Dannie Abse, whose book of poetry written in lament for his wife Joan, killed in a car crash in 2005, was a deserved "Wales Book of the Year in 2008", died yesterday. In a world that cannot afford to lose too many poets all at once I thought it fitting to set up a thread to mark their passing, and Dannie could not be a more fitting person to head up the list.

Here, fom his "Speak, Old Parrot" published two years ago, is his account of his inexorable progress towards September 28th 2014 ...




Talking to Myself

In the mildew of age
all pavements slope uphill
slow slow
towards an exit.

It’s late and light allows  
the darkest shadows to be born of it.

Courage, the ventriloquist bird cries
(a little god, he is, censor of language)
           remember plain Hardy and dandy Yeats
     in their inspired wise pre‐dotage.  

I, old man, in my new timidity,
think how, profligate, I wasted time
‐ those yawning postponements on rainy days,
those paperhat hours of benign frivolity.

Now Time wastes me and there’s hardly time
to fuss for more vascular speech.

The aspen tree trembles as I do
and there are feathers in the wind.

Quick quick
speak, old parrot,
do I not feed you with my life?


Dannie Abse, 22 September 1923 – 28 September 2014

A special word here too for Joan. A fearless campaigner for CND and rationality to the end.

An absolutely superb piece of writing - a poem I've not come across before. Painful to read, but then we "read to know we are not alone" - even if the companionship hurts. "I wasted time and now doth time waste me". Richard II, who died young. But "the paperhat hours of benign frivolity" were perhaps not such a waste; like Antony we all long for "one more gaudy night". We keep trying, but these days the gaudy nights of wine, conversation and laughter seem to end around 10.30 pm.

Dear Minette - "gaudy nights" reminds me of her Gaudian knot - or was it "gordy night"? Can't remember now. But it was pure Minette and I do so miss her posts and her spelling (said with affection, Minette, if you read this, not malice).

I'm not quite sure what this thread is asking of us. May we only post a favourite poem on the anniversary of a poet's death; or are we allowed to post any favourite, so long as the writer is dead?

I was thinking more along the lines of including them as they pop off and enter history. Trying to catch up with all of the already dead ones might be just a little too much of a job.

Not if we mention a favourite poet on the anniversary of his or her death. Waiting for our living favourites to "pop off" seems a bit - well - ghoulish. We might pop off first.

Fulke Greville, who died 30th September 1628;

Myra

I, with whose colours Myra dress'd her head,
I, that ware posies of her own hand-making,
I, that mine own name in the chimneys read
By Myra finely wrought ere I was waking:
Must I look on, in hope time coming may
With change bring back my turn again to play?

I, that on Sunday at the church-stile found
A garland sweet, with true-love knots in flowers,
Which I to wear about mine arm was bound,
That each of us might know that all was ours:
Must I now lead an idle life in wishes,
And follow Cupid for his loaves and fishes?

I, that did wear the ring her mother left,
I, for whose love she gloried to be blamed,
I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft,
I, who did make her blush when I was named:
Must I lose ring, flowers, blush, theft, and go naked,
Watching with sighs till dead love be awaked?

I, that, when drowsy Argus fell asleep,
Like jealousy o'erwatched with desire,
Was even warned modesty to keep,
While her breath, speaking, kindled Nature's fire:
Must I look on a-cold, while others warm them?
Do Vulcan's brothers in such fine nets arm them?

Was it for this that I might Myra see
Washing the water with her beauties white?
Yet would she never write her love to me.
Thinks wit of change, while thoughts are in delight?
Mad girls must safely love as they may leave;
No man can print a kiss: lines may deceive

Sacheverell Sitwell ( this is the first I have heard of him) died 1st October 1988;

The poem The Rio Grande by Sacheverell Sitwell was from "The Thirteenth Caesar, and other Poems":

By the Rio Grande
They dance no sarabande
On level banks like lawns above the glassy, lolling tide;
Nor sing they forlorn madrigals
Whose sad note stirs the sleeping gales
Till they wake among the trees and shake the boughs,
And fright the nightingales;

I can see why Sitwell was loath to publish his "poetry". Edith probably did a better job.

Maybe this thread should be reserved for the good ones? If we include everyone who thought themselves a poet regardless of how inaccurate their own assessment might have been just because they died on a particular day then that's 365.25 into 70,000,000,000 (and counting) which leads to ... well, an awful lot.

I'm a day or two late, but please may I add William McGonagall? According to Wiki, he died on 29th September, 1902.

As we all know, McGonagall's poetry is so dreadful it is quite brilliant.

