I've thought of shutting it down because of time constraints but every time I do I think of my gems stored in here. Like today's addition that I know I'll come back to time and again. On my last Poetry Friday session M. Pax left a comment the post with Kathryn Starbuck's poem introducing me to today's poet.
Thank you M. Pax I am indebted to you.
I loved Paulann's style and thought I just have to let you know about her as well. Sacrament is a poem of hers that I ended up reading more than once. I hope you enjoy it too.
Happy Friday my firends. I hope you have an awesome weekend. I came across poet, Kathryn Starbucks, this week while in search of new poems to enjoy. You know you get those moments where you just crave to curl up with a cup of tea and a great poetry book on your favourite corner of the couch. This was one of them for me.
So off I went in search and I read an interview with this wonderful lady who only started writing poetry at 60.
I think one of the things I really like about her poems that I have read is the note of accentricity and quirkiness I get.
I loved her response to an interview question from the Poets & Writers Mag when she talks about her poetry writing:
Question: P&W: Would you have ever written poetry if you hadn’t gone through this intense grief? Answer: KS: I don’t think I would have. I was driven to do it. And once I started doing it, I liked it a lot. I still like it. I just love writing poems. I love working with the words. I know nothing about how a poem is put together. I have no interest in any of that—whatever it is that is supposed to make a poem. But I know how I like to do it. It just really, really interests me, so I do it a lot.
Bio: Journalist, essayist, and editor (of the Milford, New Hampshire, weekly newspaper Cabinet), Kathryn Starbuck started writing poems in her 60s. Her first collection, Griefmania, was published in 2006. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, Sewanee Review, and Best American Poetry 2008. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/
Undone Song at Neap Tide When the sun and moon were in quadrature, when the garden had become a wilderness and the clock refused to strike
When the old year died and the sand walked into the sea with the neap tide
When you had been too long away and your old snowblue footprints clotted and hesitated in the clay
When the worry of this undone song unsung so long so loud my head I went inside and under to let the flood run free Source: Poetry (February 2005).
Convinced, 1957
At last I was convinced that giving in to their thinking represented a huge error in the evolution of my family affairs. Riven with a savage melancholy, not permitted out of the house without two minders—one armed with needle sedative, the other armed with arms—I armed myself with myself and threw off the vulgar superstition and reactionary domination that had up to then poisoned my mental library, imprisoning me, making me believe, with them, that I must have children when I knew that I must not, would not. And I did not.
Source: Poetry (January 2012).
Ideas I was the lonely one in whom they swarmed in the millions. I was their creature and I was grateful. I could sleep when I wanted.
I lived a divided existence in sleepdreams that lit up a silence as dreadful as that of the moon. I have an overly-precise recall of
those solitary years before I opened the curtain and drew upon a universe of want that made me so strong I could crack spines of books with one hand.
My very significant other is in another country at the moment. Thousands of miles away and I and the kids have parts missing. So this one is for him, but I hope you'll enjoy it none the less.
Happy Friday ya'll. Today is poetry Friday and I'm fearuring Tirzah Goodwin from A Clever Whatever on both blogs so for my more comprehensive comment on her poetry and to enjoy Eden's Prison, check out Fabulosity Reads. In short let me say Tirz's poems are just like her. Quick witted, Clever in that Whatever kinda way, full of humor and surprises.
Without further ado, enjoy this week's selection for Tirzah Goodwin from Love and Lighter Fluid.
Today is my first blog feature. I am hosted by the ever gracious, ever fabulous Rhonda at OE Books. I can't wait to see you there, she makes me sound so hot. I just love her.
No.2
All my Book Reviews have moved to my book blog: Fabulosity Reads. Do if you're a writer and want help with publicity, I would love to feature your and if you're a reader on the look out for the hot and fabulous, come on over already........
No. 3
I apologise if I irritate anyone by having the same poem on both blogs today. I haven't posted a poem in far too long. I had to remedy that.
I have had no time to indulge in my favourite pastime because life and bloggging are giving no room for pause. But when I caught a glimse of a John Keats feature on TV two days ago, that was it. He's decided to stick around in my head,insisting that I no longer ignore him and his contemporaries. So here he is ladies and gentleman. John Keats.
It was really my desire to post something you would find worthwhile reading today but alas, the body rejects that notion. I was up all night working on a new company website as blogger has completely lost my company blog after I purchased a domain name for it from them. I've given up all efforts to retrieve it. Some of you may have noticed that the link on the training page on this blog does not lead you to the Ewurum Consulting blog any longer. Its been a 6 week long futile battle and I've lost. At any rate, the world must go on and I must roll with the punches. And so before I call it a night now at 20:30pm here in SA, I wanted to post something that I found worth reading today. And so until the morrow, when next our eyes shall met......enjoy this fun gift from Anonymous.
This is a speech given by our former President Thabo Bheki then Deputy President, gave at the adoption of the South African institution in 1996. I revisit it from time to time because besides giving me goose bumps with every read it leaves me proud to be an African. It's long so I've added an abridged video version for your conveniece but please try to read the complete one in written format.
