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

Absolutely right, spot on, WFAT

Your turn.

Jabs

I was hoping you might give me a bit more background information there, Jabs.

I've not been able to find that Peter Reading piece you mentioned, it has obviously been well and truly censored.

Here's something you may have trouble finding: it is on the internet, but probably only because I've put it there, so you might have to include my name in your search criteria. If you can't find it, maybe you can guess the year and the newspaper in which it was published.


O Captain! My Captain! The series is foregone!
Another Test, you did your best, and still got dumped upon.
The Game is up, the prize is lost, the people all are booing
(And for the next two games, what’s more, I doubt if they’ll be queuing).
O will you not, O can you not
Admit to having qualms?
Yet undismayed my Captain stands
With tightly folded arms.

O Captain! My Captain! Improve the shining Gower!
Be bright of eye, and signify that you enjoy your power!
The more they fail to strike a ball, and thus achieve dismissal,
The more you must harangue your men, and flap your arms, and whistle.
You may not know what happens next,
You may not have a clue,
But England does expect that you
Will look as if you do.

O Captain! My Captain! Your countrymen are peeved,
And nor are they the only ones whom you have sore deceived:
The Goddess of Activity, O can’t you see it vexed her,
To watch your languid sauntering, more sinister than Dexter?
Our step is slow, our spirits low,
The times are out of joint;
You must do more than vegetate
At very silly point.

I couldn't find your *excellent* poem, WFAT. Didn't help that I don't know your name, of course. I loved the sinister-dexter pun. Mention of Gower as captain puts us in the 80's? The team was certainly slow and sloppy, following Gower's example, compared to today's team.

Could you tell me the background to your poem and where it appeared?

All I can add about the Sonnets is that of course they weren't translations. The fact that they had to pretend to be, instead of a woman being open about love, shows late-Victorian attitudes to sex and to women, and the fact that they were accepted if coming from a foreigner shows the blatant racism of the times.

Well done, WFAT. Yours is a terrific poem.

Your turn again, I'm afraid.

This post has been removed.

I'm glad you liked that, Jabs. It's by Russell Davies and appeared in the D Telegraph on 6 Aug 1989, after England had lost the fourth Test (of six) to go 3-0 down in the series. You could probably have found it by googling 'waiting4atickle+o captain!', although that might also have taken you to my own poor parody of the same poem. Anyway, if you follow this link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio4/NF2766775?thread=6625473&skip=450#p80918490 - and click on the link in msg 452, you should be able to see the whole poem. You'll probably have to magnify it a bit to read it, as it's a poor quality photocopy of a newspaper cutting. Here's the first line of another poem which appeared in a national newspaper in the 80s:- "It was their luck to be born into a strange time." There are a number of translations of this on the net, but all the ones I've seen are peculiarly structured. Unfortunately, my edited version of the poem fell foul of the mods. For a bonus point, can you tell me what famous remark the author of this poem made regarding the conflict in question?

Two excellent poems, WFAT! Mind you, the recent Ashes triumph (yes, I stayed up, wholly and partly) led me to go a bit overboard for the Russell Davies. Make that three excellent poems. I enjoyed your own one too.

The current one is 'Juan Lopez and John Ward' by that once noted Argentinian Anglophile, Jorge Luis Borges. I've found a perfectly respectable version of it, although I don't know who the translator is. It's at www.pleasantenglish.com/Imagenes/Pop%20up/borgese.htm
A good poem.

And he said of the Falklands War that it was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

Now try this:

Take this kiss upon the brow!

[A poet very popular and respected in the USA and in France but not here]

Sorry, the link is better thus:

http://www.pleasantenglish.com/Imagenes/Pop%20up/borgese.htm

Thanks for the link, Jabs. That translation is the same as the one I originally quoted here, but with a much better layout.

England's performance in Australia was enough to make anyone go overboard, I reckon. And it was that, of course which reminded me of Russell Davies' ditty, since it relates to the Ashes series which followed England's last victory Downunder. I trust we won't have a repeat of that in 2013.

Your poem was "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe. He is (or has been) popular and respected here, but mainly for his fiction writing, I suppose - although The Raven is well-known.


Can you tell me who wrote this extract - pretty obvious, I suspect - and the title of the poem from which it's taken?


Sleep, pretty lady, the world awaits day with you;
Girlish and golden, the slender young moon.
Grant the fond darkness its mystical way with you;
Morning returns to us ever too soon.
Roses unfold, in their loveliness, all for you;
Blossom the lilies for hope of your glance.
When you're awake, all the men go and fall for you-
Sleep, pretty lady, and give me a chance.

It is, of course, Lullaby - biting comedy from Dorothy Parker.

I wonder if you will like this, WFAT:


When I kiss you in all the folding places
of your body, you make that noise like a dog

......although 'all the folding places' makes me think of tents, field kitchens, etc etc!


Contemporary poem. Poet and title please

Jabs

That seems to be "Muse" by Jo Shapcott. I'm not really sure what to make of it. It doesn't have instant appeal to me, perhaps I need to work at it.

