S W W Haldenby

S W W Haldenby, (and there is a certain style to those three initials, and to that unusual surname, that always misses the ‘d’ when you type it) is on that slope that declines from minor poets to the hell reserved for the bad. He acknowledges this (and I assume from the illustrations it is he) in the postscript to the selection where St Peter instructs the poet to ‘Take your paper and pen and push off’. 

His reason for publishing 1000 hardback copies at £1.80 each is that he is laying the financial foundation for a centre for disabled children. 

But I do like this. I like the rhythm, I like the rhymes, I like the deployment of internal rhymes. I like the attention to structure that places the internal rhyme in the lines that do not rhyme at the end. 

People are no always so difficult. I remember carrying my daughter, blood pouring from a cut knee back to the car somewhere in the New Forest, and a Jaguar with clean white leather seats pulling over to offer a lift – a gesture of concern independent of class or the risk of blood on white suede (there would of course be the view that the blood is what the animal shed, but I am looking at the human gesture.)

S W W Haldenby ‘Knight (mare) of the Road’ 1979

Knight (mare) of the Road 

S W W Haldenby 

 

Stranded alone, through no fault of my own,

my car broken down miles from home.

The weather was bad and all that I had,

was a hanky to cover my dome.

I looked like a tramp, my clothes were all damp,

as I crouched by the road in a huddle.

I was too wet and cold, for me to behold,

that I squatted right next to a puddle.

Then a car I did see and I jumped up with glee,

in his lights he could see where I stood,

but he put his foot down and sped on into town,

through that puddle and splayed me with mud.

One did stop much later, the driver, I hate her,

the window wound down, peeping through,

she said, “Not for a gift, would I offer a lift

to a dirty old devil like you.

 

From S W W Haldenby ‘Laughter and Tears’ Bradley Publications  & Co (1979) p. 49

Edith Sitwell

New Paths on Helicon was compiled by Henry Newbolt in 1928 and features 38 poets – three of them women – Charlotte Mew, Vita Sackvile-West and Edith Sitwell.

 

The poem is Impressionist, but above all, I think concerned with sex, with the ‘secrets that in the earth are laid.’

 

Philomela is mentioned:

 

“And the birds shining in the dark of forests

Forget the grief of Philomela, knowing

Only her youth, forgetting all the darkness”

 

After being raped by Tereus, Philomela is transformed into a nightingale, a bird that sings at night which might be the ‘dark of the forests (although only the unpaired males sing).

 

It is the string of images that appeals and that builds to the whole, the curiosity of the girls (implied) about an unknown, and unknown they associate with the unknown of the dark continents, the nurses that guard them and seek to guide them.

 

The girls so innocent

 

“Young girls are sitting under zither-tinkling

Green leaves, and they too are black with shade”

 

“the white seraph flower-bells bright with dew,

So gauzy they seem floating on the air”

 

But so curious

 

Edith Sitwell ‘The Child’ 1928

The Child 

Edith Sitwell 

 

Under the five-pointed the great gold sun

That gardener spring has brought into perfection

The goat-foot satyr waves were sighing strangely

Of unseen beauty; at the hot sand’s edge

Anchored by water like the sound of flutes

Our nurses sat; it seemed, I thought, they listened,

And they were black with shade, and so we named

Them Asia, Africa, and still they seem

Each like a continent with flowers and fruits

Unknown to us; in the hot noon they glistened

With wild dew crying of some long-still dream.

 

In snow-soft places melting into flowers

Young girls are sitting under zither-tinkling

Green leaves, and they too are black with shade,

But oh, the new worlds hidden in each heart!

And the white seraph flower-bells bright with dew,

So gauzy they seem floating on the air,

Are speaking of those worlds the young girls knew.

Their hair is glittering like jewels, the grass is soft

As little birds and singing of the forests.

 

For in the forests great flowers shine like music

Or spread to silence in the tropic heat,

And every flower tells a thousand legends

Of unseen beauty that will never die;

And the birds shining in the dark of forests

Forget the grief of Philomela, knowing

Only her youth, forgetting all the darkness.

 

Our nurses called to us, their faces lovely

As that dove-soft hour we call good night;

Africa and Asia spoke “Oh never

Must you wander far into the forests,

Lest you should learn life from the dwarfish dust,

Or, like Cassandra, your deep lips should learn

The speech of birds and serpents in that glade

Where we have spoken with the ultimate Darkness –

Or know the secrets that in earth are laid –

The buried jewels whose hearts may never soften

Into sweet flowers to bloom in the spring forests.

For there is one dark forest – one whose name

You know not, haunted by a darker shade”

Yet as they spoke, the old worlds died like dew –

Life was so beautiful that shadow meant

Not death, but only peace, a lovely lulling.

 

 

From ‘New Paths on Helicon’ ed Henry Newbolt, Nelson (1928) p.292

Dorothy Byrne

I have of course included this to show what a ‘nice man’ I am. The phrase ‘gentle irony’ is not quite appropriate. Here the irony is laid on with a trowel, the irony beats you about the head, but it does so gently. 

