Thanks for censoring us giselle!

I really love the William Blake......because it shows how we shroud something as joyous as faith in religious dogma. I love the way he (Blake) depicts the chapel as having 'Thou Shalt Not' over the door. Religion seems to be always telling us what we should 'NOT'. But really, I think God is a God of Do......enjoying our five senses.......not denying ourselves for all sorts of silly reasons.

I don't like the Thomas Hardy at all...perhaps I'm missing something.

I liked them all, but the Thomas Hardy one was my least favorite. Nice contrast, thanks, Giselle.

It appears Thomas Hardy lost the 'battle of three poems' ... so in his defense I looked up a little background on Hardy which I think sets some context around the poem, I don't think it pulls him out of the basement though:

"Hardy's works take place in Wessex (named after the Anglo-Saxon kingdom which existed in the area). One of his distinctive achievements is to have captured the cultural atmosphere of rural Wessex in the golden epoch that existed just before the coming of the railways and the agricultural and industrial revolutions that were to change the English countryside for ever. His works are often deeply pessimistic and full of bitter irony, in sharp contrast to the prevalent Victorian optimism."

I can see the irony, maybe bitter irony, in his poem. And I think the repetition of the two last lines of each verse is interesting, note that the last lines are almost a repeat but for one word difference. What is Hardy trying to suggest?

On another thread posted by Geo today, there is a link to a great article entitled "How Does a Poem Mean", I think its well worth a read, this is the link:

blog.babson.me/wp-content/upload%20...% ... Ciardi.pdf

I think I have read almost all of Thomas Hardy's novels. Jude the Obscure being the most miserable book I have ever read.

I like 'Under the Greenwood Tree' though. We even have a DVD of the story, which is also a jolly romp.

I once had a literature tutor, at evening classes, who was acquainted with Thomas Hardy. He said he was a miserable old bugger.

Well Penny you are well ahead of me on the Hardy file, I've only read the Mayor of Casterbridge and that was a bit of a struggle!! I don't doubt for a minute that he was a miserable sod, I certainly thought that a few times while reading his book.

I have been reading a part of Jeanette Winterson's currently published biography. And thought I'd like to post her take on poetry, as it is an interesting one. I'll put a link to the whole article at the end although I doubt whether you'll be as moved as I was since I have an awful lot in common with Ms Winterson, except that I haven't got her talent and I'm not a Lesbian. I do love her though.

The first part is her first encounter with poetry:

The book looked a bit short to me, so I had a look and saw that it was written in verse. Definitely not right … I had never heard of TS Eliot. I thought he might be related to George Eliot. The librarian told me he was an American poet who had lived in England for most of his life. He had died in 1965, and he had won the Nobel prize.

I wasn't reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through ENGLISH LITERATURE IN PROSE A-Z. But this was different … I read: "This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy".

I started to cry. Readers looked up reproachfully, and the librarian reprimanded me, because in those days you weren't even allowed to sneeze in a library, let alone weep. So I took the book outside and read it all the way through, sitting on the steps in the usual northern gale.

and the next bit sums it up rather sweetly, I think:

I was confused about sex and sexuality, and upset about the straightforward practical problems of where to live, what to eat, and how to do my A levels. I had no one to help me, but the TS Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oc ... -my-mother

Great article Penny. You can sense her anguish and I can understand that poetry could help. And I do remember the days of silence in librairies, it gave the librarians a degree of authority that I think may not exist so much anymore.

A short one today from DH Lawrence:

The Gazelle Calf
The gazelle calf, O my children,
goes behind its mother across the desert,
goes behind its mother on blithe bare foot
requiring no shoes, O my children!

DH Lawrence


The Germ
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

Ogden Nash

I'm not familiar with the term 'poppet', so I looked it up on Wiki:

"The word poppet is an older spelling of puppet, from the Middle English popet, meaning a small child or doll. In British Dialect it continues to hold this meaning. Poppet is also a chiefly English term of endearment.[1] In folk-magic and witchcraft, a poppet is a doll made to represent a person, for casting spells on that person or to aid that person through magic.[2] These dolls may be fashioned from such materials as a carved root, grain or corn shafts, a fruit, paper, wax, a potato, clay, branches, or cloth stuffed with herbs. The intention is that whatever actions are performed upon the effigy will be transferred to the subject based in sympathetic magic. It was from these European dolls that the myth of Voodoo dolls arose.[3][2] Poppets are also used as kitchen witch figures."

"British Dialect"?! Meaning other than the Queen's English?

In The Germ, I can see the kindly father making up this little rhyme for his sick child. I like it. And I like the term, 'poppet', sounds very British.

Yes, I do often call my grand-daughter my little poppet.

I thought it came from the French - poupee - meaning doll.

I really do like 'the germ' and it reminds me of one of my grandson's favourite poems by Spike Milligan:

Tell me little woodworm, eating all that wood
Surely all that sawdust can't do you any good

Goodness, little woodworm you've eaten all the chairs
So that's why poor old grandad's sitting outside on the stairs.