National Poetry Month - in America
Parochialism aside, I find that the discovery of April as Poetry Month in the US is eerily relevant - I have found two poems over the last two days that I have quite liked, from very different areas. I was following Poetry Month unknowingly!
This is particularly interesting as I am not a poetry fan generally and never really have been. Even as a teen, if I was reading books with poetry (for instance, the Dragonlance Chronicles), I tended to skip the poetry because I found reading it painful (in the stab-my-eyes-with-sporks kind of way). This has applied to all forms I've experienced, sophisticated or simple, rhyming or not. This is strange, I feel, as I've been an avid reader all my life - of everything, including books, fiction and non-fiction, pamphlets, notices, letters, dictionaries, magazines, journals - but I've always avoided poetry.
Lately I've been trying to give poetry a more fair hearing, so this being Poetry Month is auspicious! To celebrate, have two poems (one for each day so far). I prefer to provide without commentary or context so that people can draw their own sense from these. You can always investigate further if you then wish, or ask me.
The Red Cockatoo
by Po Chu-i (translated by Arthur ??)
Sent as a present from Annam
A red cockatoo
Coloured like the peach-tree blossom
Speaking with the speech of men
And they did to it what is always done
To the learned and the eloquent
They took a cage with stout bars
And they shut it up inside
Untitled (written at the end of 1935)
by George Orwell
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But the girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
This is particularly interesting as I am not a poetry fan generally and never really have been. Even as a teen, if I was reading books with poetry (for instance, the Dragonlance Chronicles), I tended to skip the poetry because I found reading it painful (in the stab-my-eyes-with-sporks kind of way). This has applied to all forms I've experienced, sophisticated or simple, rhyming or not. This is strange, I feel, as I've been an avid reader all my life - of everything, including books, fiction and non-fiction, pamphlets, notices, letters, dictionaries, magazines, journals - but I've always avoided poetry.
Lately I've been trying to give poetry a more fair hearing, so this being Poetry Month is auspicious! To celebrate, have two poems (one for each day so far). I prefer to provide without commentary or context so that people can draw their own sense from these. You can always investigate further if you then wish, or ask me.
The Red Cockatoo
by Po Chu-i (translated by Arthur ??)
Sent as a present from Annam
A red cockatoo
Coloured like the peach-tree blossom
Speaking with the speech of men
And they did to it what is always done
To the learned and the eloquent
They took a cage with stout bars
And they shut it up inside
Untitled (written at the end of 1935)
by George Orwell
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But the girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?