We
had eight regular readers and two guests who read poems at the first
Poetry session of the year. It was the first to be attended by a
toddler:
Babe Ruth
The
poets were from all over the globe. Our own Talitha was read by her
mother, Sheila Cherian. There were poems by Americans, a Romanian,
several Indians, Britishers, and even a French poet in translation.
Zakia, Talitha, baby Ruth, Deepti, Pamela
Poetry
can be sad, it can be funny
It
can provoke laughter, but will it ever make money?
Shoba, Saras, Thommo
It
can subvert dictatorship
And
promote linguistic scholarship
Sheila Cherian
Elves
from Middle Earth's axis
Can
contend with a proud man's proboscis
Sheila; Shehnaz briefing Deepthi on the Date Nut cake recipe
In
Tamil regions a bully may wink and smile
But
old familiar faces are out of style
Thommo & Zakia
Rabbi
and rabboni from the Middle East
Can
travel the sidewalk that ends in Midtown East
Talitha, Deepthi, baby Ruth
Three
persons may be found in you and me
That's
what he says, the poet Seshadri
Thommo, Zakia, and baby Ruth
But
tender pink foot-soles will never be slapped,
Until, in nylon, women's legs come wrapped
It
was an exhilarating session; we cannot end without stimulating our
salivary glands once again for the wonderful date-nut cake we had.
Thank you, Shehnaz!
Here
we are gathered at the end for our customary group portrait:
Full
Account and Record
of the Poetry Session Feb 10, 2016
of the Poetry Session Feb 10, 2016
Present:
Shoba, Thommo, Pamela, KumKum, Joe, Zakia, Talitha, Saras
Guests:
Sheila Cherian, Shehnaz, Deepthi Mathew and baby Ruth
Absent:
Sunil (away to Thrissur on work), Priya (sick), Preeti (?), Kavita,
Ankush
The
next readings have been fixed for the following dates:
Fri
Mar 11, 2016
– Lord of the Flies by William
Golding
Fri
Apr 22, 2016
– Poetry, special session where all
will read from Shakespeare's works to commemorate his 400th Death
Anniversary the next day.
A
subscription dinner or lunch will be fixed to bid farewell to Talitha
who is moving to Thiruvananthapuram in Mar/Apr. It will be a great
loss to our reading group.
Date and walnut cake recipe
by Shenaz Ahmed
Ingredients:
100g butter (salted)
100g sugar
2eggs
1cup / 100g chopped dates
1cup water
1tsp baking soda
1cup / 100g maida
1tsp vanilla essence
Pinch of salt (in case of unsalted butter)
Method:
Take the water and bring it to boil. As the water begins to boil, add the dates and the baking soda. Take it off the heat and let it cool.
Preheat the oven to 150°C/ 300°F.
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time.
Sieve the maida and set aside. If you are using unsalted butter, then add a pinch of salt to the maida before sieving it.
Now add 1/3rd of the dry mix into the batter and then ½ of the water and dates mixture. Alternate the dry and wet mix ending with the dry.
Fold in the nuts.
Pour mix into an 8"x8" greased pan and bake for 40 min.
This cake rises well. So divide the batter if needed.
Ahmed.shehnaz@gmail.com
1.
Deepthi Mathew
Adrian
Henri (1932 – 2000) trained as a painter in Newcastle and taught at
the Liverpool Art College in the 1960s. He burst onto the scene as a
writer (along with Brian Patten & Roger McGough) with the Penguin
anthology The Mersey Sound (1967), one of the best-selling
poetry books of all time (over a quarter of a million copies to
date). He collaborated with pop musicians and performed his poetry on
stage in UK and abroad. This helped widen the audience for poetry
among the 1960s youth of Britain. He was influenced by the French
Symbolist school of poetry and by surrealist art. For more, see his
website
The
first poem Love Is describes
the different experiences of human boy-girl love and is as
eloquent in its way as St Paul in 1 Corinthians:
Love
is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is
not proud.
The
poem works its way to a climax of opposing tropes with the final
stanza:
Love
is you and love is me
Love
is prison and love is free
Love's
what's there when you are away from me
Love
is...
Through
this all Deepthi's daughter, Ruth, a few months old, was watching; in
her short life she has experienced the pervasive nature of love,
reinforced by the existential refrain, Love Is.
The
second poem is perhaps more for children, one can't be sure. One
could add a coda to Henri's poem on a more pessimistic note:
Food
is made with it
Flowers
are sprayed with it
Pesticide
I
hate that stuff
2.
