Dear Mr Lee -- U A Fanthorpe

Guest poem submitted by Vijay D'Silva:

(Poem #488) Dear Mr Lee Dear Mr Lee (Mr Smart says it's rude to call you Laurie, but that's how I think of you, having lived with you really all year), Dear Mr Lee (Laurie) I just want you to know I used to hate English, and Mr Smart is roughly my least favourite person, and as for Shakespeare (we're doing him too) I think he's a national disaster, with all those jokes that Mr Smart has to explain why they're jokes, and even then no one thinks they're funny, And T. Hughes and P. Larkin and that lot in our anthology, not exactly a laugh a minute, pretty gloomy really, so that's why I wanted to say Dear Laurie (sorry) your book's the one that made up for the others, if you could see my copy you'd know it's lived with me, stained with Coke and Kitkat and when I had a cold, and I often take you to bed with me to cheer me up so Dear Laurie, I want to say sorry, I didn't want to write a character-sketch of your mother under headings, it seemed wrong somehow when you'd made her so lovely, and I didn't much like those questions about social welfare in the rural community and the seasons as perceived by an adolescent, I didn't think you'd want your book read that way, but bits of it I know by heart, and I wish I had your uncles and your half-sisters and lived in Slad, though Mr Smart says your view of the class struggle is naïve, and the examiners won't be impressed by me knowing so much by heart, they'll be looking for terse and cogent answers to their questions, but I'm not much good at terse and cogent, I'd just like to be like you, not mind about being poor, see everything bright and strange, the way you do, and I've got the next one out of the Public Library, about Spain, and I asked Mum about learning to play the fiddle, but Mr Smart says Spain isn't like that any more, it's all Timeshare villas and Torremolinos, and how old were you when you became a poet? (Mr Smart says for anyone with my punctuation to consider poetry as a career is enough to make the angels weep). PS Dear Laurie, please don't feel guilty for me failing the exam, it wasn't your fault, it was mine, and Shakespeare's and maybe Mr Smart's, I still love Cider it hasn't made any difference. -- U A Fanthorpe

The last poem I sent was also by the same poet. Funny thing is that I discovered
her in one of my sister's school textbooks on my first trip home after going to
college. There is this wonderfully  unaffected and honest feel to this poem
which I really liked; also, there's lots to chuckle over while reading through
it...
        What really got to me though was that this poem really brings back hordes of
memories about school and the rest of my childhood which seems so far away now.
For some reason which I cannot fathom even now, I always had a morbid fear of
being forced to read "Cider with Rosie" and stayed as far from the book as I
could. Makes the poem all the more enjoyable.
        Other things like English lessons("T. Hughes and P. Larkin and that lot") with
people like Mr Smart teaching us "national disasters" also come back. (It's
rather ironic that Lee was considered to be one of the contenders for the post
of Poet Laureate after Ted Hughes.) The time I had chicken pox and books "I
often take.. to bed with me to cheer me up" as well as that desire to live in an
imaginary world which I suppose we all have at some time... Furthermore, her
calling him "Laurie" reminds me of those knock-me-down crushes we used to have
on pretty young teachers at school. Her manner is almost indulgent there.
        I suppose the subtleties of the poem and what the poet is saying matter as
well, but in this case I prefer to delight in how she says it and the fact that
it makes me remember rather than make me feel about the poem. In conclusion
though, I wouldn't say "I still love Cider". In that respect, "it hasn't made
any difference"!!

Vijay.

Petra -- John William Burgon

A couplet from

(Poem #487) Petra Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city - half as old as time! -- John William Burgon

"This must be the most quoted couplet from any of the poems to have won the
coveted Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford University. Burgon wrote it in
1845, before becoming a clergyman and disappearing into obscurity. None the
less, this is a fine piece of verse to be remembered by."

        -- Kenneth Baker, 'Unauthorized Versions', Faber 1990.

Regular readers of the Minstrels will know the word I'm dying to use to describe
this snatch of verse (Hint: adjective, 9 letters, starts with an e, falls
between 'evince' and 'evolve' in the dictionary)...

thomas.

[On the Newdigate Prize]

Other winners include Matthew Arnold, for 'Cromwell', in 1843; Oscar Wilde, for
'Ravenna' in 1878, and Laurence Binyon, for 'Perse.

