Saturday, August 30, 2014

Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water

I was reading a a biography of John Keats and looking at some of his letters this past month and learned of a summer hike that Keats made. 

In the summer of 1818,  Keats went on a six-week walking tour through northern England, Scotland, and Ireland. Keats and his friend Charles Brown set off in June and walked 600 miles before sailing back to London.
Keats was not an outdoorsman and had spent most of his life in London never having been out of southern England. He was 22 and had never seen a mountain.
They set off with very little in their knapsack � shirt, stockings, nightcap, towels, a brush and comb, snuff, and one book: a translation of Dante.
They started from Lancaster and headed for the Lake District. Keats� brother George and his wife Georgina accompanied them as far as Lancaster and then continued to Liverpool, there to emigrate to America.
This was not a poetry tour but John and Charles stopped at William Wordsworth�s home. Wordsworth was not at  home.
Keats did not write his first poem until age 18. He was encouraged by a literary circle of friends in London, though he worked at a hospital to make his living. Keats� first book, Poems, appeared in 1817 and after that, he devoted himself entirely to poetry.
Keats wrote that as the walk continued he found himself more moved by the people they met than by the landscape. He thought much of the mountains and moors seemed bleak.
He recorded that on June 29, they set off at 4 a.m. up the mountain Skiddaw. It offered a  to the Irish Sea and Scotland.
In the town of Ireby, that watched a performance of traditional dancing and Keats wrote: �I never felt so near the glory of patriotism, the glory of making, by any means, a country happier. This is what I like better than scenery.�
Keats was not pleased with the food on the trip either. In a letter, he writes: �We dined yesterday on dirty bacon dirtier eggs and dirtiest Potatoes with a slice of Salmon.� In Scotland, they seem to have survived on oatcakes and whiskey. He hated the oatcakes but enjoyed the whiskey.
Another poetry stop was to Alloway, the birthplace of the Robert Burns in Scotland. He was happier with this area. He said that the River Doon was �the sweetest river I ever saw� and he enjoyed a large pinch of snuff while standing on the Brig o� Doon, a bridge Burns wrote about in his poems.
Keats and Brown continued through Scotland and made a short trip into Northern Ireland averaging 10-20 miles a day. By August 2, they had made it to the top of Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the British Isles.
Keats�s health had actually not been very good before the trip, but developed a bad cold at this point and was advised by a doctor to quit the walking tour. He headed back to London, but Brown continued and walked another 1,200 miles.
1818 was not a good year for John and his family. He had financial difficulties. His brother Tom was battling tuberculosis. George and his wife made a poor investment in America and was left penniless in Kentucky.
The one happy thing in his life was his fianc�e, Fanny Brawne.
1819 was a very productive year. By September, he had written a book�s worth of poems including �Ode on a Grecian Urn,� �Ode to a Nightingale,� �Hyperion,� �The Eve of St. Agnes,� �To Autumn,� and �La Belle Dame Sans Merci.�
John Keats Tombstone in Rome 01.jpg
�John Keats Tombstone in Rome� by Piero Montesacro � Wikimedia Commons
John developed tuberculosis (for which there would be no cure until the next century),  possibly from caring for his brother. Early in 1820, the disease worsened and he was advised to move to a warmer climate.
In September 1820, Keats left for Rome knowing he would probably never see Brawne again. After leaving he felt unable to write to her or read her letters.
Keats wrote his last letter to his walking partner Charles Brown on November 30, 1820: �Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book � yet I am much better than I was in Quarantine. Then I am afraid to encounter the proing and conning of any thing interesting to me in England. I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence�.
He died in Rome on February 23, 1821 and is buried there. He was only 25 years old.
He wanted a tombstone without name or date, only the words, �Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.� Charles Brown and another friend had the stone place but added a lyre with broken strings and this epitaph which lies some blame on critics who were harsh with Keats� poetry.
�This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821?

Monday, August 25, 2014

The Baobab Tree by Rachel Sawaya





You know he is there, standing

in a field, like all the others,

but he is not like them.

The children do not eat his leaves,

or sugar coat his pulpy fruit.

His trunk has not been stripped

by women hoping to calm

a fever. He cannot soothe you.

He can only hold you after

your last shred is torn away.



You were told anyone can visit him,

as long as they are respectful.

You let

Monday, August 18, 2014

lost and found on the b train in winter by Walter Bjorkman



i
first heard the rumble, felt the roar, before i was born
in my mother�s own cave, on her doctor�s way
i first saw the white porcelain straps, felt the frayed straw seats
smelled the wet drying wool before i was one year of age

record
snow the christmas eve three months before my birth
then every month thereafter � i rode the rails in that womb
while dirt-crusted plowed snowdrifts piled to

Monday, August 11, 2014

A whimper after the bang by Emily Manger

Tenderness scorched from the planet
but she's got it, baby
strong as the cockroach and faded as a fable
she chews preserved meat open-mouthed
and when she declares
around the pride of survival
that she used to be a vegetarian
you can almost see
eyelashes gentle as tattered lace
nobody's beautiful
but in the arctic solitude of a crumpled climate
she slings that shotgun over her shoulder
like

Saturday, August 9, 2014

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By Nishikant Tiwari

Romantic hindi poem

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Carl Sandburg: I Wish I Never

Having read poems by Carl Sandburg in my elementary school English classes, I was not a fan. "Fog" was a cute little thing. I still recall a teacher using it to teach us personification.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

His poem "Chicago" was in at least two anthologies in school and we read that too.
It begins:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation�s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys...

Other than those painted women, it didn't interest me very much.

Then, in high school, I read "Mag" without knowing it was by Sandburg. It was bitter. It kind of shocked me. No curse words, but so cutting.

Mag

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take care of each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.
     I wish the kids had never come
     And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
     And a grocery man calling for cash,
     Every day cash for beans and prunes.
     I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
     I wish to God the kids had never come.


It was first published in his collection Chicago Poems (1916). This volume, along with Cornhuskers (1918) and Smoke and Steel (1920), established Sandburg's reputation as a talented free verse poet, known for portraying industrial America.

I suppose the obvious prompt from the poem is about marriage. Too obvious.

What struck me about the poem initially is the negative wishing. I was more used to reading poems where the wishes were for things in the future. Good things. Better things. But Sandburg is wishing to change the past. To undo what was done.

Your task this month is to write a poem about a negative wish (or wishes) - a wish to undo, wishes that change the past. Those are the wishes that pull you right back to the present and have you thinking about the future.

Submission Deadline: August 31, 2014

Monday, August 4, 2014

Agnus Dei by Marty Smith






I carried the lamb in a sack on my horse

the tongue hanging grey and limp.

It�s buggered, said Dad, throw it in the
creek.

The creek leaped, dimpled. Small bubbles

whirled, it rumpled where I was looking

the water shadowed half-blue-black



deep just there with duckweed floating out

the yards behind all noise, the

A simple little school dress



I love the simple style
of these check school dresses.
They look lovely on my granddaughter
     who is five
A pretty and practical design.

The yellow check is not often seen
in my local area
so I ordered on line
I bought three.
     One to wear,
          one in the wash
     and one ready to wear.

I know they will wash well
and keep their fresh look
as long as my daughter in law
     doesn�t throw the jeans
          in the wash as well.




Taken from an online review of a Marks & Spencer Classic Checked Dress, posted on 17th May 2014. Submitted by Uschi Gatward.