Sheila Cherian
Talitha's
mom decided to recite a poem from the slim book of religious poetry published by her
daughter Talitha Cherian Mathew, titled Crossing the Kidron,
2016. Her brother, Tarun, did the line drawings illustrating the
poems.
The Kidron is a river flowing from Jerusalem eastwards into the Dead Sea. In this symbolism it separates the city where Jesus taught and had his triumphal entrance only a week before, from the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed to the Father, hours before his crucifixion. Crossing the river is analogous to taking the irrevocable step toward death in the pilgrimage of life.
The Kidron is a river flowing from Jerusalem eastwards into the Dead Sea. In this symbolism it separates the city where Jesus taught and had his triumphal entrance only a week before, from the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed to the Father, hours before his crucifixion. Crossing the river is analogous to taking the irrevocable step toward death in the pilgrimage of life.
The
poem Rabboni (meaning
'master' in Aramaic)
is the story of Mary Magdalene returning to the tomb of Jesus and
finding it empty, and subsequent happenings as told in the gospel of
John Ch 20, verses 1 to 18. See
Mary
asks of a man she thinks is the gardener where lay the body of Jesus
they had put in the tomb. And when he replies calling her 'Mary' she
instantly recognises
the familiar voice of the living Jesus. The poem ends with Jesus
quizzing her as to his nature, just as he had earlier quizzed the
apostles "Who do you say I am?"
3.
Talitha
Talitha
recited two songs from the series Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.
Tolkien who has become a phenomenon after the films of that name were
released in 2001-03 long after his death; see
To
quote from wikipedia
Set
in the fictional world of Middle-earth, the films follow the hobbit
Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) as he and a Fellowship
embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, and thus ensure the
destruction of its maker, the Dark Lord Sauron (Sala Baker).
The Fellowship becomes divided and Frodo continues the
quest together with his loyal companion Sam (Sean Astin) and
the treacherous Gollum (Andy Serkis). Meanwhile, Aragorn
(Viggo Mortensen), heir in exile to the throne of Gondor, and
the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) unite and rally the Free
Peoples of Middle-earth in the War of the Ring.
Map of Middle Earth
A
mini-biography of Tolkien is at
along
with photos and a picture of the gravestone shared with his wife.
Tolkien exploited his academic mastery over Old English and
linguistics to create several languages for his hobbit books. Tolkien
became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford
in 1945 and remained there until his retirement. Here he is in a
recording in an elaborate language, Quenya, elocuting an Elvish poem
called Namarie, or Galadriel’s lament, from The
Fellowship of the Ring novel:
It
is lovely to hear his voice. Namarie translates as 'Farewell,' and the poem
in English reads:
Ah!
like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years
numberless
as the wings of trees! The long years
have
passed like swift draughts of the sweet mead
in
lofty halls beyond the West, beneath the blue
vaults
of Varda wherein the stars tremble in the
song
of her voice, holy and queenly.
Who
now shall refill the cup for me?
For
now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of Stars,
from
Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like
clouds,
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and
out of a grey country darkness lies on the
foaming
waves between us, and mist covers the
jewels
of Calacirya for ever. Now lost, lost for
those
from the East is Valimar!
Farewell!
Maybe thou shalt find Valimar. Maybe
even
thou shalt find it. Farewell!
The
first poem, Bilbo's Song, is sung toward the end of his life
by Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of Tolkien's 1937 novel The
Hobbit, as well as a supporting character in The Lord of the
Rings. He ruminates:
I
sit beside the fire and think
of
people long ago
and
people who will see a world
that
I shall never know.
The
other poem is also a song, by Sam, the companion of Frodo Baggins who
is dead and they have failed in the attempt to destroy the One
Ring. Sam sings this to jolly
himself. Both songs have been set to music and they were played at
the session from an iPad; the
voice is that of Adele
McAllister and the Youtube
links are given after the text of the poems.
There
is a Tolkien Society whose website is
4.
Zakia
Zakia
read a poem, Three Persons,
by poet, essayist, and critic Vijay Seshadri who migrated to USA with
his parents at the age of five. He earned a BA from Oberlin College
and an MFA from Columbia University.
Seshadri
is the author of Wild Kingdom
(1996); The Long Meadow
(2003), which won the James Laughlin Award; and 3 Sections
(2013), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The Pulitzer
committee described the book as “a compelling collection of poems
that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice
that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.”
