Raven Ramblings

Lenten Read the Fourth

2012-02-21T21:15:00.018Z

Lent has somewhat taken me by surprise this year. We had great plans we'd hoped would be ready for this year but Christmas was only just recovered from when suddenly there were pancakes appearing everywhere. Optimism remains for a charitable read next year.

If you are new to the idea of a Lenten Read, there is an introduction to it, plus 2010 and 2011's choice of books.

My selection this year:

I loved Kate Grenville's The Secret River and Can. Not. Wait. to get stuck into her latest, Sarah Thornhill, which continues the story. 307 pages.

For months I've been meaning to read Josh Ritter's debut novel, Bright's Passage. Now is the perfect time, not least because New Island recently secured rights to publish it here in Ireland - expect it on the bookshelves in April. 193 pages.

It's my two year anniversary of discovering Mr Rhodes. I love his writing. My expectations are so high for this book, I'm getting vertigo. The publisher says 423 pages but that's suspiciously long for a Rhodes novel. Verification when it is released on March 1st.

The first line of Carson McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter remains one of my favourite openers: In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Those words set my expectations high and I was not disappointed. This one is a slip of a novel at 176 pages but I'm willing to bet they'll be 176 pages of, as the literary critics say, awesomeness.

I've read a couple of William Boyd novels and enjoyed the pace of them. He is more narrative driven than many authors I read but that's not a bad thing when he has an intriguing story to tell. Plus, there was a good interview with him on Open Book recently which piqued my interest. 353 pages.

I may regret this last choice, not because of content but because I suspect I won't want to rush through it. His book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning is highly recommended - it gave me a much better understanding of how this world works on individual and societal levels. I anticipate that this book will do the same. 256 pages, though I'll only get around half way though it before Easter.

These are the intended but we'll see what life throws in my general direction over the next six weeks. I will be taking a break from my Poem-for-today posts but they will resume Monday 9th of April.

I'll be tweeting my reading progress daily using #lentenread, please do join in!

~Louisa

He Tells Her

2012-02-19T18:47:00.004Z

....
In altercations fierce and long
She does her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
....

A gift from Wendy Cope to anyone who has ever found themselves in an argument with somebody factually incorrect, arrogant, obstinate and above all, a skilled debater. There are few situations so frustrating, so irritating as an obdurate individual who will categorically and patronisingly deny the remotest possibility that they are anything less than 100% right about something that you know to be complete rubbish. It is an impressively dispassionate poem.

Dead Cow Farm

2012-02-15T23:14:00.004Z

....
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood
Blossomed, a miracle to believe:
And so was Adam born, and Eve
.....

This is a poem of two halves; Robert Graves weaves a creation myth from earth and ancient tales, warm and nurturing, to bring forth the world. The tone alters in the second half to imply that the cold science of evolution has obliterated the magic of the old and replaced it with an apocalyptic desolation devoid of life.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

2012-02-13T21:48:00.003Z

....
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
....

One line? One line from the whole of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock? Yes but what a line. On first reading T.S. Eliot's poem, one would be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed. A Leaving Cert. student might roll their eyes and wonder wtf was he on about. I was fortunate to have an English teacher advise his class to find one line - one line - that made sense to them. Once your foot is in the door, slowly slowly the rest opens up.

Oh! Mr. Best, you're very bad

2012-02-10T23:34:00.003Z

Oh! Mr. Best, you're very bad
And all the world shall know it;
Your base behaviour shall be sung
By me, a tunefull Poet.
....

It's proclamations like this that make me think I wouldn't have liked Jane Austen very much at all. And not just because she rhymed know it with poet. Her moral high-ground is somewhat compromised by her threats to publicly deride this Mr Best if he does not conform as she believes he should, and frankly the whole passive-aggressive approach does her no favours at all. This poem is an excellent example of why one should always be wary of upsetting a writer; whatever about mightier, in the right hands the pen can certainly be sharper than the sword.

On Raglan Road

2012-02-08T22:35:00.002Z

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
....

You've been there too? Their dark hair, their dark eyes, their smile that twists your heart fit to burst and you know, you know it'll end with tears and beers but you take their hand anyway, ignoring the inevitability of tomorrow because you have been, as Patrick Kavanagh so aptly puts it, enchanted.

Evening Solace

2012-02-07T22:34:00.003Z

....
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.
....

As might be expected of Charlotte Brontë, this is a melancholic poem, yet one essentially of optimism as it recognises the dulling effect of time on misery and torment. It gives perspective to those in the midst of sorrow - when the heart is freshly bleeding - the promise that their pain will not remain acute. I hope her father read it; he must have had a great source of strength to survive burying his wife, his son, and his three daughters.

The Grey Monk

2012-02-06T22:01:00.003Z

....
But vain the Sword and vain the Bow,
They never can work War's overthrow.
The Hermit's prayer and the Widow's tear
Alone can free the World from fear.
....