Here's something I spotted on a message board this morning which did have instant appeal. It's out of copyright so I can quote it at length. I think you will probably know it, but who is the author and where is it from?


But most by Numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong.
In the bright Muse tho' thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid to join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers thro' the trees;"
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep;"
Then, at the last and only couplet, fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line
Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labours, and the words move slow:
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

Right. Interestingly, it's a modern rhyming poem. About her male muse.
Her muse is corporeal, mortal, unlike the muse of the male, which tends to be ideal, aetherial, eternal.

Yours is a passage from Alexander Pope's deadly 'Essay On Criticism'.
'Most by numbers judge a poet's song' is a total and economical dismissal of people who say 'it must/must not rhyme' or 'a Haiku has to have a 5-7-5 structure’, thus saving themselves the trouble of actually reading poems to see which is good and which not so good.

Basho, the great Japanese Haiku writer of 17th c, for example, didn’t use the 5-7-5 at all, and this is true here both of the original and the English translation of one of his haiku.

kabitan mo / tsukubawasekeri / kimi ga haru

the Dutchmen, too, / kneel before His Lordship— / spring under His reign. [1678]


Now, if you like psychoanalysis you surely must like this!


At times she thinks that what she really
ought to be doing with her life
is somehow the decision of the aether;

Title and author please

Jabs

That one took a bit of finding, Jabs. It was "A Voids Officer Achieves The Tree Pose" by Annie Freud. Psychoanalysis, eh?

This one might be appropriate.

They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

WFAT, Psychoanalysis may have been a clue, but it was meant to be a misleading one. Sorry
Sigmund Freud, the connection, was a distant relative. Great Grand-Uncle or something. But Annie is a contemporary English poet, daughter of Lucien Freud the artist, I believe.

You got it right, of course.

Try this one next (you probably won't even need to look it up).
A favourite of T.S.Eliot's:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote


Jab

Those are the opening lines of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."

Here's a poem to guess. I don't know exactly when it was written, but the poet was alive within Douglas Adams's lifetime [hint: a movie about the poet came out a few months ago, and another movie about his literary movement is about to hit the theaters]:

Tail turned to red sunset on a juniper crown a lone magpie cawks.

Mad at Oryoki in the shrine-room -- Thistles blossomed late afternoon.

Put on my shirt and took it off in the sun walking the path to lunch.

A dandelion seed floats above the marsh grass with the mosquitos.

At 4 A.M. the two middleaged men sleeping together holding hands.

In the half-light of dawn a few birds warble under the Pleiades.

Sky reddens behind fir trees, larks twitter, sparrows cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep.

Hi Fluffy!

They were the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer all right. Well done.

Yours is a poem featuring Mindfulness written at a Buddhist Centre - the evocatively named Rocky Mountain Dharma Centre - by Allen Ginsberg. Called 136 Syllables. I think it's very good - based on close observation in line with Mindfulness, it puts you right there with closely observed and sharp images.

That's good news - two movies featuring In the old Strauss waltz for the first time


Next: poem title and original poet* please:

We had listened to your quiet call,
Since then all the living things are alien
And the knocking of the clock consoles.

We, like you, are gladly greeting sunsets,
And are drunk on nearness of the end.
All, with which on better nights we're wealthy
Is put in the hearts by your own hand.

*It's a foreign poem, trans. Angela Livingstone.

Jab

Sorry, this has garbled itself in the computer:

1. The films feature Allen Ginsberg, presumably - it's escaped from the first line of the poem, as has The old Strauss Waltz.

2. The translator was Ilya Shambat - I'd been looking at the book I have, which is trans. by Livingstone. This is from the internet, with different translator.

I'll repeat the poem, (first two verses):

In the old Strauss waltz for the first time
We had listened to your quiet call,
Since then all the living things are alien
And the knocking of the clock consoles.

We, like you, are gladly greeting sunsets,
And are drunk on nearness of the end.
All, with which on better nights we're wealthy
Is put in the hearts by your own hand.


But by any translator will do.


Jab

That's another one by Marina Ivanova Tsvetaeva, Jabs - "To Mother".

You omitted to identify the poem in #552 - at least, you didn't post the details.

Lovely to see you here, Fluffy.

This one is probably still in copyright, so just a short extract:-

............. A chill in the flesh
tells him that death is not far off
now: it is the shadow under the great boughs
of life. His garden has herbs growing.

The boat drove on, the frightened mules
Tore through the rain and wind,
And bravely still, in dangers' post,
The whip boy strode behind.

"Come 'board, come 'board," the captain cried,
"Nor tempt so wild a storm;"
But still the raging mules advanced,
And still the boy strode on.

Then said the captain to us all,
"Alas, 'tis plain to me.
The greater danger is not there,
But here upon the sea.

So let us strive, while life remains,
To save all souls on board,
And then if die at last we must,
Let....I cannot speak the word!"

The poem in post 558 is "Good" by R S Thomas.