Seshadri
has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts,
the NEA, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has worked as an editor at
the New Yorker
magazine and
has taught at Bennington College and Sarah Lawrence College, where he
currently directs the graduate non-fiction writing program.
Here
is a review from the New Yorker:
And
an interview which is revealing:
Vijay
is the son of of one of KumKum's close friends and exercise buddy in Morgantown, WV, Champaka, the
poet's mother. She
confessed she does not really
understand what Vijay is up to most of
the time. KumKum did not
recognise
the characters in a poem The Long Meadow,
which is an episode from the Mahabharata. See if you can
But
once Joe visiting the parents
took down a volume of Vijay's
verse from the bookshelf and read a couple of poems with great
warmth, leading them
to believe he not only fathomed the poem but managed
to communicate it to them. One was Survivor from the collection The Long Meadow. However, most
would leave the matter of
comprehension of Seshadri's poems as a reader who
wrote, “Seshadri's words pulsate with a vague yearning to be
understood and to understand.”
Vijay Seshadri writes for the New Yorker
Perhaps
Vijay Seshadri in this poem, Three Persons,
is hinting that a person transforms (in the words of Whitman, “I
contain multitudes”) over time, but the three persons are not
identified precisely. John Ashbery is a New York (Brooklyn really)
poet whom Seshadri resembles closely in being opaque and quixotic.
You can hear Seshadri recite
this poem at
and
on the linked page ('Read Q &
A') is a brief pointer to who
the 'you' might be.
5.
Thommo
Thommo
read a poem by Charles Lamb who is mainly known for his prose work,
Essays of Elia, and for the children's book, Tales from
Shakespeare, which he co-wrote with his sister, Mary Lamb. He was
in the literary circle of Coleridge and Wordsworth and wrote poems
too. Unfortunately, his sister Mary had periods of great mental
instability in one of which she killed her mother. She had to be
placed in a private mental institution. Charles himself suffered from
mental problems. He clerked for the East India Company, which Thommo
says in modern parlance may mean he was an officer; but the verb 'to
clerk' is listed as the pedestrian occupation of acting as a clerk,
in the OED.
Essays
of Elia is a collection of his essays written under the pen-name
Elia for London Magazine. Wordsworth admired Lamb as a prose
stylist and indeed you will rarely come across sentences rolling on
as smoothly across a page. Here,
for example, is the beginning of Macbeth as narrated by Charles Lamb:
WHEN
Duncan the Meek reigned king of Scotland, there lived a great thane,
or lord, called Macbeth. This Macbeth was a near kinsman to the king,
and in great esteem at court for his valour and conduct in the wars;
an example of which he had lately given, in defeating a rebel army
assisted by the troops of Norway in terrible numbers.
The
two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banquo, returning victorious from
this great battle, their way lay over a blasted heath, where they
were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures like women,
except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire
made them look not like any earthly creatures.
His
recounting of twenty plays of Shakespeare for children with his sister, Mary,
attained great popularity and that work is still in print in numerous
editions. She did the comedies, and he the tragedies.
The
poem, The Old Familiar Faces, is an elegy written in a
melancholic mood for times past and happy days lost to memory. His
childhood playmates are gone, his drinking buddies are gone, his love
is lost:
all
are departed;
All,
all are gone, the old familiar faces.
The
poem is in tercets mainly in iambic pentameter. The repeated refrain
'old familiar places' is a cry from the heart. Lamb is clearly
recalling his own past. He did have a love, Fanny Kelly, who turned
down his suit; the 'friend of my bosom' whom he considers 'more than
a brother' is thought to be Coleridge. The reader may benefit from a
review when it was selected as Poem of the Week by the Guardian
columnist, Carol Rumens:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/26/poem-of-the-week-the-old-familiar-faces-charles-lamb
Consult
the wiki entry for more biographic details:
6.
Saras
Shel
Silverstein was an American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist,
screenwriter, and author of children's books. In an interview
published in the Chicago Tribune in 1964, Shel talked about
the difficult time he had trying to get this first book published,
The Giving Tree. “Everybody loved it, they were touched by
it, they would read it and cry and say it was beautiful. But . . .
one publisher said it was too short. . . .” Some thought it was too
sad. Others felt that the book fell between adult and children's
literature and wouldn't be popular. It took him four years before
Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary Harper & Row editor, decided to
publish it. She even let him keep the sad ending, Shel remembered,
“because life, you know, has pretty sad endings. You don't have to
laugh it up even if most of my stuff is humorous.”
