Wed 5th July
On Wednesday the 5th. of July, we met at Marie’s house to read the Summer poems we had brought along.
We were a small, select group this time for various good reasons but nevertheless we continued with the tried and tested format beginning with Geoff reading the rest of chapter six of ‘Thorkil’.
Suzanne began with her and Diana’s choice of ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas; a well known and well loved poem because of its singular name and its beautifully descriptive evocation of “...one afternoon
Of heat...”
The express-train had drawn up there “unwantedly”. The station was deserted. Thomas evokes an idyll, a moment in time where just “The steam hissed”, the world seemed to be “...still and lonely fair” and then “...for that minute a blackbird sang” which seemed to him to set off a chain reaction until he could hear what he imagined were
“...all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.”
A quiet moment in a train recorded, which evokes in the reader a nostalgic sound-and-visual picture of calm, unaffected, bucolic beauty and we all wish we had been there too.
Her second poem was ‘June’ by John Updike. The poet remembers those hot, dry summer evenings when “School’s out” and children, because the Little League is on where 10 -12 years olds play in a baseball tournament in the Eastern States. They are able to play Hopscotch, go to the creek and “...after supper,
Hide and Seek.”
His final remembrance is “..and freckles come
Like flies to cream.” The form of the poem is similar to a nursery rhyme which suits its subject matter admirably.
Diana then chose ‘At Ogmore-by-Sea this August Evening’ by Dannie Abse. It takes the form of an elegy to his father who “loved this estuary” The poet’s true affection is shown early on in his humourous depiction of his father “...who, self taught, scraped upon
An obstinate violin.” We are told that Abse is in a dark room and has chosen a solemn record, a Bach partita and that “This violinist and violin are unified.”
His second stanza emphasises the gloom he is mentally inhabiting when the “darkening evening outside” from the first one leads us to: “Such power! The music summons night.” Twenty minutes later it is completely dark apart from the “...wincing electric of Porthcawl” but then he says “Look!” and he imagines “a pale familiar” on the prow of the “Death-boat”, his father.
In the third stanza he calls out “Father? Here I am father. I see you.” This leads him on to recall his father’s favourite place “where once you held
A bending rod and taught me how to bait
The ragworm hooks. Here, father, here tonight
We’ll catch a bass or two, or dabs, or cod.”
However, this lightness of mood comes crashing back down in the last stanza when he calls this reverie a “Senseless conjuration.” He realises once more his father’s recent death. He ends by describing three distant lighthouses which “Converse in dotty exclamation marks.” The record finishes and he says there is nothing “but of the tumult of the sea” left to him. His despair is complete.
Diana’s next poem was called ‘A Bay in Anglesey’ by John Betjeman. It is a description of what he is seeing, hearing and smelling as he walks along the edge of the sea there. He starts “The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide
Slaps the rocks the sun has dried,” and then animates the sea “Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift
Round low peninsulas...” He describes the magnifying properties of the water and then notices greenery below the surface “And brown over shadowy shelves below
The waving forests of seaweed show.” In the next stanza he continues the romantic, descriptive style and then surprises us with a ‘Larkinesque’ realism at the end of the line: “Are shells, dried bladderwrack, broken glass”. This is the only hint of irony, however, as he continues with succulent lines as “The thymy, turfy and salty scents” and the last stanza itself “And filling in, brimming in, sparkling and free
The sweet susurration of incoming sea.”
Diana’s third contribution was ‘Hymn to the Sun’ by Michael Roberts. Roberts tells his story of an August day in Perigord by relating it to a Northumbrian dustman who, one day in Longbenton, North Tyneside, had commented on how very warm it was. The first lines of the first four stanzas all mention the Northumbrian as a contrast to their following descriptions of the Perigord the poet loves. The last stanza quotes the old women from Perigord who also comment upon the warm weather. At the beginning of the second Roberts says that the dustman had
“...never known
horizons shimmering in the sun,
men with swart noontide faces sleeping thick with flies,
by roadside cherry trees.” We can feel the clean, bright heat of South East France when he mentions the
“white road dancing,and the stones,
and quick dry lizards, round Millevaches”
Each old woman in the final stanza calls out “Fait chaud” as she goes over the hill in Perigord as a reflection of “Voy Wawm” from the Northumbrian in the opening line. The women are:
“...prim in tight bonnets, worn black dresses, and content
with the lilt of sunlight in their bones.”
Diana’s final piece was ‘On this Island’ by W.H. Auden. He starts his poem by addressing us in the form of a stranger who needs to follow his instructions, no ifs, no buts!
“Stand stable here
And silent be” We are also introduced early on to some fine internal rhyming:
“The leaping light for your delight discovers” This continues to great effect throughout the poem. In the second stanza he continues to advise the stranger “Here at a small field’s ending pause”. He has the ability through the rhythm of his words and onomatopoeia to emphasise the movements of the sea, hence:
“Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges
Oppose the pluck
And knock of the tide,
And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf...” He uses simile and metaphor to suggest to the stranger that the memories he accumulates there might remain with him in some ethereal way throughout his life.
“Far off like floating seeds the ships
Diverge on urgent voluntary errand
And this full view
Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do
That pass the harbour mirror
And all the summer through the water saunter.”
