The Beautiful List

I've spoken about and shared list poems a couple of times before but I really don't think we can have too much of a good thing. List poems, done well, sing to us because of their deceptive simplicity: they wear the disguise of an ordinary everyday thing (shopping list, to do list etc) but the poet's choice of form and language lifts them up out of the ordinary and makes them extra-ordinary.

The following poem, by Tim Nolan, (which you can listen to HERE on The Writer's Almanac before you read it), slows our reading down with its short couplets. It asks us to pay the same amount of attention to the 'forgotten'. But this isn't just a poem about a literal change of season. The introduction of the human relationship in the middle of the poem - the flush of your face/ so much - asks me to reconsider the other imagery, the statements at the close of the poem, and the title as metaphor. Here it is and many thanks to Tim for giving his permission:


Long Winter

So much I've forgotten
the grass

the birds
the close insects

the shoot—the drip—
the spray of the sprinkler

freckles—strawberries—
the heat of the Sun

the impossible
humidity

the flush of your face
so much

the high noon
the high grass

the patio ice cubes
the barbeque

the buzz of them—
the insects

the weeds—the dear
weeds—that grow

like alien life forms—
all Dr. Suessy and odd—

here we go again—
we are turning around

again—this will all
happen over again—

and again—it will—

Tim Nolan

If you're in the UK or Europe
then check out the The Book Depository
for Tim's collection, The Sound of It.

What do you take from that penultimate couplet and the final line on its own? Inevitability, acceptance, understanding?

I take comfort from it; repetition in all its guises can be comforting. Although my comfort is tinged by inquietude. I'm not sure I want another long winter, I'm not sure that I want some things to happen over again. But I also know that my experience of life is deepened by living through change.

Poems that make us think, that shift us between different emotions, these are the ones to cherish.

I don't want to be prescriptive with a poetry prompt. Let this poem work on you through several readings then set out on a journey of your own.

Write well.
L
x

The poetry of who and what we are and do

It's natural that we read other poets to inspire us with the writing of our own poems. And healthy too! We should be aware of what's going on in the world of contemporary poetry around us. And I know that when I'm reading poetry, I write more poetry. I also know that if I read more prose, I find it more difficult to write poetry. Perhaps the patterns and rhythms of what I'm reading are absorbed by my unconscious and, when I sit down to write, the echoes of what I've read most recently are the first to emerge.

How about you? Do you write what you read, influenced by the patterns, and perhaps themes, on the page? Or are you able to write in whatever form you choose, regardless of what you're reading?

And have you identified what kind of poetry you write?

When someone asked me that for the first time, in the early 1990s, it took me by surprise. I hadn't long been writing and hadn't developed any measure of objectivity towards my own work. But to know what we're doing, to be aware of what matters to us and how we want to affect an audience, can only help us as writers.

I've always wanted poems I read to make me think and feel, so I've tried to achieve that in my own writing. And feel a responsibility to 'entertain' an audience. But I don't mean that in the sense of superficial laughter and enjoyable trivia. I mean it in the sense of the original meaning of the word, which comes from 'inter' (to be among) and 'tenere' (to hold). Isn't that an amazing thing for us to try and achieve? To be among our audience, to be part of them, and to hold their attention.

Feel free to respond to any of the above questions and points, and extend the discussion too, in the Comments box, in prose or even poetry.

Write well.
L
x

Hearts & Minds

Dali & Captain Moore

There's a story about Salvador Dali, told to me a few years ago by his long-time manager, Captain Peter Moore.

Peter called on Dali at his house and studio in Port Lligat to see how he was progressing with a commission and was alarmed to see that the painting was far from finished.
'No problem, el capitano,' said Dali, 'I have until end of October.'
'But it's already November,' said Peter.
'November!' exclaimed Dali. 'Someone has stolen my October!'

I feel a little like that about March! Although rather than stolen it was filled to the brim with exciting events for the launches of another country, haiku poetry from Wales (Gomer Press).

But I'm back home in France now, catching up with writing and AppleHouse, and I came across this poem, in my Poems on the Underground anthology, which I can't remember ever reading before:

from The Mind is an Ancient and Famous Capital

The mind is a city like London,
Smoky and populous: it is a capital
Like Rome, ruined and eternal,
Marked by the monuments which no one
Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains
Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces,
Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins
Of every haunted, hunted generation's celebration...