Nordstrom
later encouraged him to write poetry for children. Not having studied
poetry he developed his own quirky style (isn't poetry and art all
about developing an individual style?) like this
If
you had a giraffe . . .
and
he stretched another half . . .
you
would have a giraffe and a half . . .
Nobody
loves me, Nobody cares
Nobody
picks me peaches and pears.
Born
in Chicago, he started drawing by age seven and then writing. Girls
didn't want anything to do with him. “By the time I got to where I
was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more
important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work
has become a habit." This is from an interview with Jean Mercier
in Publisher's Weekly (24 Feb 1975)
He
developed his own style in drawing without imitating, except that he
admits his debt to Al Capp. In 1957, Silverstein became a leading
cartoonist in Playboy, which sent him around the world to
create an illustrated travel journal with reports from far-flung
locales. The critic Otto Penzler said of Silverstein, “Not only has
he produced with seeming ease country music hits and popular songs,
but he's been equally successful at turning his hand to poetry, short
stories, plays, and children's books. Moreover, his whimsically hip
fables, beloved by readers of all ages, have made him a stalwart of
bestseller lists.” You can read all this and more at the wiki entry
Each
poem by Silverstein is accompanied by a cartoon. When Saras finished
reading Where the Sidewalk Ends
KumKum burst out with a hooray, saying she understood it, prompting
laughter among the other readers who had just been though Seshadri's poem. Messy Room
has a lovely twist at the end after
the room has been described in detail, and everything that's untidy about
it; the recognition dawns at
the end that it is the
author's own room! It's a kind of mea culpa, and a slyer way of
saying what is noted in the gospel of Matthew:
You
hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you
will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
KumKum
said the poem was lovely, particularly the surprise
ending. The third poem
I Cannot Go To School Today is
funny but Saras didn't
read it in the interest of allowing
time for others.
7.
Shoba
Shoba
read from poet Bharat Trivedi, Birth Of My Poem.
He is a commerce graduate from Bombay U and lives in Bahrain. He has
been writing since his college days. This poem is published on the
Web, not in a book. His auto-biography on
the Web notes:
“Am
a Commerce Graduate from
Bombay University! Born and brought-up in Bombay (Mumbai) but
currently i live with my family in BAHRAIN (M. East). Employed as a
Financial Accountant with leading Import firm in Gulf.
I’m
a down-to-earth Male, but often ride on white-winged Pegasus to
unexplored continents and unknown lands to pen poems. a ‘budding’
poet. though I’ve been writing poems since my college days, but I
became serious about poems, almost four years ago, when my near &
dear ones encouraged me to enter in ‘International World Poetry
Contest’ and one of my poems made it to the finals!
My
poetries revolve around words and imagery, but Melancholy usually
peeps in most of my poems, through a tiny key-hole. I strongly
believe - “Life is pendulum swaying between a tear and a smile”…
My
Interests:
Creative
Crafts, Reading, Writing, Movies, Music, Computers and Poetry (of
course) …
So
much for Bharat Trivedi; now you can read his poem about tender pink
footsoles that will be slapped, about
his precious
poetry clinging to his milkless
hairy breast, and so forth.
KumKum lavished praise on it as 'beautiful' but Joe was
silent.
8.
Joe
Brian
Hooker (1880-1946) was an American poet and lyricist. He attended
Yale, graduating in 1902. He published his poetry in various
magazines and wrote libretti for two operettas, Mona (1912)
and Fairyland (1915). He is noted for his translation in 1925
of the play Cyrano de Bergerac (CdB) written in 1897 by French
author Edmond Rostand. José Ferrer played Cyrano in an acclaimed
1946 Broadway production and went on to win an Oscar when he starred
in the 1950 B&W film adaptation which is on youtube:
Thommo
noted that José Ferrer also played the role of the Turkish Bey in
Lawrence of Arabia (1962). You can read all about this fine
stage and film actor who was the first Hispanic to win an Academy
Award, at his wiki site
The
original play is written in Alexandrines (12-syllable lines much used
in French poetry before the 20th century) but the translation is in
blank verse (regular unrhymed lines, mostly iambic pentameters).
José Ferrer closeup as Cyrano de Bergerac
The
story concerns a dashing swordsman and poet, who has but one handicap
– a large nose that fills him with a sense of unworthiness. He
dare not court the woman he loves, Roxane, but on the other hand he
will brook no insult to his nose. Roxane, however, falls in love with
a cadet recruit in the guards, Christian, who after an inadvertent
remark on Cyrano’s nose, insinuates himself into his good graces.