[On Petra]

Here's what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to say:

 "Petra: ancient city, centre of an Arab kingdom in Hellenistic and Roman times;
its ruins are in southwest Jordan. The city was built on a terrace, pierced from
east to west by the Wadi Musa (the Valley of Moses)--one of the places where,
according to tradition, the Israelite leader Moses struck a rock and water
gushed forth. The valley is enclosed by sandstone cliffs veined with shades of
red and purple varying to pale yellow, and for this reason Petra was called by
the 19th-century English biblical scholar John William Burgon a 'rose-red city
half as old as Time'.

The Greek name Petra ('Rock') probably replaced the biblical name Sela. Remains
from the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods have been discovered at Petra,
and Edomites are known to have occupied the area about 1200 BC. Centuries later
the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe, occupied it and made it the capital of their
kingdom. In 312 BC the region was attacked by Seleucid forces, who failed to
seize the city. Under Nabataean rule, Petra prospered as a centre of the spice
trade that involved such disparate realms as China, Egypt, Greece, and India,
and the city's population swelled to between 10,000 and 30,000.

When the Nabataeans were defeated by the Romans in AD 106, Petra became part of
the Roman province of Arabia but continued to flourish until changing trade
routes caused its gradual commercial decline. After an earthquake (not the
first) damaged the city in 551, significant habitation seems to have ceased. The
Islamic invasion occurred in the 7th century, and a Crusader outpost is evidence
of activity there in the 12th century. After the Crusades, the city was unknown
to the Western world until it was rediscovered by the Swiss traveler Johann
Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812."

        -- EB

A more romantic account of Burckhardt's expedition is this:

"The Swiss explorer who rediscovered Petra in 1812, Burckhardt was a classic
nineteenth-century adventurer, the kind of man who would spend years polishing
his disguise as an Arab so he could pass unnoticed through the Middle East, a
land not always hospitable to curious Europeans. Under contract to the African
Association, a private group of wealthy men in Britain who sponsored
exploration, Burckhardt planned to cross the Sahara and seek the source of the
River Niger. He first perfected his traveling persona as an Arab trader named
Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abd Allah, then set off from Damascus toward Cairo. On the
way he decided to take a look inside the Wadi Mousa (the Valley of Moses) in
hilly region north of the Red Sea, rumored to contain the ancient ruins of a
lost city. Burckhardt told his reluctant guide that he had promised to sacrifice
a goat at the tomb of the prophet Aaron, which lay on a mountaintop inside the
valley. Although his guide grew increasingly suspicious of his charge's interest
in the archeological wonders, Burckhardt's ruse allowed him to become the first
European to see Petra in a millennium."

        -- Tom Huntington, thehistorynet.com

[Moreover]

A couplet as famous as today's is, naturally, not without its fair share of
parodies. For instance:

'Match me such marvel'

Match me such marvel save in college port,
The rose-red liquor, half as old as Short.

        -- William Tickell Jones

William Short was an Oxford don and 'character'. He had taught at Rugby around
1800, became a tutor at Oxford around 1820, and still lectured at Trinity
College in the 1860s.

Tickell Jones later became Bishop of St Davids.

Epitaph for a Darling Lady -- Dorothy Parker

(Poem #486) Epitaph for a Darling Lady All her hours were yellow sands, Blown in foolish whorls and tassels; Slipping warmly through her hands; Patted into little castles. Shiny day on shiny day Tumbled in a rainbow clutter, As she flipped them all away, Sent them spinning down the gutter. Leave for her a red young rose, Go your way, and save your pity; She is happy, for she knows That her dust is very pretty. -- Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker at her vicious best - I don't know whether to laugh, wince or
simply admire the effortless skill with which she plucks just the right
word or phrase out of thin air, time and again. The second verse, in
particular, is a lovely blend of imagery and versification, both stamped
with Parker's unique touch.

It is perhaps that distinctive style that I most like Parker for - indeed,
of all the 'humorous' poets I am familiar with, she is perhaps the one most
greatly disserviced by the label. I've said a bit about Parker's style in
the past (see the links), but neglected to mention the sheer depth of her
insight into humanity (even more evident in her short stories,
incidentally), or her deft use of sarcasm and absurdity. Well, consider them
mentioned <g>.

Links:

We've run two of Parker's poems in the past: poem #150, poem #192.

