Friday 27 September 2013

ANYONE CAN WRITE MODERN POETRY...

Anyone can write modern poetry
…but that doesn't mean it's no good.
It can be very good or only better than a shopping list.
How is it judged? - easy, it stops you reading on.
You go back to make sure you got it right - that it was speaking to you…
That you hadn't 'misread' it like an American President -
Well, we're talking George Bush here…
No, what I mean is that good poetry talks to us all but also -
Only to us.

You'll know it when you see it…



Tuesday 24 September 2013

CATCHING LIFE BY THE THROAT...

Josephine Hart called her book with her choice of the eight modern poets...and I agree with her in every one (Auden, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin, & Sylvia Plath) - not so sure about Marianne Moore, so will have to go there again. 

Was particularly glad to see the two American gels - Dickinson and Plath there (where they belong). 

Almost anything of Emily's on her favourite pal (death) - will knock you out...

- and Plath; plenty, but for e.g. read the 'Mirror'

They all had it by the bucket..! 

What did they have...?  

They had the 'ear'..!


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THE END OF A DREAM...

Blair and Brown killed off the socialist dream that began in the garden of Gethsemane....death by poison. 

Miliband (Ed) to get power, sold himself to the Big Unions - as reactionary as the Klu  Klux Klan but without the dress sense...now all we have are 'managers' embroiled in a particularly virulent form of (office) politics... 

The Big '...isms' are dead - except of course, for plagiarism..!


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Sunday 15 September 2013

We all knew why...or catching her (w)life by the throat*





* reference to her sister-in-law's brilliant book on modern poets (see later post)

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POETRY SHOULDN'T BE EASY....

Poetry is the highest form of language.
It can also easily be misused or become meaningless…
Take the phrase, 'the solitude of strangers'.
Great phrase, at first glance it seems loaded with meaning.
But you would have solitude with strangers - until you get to know them!
Then - not strangers, so no solitude!
Unpacked, it has the same impact as "the wetness of water".
Poetry should not be used to sell empty phrases, door-to-door.


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