Christian is in love with Roxane and Roxane with him, but they have
not spoken. The recruit does not possess the wit to win his lady, and
the whole play is about how Cyrano confesses his own love for Roxane
in the guise of ghosting letters for Christian. Not only letters, but
even in live balcony scenes, Cyrano coaches Christian to speak words
he prompts from the shadows.
The
film is famous for the sword-fencing, but also for the poetic
gasconade which punctuates Cyrano’s normal speech, and the fine
sentiments in which he clothes his romantic love – expressed at
second hand. Joe remembers reveling when he saw the movie as a
teenager with school mates and he thought Cyrano was the guy who had
it all, including the nose.
70
poems of Hooker are available on the Web at
These
are taken from his volume titled Poems, published by Yale
University Press in 1915:
Joe
read from one of the three or four famous speeches in the play Cyrano
de Bergerac. But as an introduction he read an original sonnet,
Andante, of Hooker to
give a taste of the kind of verse he wrote on his own inspiration. It
is a sonnet consisting of an octet and a sestet in the Petrarchan
rhyme scheme: abba abba cde cde
The
Cyrano speech Joe chose for the main presentation is the 'No Thank
You' speech in which Cyrano responds to the Captain of the Guards who
admires him, but advises prudence and a bit more deference to the
powerful elite – the Cardinal, the Comte de Guiche and Vicomte de
Valvert who have it in their power to advance his career. But Cyrano
asserts his lofty independence and refuses to kowtow to anyone:
At
a word, a Yes, a No, to fight — or write
But
never to make a line I have not heard in my own heart.
To
travel any road under the sun, under the stars,
Not
care if fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne,
9.
KumKum
KumKum
chose two poems from the book Love Stands Alone – Selections
from Tamil Sangam Poetry – translated by M.L. Thangappa (Penguin).
Tamil
Sangam poetry was composed a long time ago by a core group of poets,
and others added their contributions. The Sangam period extended
roughly between 300 BC to 300 AD. KumKum first heard about this
poetry from a friend, the late Mrs. Indrani Manian, who retired as
professor of Tamil at Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi.
She stayed with KumKum and Joe in 1992 on her way back from a Tamil
Literary Conference in USA to which she had been invited.
Venkatachalapathy
in the introduction says, “According to tradition, there were three
Sangams, or academies, in ancient Tamil Nadu where poets congregated
to debate and authorise literary works.” The works of the first
Sangam and second Sangam are completely lost to us. But scholars and
the researchers have identified many poems that were composed and
compiled during the third Sangam. They were written on palm leaves;
it is difficult to produce diacritical marks on leaves and this
results in ambiguities that have to be settled by the context.
Though
there exist many translations in English of ancient Tamil Sangam
Poetry, KumKum chose the Penguin volume, because the translations
were done by Sri M. L. Thangappa, an authority on Tamil literature.
It was the winner of the 2012 Sahitya Akademi Translation Award.
The
poems have several characteristics. The language is sparse and in
that respect it is close to modern English poetry. A great many poems
deal with women's lives, which does credit to the male poets of the
era: they closely observed and entered into the interior lives of
women, whom they surely appreciated for their strength. There is a
folk colour to the poetry in its lack of sophistication, but even the
trivia are not missed by the eye of the poet. There seems to be no
influence of Sanskrit poetry, with its elaborate language conventions
and poetic forms.
Thangappa
has divided the volume in two parts. The first part is Akam –
poems about love and emotion are included here. The second part is
Puram; the themes of these poems are everything else.
The
second poem ends on these lines
And
that rascal
looking
piercingly at me
out
of the corner of his eyes
winked
and smiled.
Thommo
laughed and said guys have not changed in a thousand years!
10.
Pamela
Her
choice was a Romanian poet, Marin Sorescu. A brief bio of his by
Bloodaxe Books, his publisher, is at their website
Marin
Sorescu was born in a family of peasants. He studied Russian and then
Romanian at the Univ of Iasçi and later became editor of a literary
journal. He often drew and doodled and began oil-painting seriously
in 1989.
Hands Behind My Back - Selected Poems by Marin Sorescu
During
the time of the dictator Ceauçescu one had to learn a kind of
allusiveness and irony that would prevent writers from being nailed
for direct criticism of the government. A journalist, Nemoianu, has described
Sorescu like this: “His reactions to an increasingly absurd
political régime were always cleverly balanced: he never engaged in
the servile praise of leader and party usually required of Romanian
poets, but nor did he venture into dissidence. He was content to let
irony do its job… His texts are masterpieces of allusion and adroit
manoeuvring…” Later there was a period of openness and free
expression. The poems are plain-spoken and contain sly expressions of
humour. During the repression of the Ceauçescu regime he chose irony
and indirect symbolism over direct confrontation. After the
censorship was lifted Sorescu's plays filled auditoria in Bucharest.