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-tay-bridge-disaster

In dark moments, when I fear my central girders are about to give way, I always remember his advice about using buttresses:

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

2nd October is National Poetry Day;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-29446826

Since this is October 8th it might be fitting to remember the poet Goku Kyonen who died on this day in 1272. In Japan Goku is known mostly for his own personal "jisei", a short poem which one composes just before one dies (if one is lucky - or suicidal - enough to anticipate the event correctly), so we must assume this is also the anniversary of its composition, recited before a gathering of his Zen Buddhist disciples. However to get the full point, and possibly an inkling of Kyonen's sense of humour right up to the end, one requires - like stage directions - the actions that accompanied the recital:

Goku gathers his disciples around him and laboriously lifts himself into a sitting position from the cot on which he lies.

He taps his stick once upon the floor and speaks almost in a whisper ...

"The truth embodied in the
Buddhas
Of the future, present,
past;
The teaching we received
from the
Fathers of our faith
Can be found at the tip of
my stick."

Taps stick on floor once more.

Shouts smilingly: "See! See!"

Dies stitting up.



Some Zen jisei are pithy indeed:

Empty-handed I entered
the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
Senryu, died June 2nd 1887

Spitting blood
clears up reality
and dream alike.
Senryu (an earlier monk of the same name), died September 23rd 1790

Coming, all is clear, no
doubt about it. Going, all is
clear, without a doubt.
What, then, is all?
Hosshin, died 14th century (who followed this with a cry of "Katsu!" - Eureka! - and then keeled over)

Deleted.

Reading on of my WW1 books last night "Tumult in the Clouds" about the air war 1914-18, the title of the book is taken from a poem by WB Yeats, "An Irish Airman foresees his death"



The airman is thought to be Major Robert Gregory, a friend of Yeats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Irish_Airman_Foresees_His_Death

A dead poet who has recently been in the news is Flannery O'Connor, the American writer more famous for her essays and short stories but who also produced enough verse in her lifetime to warrant inclusion last week in the USA's "poets' corner". This corner, modelled on its Westminster Abbey counterpart, is a collection of plaques in New York City Cathedral of St John the Divine dedicated to the country's foremost authors of lyrical verse and prose, each one accommodating a little quote which hopefully represents its originator with accuracy and wit.



The problem with Flannery was settling on which quote this might be - O'Connor was eminently quotable in everything she wrote, as any trawl through websites devoted to witty citations will demonstrate. In the end the Cathedral committee that decides such things settled on this from a 1953 letter she wrote to Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell;

“I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.”

I like it.

Another dead poet in the news lately - a notebook containing early hand-written drafts of some well known Dylan Thomas poems was "rescued" from being chucked in the fire back in the 1930s and has now found its way to the auction room (where the sellers are hoping to get as much as £150,000 for it).



Amongst the poems is an early version of the magnificent Altarwise by Owl-Light - as pleasant to read aloud as it is unfathomable. Its final stanza ...

Let the tale’s sailor from a Christian voyage
Atlaswise hold half-way off the dummy bay
Time’s ship-racked gospel on the globe I balance:
So shall winged harbours through the rockbirds’ eyes
Spot the blown word, and on the seas I image
December’s thorn screwed in a brow of holly.
Let the first Peter from a rainbow’s quayrail
Ask the tall fish swept from the bible east,
What rhubarb man peeled in her foam-blue channel
Has sown a flying garden round that sea-ghost?
Green as beginning, let the garden diving
Soar, with its two bark towers, to that Day
When the worm builds with the gold straws of venom
My nest of mercies in the rude, red tree.

29 January 1845 saw the publication of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Triceratops wrote:

29 January 1845 saw the publication of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

To me, this is extremely reminiscent of the work of his contemporary, Longfellow. Neither attracts me greatly. To me, Ambrose Bierce satirised both extremely well in his Devil's Dictionary:-
 

whangdepootenawah

n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.

Should you ask me whence this laughter,
Whence this audible big-smiling,
With its labial extension,
With its maxillar distortion
And its diaphragmic rhythmus
Like the billowing of an ocean,
Like the shaking of a carpet,
I should answer, I should tell you:
From the great deeps of the spirit,
From the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soul this laughter welleth
As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
Like the river from the canon [sic],
To entoken and give warning
That my present mood is sunny.
Should you ask me further question --
Why the great deeps of the spirit,
Why the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
This all audible big-smiling,
I should answer, I should tell you
With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
With a true tongue, honest Injun:
William Bryan, he has Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
Standing silent in the kneedeep
With his wing-tips crossed behind him
And his neck close-reefed before him,
With his bill, his william, buried
In the down upon his bosom,
With his head retracted inly,
While his shoulders overlook it?
Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Shiver grayly in the north wind,
Wishing he had died when little,
As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
Standing in the gray and dismal
Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
Realizing that he's Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

Not dead yet, this man, but since it's his 68th birthday let's have a classic blast from the poet Les Barker:

I used to perform his "Sloop John A" as a folk club floor singer (misleading description there - never sang a floor in all my days).


