Strugnell's Haiku -- Wendy Cope

Another, errm, masterpiece of sorts from Jason Strugnell...

(Poem #693) Strugnell's Haiku (i) The cherry blossom In my neighbour's garden - Oh! It looks really nice. (ii) The leaves have fallen And the snow has fallen and Soon my hair also... (iii) November evening: The moon is up, rooks settle, The pubs are open. -- Wendy Cope

 From "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis", first published in 1986.

 Poor Strugnell. The syllables number seventeen, properly arranged in a
5-7-5 pattern; the seasonal references are all present and accounted for;
why, there are even cherry blossoms and falling leaves and the winter
moon...

 ... and yet there's _something_ about his haiku that doesn't quite work. Oh
well.

thomas.

PS. <grin>

[Quoting from a previous encounter with Cope and Strugnell]

 This is but one of several works attributed by Wendy Cope to the
impressionable South London poet Jason Strugnell, whose misfortune has been
to fall under the all-too-obvious influence of one great poet after
another...

[Links]

 The said previous encounter was "Strugnell's Rubaiyat", which you can read
at poem #587

 The above page has a lot more material on parodies - analyses, links, the
works. Check it out!

[Moreover]

 Today's poem is from "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis", Cope's first book,
which I found at a bookstore just this afternoon. Quoting extensively from
the dust-jacket:

 ""Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis", Wendy Cope's first book, was an
immediate bestseller, delighting readers with its unconventional mixture of
satire, candid love poetry, and parody. It includes examples of work by
Jason Strugnell, the haplessly influenceable bard of Tulse Hill, as well as
poems in Wendy Cope's own voice...

 ... Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent. She was educated at Farringtons
School and read History at St Hilda's College, Oxford. After university she
worked for fifteen years as a primary-school teacher in London. In 1987 she
received the Cholmondeley Award for poetry and, in 1995, the American
Academy of Letters Michael Braude Award for Light Verse. She is now a
freelance writer. She has written another collection of verse, "Serious
Concerns", a book of rhymes for children, "Twiddling Your Thumbs", and a
long poem, "The River Girl", and she has edited an anthology of women's
poetry for teenagers, "Is That the New Moon?"."

     -- Dust-jacket of "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis", Faber & Faber, 1986

[Bonus Poem]

 The collection's title poem is unskippable:

 "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis"

 It was a dream I had last week
 And some kind of record seemed vital.
 I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
 But I love the title.

     -- Wendy Cope

The Messenger -- H P Lovecraft

Guest poem submitted by William Johns:

(Poem #692) The Messenger The thing, he said, would come in the night at three From the old churchyard on the hill below; But crouching by an oak fire's wholesome glow, I tried to tell myself it could not be. Surely, I mused, it was pleasantry Devised by one who did not truly know The Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago, That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free. He had not meant it - no - but still I lit Another lamp as starry Leo climbed Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed Three - and the firelight faded, bit by bit. Then at the door that cautious rattling came - And the mad truth devoured me like a flame! -- H P Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a weird fiction author during the 1920's and
30's.  After failing to complete school, allegedly due to poor health, and
being unable to go on to become a scientist as he wished, he became quite
reclusive, perhaps even clinically depressed, for several years.  He became
involved in what would today be called a "flame war" over the merits of a
certain romance author, and his letters, cleverly written in prose,
attracted the attention of the Amateur Publishing Association.  He was
invited to join, and published his first story, "The Alchemist".  Membership
and activity in the APA pulled him out of his doldrums, and he went on to
become the greatest weird fiction author of all time.

That being said, it must also be said that much of his poetry, especially
early on, was awful.  Only later on, when he adopted a more modern style and
freed himself from the imitation of earlier poets, did his prose become
palatable.  "The Messenger" is a good example of what he was capable of.
There is an interesting story of how this poem came about.

In the summer of 1926, H. P. Lovecraft wrote "The Call of Cthulhu", which
was published in February 1928 in Weird Tales and is perhaps his most famous
(if not best) story.  In that story, a sculptor named Henry Anthony Wilcox,
described as "a thin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect",
produced a clay tablet covered in mysterious heiroglyphs while sleepwalking.
Wilcox' address is given as 7 Thomas Street, Providence, R. I.

