December 2011
1 post
The Licorice Fields at Pontefract
In the licorice fields at Pontefract My love and I did meet And many a burdened licorice bush Was blooming round our feet; Red hair she had and golden skin, Her sulky lips were shaped for sin, Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack’d The strongest legs in Pontefract.
The light and dangling licorice flowers Gave off the sweetest smells; From various black Victorian towers The Sunday evening...
November 2011
1 post
He thought how much he liked her
While he was being given his change, Dixon studied the barmaid, who was large and very dark with a narrow upper lip and rather close-set eyes. He thought how much he liked her and had in common with her, and how much she’d like and have in common with him if she only knew him.
— Kingsley Amis, from Lucky Jim
October 2011
1 post
From A College Window
The glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping, Goes trembling past me up the College wall. Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping, The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall. Beyond the leaves that overhang the street, Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white, Passes the world with shadows at their feet Going left and right. Remote, although I hear the beggar’s...
September 2011
3 posts
Picking gooseberries, she said.
“She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. I asked her to look at me and after a few...
Furious Horsemen
Although Atlas is not a machine built to handle textual materials, he uses the dead hours of the night to get it to print out thousands of lines in the style of Pablo Neruda, using as a lexicon a list of the most powerful words in The Heights of Macchu Picchu, in Nathaniel Tarn’s translation. He brings the thick wad of paper back to the Royal Hotel and pores over it. ‘The nostalgia of...
“His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in...”
– J.M Coetzee, from Disgrace
August 2011
6 posts
Why Did I Dream Of You Last Night
Why did I dream of you last night? Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light Memories strike home, like slaps in the face; Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog beyond the window.
So many things I had thought forgotten Return to my mind with stranger pain: - Like letters that arrive addressed to someone Who left the house so many years ago.
Philip Larkin
“Wallace Stevens is beyond fathoming, he is so strange; it is as if he had a...”
– Marianne Moore to William Carlos Williams
“W. is very excitable: he has more passion about philosophy than I have; his...”
– Bertrand Russell, about Wittgenstein
Poetry of Departures
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand, As epitaph: He chucked up everything And just cleared off, And always the voice will sound Certain you approve This audacious, purifying, Elemental move.
And they are right, I think. We all hate home And having to be there: I detest my room, It’s specially-chosen junk, The good books, the good bed, And my life, in perfect order: So to hear it said
He walked...
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered...
“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with...”
– W.B. Yeats