Delmore Schwartz (1913 - 1966)

Lots of the metaphors make immediate sense to me, particularly the mind being full of monuments 'which no one/ Now remembers' and 'Catacombs', although I'm a little unsure about 'equestrian' statues. I suppose the horse and rider could symbolise war? But I still like the poem a lot.

A few years ago I wrote a poem entitled 'Your Heart' which was published on a poster for a Hospital project:

Write a poem about the mind or the heart. Use metaphor rather than direct explanation to suggest what the mind or heart is, or does.

Write well.
L
x

Your age... contented, accepting, resentful, indifferent, curious?

There's a saying... if you want to feel young, mix with younger people. If you want to look young, mix with with older people. Here on the Cote d'Azur, particularly outside of the holiday season, there are a lot of elderly people, and for the most part all pretty sprightly for their eighties, so at 52 I'm a bit of a teenager!

1960

2010

Apart from being alternately accepting and resentful of the usual signs and effects of age - aches, wrinkles, long-sightedness, unable to drink more than a half bottle of wine without getting a hangover - I really do like being in my fifties and wouldn't want to go back to a previous age or time.

How about you? And do you ever wonder what you'll be like in 20 or 30 years time? It's difficult enough to feel any real connection to the child, girl or young woman who stares out at me from old photos so to imagine what and who I might be in the future feels like an impossible task. Perhaps I should have a go at one of those 'ageing' apps you see on Facebook and on people's mobile phones!

The danger of writing poems about getting older is that they might sound sentimental, even self-indulgent if we write about ourselves. How do we explore the personal and particular but make it universal, make it something that matters to other people? Philip Schultz talks about age in this poem:


76

My bones aren't what they used to be; my eyes ache,
as if I've been reading an ancient text by candlelight.
My back and knees creak. I'm happy if the car starts
and I can walk the dogs along the ocean which looks
a little less robust. It replenishes itself with stretching
and long cleansing breaths. The sun is another story.
It's beginning to show its age. Perhaps we've enjoyed
enough springs and everything is getting a little redundant.

Philip Schultz
from Living in the Past - Available via Amazon
Harcourt, Inc., 2004

Co-winner of the 2008
Pulitzer Prize

I like how he links ageing to the planet - what he notices about the sea, the sun. Do you think the last sentence is a little defeatist, or is it philosophical? Why should we expect our planet to last forever? And this is one of the thoughts I leave the poem with rather than just thinking about the narrator's own experience.

There's one phrase in the poem that makes me smile: I'm happy if the car starts/ Me too! Do we expect less as we get older? Or do we learn gratitude? Again, I'm prompted to reflect on particular ideas that are implicit in the poem but take me outside of it too.

Write your own age poem, using the above poem as a model, or stretching out in your own direction. But be careful, you don't want to put your back out : )

Write well
L
x

Consider this... a very un-Valentine writing prompt

Barbara Ann Kipfer
Random House 2007

I bought this book while on holiday in the US a couple of years ago. It's not the kind of book you read from cover to cover. You pick it up and glance through the 8 or 10 questions it has on each double page spread, and the occasional large print single pager, and see if one catches your eye. I've noticed that sometimes one does arrest me but I move on because I feel it's asking too much of me at that moment. Cowardly? Lazy? Probably a little of both. But I don't find it easy to think deeply spontaneously. It's is if I have to be shoe-horned into it, and for that reason dinner with good friends often has the right elements - comfortable companionship, good food and wine - to ease me slowly into a stage of, I hope, intelligent reflection. Of course a discussion of beliefs and opinions can become very energetic, even over-heated, particularly when there's a decent quantity of wine around, but if there are enough of you one person is generally able to lower the temperature and pull everyone back to a level of consideration. That's not always possible with family though... at least in my experience. Maybe yours is different?

My poetry prompt for today, and a very un-Valentine one it is too but I'm going on the assumption that there's plenty of Valentine stuff already out there, is to write a poem in response to the following question:

(p. 63) What will happen to the world when you die?

Here's my spontaneous response, raw and unedited but something to work on:

What happens to the world when I die

In the movie
of my life
there’s a moment
of stillness:
a street empty
of traffic;
a cashier’s hand
hovers over
the buttons on a till;
someone looks up
through the bare branches
of a Plane tree,

and then it’s over,
a car-horn blares,
a customer asks
if avocados
are on special,
a sudden gust
forces someone
to clap their hands
against the cold
then fast-dial home
to say they won’t
be long.

How carefully
I read the credits
looking
for myself.

Lynne Rees


I look forward to reading your poems.

Write well.
L
x