Bertrand Kelton Hart, author of a daily column called "The Sideshow" in the
Providence Journal, happened to live at that address.  Upon learning that
his address had been used in Lovecraft's story, he published in his column
"...I shall not be happy until, joining league with wraiths and ghouls, I
have plumped down at least one large and abiding ghost by way of reprisal
upon [Lovecraft's] own doorstep in Barnes street... I think I shall teach it
to moan in a minor dissonance every morning at 3 o'clock sharp, with a
clinking of chains."

This, in turn, inspired Lovecraft to write "The Messenger", which was
published in the Providence Journal on December 3, 1929.

Bill.

[thomas adds]

Martin once ran a set of three poems written by fantasy authors:

Poem #257 - "Three Rings for the Elven Kings", J. R. R. Tolkien
Poem #259 - "Songs from an Evil Wood", Lord Dunsany
Poem #261 - "Recompense", Robert E. Howard

Needless to say, "The Messenger" would have fit the theme like a glove.

Incidentally, "weird fiction" is as good a description of Lovecraft's
peculiar brand of fantasy as any I've seen <grin>.

thomas.

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles -- Billy Collins

(Poem #691) Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles It seems these poets have nothing up their ample sleeves they turn over so many cards so early, telling us before the first line whether it is wet or dry, night or day, the season the man is standing in, even how much he has had to drink. Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow. Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name. "Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's. "Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea" is another one, or just "On a Boat, Awake at Night." And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with "In a Boat on a Summer Evening I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird. It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem." There is no iron turnstile to push against here as with headings like "Vortex on a String," "The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever. No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over. Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall" is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders. And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors" is a servant who shows me into the room where a poet with a thin beard is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine whispering something about clouds and cold wind, about sickness and the loss of friends. How easy he has made it for me to enter here, to sit down in a corner, cross my legs like his, and listen. -- Billy Collins

I just love the way today's poem implicitly echoes the conventions of the
very same Chinese poems it explicitly pays tribute to - from the sparse,
Imagistic words it uses to its own overly expressive title [1]. I also like
the dry humour of phrases like "the simple rice cake" and "up their ample
sleeves", and the sardonic wit that came up with "Vortex on a String" and
"The Horn of Neurosis" (!)...

... of course, the humour shouldn't mask the fact that Collins is making an
important point about what he believes poetry should be and mean and do. Too
often (especially these days), poets seem to speak only to other poets, or
(even worse!) to academics and critics. And while I confess I like
cleverness and intellectual games, I have to agree with Collins in
castigating those who pursue obscurity for its own sake, who refuse to
"[make it easy] to enter [a poem] / to sit down in a corner / cross my legs
... and listen".

thomas.

[1] form, content, self-reference, Imagism, the mystery of the Orient...
wow, I managed to refer to all of my favourite critical hobby-horses in a
single sentence!

[Biography]

Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941. He is the author of six
books of poetry, including Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1998); The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a finalist for the
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Questions About Angels (1991), which was
selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series; The Apple That
Astonished Paris (1988); Video Poems (1980); and Pokerface (1977). A
recording of Collins reading thirty-three of his poems, The Best Cigarette,
was released in 1997. Collins's poetry has appeared in anthologies,
textbooks, and a variety of periodicals, including Poetry, American Poetry
Review, American Scholar, Harper's, Paris Review, and The New Yorker. His
work has been featured in the Pushcart Prize anthology and The Best American
Poetry for 1992, 1993, and 1997. He has received fellowships from the New
York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the
Guggenheim Foundation. In 1992, he was chosen by the New York Public Library
to serve as "Literary Lion." For several years he has conducted summer
poetry workshops in Ireland at University College Galway. He is a professor
of English at Lehman College, City University of New York. He lives in
Somers, New York.

     -- The Academy of American Poets
[broken link] http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=294.

[Links]

http://www.bigsnap.com/billy.html is a very comprehensive website dedicated
to Billy Collins; it has links to several other of his poems.

We haven't had a whole lot of Chinese poetry on the Minstrels, though check
out
Poem #70, Ezra Pound, "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
Poem #504, Li Po, "About Tu Fu"
Poem #683, Li Po, "To Tu Fu from Shantung"

There are also several haiku by Basho, Buson and the like; see Poem #23,
Poem #56 and Poem #277.

And finally, the essay accompanying Geoffrey Hill's "A Prayer to the Sun",
Poem #349, has more on the concept of 'necessary obscurity' in poetry.