Unless this Dorothy Byrne is Head of Current Affairs at Channel 4, then Dorothy has left no digital footprint. Where are the ‘friends of Dorothy’ when you need them? 

I came across this poem and bought the collection in order to have it, and will defend it as a poem against purists. In a short space of words it speaks of so much.

Dorothy Byrne ‘Nice Men’ 1989

Nice Men 

Dorothy Byrne

 

I know a nice man who is kind to his wife

     and always lets her do what she wants.

 

I heard of another nice man who killed his

     girlfriend. It was an accident. He pushed her

     in a quarrel and she split open her skull on the

     dining-room table. He was such a guilt-ridden

    sight in court that the jury felt sorry for him.

 

My friend Aiden is nice. He thinks women are

     really equal.

 

There are lots of nice men who help their wives

     with the shopping and the housework.

 

And many men, when you are alone with

     them, say, ‘I prefer women. They are so

     understanding.’ This is another example of

     men being nice.

 

Some men, when you make a mistake at work,

     just laugh. They don’t go on about it or shout.

     That’s nice.

 

At times, the most surprising men will say at

     parties. ‘There’s a lot to this Women’s Lib.’

     Here again. is a case of men behaving in a nice

     way.

 

Another nice thing is that some men are

     sympathetic when their wives feel unhappy.

I’ve often heard men say, ‘Don’t worry about

     everything so much, dear.’

 

You hear stories of men who are far more than

     nice – putting women in lifeboats first, etc.

 

Sometimes when a man has not been nice, he

     apologises and trusts you with intimate details

     of the pressures in his life. This just shows how

     nice he is, underneath.

 

I think that is all I can say on the subject of

   nice men. Thank you.

 

From ‘Is that a new moon: poems by women poets’ ed Wendy Cope, Collins (1989) p.77

Mary Stewart

The poem appeals to me at the simplest level of fun – it plays with words, it plays with the disappointment in finding the peasant names for the finch are so ‘odd’, so ‘peculiar’ so ‘unfitting’, it plays I think with a subtitle that echoes the Romantic ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’.

That is (in fact) quite enough.

Mary Stewart is well known as a novelist. Her novels stand regularly on the shelves in charity shops. I have never read one, but might do now. One was the Moon-Spinners – made into a film with Hayley Mills, that I remember seeing as a child.

She died only four years ago at the age of 97, her poetry collection published when she was seventy two, mostly poems she had written over 35 years before, but with a few more recent ones included in the books – a technique used by Jan Siegel of modern writers.

Mary Stewart ‘Lament’ 1990

Lament

(On looking up the bullfinch in Morris’s British Birds)

Mary Stewart

 

Many a time from where I sit

I watched the brilliant bullfinch flit

From fence to twig, from twig to fence,

Admiring his magnificence.

 

His smooth dark cap, his back of blue,

Wings flashing white and indigo,

The smart black tail and rosy breast –

What other finch so proudly dressed?

 

This bird, thought I, more striking far

Than robin, thrush and linnet are –

This lovely bird must surely be

Known by sweet names ‘familiarly’?

 

Laverock, mavis, stormcock, throstle,

With lintie, merle and redbreast jostle

In all the lists; I looked to see

What bullfinches were called – ah me!

 

‘A very handsome species this,’

Says Morris – certainly it is!

‘And known,’ says he defeating hope,

As Alp, and Hoop, and Nope, and Pope.’

 

Now shrike and snipe are bad enough,

and shag and coot are pretty tough,

But what benighted bird could stoop

To Nope, and Pope, and Alp, and Hoop?

 

No longer does my bullfinch now

Flash prettily from bough to bough;

But Nope nips by and furtively

Pope pops, Hoop hops, from tree to tree.

 

From Mary Stewart ‘Frost on the Window and other poems’ Hodder & Stoughton (1990) p.52

Edgar Lee Masters ‘George Gray’ 1915

George Gray

Edgar Lee Masters

 

I have studied many times

The marble which was chiseled for me –

A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbour.

In truth it pictures not my destination

But my life.

For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;

Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;

Ambition called me, but I dreaded the chances.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

And now I know that we must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

Wherever they drive the boat.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,

But life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire –

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

 

From ‘Spoon River Anthology’ (1915) Dover (1992) p.30

Edgar Lee Masters

Somewhere on the internet is a quiz. And there is a category for Poetry, and every now and then I would compete. One month I think I was second in the UK. But I did not give it much time, and it was not difficult – I knew a lot anyway, and some questions came round and round, and with them answers, and all too often the answer was ‘Spoon River Anthology’.

And this afternoon I came across a copy in a charity shop in Armley (my nan took me to the Armley library many years ago, asked if I could read the book I was taking she pulled herself up and said that I “could read anything” – or so my mother told me). Anyway I have been reading the poems.

The conceit is that each poem is the epitaph of someone in the Spoon River graveyard. Some are rather weak; some require two poems – the two views on a marriage or on a death, but this stands alone as a meditation on life.