-martin

Hunters in the Snow: Brueghel -- Joseph Langland

Wrapping up the theme:

(Poem #485) Hunters in the Snow: Brueghel Quail and rabbit hunters with tawny hounds, Shadowless, out of late afternoon Trudge toward the neutral evening of indeterminate form Done with their blood-annunciated day Public dogs and all the passionless mongrels Through deep snow Trail their deliberate masters Descending from the upper village home in lovering light. Sooty lamps Glow in the stone-carved kitchens. This is the fabulous hour of shape and form When Flemish children are gray-black-olive And green-dark-brown Scattered and skating informal figures On the mill ice pond. Moving in stillness A hunched dame struggles with her bundled sticks, Letting her evening's comfort cudgel her While she, like jug or wheel, like a wagon cart Walked by lazy oxen along the old snowlanes, Creeps and crunches down the dusky street. High in the fire-red dooryard Half unhitched the sign of the Inn Hangs in wind Tipped to the pitch of the roof. Near it anonymous parents and peasant girl, Living like proverbs carved in the alehouse walls, Gather the country evening into their arms And lean to the glowing flames. Now in the dimming distance fades The other village; across the valley Imperturbable Flemish cliffs and crags Vaguely advance, close in, loom Lost in nearness. Now The night-black raven perched in branching boughs Opens its early wing and slipping out Above the gray-green valley Weaves a net of slumber over the snow-capped homes. And now the church, and then the walls and roofs Of all the little houses are become Close kin to shadow with small lantern eyes. And now the bird of evening With shadows streaming down from its gliding wings Circles the neighboring hills Of Hertogenbosch, Brabant. Darkness stalks the hunters, Slowly sliding down, Falling in beating rings and soft diagonals. Lodged in the vague vast valley the village sleeps. -- Joseph Langland

You don't often see this kind of descriptive poem attempted in completely free
verse; it's to Langland's credit that he achieves this task while remaining
remarkably 'poetic'. My favourite part of is this:
        "This is the fabulous hour of shape and form
         When Flemish children are gray-black-olive
         And green-dark-brown."
which seems to capture the feel of the orginal wonderfully well.

thomas.

[Thanks]

Dan Percival was the first of several people to write in with the name of the
painting I mentioned yesterday - it was 'The Human Condition', by Rene Magritte
[1]. Thanks, Dan (and all the others).

[1] Not Matisse, as I had written yesterday. I'm mortified that I confused the
two... they say the memory is the first thing to go... Magritte/Matisse,
Corot/Courbet, Monet/Manet... oh well.

[Moreover]

Dan also wrote:

"Magritte was deeply concerned with the distinction between a painting and its
subject, probably most famously expressed in "La trahison des images," ("The
treachery of images"), in which a realistic illustration of a pipe is captioned
with the phrase "Leci n'est pas une pipe." (This is not a pipe.)  There's a web
site with a searchable catalog of 300 of his paintings at www.magritte.com.
Several of his paintings treat the theme of a painting of a window placed in
front of the window.  Just go to that site, follow the "Museum" link, then pick
"window" from the theme menu of the search area on the left.  In the first two
pages of results, paintings like the one you describe are "The Human Condition"
(two versions) and "Where Euclide Walked."

Hmm, there's that old dichotomy between representation and represented again...

Hunters in the Snow -- William Carlos Williams

The third poem in this week's theme:

(Poem #484) Hunters in the Snow The over-all picture is winter icy mountains in the background the return from the hunt it is toward evening from the left sturdy hunters lead in their pack the inn-sign hanging from a broken hinge is a stag a crucifix between his antlers the cold inn yard is deserted but for a huge bonfire that flares wind-driven tended by women who cluster about it to the right beyond the hill is a pattern of skaters Brueghel the painter concerned with it all has chosen a winter-struck bush for his foreground to complete the picture -- William Carlos Williams

What I find most interesting about William Carlos Williams' take on Brueghel's
'Hunters in the Snow' is that unlike the other poets we've featured, Williams
talks, not about the scene shown in the painting, but about the painting itself.
There's an extra level of indirection here which is subtle but (I think) quite
important - especially given the context of Williams' work and the Imagist
movement.

The poem itself is simple and direct, a perfect example of Williams' inimitable
minimalism. It also stays true to the Imagist mantra "Show, don't tell"; the
difference, though, is that what's being shown is not a scene, but an image of
one. In that, it reminds me irresistibly of another painting I once saw - I
don't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure it was by Matisse; could some kind
soul on this mailing list illuminate me? - of a painting, which in turn showed
the view out of a window, and was placed directly in front of that window.
Strange loops, self-reference, wheels within wheels... Lovely.

thomas.