William Blake has two associations for me: the beautiful, wild illustrations he used with his poems, and Johnny Depp in Dead Man. Perhaps because I associate rhyme with a sense of whimsy, it's hard for me to fully feel the depth of sentiment Blake pours into this poem. The pace of it is almost jaunty when the subject matter cries out for serious consideration, almost mocking of the sincerity of the monk and the emotional and physical pain he is enduring. The structure and content make strange bedfellows but perhaps that is the very reason I remember it.

L'amoureuse | The Beloved

2012-02-04T21:34:00.002Z

....
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s'évaporer les soleils
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire.

....
Her dreams in broad daylight
Make the suns evaporate
Make me laugh, cry and laugh,
Speak with nothing to say.

Another love poem, this one from Paul Éluard, a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement. There is intoxicating joy in his words with the swirling possession of love taking on his human form. The last lines speak to the hysteria she is causing in him, the fine line between, or overlapping Venn diagram of, love and madness.

Mirror In February

2012-02-01T22:46:00.005Z

....
Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
....

One of the two Thomas Kinsella poems that have stayed with me since school fado, fado, in particular the idea of being hacked clean. The pivotal moment of the poem is his realisation that he is no longer young, that age has left its physical mark on him. It's a very different reading experience for a 16yr old and someone in middle-age, and I expect will be different again twenty years hence. As with The Road Not Taken, the last two words can be read with optimism or pessimism depending on ones misanthropic tendencies or lack thereof.

Donal Óg

2012-01-31T20:32:00.003Z

....
You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.
....

When Lady Gregory translated this old Irish poem into English, she stayed closed to the original grammatical structure imbuing the language with a vernacular vibrancy. The disjointed narrative heightens how torn the speaker is, hysterical with love for the boy who has stolen away her heart and left her hanging in desire and frustration and despair. I say "her" but there is no obvious indication of the gender of the speaker, it reads just as passionately either way.

Should the wide world roll away

2012-01-30T21:40:00.002Z

Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror
Limitless night,
....

As we near St. Valentine's Day, a simple, profoundly moving love poem from Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900). The opening lines (above) certainly would not lead the reader to consider that they were embarking on a declaration of desire, surrender, possession, but no better time to know what, or who, is truly important to us than at the hour of apocalypse.

Think On This

2012-01-30T21:07:00.008Z

I must get some Evening Primrose Oil or else we’ll all suffer from her foul temper. Now that she’s coming home to stay, we’ve got to take all necessary steps to minimise the damage to our nerves.

My youngest daughter has been forced home by economics, back to where she once belonged with her mum and siblings, all of us worried how it will pan out.

Oh, I don’t believe in all that rubbish, it’s been discredited, you know, homeopathy and all that sort of stuff.

The world is full of sceptics out to prove everyone wrong until the evidence is slammed right up against their noses, and my son is no worse, or no better than most pessimists who refuse to consider that maybe there’s another way to solve a problem, ease a condition, rebalance an imbalance.

Never mind, I said to him, I will hold off, if you like, let you see for yourself the impact PMT will have on the entire household. Be as wary as you like about this wacky treatment, but they’ve been treating ailments with herbal remedies since prehistoric time. Don’t say you haven’t been warned…

When one of my children was suffering from all kinds of physical problems our family doctor prescribed lotions, ointments, creams, tablets, but to no avail. Her suffering was woeful, almost too hard to stand by and watch, helpless. My brother, whose advice I’d normally take with a pinch of salt (or two!) said down the phone: For goodness sake, will you take her to a homeopath. It took only three days for the symptoms to die down, for the problem to be solved, for the homeopath’s remedies and sound dietary advice to work their magic. The road back to full health took some time but the improvements were measurable and real; problem solved.

If I broke my leg I’d go straight to the hospital, have it set, plastered, and put to rights. I’m sensible and know when to use conventional medicine but I also recognise other disciplines that improve the quality of my life beyond measure, can relieve pain and niggling symptoms hiding under the doctor’s radar. There’s room for more than one way of thinking, as my son will soon find out!

Lullaby

2012-01-27T22:43:00.003Z

....
Sleep, pretty lady, the night shall be still for you;
Silvered and silent, it watches you rest.
Each little breeze, in its eagerness, will for you
Murmur the melodies ancient and blest.
....

This poem by Dorothy Parker conjures up images of the old Disney Sleeping Beauty. The rhythm is that of a cradle, back and forth, back and forth; the words flow and soothe with the narrator's sweet generous wishes for the pretty lady... until the last line reveals their true intent.

Adventures Of Isabel

2012-01-26T21:29:00.003Z

....
Isabel met a hideous giant,
Isabel continued self reliant.
The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,
He had one eye in the middle of his forhead.
....

Ogden Nash should really be read aloud to fully appreciate his rhyming genius; dancing rhythm and word play that bring a deceptively light touch to what those inclined might call a feminist poem. The fairy tales that force girls into the role of victim are turned upside down; even the modern monster of a doctor attempting to psychologically infect our heroine with hypochondria is "calmly" dealt with. Poems with meaning don't have to be serious.

