Billy Collins Makes You Want to Write a Poem

This TED talk by Billy Collins is essential viewing for poets who are drying up, school-goers who need to be convinced that poetry means anything and anyone who has ever said they don't like poetry. A very entertaining 15 mins.

Jesus The Aviator

Jesus the fighter pilot

has served in Iraq and Afghanistan:

6,000 flight hours; 1,800 combat hours. 

Described as cool-headed, aggressive;

when asked for his opinion, he says

he backs America all the way. 

The much decorated F-18 pilot claims

he’s come a long way, his teachings are smarter;

“follow the dollar gospel” he says,

  “In God We Trust”.

A Visual Jolt

Sometimes an unexpected glimpse trips a mental switch that triggers  understanding. It maybe the shock that jolts clarity, or maybe the novel view of something familiar.

  

Seeing, through

this patterned pane,

 

your face: 

whole but distorted

like our love.

My Úna Bhán

One of the great Irish love songs love songs was written by Tomás Láidir Mac Coisdealbha (fl.1660s) from Moylurg, Boyle. It will feature in the forthcoming Roscommon anthology.

Tomás was in love with Úna Ní Dhiarmada, but her father considered him less than suitable and forbade her having any contact with him. She, grief-stricken, became very sick and eventually her father relented and permitted Tomás to visit her. On leaving, he vowed that if a messenger sent by Mac Diarmada did not reach him before he crossed the river, he would never return nor speak to her again.

He rode slowly and delayed at the river, even in the middle of the river till eventually, goaded by his servant, he crossed. The messenger arrived but too late. He killed his servant with a single blow.

Úna died heart-broken and was buried on Trinity island on Lough Key. On his death, his request to be buried beside her was granted; it is said that a tree above his grave inter-twined with a tree above hers.

WB Yeats, on visiting the island, searched for the inter-twined trees but failed to find them.   

It not generally known but I, myself, have endured as sad an experience in my own past - it is well known that you must not look back as a lover is leaving. On that dreadful day, I said goodbye to my love and very purposefully turned from her and walked away. However, I had just gone a short distance when it began to rain so I went to open my umbrella. A sudden gust of wind caught the opening umbrella and wheeled me round so that I found myself looking directly at her. To my horror, the clothes she was wearing  now hung on a block of stone that had her likeness. It was standing exactly where I had left her; the index finger of her right hand frozen in the act of removing a tear.

The eyes have it

 

 

These images by Lucas Cranach the Elder are very arresting. Despite being 600 years old there’s something very fresh and immediate about them. The eyes are compelling, the depth of emotion they convey; it looks as though they are seeing all the world’s sorrow to the end of time. The paintings give me an urge to write, and that is one of the reasons I am always interested in the work of painters and photographers.

 

 

Trees like..........................

Elaine Leigh's painting brought another painting to mind, and so this poem.

What The Artist Sees: 

 

these trees like the ladies of Avignon,

shamelessly flaunting  themselves,

streaming earth to heaven,

arms thrown upward, presenting  so fiercely. 

In their assemblage: formidable, fearsome,

the usual meaning is altered,

(a shared purpose outside today’s understanding),

their collective nakedness guarding some primeval dogma.

 

Those Marches

 

When  they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of Brendan

alone in his sitting room,

flicking channels,

news to news;

dinners collecting on the table. 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of Peter

who hated cameras;

his reflection

in the mirror

between the bottles. 

 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of Tom

who asked for a present

on his death bed;

I didn’t have one,

no one else came. 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of John

who asked me to visit,

gentlest man

I’ve ever known;

I didn’t.  

When they play those marches,

play those marches;

when they play those marches,

the drums tip away.

What the camera saw

They often  tell lies, but sometimes the camera catches a moment of truth. This isn't a classic poem but it catches a poignant moment.

The Photograph.

 

You, longing for another

who wasn’t there. 

She was leaning against me

but I didn't care. 

That sunny day

I was looking at you, 

confident my feelings

were not on view. 

But now I see

as the camera saw, 

that moment’s disappointment,

a lifetime cannot thaw.

You Crying

 

Your crying:

The silver streams

Of your eyes,

The radiant red cheeks,

The choking on words,

The gullish.

 

Somehow

I think of a voice

Curling up

From inside a hollow oak.

A little goes a long way

I have over the years come across some examples of very little making the difference between life and death. In caring for the elderly, sometimes it is food for the spirit that makes the difference. This poem instances a particular case; the improvement was spectacular.

In the Home 

Sitting quietly by her bed,

among those sobbing, groaning women.

A room claustrophobic with impending death;

her spirit withered inside her,

her mind ran away to the fifties.  

But given a bed near the window,

her mind cranked up.

It was the birds on the lawn,

the grubbing thrushes and blackbirds:

they found perches for her brain.

Almost Summer

The lengthening days and the anticipation of sunny weather are part of what makes May special, but in rural parts there are more subtle triggers that stir a deeper-rooted happiness that is somehow extracted from the locked chest of childhood.

I’m talking about the cuckoo’s call coming from somewhere across the fields. That clear, spoken pair of syllables cuck koo that sounds prehistoric, beautiful, and somehow like a personal call to you. The smell of wild garlic from the woods outside Mount Charles and the coconut scent of the furze when at last the sun is warm enough to raise it.

Meanwhile the mountains are predominately brown right now with this late spring. But within two weeks the green explosion will have taken place and the passage of clouds will be as dramatic on their flanks as it is in the skies above Barnesmore. Vacillating, bottle green, gliding along the hectares of unfurling bracken, they will be the flowing current that is the Donegal hills in Summer-time.

 

The Early Mornings of the Early Days of Parenthood

I've just discovered this poem from years ago.

Roaring.

 

Every morning

I balloon out of bed,

bank around the corners

into the other room

and rant.

 

 

Silence.

 

Rant bank balloon

morning

and

 

Roaring.

 

Every morning

I balloon out of bed,

bank around the corners

into the other room

and rant.

 

Silence.

 

Rant bank balloon

morning

and

 

 

for a smartish type,

I'm a slowish learner.

The world breaks, people disperse

in ant-burst fashion.

A piano-maker brimful of strings,                     hammers

            and physics             introduced me to his cities. 

There is no space,

one chaos is not like another.

RS Thomas reading The Bright Field

Accessible, moving, spiritual, relevant, profound are very complimentary words when applied to poetry. All of them apply to the poetry of the great Welsh poet RS Thomas. The Bright Field is a beautiful poem, his own reading of it enhances the beauty. 

Read it loud, a verbal upper

There is no poetry to match Whitman’s for exultation; he sings a body electric. Like a river in spate, there is an awesome energy in the poetry. Go to a quiet room, read it out loud, it's a verbal upper.  

 

One of the essential reads in all poetry, the poems from Whitman's " Leaves of Grass" can be got at http://www.bartleby.com/142/index2.html

 

 

from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" 

 1

 

 I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

 And what I assume you shall assume,

 For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 

 I loafe and invite my soul,

 I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

 

 My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,

 this air, 

 Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and

 their parents the same,

 I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

 Hoping to cease not till death. 

 Creeds and schools in abeyance,

 Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never

 forgotten,

 I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

 Nature without check with original energy. 

 2 

 Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are

 crowded with perfumes,

 I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

 The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 

 The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the

 distillation, it is odorless,

 It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

 I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

 I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread,

crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of   blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind,

 A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

 The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

 The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,

 The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. 

 

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 

 

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are      millions of suns left,) 

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

 You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

 You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

 

3

 

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always
substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed
of life.

To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is
not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while
they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man
hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied — I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side
through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day
with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the
house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream
at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and
which is ahead?