Marie introduced us to ‘Taxing the Rain’ by Penny Shuttle. It is ironic insomuch as it sings the praise of rain while suggesting that some think that it should be taxed i.e. punished. The gardeners amongst us, I am sure, will appreciate this hymn to rain as we all know this summer has been extra dry. The preposterous suggestion by the unnamed in the poem that all the irritations of rain “soaking our earth
and splashing all over our leaves:” and “...for muddying our grass
and amusing itself with our roots” is nothing less than a poetic conceit for the poet to draw our attention to the fact that water is as necessary for life as the air we breathe. Her last stanzas say that these cynical folk probably only start to appreciate it when “...the too-long untaxed rain comes indoors
and touches our lips,
bringing assuagement - for rain comes
to slake all our thirsts , spurting
brusque and thrilling in hot needles,
showering on to anyone naked;
or balming our skins in the shape of scented baths.” and lastly she returns to her thesis:
“Yes there are many who’d like to tax the rain;
even now they whisper, it can be done, it must be done.”
Marie’s second poem ‘Waiting to Notice’ by Norman MacCaig also contains a conceit. In this poem MacCaig encourages us to believe that we are reading or listening to the account of an ancient fallen stone statue who has found himself in the twentieth century. The statue who sprawls “...among seapinks - a statue
fallen from the ruins
of the air...” points out to us that “a crowd of fancies is not so easy come by” and then gives us a set of conditions in the form of similes for that to happen:
like weather or a migration, or a haystack
going up in flames all on its own.” When they do happen, he says, “the mind alerts itself” and at those moments the landscape he inhabits seems to become aware of its elements and they of their uniqueness “...huge lumbering sea - that fat-fingered lacemaker who,
by sitting on shells, gives them
their shapes...” He looks forward to a sunshaft which as well as showing tiny “..motes in the air..” also moves into the darkness within him. Lastly because of this confluence of happenings the statue says he bends his
“...stone arm up till the hawk
hovering over the hay field
perches fluttering
on my wrist” and he is reunited with his medieval past once more.
Marie’s third was ‘El Aghir’ by Norman Cameron in which the poet tells of a journey across the desert during wartimewhen he was
“...gummy-mouthed from the sun and the dust of the track” He had picked up two Arab soldiers and had asked them in what he called “...a kind of French” whether there was fresh water somewhere before arriving at their destination at El Aghir. Then, round a corner “...we heard a splashing of waters” Cameron’s style is more prose-like than the previous authors and it is more of a story but nevertheless includes some intriguingly playful part-rhyming ends to his lines such as: “truck/track - facets/faucets - double/dabble and so on. The fountain we are told “has two facets
Discharging both ways , from full-throated faucets” The driver slammed on his brakes and they yelped with joy and drank and filled their bottles then made their way to an inn for wine. The Arab soldiers joined them excusing their indulgence “‘After all’ they said, ‘it’s a boisson’ without contrition.” Arriving in El Aghir they found it abundant and well appointed.
“Such blessings, as I remarked, in effect, to the waiter
Are added to them that have plenty of water.”
Although Elaine was unable to come to our meeting she did send some suggestions for us. The first of these was, she said, a hymn she remembered singing as a youngster. ‘Summer Suns are Glowing’ by William Walsham How. It praises the bounty the sun brings in summer. She was also reminded of a rhyme about the bird whose song epitomises the coming of summer:
“The cuckoo comes in April
He sings his song in May
He changes his tune in June
And in July he flies away.” Diana also remembered this ditty but with a small variation.
Elaine’s third contribution was the song ‘Summertime’ from Gershwin’s musical ‘Porgy and Bess’ It takes the form of a lullaby explaining that because it’s summer all is fine in the world:
“...the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high,” the baby has the best start in life which the ballad explains because:
“Oh, your daddy’s rich
And your ma’ is good lookin’” The song has become the most well-known from the musical and many singers and jazz musicians have taken it on. It has a beautiful melody and uplifting lyrics.
Elaine’s last piece is one of the many modern translations of the 13th. century song often sung in rounds ‘Summer is icumen in’ which praises the cuckoo and all the things that the countryside provides:
“The seed is growing
And the meadow is blooming” and the farmer’s animals are producing offspring:
“The ewe is bleating after her lamb
The cow is lowing after her calf” So all’s well in summer.
Geoff’s first piece ‘Damon the Mower’ by Andrew Marvell deals with unrequited love. There are eleven stanzas each with eight lines. Within each line there are eight syllables and each stanza contains four rhyming couplets. Damon is infatuated with Juliana. He leaves tokens of his devotion:
“To thee the harmless snake I bring
Disarméd of its teeth and sting;
To thee chameleons, changing hue,
And oak leaves tipped with dew” But she not only shows no interest in them she is not even curious about who has placed them there. He tries to point out to her how worthy a mower like him would be to a “fair shepherdess”. The spurned mower in the penultimate stanza “by careless chance” injured himself:
“And there among the grass fell down,
By his own scythe, the mower mown” but he thinks this pain is nought compaired to his unrequited love. He says:
“With shepherd’s-purse, and clown’s-all-heal,
The blood I staunch, and would I seal” but Marvell points out:
“Only for him no cure is found
Whom Julia’s eyes do wound
‘Tis death alone that this must do:
For Death thou art a Mower too.”
Geoff’s last poem was ‘Summer’ by John Clare and in this two, eight line stanza piece of thirteen syllables also with rhyming couplets the convention of the suffering lover is continued. In the first half of it though he paints a more idyllic picture for “...love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast;” He is going to ask her while she is sitting
“...beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair,” if he may “...lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.” In the last stanza he will whisper in her ear “That I cannot get a wink o’sleep for thinking of my dear;” and that he can’t eat and he daily fades away “like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of day.” That was how they woo’d in the early nineteenth-century!
gw