Words, Poetry, Literature

Warning

Nobody eludes the limerick-crafter,
Neither high-born, low-born, nor upright grafter -
Tho’ by scuttling one may
Perhaps briefly delay
One’s fate as a source of fondly light laughter. 

Indulgence

Bold Catullus, 

Son of Remus,

Cheerfully wrote: 

‘You shan’t evade

These rhymes I’ve made.’

Such a conceit

(One may repeat,  

As in a song)

Is surely wrong.

And the poet 

Had to know it -

But this rhyme did like

Too well to spike! 

Versifying

To get verses right
(Well, pretty well right)
You have to nibble
Away at them,
Re-choosing the words,
Cajoling the words,
And so edging them
Into their places.

It’s consuming and
Delicate work; and
Immensely rewarding.

An Old Problem

I have, I think, a poet’s heart

And a mind academician.

How does one tear the two apart

When there’s plainly contradiction?

Confession

I have to write.
For all my life
I’ve known this truth.

Serious prose,
Flippant poesy,
Loving letters,

It matters not
Whatever form;
I prize them all. 

On Poetry

I guess I’m old-fashioned,

Just a child of my time,

Because (though not at all

Firmly wedded to rhyme)

I do respect metre

And capitalized line,

And confess chopped-up prose,

Presented as verses,

Gets right up my nose. 

The Australian Way

Your Aeneids and your Odysseys
Are all very well,
But when it comes to story-telling
In poetic form
About heroic deeds and derring-do,
Old Banjo surely
Takes the cake with a ripper yarn that’s
Not too bloody long.

Unlike your Homers and your Virgils,
He writes an epic
Where no one’s killed or maimed, and tells it
With such modesty
The Man from Snowy River doesn’t  
Even rate a name,
Nor his weedy horse; but they’re true-blue
Heroes all the same. 

At One with Old Nick

Evening comes, and so,

Just like dear Niccolò

(Absent the curial

Robes and the genius),

I settle contently

To my desk yet again.

Later, bed insisting,

Writing finishes but

Contentment flows anew

From more or better words

Fastened to the page than

Were there the day before.

Parallel

Sometimes, when writing, words briefly

Flow with such grace and precision

That I have a sense of riding

A meek breaker into shallows. 

It puts me in mind of Jason

On the lip, planing to the curl,

Turning into the barrel and

Flying to an equal pleasure.   

Two and One-third Haikus on a Writerly Theme

i.
You nibble away 
At the words and, mostly, they
Come good in the end.

ii.       
At last, I have it
By the throat, this verse that I
Have laboured over.

iii.
I write,
Therefore
I am.

Of  Poetic Respect

‘Sonnet’ was its brazen claim,

On a recent printed page.

True, it had the fourteen lines.

But that was all: no respect 

For metre, no respect for rhyme,

No respect for discipline,

A key to that ancient form.
And it betrayed even its

Free Verse friends by discarding,
 Also, respect for meaning.

Of Pumpkins and Hooligans

The match between meaning 

And sound is uncanny

In some Anglo-Celt words.   

Take ‘pumpkin’, for instance:

What a jolly, rotund,

Bright-beaming kind of name!

Contrast ‘hooligan’: such

A baleful, sinister,  

Sly snarling kind of name! 

Concerning Armadillos

I’ve always thought well

Of armadillos.

How could a creature

With such a name be

Other than charming

And loveable?

A Bloomsday Reflection

Nora Barnacle,
Long faithful lover, 
Told her Jim that his
Writing was obscure. 

But clarity was
Not Jim’s primary
Goal: he was set on
Immortality.

And that, he smirked, would 
Certainly come with 
His clever word games,  
Enigmatic tropes.

He was right (despite
Much turgid prose and
Unrelenting lists
Of drab trivia).

As he foretold, the
Learned professors
Fell for the tricks and
Let the padding pass.

Yet, at will, he could   
Write like an angel
(Say, Bloom’s beach perv on 
Gerty MacDowell). 

Which makes it hard to
Forgive the sludge and  
The murk that Nora
Rightly lamented.   

  

Haikus on the Arrogance of Writing

I.
Each and every
Day, I set down words that I 
Know will survive me.
 

II.
Written thoughts I leave
Behind me don’t depend on 
Fragile memories.
 

III.
With luck, the written
Word may confer a smidge of 
Immortality.
 

Three Questions for 
Three Bookish Grandchildren
2014

Can you recall the rapture
As those once-mysterious
Black marks exploded into
Cascades of wonderful words?

Can you recall the lust that 
Drove you to fib and cheat on 
Your parents (blanketing torch,
Smuggling books to the toilet)?

Can you recall those words (‘heard’
First in print) garble-glued in
Your head, on your tongue, until
You tumbled to the fashion?[1]

I can.

[1] My own longest-lasting ones: Miezled (as in pie-puzzled) for ‘misled’;  Reesipes (as in free-wipes) for ‘recipes’; Matchin (as in catch-in) for ‘machine’.

   On Creating a Poem

2014

The idea hits
At any old time:
Quick, quick jot it down
Before it sneaks off!

Ponder the jotting 
(Mostly much later)
And sprinkle trial  
Words on to the screen.

Some will seem good (at
Least for the moment), 
Though their order is
Always suspicious.

No instant fixes,  
More wrestling, more time: 
Tenacity, craft,
The name of the game. 

But, oh, the delight
When you feel it right
To loosen your grip
And let it fly free!

Of Reading

2014 

The problem with reading:
It takes time from writing.

 It Happens
      Every Now and Again

2015
     
It’s late, you’re weary, writing’s slow,  
Bed is on the tip of the mind.
Then a word on the screen bursts from
The fog, with more shadowed behind.

Notes, deferring detail, can’t cope 
With your old slippery-fish mind.
New words must be herded as soon  
As may be, straight into the yards.

So you hunt them hard, one by one, 
Until the paddock’s emptied and 
All are inside: slam the gate shut.
And then dance so happy to bed!

 The Role of Rhyme

2015

Late in life, John Milton
Changed his mind, rejected
The ‘bondage of Rhyming’
And wrote Paradise Lost,
His blank-verse masterpiece.

Modern poets mostly
Share his dislike of rhyme,
Though not his respect for
Metre nor, some, even
His respect for meaning.

But both overlook two
Virtues of deft rhyming:
An aid to recalling
Choice lines, and a fertile
Fount of light laughter.
 

  





Of My Craft
2015

Its theory (as is
Normal with theory) 
Is simply stated:
Placing the right words
In the best order,
Consistent with the
Author’s intention.

Its practice (as is 
Normal with practice)  
Is infinitely 
More complicated  
To explain – so, with
Your kindly assent, 
I shan’t even try!  

Of Writerly Pleasure
 2015
 

Oh, those rare and magical
Moments of sov’reign delight,
When you just know that for once
The words are utterly right! 





 

Poetic Lunacy

2017

Some recent poets seem to 
Think that the expression of
Their thoughts has greater impact
Without any punctuation.

As if all their chopped-up prose
Wasn’t enough already
To sorely test their readers!