A Broken Appointment

2012-01-25T23:03:00.004Z

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
....

We've all been there, waiting on someone who never showed. These days it wouldn't be the lack of presence so much as the lack of an explanatory text that would have our minds making presumptions, reading into and over-analysing past interactions, concluding they clearly have no feelings at all rather than considering the mundane options of no credit, dead battery, phone lost, stolen or simply left at home. Thomas Hardy was without such technology to consider but his plight, and his resulting judgement of a woman not present to defend herself, has not changed in two hundred years.

The Road Not Taken

2012-01-23T21:08:00.004Z

....
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
....

I can rarely think of Bob Frost, or Walt Whitman, without recalling Roberto Benigni's character in Down By Law. Having been fortunate enough to have hiked around Robert Frost country, this poem has both a literal and metaphorical resonance for me. It can be read as a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full poem (is the sigh of regret or contentment?) but either way it is the road not taken that gets the title spot.

Young Me, Now Me

2012-01-20T22:16:00.003Z

Find an old family photograph, dust it off and just imagine what you’d all look like were you to repeat the shot. My brother was well known for dropping his trousers whenever a camera pointed in his direction; his older self – retired professional, father of four with letters after his name – would be unlikely to even smile if I reminded him of his former cheeky escapades captured on camera all those years ago. He’d probably be arrested were he to repeat his earlier actions on the front lawn before horrified relatives, now aged, with less of a sense of humour than they had way back when.

Ze Frank posted an old pic of himself online with a second version taken years later and started a craze that ended up as this hilarious book, Young Me, Now Me. Featured are many original snapshots alongside a modern replica recreated as closely and faithfully as humanly possible. What was two cute kids licking lollipops is now two adults looking slightly ridiculous in the same pose. A ponytailed girl celebrated her birthday, grimacing, two fingers pulling her mouth apart, a silly hat on her wobbly head; fast forward twenty-five years to find that same person complete with party hat and oddly ugly grin, mouth held apart by older fingers. It’s an age thing: what is endearing in a person who only comes up to your knees becomes peculiar and very slightly strange in someone older, but obviously no wiser. It’s genius!

His Stillness

2012-01-20T21:55:00.003Z

....
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you." My father said,
"Thank you." And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
....

This is one of the many poems Sharon Olds wrote about her father being diagnosed, treated for, and eventually dying from cancer. Though really what she is often writing about is seeing her father, and their relationship, with fresh eyes. Because he did not react as she expected him to - possibly wanted him to? - her paradigm shifts, her understanding of the past alters, her respect grows. As he is given notice of the imminent end to his mortality, so she is given the grace of his immortality within herself.

Early in the Morning

2012-01-19T20:48:00.003Z

....
My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
....

I discovered Li-Young Lee through hearing an interview with him and being captivated by his voice and careful way of speaking. He struck me as someone who does not underestimate words. From an extraordinary life, rich with experience, he pulls quiet, observational poems, as with this one where the simple daily act of his mother tying back her hair in the morning is the pebble dropping into the still pool.

This Life

2012-01-18T19:38:00.003Z

....
did he imagine that she would grieve
all her young life away tell everyone
this boy I kind of lived with last year
he died on account of me
....

A Grace Paley poem contemplating the suicide of a young man. How easy it is to have clear perspective from the outside and how hard from the centre of a maelstrom. We value so dearly that which we have to fight for, and resent those who devalue the same thing by throwing it away.

The Swan

2012-01-13T21:32:00.003Z

....
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
....

Another avian poem from Mary Oliver in which she paints a strong, vivid picture with bold words. The poem is a series of questions that are craving an affirmative answer; there is an urgency to them as if the asker's sense of self is dependent on the affirmation that another was equally profoundly affected by the vision of the swan.

Wild Geese

2012-01-12T20:54:00.004Z

....
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
....

A poem about perspective from Mary Oliver in which she acknowledges, and does not diminish, the human capacity for despair. Instead she invites us to take a step back, to look around at nature getting on with the wondrous business of living that we might figure out where we fit in to the landscape.

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

2012-01-11T20:59:00.003Z

....
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
....

James Wright evokes a gentle, lazy, perfectly pastoral afternoon in lines that need to be read at the pace of a bumblebee drunk on nectar. It is a sensual poem calling on sight, sound, scent, the texture of the air is almost palpable. And as you relax fully, a floating leaf on the babbling brook of his words, he casually tosses out the last line like a bucket of ice water, arresting all reveries and slapping the cogs of your brain into overdrive.

Walking Across The Atlantic

2012-01-10T11:21:00.002Z

....
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
....

Another from Billy Collins, a short one but with more magic packed into those ten lines. It's one of the poems he put under a Creative Commons licence allowing imaginative individuals to make accompanying animations. They're a fantastic way to introduce poetry to people who might normally shy away from literary scribblings.