on me that I should possibly find out what a 'quinquireme' is or might be.)

Cargoes

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.



Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

With a cargo of diamonds,

Emeralds, amythysts,

Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.



Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield  1878 - 1967

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