I am an African.
I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope. The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld. The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day. At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.
A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people, perished in the result. Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again. I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.
I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.
My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.
I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins. I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns. I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence. Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African. I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible.
I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image. I know what if signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who, sub-human. I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.
I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest. I have seen the corruption of minds and souls in the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity. I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings. There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain. Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare. And so, like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars. They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to murder wife and wife, husband.
Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment. All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!
Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines. I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression. I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice. The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric. Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.
Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be. We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African. The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes and unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender of historical origins. It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and will defend to the death, that the people shall govern. It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be separated from the material well-being of that individual.
It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny. It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal. It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their views, promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with repression.
It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary rule.
It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to force.
It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.
As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit.
Our sense of elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African minds.
Bit it is also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could, despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.
Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.
But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!
Today it feels good to be an African. It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and publicists, to the mass communication media, to our friends across the globe - congratulations and well done!
I am an African.
I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa. The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear. The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share. The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair. This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned. This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes. Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now! Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace! However improbable it may sound to the skeptics, Africa will prosper! Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now!
I am ridden I said With guilt don't be he said But it is life I said Only a mass of tissue he said How will I go on I said There is no condemnation he said But you're only a physician I said And so I should know he said Go on, take care of yourself he waved Oh my soul I cannot live I said Be still, I have not left, He whispered....
Perhaps I should explain the copyright logo on this one. I'm considering using this as one of those passages you find before chapter 1, I'm not sure what the correct term for it is. If you know it please advise, and then tell me what you think?
I was all set to answer the questions of Myne's meme today for my post but then I came across this poem in my newly acquired collection of Best Loved Poems Edited John Boyes. I just could not, not share it 'tis so lovely. I'm also quite stoked because I yesterday I got me'self 2 h/c copies of Graham Hancock's, Fingerprints of the Gods and Underworld which is signed. Yipeee!!! Enjoy the poem...
THE RUINED MAID by: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
"'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?"--
"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.
"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"--
"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.
-- "At home in the barton you said `thee' and `thou,'
And `thik oon,' and `theäs oon,' and `t'other'; but now
Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!"--
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.
-- "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak
But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,
And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!"--
"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.
-- "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,
And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!"--
"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.
-- "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!"--
"My dear -- a raw country girl, such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.
One of my love affairs is with Poetry. I looked up to see what the definition of poetry is and realised, there really is none to be found. Like music poetry is what it is to the reader. For example I love E.B Browning's poem "How do I love thee, let me count the ways" and not because I find it romantic like "lets sit under the sycamore tree my valentine, so you can sing sweet lullaby's to me while I wipe your brow with my kerchief and tickle your nose with rose petals" NO (although it is that as well to others). I find it rather desperately intense in its declaration. Like I'm about to say my last goodbye and you going off to some ravaged destination, you're looking at me through your carriagewindow lunging for my hand while I strain towards yours against the platform. Steam billows and a whistle blows signalling departure as we share this last bitter-sweet exchange ". Like that.
As with this one, after reading some poems I want to lose myself in them over and over again, or I long for whatever the poet was relating and sometimes am left just heartbroken because of it. Some leave me with such excitement my face hurts from the smiles, others with an ache as they reminds me of what I do or do not have or even remind me of long forgotten pains. Others let my imagination take to the skies and commune with raptors in flight and some leave me gasping for air, having created such turbulence within me that I feel as though "my self" might implode.
" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing."
My two cents worth is that poetry is a summary of my reading preferences, it is hard, spontaneous, a stark portrait with no inhibitions_it does not have the luxury of time to dabble in niceties or create soft landing pads. My brand of poetry is designed deliver a punch that inflicts the most gratifying damage in the shortest time. It is sadistic, it will not entertain a happy ending for the sake of the reader, based on the history of what sells. My poetry says take me as I am and I'll do with you what I will............
If you enjoy this medium, how do you define it, how does it influence your outlook on life.
These are some of my favourites and I have shared others I love equally in my previous posts.
A beautiful man (Rupert Brooke) wrote this intensely haunting poem in 1911) and I am so delighted I got my hands on a collection of his poems and memoir this morning.................
I suddenly feel like starting a Sunday off with poetry bodes well for the day.
For the fun of it. The Inchcape Rock by R. Southey (Only took one stanza from it) He felt the cheering power of spring, It made him whistle, it made him sing, His heart was mirthful to excess, But the Rovers mirth was wickedness.
And then something very appropriate for the season. I love this poem not only because I get so excited whenever I read the first lines, as I did in class so many years ago but because of the memories it conjures. I had the best year of my schooling career in matric at Brackenfell High School.
Ode to Autumn by John Keats Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier. But you are the queen.
When you go through the streets No one recognizes you. No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks At the carpet of red gold That you tread as you pass, The nonexistent carpet.
And when you appear All the rivers sound In my body, bells Shake the sky, And a hymn fills the world.
Only you and I, Only you and I, my love, Listen to me.
