Dead Poets Society

[Godot 149]

Poetry, poets, dead ones, dying ones, deathly ones. Spy corner has demonstrated that there is more than a passing interest among deathlisters in poetry and poets as TF suggested some time ago.

 

Stanley Kunitz is one among many. Who will be next? Louis Simpson? Gunter Grass, the SS poet? Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

 

A thread for favourite poems, discourse on all things poetic and, of course, poets who are potential deathlist material. Ernesto Cardenal, Henri Chopin, Robert Creeley, Hans Enzensberger, Tuli Kupferberg, Noel Edmonds: names you are not likely to find in the Big Brother House.

 

Dedicated to Emily Dickinson, the matriarch of deathly verse.

[maryportfuncity 10,630]

I'm hoping Edward Upward - 101 years old - will be the next 'name' in the Dead Poets Society, he's a name on my CPDP theme team.

[Tempus Fugit 214]

The trouble with poets is very few of them are well known enough for DeathList.

 

Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney though certainly is, but he's only 67 and no illnesses.

[The Pooka 26]

Poetry, poets, dead ones, dying ones, deathly ones. Spy corner has demonstrated that there is more than a passing interest among deathlisters in poetry and poets as TF suggested some time ago.

 

Stanley Kunitz is one among many. Who will be next? Louis Simpson? Gunter Grass, the SS poet? Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

 

A thread for favourite poems, discourse on all things poetic and, of course, poets who are potential deathlist material. Ernesto Cardenal, Henri Chopin, Robert Creeley, Hans Enzensberger, Tuli Kupferberg, Noel Edmonds: names you are not likely to find in the Big Brother House.

 

Dedicated to Emily Dickinson, the matriarch of deathly verse.

Godot - how good of you to raise the tone. Here's a simple favourite from my neck of the woods. I believe it was a 'chart-bound sound' in 1913.

 

In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'

Only a man harrowing clods

In a slow, silent walk

With an old horse that stumbles and nods

Half-asleep as they stalk.

 

Only thins smoke without flame

From the heaps of couch-grass;

Yet this will go onward the same

Though Dynasties die.

 

Yonder a maid and her wight

Come whispering by;

War's annals will fade into night

Ere their story die.

 

Thomas Hardy

 

Bring 'em on.

[Tempus Fugit 214]

For all dog lovers,

 

Dog by Harold Monro

 

You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff,

Asking for that expected walk,

(Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff)

And almost talk.

 

And so the moment becomes a moving force;

Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark;

The sticks grow live in the stride of their vagrant course.

You scamper the stairs,

Your body informed with the scent and the track and the mark

Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares.

 

We are going out. You know the pitch of the word,

Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog

And reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard)

The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.

 

Out in the garden your head is already low.

(Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.)

But your limbs can draw

Life from the earth through the touch of your padded paw.

 

Now, sending a little look to us behind,

Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play,

You carry our bodies forward away from mind

Into the light and fun of your useless day.

 

* * * * *

 

Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went

Out by the hedge and the tree to the open ground.

You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent,

Over the hill without seeing the view;

Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you:

To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely found.

 

Home . . . and further joy will be surely there:

Supper waiting full of the taste of bone.

You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stare

For the rapture known

Of the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-down

While your people talk above you in the light

Of candles,and your dreams will merge and drown

Into the bed-delicious hours of night.

[Banshees Scream 110]

Words. They speak softer than actions.

 

Actions are loud and outrageous, words are in tune and direct.

[The Pooka 26]

In Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

 

whistles far and wee

 

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

 

when the world is puddle-wonderful

 

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

 

it's

spring

and

the

 

goat-footed

 

balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

[Tempus Fugit 214]

My favourite piece by Mr. Kipling (not the cakes)

 

The Way Through the Woods

 

THEY shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again;

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath,

And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring-dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late,

When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate.

They fear not men in the woods,

Because they see so few

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods . . .

But there is no road through the woods

[The Pooka 26]

My favourite piece by Mr. Kipling (not the cakes)

 

The Way Through the Woods

 

THEY shut the road through the woods

 

. . .

But there is no road through the woods

 

... he did write exceedingly good poems.

[Tempus Fugit 214]

The Cricketers of Flanders by James Norman Hall (an American, ne'er a baseball in sight).

 

 

The first to climb the parapet

With cricket balls" in either hand;

The first to vanish in the smoke

Of God-forsaken No Man's Land;

First at the wire and soonest through,

First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,

The Maxims, and the first to fall, --

They do their bit and do it well.

 

 

Full sixty yards I've seen them throw

With all that nicety of aim

They learned on British cricket-fields.

Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!

Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench,

"Lobbing them over" with an eye

As true as though it were a game

And friends were having tea close by.

 

 

Pull down some art-offending thing

Of carven stone, and in its stead

Let splendid bronze commemorate

These men, the living and the dead.

No figure of heroic size,

Towering skyward like a god;

But just a lad who might have stepped

From any British bombing squad.

 

 

His shrapnel helmet set atilt,

His bombing waistcoat sagging low,

His rifle slung across his back:

Poised in the very act to throw.

And let some graven legend tell

Of those weird battles in the West

Wherein he put old skill to use,

And played old games with sterner zest.

 

 

Thus should he stand, reminding those

In less-believing days, perchance,

How Britain's fighting cricketers

Helped bomb the Germans out of France.