All this, and much much more, at the Minstrels website,
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/

Tell Brave Deeds of War -- Stephen Crane

(Poem #690) Tell Brave Deeds of War "Tell brave deeds of war." Then they recounted tales, -- "There were stern stands And bitter runs for glory." Ah, I think there were braver deeds. -- Stephen Crane

        (Black Riders XV)

I've read a number of war poems, good, bad and indifferent, but nothing
quite like today's quietly understated piece. There is a certain quality to
Crane's work; not quite 'originality', for the sentiment is not a new one,
but rather distinctiveness - not so much what the poem says as how it says
it.

As in many of his other poems, Crane manages to say a lot in surprisingly
few words; nor is it, as with some other poets, a matter of layering
meanings and imagery, or of 'making every word count'. With Crane, it seems
to be more a matter of finding *precisely* the right thing to say, and then
saying it as simply and economically[1] as possible - a technique that
sounds simple enough in theory, but whose difficulty is actually concealed
by the ease with which Crane accomplishes it.

[1] but without ever losing his characteristic tone of voice

Links:

poem #196 has a biography and a more extensive discussion of crane's
poetry.

poem #253 is one of my favourite verses from The Black Riders

And [broken link] http://geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/crane02.html contains the complete
text of The Black Riders and Other Lines, of which today's poem is but
stanza XV.

-martin

Helen in Egypt -- H D

Guest poem submitted by David Wright, an excerpt
from:

(Poem #689) Helen in Egypt This is the spread of wings, whether the Straits claimed them or the Cyclades, whether they floundered on the Pontic seas or ran aground before the Hellespont, whether they shouted Victory at the gate, whether the bowmen shot them from the Walls, whether they crowded surging through the breach, or died of fever on the smitten plain, whether they rallied and came home again, in the worn hulks, half-rotted from the salt or sun-warped on the beach, whether they scattered or in companies, or three or two sought the old ways of home, whether they wandered as Odysseus did, encountering new adventure, they are one; no, I was not instructed, but I "read" the script, I read the writing when he seized my throat, this was his anger, they were mine, not his, the unnumbered host; mine, all the ships, mine, all the thousand petals of the rose, mine, all the lily-petals, mine, the great spread of wings, the thousand sails, the thousand feathered darts that sped them home, mine, the one dart in the Achilles-heel, the thousand-and-one, mine. -- H D

Lately I've been reading H.D.'s Helen in Egypt and very much enjoying it,
although I'm hard pressed to express why.  The book-length poem takes as its
subject a story that dates back at least as far as the sixth century Greek
lyric poet Stesichorus, and was the subject of a play by Euripides as well.
The story is an alternate version of the Troy legend in which Zeus placed a
phantom Helen upon the ramparts of Troy and kept the faithful wife safe in
Egypt until Menelaus retrieved her.  In H.D.'s version she has encounters
with the spirit of Achilles who comes limping onto the shore, (it is he that
seizes her throat in the passage above, although that is not where their
story ends), as well as with Theseus and Paris, who she does after all seem
to have run off with.

I'm sure there is much interesting matter to be found in the author's
biography, the effect of the post-war years, the relationship of the poem to
Pound's Cantos -- it is supposed to be something of a feminist response --
the layers of Woolf-y psychology or the author's symbols, and I expect it
would be easy to find all sorts of explication of the piece. H.D. has
provided her own explanation in short prose passages before each verse,
originally composed to aid in a recording of the piece, and making this a
very accessible poem to read, I think.

What has captured me is the language, which shares with much ancient Greek
lyric a spare directness combined with this enchanting, at times incantatory
power.  (I guess enchanting and incantatory are just French and Latin for
the same thing, eh?)  And her feel for rhythm, her respect for the pulse,
make this a pleasure to read aloud.  I don't read Greek myself, but I
understand ancient Greek is very plain and unadorned in comparison with
English, or English poetry, anyway.  The whole poem is suffused with mystic
longing and with Love-Death.  If you enjoy reading Homer, this is a
fascinating counterpart to it.

(I'll insert a plug for one of my other favorite modern poetic treatments of
an ancient epic, although it is an altogether different sort of thing, very
prosy and sardonic.  This is Jason & Medeia, by John Gardner, a wonderful
author who hardly anybody seems to read anymore.)

David Wright.

PS. Other poems by H. D. on the Minstrels:
"Oread" poem #310
"Helen" poem #449
The first of these has a biography, critical analysis, and links to other
Imagist poetry. The second kicks off a set of poems on the Trojan War, which
might be of interest read in conjunction which today's poem. - t.