Flavit Les Barker!

I thought that cat poem was awful - and the pictures.

Sorry.

Temperance wrote:

I thought that cat poem was awful - and the pictures.

Sorry.

Try this one, then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDakrjmwJc

Brilliant, Gil!

Though I reckon the Wordsworth Brigade will have something to say ...

This one, if you remember that godawful Family Favourites request, is only farking brilliant!

nordmann wrote:

Though I reckon the Wordsworth Brigade will have something to say ...

Oh no, not those Wordsworth types!

For the record, I'm not that keen on William Wordsworth. Never did like the Lyrical Ballads. Some of the stuff is dire.


And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water--never dry
I measured it from side to side:
'Twas four feet long, and three feet wide.

An extract from The Thorn. Less a poem, "more of a rhyming geographical survey".

Philip Larkin to receive a floor stone in Westminster Abbey;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33148295

From "Church Going"

Once i am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting seats and stone
and little books; sprawlings of flowers cut
For Sunday brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense musty unignorable silence
Brewed God knows how long.
Hatless I take off
My cylce-clips in awkward revrence

Move forward run my hand around the font.

From where i stand the roof looks almost new--
Cleaned or restored? someone would know: I don't.

Here's Larkin reading the poem. You do have to listen to the end though, Trike. Interesting that Christopher Hitchens cited it:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5aKknj-q3o


"Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings", said WH Auden.

Stronger than the acid of his ironies is a profound sympathy for the wishful or naïve, and for the poignancy of their disabuse. One returns to Larkin not for lyrical heckling but for the humane clarity at the core of his irreverence.

William Waring Cuney - not a great poet, not a very well known poet, but a dead one.

He was forging a career as a poet at a time when African Americans found it almost impossible to forge a career as anything, and as an African American he was therefore one of those who rejoiced when Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world, defeated former champion Jim Jeffries in what was billed "the fight of the century" on Independence Day 1910. White Americans were so sure the negro upstart would be "put in his place" by the returning champion that Johnson's emphatic victory prompted a vicious reaction by whites in many southern US towns and cities to the quite understandable jubilant celebrations embarked upon by black Americans throughout the land. Cuney was one of those celebrating, and his re-wording of the old spiritual "My Lord, What A Morning" should be read aloud in true Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali "Float Like A Butterfly" mode to extract its intended joy and effect ... (Or better yet, gather a few righteous brothers and sisters around you and belt it out in raucous chorus to High Heaven)

MY LORD, WHAT A MORNING

Oh, my Lord
What a morning,
Oh, my Lord,
What a feeling,
When Jack Johnson
Turned Jim Jeffries’
Snow-white face
Up to the ceiling.
Yes, my Lord,
Fighting is wrong,
But what an uppercut.
Oh, my Lord,
What a morning,
Oh, my Lord
What a feeling,
When Jack Johnson
Turned Jim Jeffries’
Lily-white face
Up to the ceiling.
Oh, my Lord
What a morning,
Oh, my Lord
Take care of Jack.
Keep him, Lord
As you made him,
Big, and strong, and black.

Still it seems JJ was a live memory in WWI.

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=104051

So was Jeffries, who was also a JJ by the way. In 1915 Jeffries and Johnston, both overweight and way beyond any actual fighting, put on an exhibition match in Paris for the troops at which it was reported the 150,000 who attended (none of whom were USA troops, it being still too early in a war for them to join in) saw nothing (save a few hundred near the ringside) but which cheered everyone up no end.

As late as 1978 an ex Irish army officer working in the Irish civil service could boast to me about how he delivered a "Jack Johnston" on someone in the pub the previous night (he hadn't but he really needed to believe he had). He was horrified to hear that Johnston wasn't a stout Kerry lad and was actually more related to Kunta Kinte than Kelly the Boy From Killane, but he was still proud he'd landed one.

Just an honest thought, why am I more comfortable with the works of dead poets than the breathing ones of today?

Priscilla wrote:

Just an honest thought, why am I more comfortable with the works of dead poets than the breathing ones of today?

You are not alone there - look how a painter's ouvre increases in value on the artist's death .....