h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First Child - Second Child by Ogden Nash. Satirises the enthusuasm then lack of interest of a particularly shallow sort of msn.
Now:


Be it a girl, or one of the boys,
It is scarlet all over its avoirdupois,

....,like a wayward girl, will still be coy,
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;

Great to see you back here, Frank. But where have you been all this time (apart from in N America)? Most of us thought you'd gone to join the Muses in the sky. You haven't taken up ghost writing, have you? Some changes were made to the log-in process a while ago, and several people have had problems as a result. I don't know what problems, though, as I've not encountered them myself. I see you've already found the Bad Poetry thread. Here's a link to another one that you may remember:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F69196?thread=6410113&skip=800&show=20 That extract was from Keats' "On Fame". I think it's Jabs' turn, really - not sure what went wrong with his last post - but I'll throw this one in, anyway. Here come I to my own again, Fed, forgiven and known again, Claimed by bone of my bone again And cheered by flesh of my flesh. The fatted calf is dressed for me, But the husks have greater zest for me, I think my pigs will be best for me, So I'm off to the Yards afresh.

"The prodigal son" by Rudyard Kipling.

["Do you like Kipling?"
"I don't know, I've never kippled"]

next poem:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal

Lord Byron, apparently writing in a format established by Spencer.

(I have been away from this site for over a year, but I see that the same people till gather here, and in associated places to think about poetry or to write some "Bad Poetry". Fun, fun, fun!)

Next Poem: (on a subject in which I fear I am sadly lacking.)

Throw away Thy rod,
Throw away Thy wrath;
O my God'
Take the gentle path!

GEORGE HERBERT. AS far as I can see, the title is the first line.

NOW:



… And there’s pus in the weir; where once a white cumulus froth
of cauliflowers boiled, there’s a fetid and curdling slack
of turpentine slick clotting up with each new pollutant
in a piled scum of rainbow blown corrugated and poxed …

Peter Reading: a modern outspoken writer; strong stuff; I love it.

Now then:

....All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

That's Gerard Manley Hopkins. I used to imagine him walking though Cambridge, by The Backs down to The River, particularly in Autumn when the trees are at their golden best.

now:


If you saw my little backyard "Wot a pretty spot" you'd cry
It's a picture on a sunny day
Wiv the turnip tops and cabbages wot peoples does'nt buy
I makes it on a Sunday look all gay
The neighbours finks I grow em and you'd fancy youre in Kent
Or at Epsom if you gaze into the mews
Its a wonder as the landlord does'nt want to raise the rent
Because we've got such nobby distant views.

Chorus
Oh it really is a werry pretty garden
And Chingford to the eastward could be seen
Wiv a ladder and some glasses
You could see to "Ackney Marshes
If it was'nt for the ouses in between.

We're as countrified as can be wiv a clothes peg for a tree
The tub-stool makes a rustic little stile
Ev'ry time the bloomiin clock strikes there's a cuckoo sings to me
And I've painted up to Leather Lane a mile
Wiv tomatoes and wiv radishes wot adn't any sale
The backyard looks a puffick mass O' bloom
And I've made a little beehive wiv some beetles in a pail
And a pitchfork wiv a handle of a broom.

Chorus
Oh it really is a werry pretty garden
And Rye ouse from the cock-loft could be seen
Where the chickweed man undresses
To bathe 'mong the watercresses
If it was'nt for the ouses in between.

Poet and title please.

PS I didn't go to Cambridge!

Neither did I. I was in Oxford for a day forty years ago.

"If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between". as recited by Gus Elen:
Words and music by Edgar Bateman and George Le Brunn.

A Music Hall favourite.

Now:

Those Irish chappies
Have a fine sense of it
This language of ours

They toss it in the air
Like a snowball

Dribble it through their fingers
Like the guy in the movies

Tell tales that fell
Of the back of a lorry
Carting logs for the furnace

Swill it round their mouths
And let the spittle drip
Slowly out

Trickle, tumble
Fiddle, fumble
Bimble, bumble

To be sure of anything
Would be a fine thing

To be sure
As Spike says-
.........................

The poem is from Sir Paul McCartney's first poetry collection, "Blackbird Singing."

The poem itself has the title "Irish language"

Next poem:

Like conch shell
I broke the spell
Of Anancy's ride
And spilled wide
Secrets on waves
Connecting slaves
To warrior spears
Of Igbo and Ashanti,
Coramantine and Fulani
Hausa, Yoruba and Twi
Hillside Massai and Fanti

In the twilight zone
The spider king did moan
About the crossing
About ship tossing
Tangling up his web
0f tales upon his bed
He spoke of births
Below, in the surfs
Of black blood,
Of children crying,
Longing for his food

That was Paul McCartney with his museum warpaint on. Competent verse, called possibly The Lan I wan'. Sorry to sound sniffy, but I think poetry ought to come from real experience - however transformed and transmogrified -[with the exception of comic verse. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong]. And this white man done misappropriated a whole culture. Now something out of lived experience:


Air white with cold. Cycloid wind prevails.
On ichnolithic plain where no step stirs
And winter hardens into plate of ice:
Shoots an anthracite glitter of death
From their eyes, - these men shine darkly

That's Lynette Roberts again, Jabs. I'm not sure, but I presume it's a stanza from "Gods With Stainless Ears".

A bonus point if you can guess what prompted me to quote this one.

In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.
Love, like a carefully loaded ship,
crosses the gulf between the generations.
Therefore, we do not neglect the ceremonies
of our passage: when we wed, when we die,
and when we are blessed with a child;
When we depart and when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.
Let us bring up our children. It is not
the place of some official to hand to them
their heritage.
If others impart to our children our knowledge
and ideals, they will lose all of us that is
wordless and full of wonder.
Let us build memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest they allow treasures to be lost because
they have not been given the keys.
We live, not by things, but by the meanings
of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.

I meant to mention, in view of Jabs' comment "poetry ought to come from real experience", that, according to Nietzsche once, "poets are impertinent - they exploit their experiences". Or something like that.

"Sorry to sound sniffy, but I think poetry ought to come from real experience - however transformed and transmogrified -[with the exception of comic verse. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong]." [Jabberwock]

I think that a whole thread could be devoted to discussion of this topic, Jabs. Homer never saw a lotus-eater or a cyclops or Calypso's island. If he was blind as they claimed, he wouldn't have actually seen much, yet his position as a great poet seems unarguable.

I come from the side of the aisle where great literature takes you away from the real world to one extent or another, though I am not advocating going to extremes. Some balance is required if you are to entice others to join you on your adventure.

1. She left her husband and wrote and brought up a family in a caravan on the road at the edge of town, WFAT. And she was a better poet than the lot of 'em. You don't hear so much about poets of WW2, (perhaps it was less of a shock?), but she in her relative obscurity was arguably the best of them.

2. Good. I'm glad I agree with Nietzsche (or vice versa)


This is tengentially and surprisingly connected with World War 2: No need to read all of it.

It was in the thicket of the Artois Wood.
Deep in the trees, on blood-soaked ground,
Lay stretched a wounded German warrior,
And his cries rang out in the night.
In vain ... no echo answered his plea ...
Will he bleed to death like a beast,
That shot in the gut dies alone?
Then suddenly ...
Heavy steps approach from the right
He hears how they stamp on the forest floor ...
And new hope springs from his soul.
And now from the left ...
And now from both sides ...

Two men approach his miserable bed
A German it is, and a Frenchman.
And each watches the other with distrustful glance,
And threatening they aim their weapons.
The German warrior asks:
"What do you do here?"
"I was touched by the needy one's call for help."

"It's your enemy!"
"It is a man who suffers."