And other eyes than ours would see;

And other hearts than ours would thrill;

And others say, as we have said:

"A sportsman and a soldier still!"

[in eternum+ 22]

Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?

 

Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?

I'm right on my uppers.

I can pay you back

When this postal order comes from Australia.

Honestly.

Hope the bladder trouble's getting better.

Love, Ewan.

 

-The Poet McTeagle

[maryportfuncity 10,630]

The trouble with poets is very few of them are well known enough for DeathList.

 

Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney though certainly is, but he's only 67 and no illnesses.

 

Aye Tempus but I still think we should look to Eddie Up for next year, assuming he lasts that long. He WAS well known and the only reason for his decline is that the world passed him by years ago. In other words, like Fay Wray, he's a living relic. He will get broadsheet obits.

[Lady Grendel 139]

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky

I left my vest and socks there - I wonder if they're dry?

 

Spike Milligan

[maryportfuncity 10,630]

When a man is tired of London,

then he is tired of life.

When a man is tired of Cleator Moor*

he's only tired of shite!

 

 

From 'Raiders of the Low Forehead' by Stanley Manly

 

 

 

* A town in West Cumbria, near Maryport.

[DevonDeathTrip 2,358]

If I had a newt

I'd have a pursuit

[Tempus Fugit 214]

Snooker loopy Not exactly a poem, but rather appropriate given what's been happening.

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

Me and him and them and me

We'll show you what we can do

With a load of balls and a snooker cue

 

Pot the reds then, skrew back

For the yellow green brown blue pink and black

Snooker loopy nuts are we

We're all snooker loopy

 

Now ol' Milo as we all know's

Got loadsa dappa suits

London bred and he keeps his head

'Though he's got Italian roots

Emotional but he keeps his cool

'Til he reaches the finals

And whether he wins or whether he don't

'I always bite me eyeballs'

 

Now our friend Den, hours he spent

Down the snooker hall

On the old green baize his mates seem amazed

At skills with a snooker ball

And them long shots, he never ever got

Why? The old mind boggles

But nowadays he pots the lot

'Cos I wear these goggles'

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

Me and him and them and me

We'll show you what we can do

With a load of balls and a snooker cue

 

Pot the reds then, skrew back

For the yellow green brown blue pink and black

Snooker loopy nuts are we

We're all snooker loopy

 

Now Terry the taff was born in a gaff

In the valleys of the land of song

And as the reds he puts to bed

He likes to sing along

And if I win he says with a grin

It can only help me can't it

I'll celebrate, I'll buy another eight

'Hairbrushes for me barnet'

 

Now old Willy Thorne his hair's all gone

And his mates all take the rise

His opponent said cover up his head

Cos it's shining in my eyes

When the light shines down on his bare crown

It's a cert he's gonna walk it

It's just not fair giving off that glare

'Perhaps I ought to chalk it'

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

Me and him and them and me

We'll show you what we can do

With a load of balls and a snooker cue

 

Pot the reds then, skrew back

For the yellow green brown blue pink and black

Snooker loopy nuts are we

We're all snooker loopy

 

Now Steve last year come very near

To winning the snooker crown

But he never got to put it on his ginger nut

Cos the black ball wouldn't go down

His manager of all said 'Sod that ball'

But it helped him make his mind up

Now he don't care who wins this year

'Cos he's got the rest of us signed up'

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

Me and him and them and me

We'll show you what we can do

With a load of balls and a snooker cue

 

Pot the reds then, skrew back

For the yellow green brown blue pink and black

Snooker loopy nuts are we

We're all snooker loopy

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

Me and him and them and me

We'll show you what we can do

With a load of balls and a snooker cue

 

Pot the reds then, skrew back

For the yellow green brown blue pink and black

Snooker loopy nuts are we

We're all snooker loopy

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

We're all snooker loopy

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we.....

We're all snooker loopy

 

[The Pooka 26]

Snooker loopy Not exactly a poem, but rather appropriate given what's been happening.

 

Snooker loopy nuts are we

 

Cracking TF. And topical.

[Godot 149]

Stumbled on Charles Bukowski's web site and thought he might be a good candidate until I found he was long dead. But what a marvellous timeline. It mentions all his major illnesses and even when and to whom he lost his virginity. If only deathlist candidates published such usefully ordered information about themselves.

[DevonDeathTrip 2,358]

Edwin Morgan, Scotland's poet laureate, is suffering from terminal prostate cancer.

 

Prostate cancer is a bit of a slow burner, but he was first diagnosed in 1999 and he is 88 years old, so I doubt he's going to with us for an awful lot longer.

[TAFKAG 70]

The 'most recognised Palestinian poet in the world', Mahmoud Darwish, is dead. I probably walked right past him one fine day, but failed to recognise him.

[maryportfuncity 10,630]

Darwish gets quite a send off.

[TAFKAG 70]

The super-efficient Boches have finally caught up with noted poet and TV licence-evader Friedrich Schiller a mere 203 years after his death. Goethe is twitching nervously in his grave, despite claiming that he "never watched the bleedin' thing and the aerial don't work anyway".

[DevonDeathTrip 2,358]

Pulitzer prize winning poet William De Witt Snodgrass has died at the age of 83.

[DevonDeathTrip 2,358]

Edwin Morgan celebrates his 89th birthday today and is still getting out and about. I thought he would be dead by now.

[themaninblack 2,112]

Poet U A Fanthorpe has died..