In
the present poem, Paintings,
the poet imagines himself interacting with paintings in museums, and
then the paintings disappear and the authorities
get after him. He finds it hardest to steal Rembrandts
there’s
darkness —
The
terror seizes you, his men don’t have bodies,
Van
Gogh's paintings
whirl
and roll their heads,
And
you have to hold on tight
With
both hands
This
must be a reference to the painting Starry Night:
He
refers to Four Seasons of Pieter Brueghel; actually Brueghel painted
six works of the different seasons and five have survived. Here's the one called Hunters in the Snow (1565):
The
stealing of paintings in the poem ends thus:
So
I’m caught in the end
And
get home late at night
Tired
and torn to shreds by dogs
Holding
a cheap imitation in my hands.
KumKum's
idea is that these are copies he has made of the original, working
laboriously in the gallery with his easel and oil paint tubes. But
maybe it is a cheap knockoff he has bought off the sidewalk, who
knows?
Readings
1.
Deepti Mathew
Adrian
Henri (1932 – 2000) http://www.adrianhenri.com/
Love
is...
Love
is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love
is a fanclub with only two fans
Love
is walking holding paintstained hands
Love
is.
Love
is fish and chips on winter nights
Love
is blankets full of strange delights
Love
is when you don't put out the light
Love
is
Love
is the presents in Christmas shops
Love
is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love
is what happens when the music stops
Love
is
Love
is white panties lying all forlorn
Love
is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love
is when you have to leave at dawn
Love
is
Love
is you and love is me
Love
is prison and love is free
Love's
what's there when you are away from me
Love
is...
The
Stuff
Japanese
cars are made in it
Sardines
are laid in it
Tin
I
like that stuff
Broken
glass is found in it
Lovers
lie in it
Grass
I
like that stuff
Women's
legs come wrapped in it
Fish
get trapped in it
Nylon
I
like that stuff
Teachers
always write with it
Dover's
cliffs are white with it
Chalk
I
like that stuff
2.
Sheila Cherian
Talitha
Mathew (born 1958)
Rabboni
Lilies
leap up in lavish bloom before
eyes
too strained
to
“consider” them,
Grass
green and damp beneath her weary feet,
Pale
sunshine paints the anxious east,
Dapples
the perplexed pebbles on the way.
Behind
her looms the darkness
of
the empty tomb.
It’s
not yet day.
“Where
have you laid Him, sir?
Speak,
speak, - if you have taken Him away –”
(For
I was there,
I
heard the order, the centurion's sudden shout:
Staurotheto
kai staurotheto
Crucify
him, yes, and crucify!
I
saw Him die...
Was
there something more to do?
Some
torture unimaginable?)
“Where,
where's the broken body
Of
my Lord?”
“Mary!”
The voice is soft but carrying,
a
thunderclap from a clear opal sky
Falling
on the bewildered panels of her mind –
It
cannot be – we came but to embalm him
with
spices and with fragrant nard and myrrh!
It
cannot be – I saw the pain impale Him,
I
saw the spear plunge right into His side...
Can
He live still and with such blazing life,
And
yet – that joy that angels
dare
not look upon,
The
voice that rang through Galilee,
That
calmed the clamour of the sea –
and
quelled the captious Pharisee,
Calls
now to me!
And
so,
Aghast,
astounded, stumbling
to
make sense of this,
Not
knowing what to call Him, frozen there,
Framed
by the earliest light of this strange day,
She
searches for words to describe
Him,
living, laughing, standing there –
“I
am come that you might find life
and
lots more of it! Abundance of it!”
– and
then she finds the plainest words,
the
most familiar and the best:
Rabboni,
Master mine –
It
is you, after all
“Yes,
but who do you say that I am?"
*Kyrios?
Logos? Theos? Just Rabbi – or divine?
(from
Crossing the Kidron by
Talitha Cherian Mathew, 2016)
Footnotes:
Kyrios = Lord, Logos = Word, Theos = God – all in Greek
Rabbi
= teacher, Rabboni = master in Aramaic
3.
Talitha
J.R.R.
Tolkien (1892 – 1973)
Tolkien
Gateway http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Main_Page
Bilbo's
Song
I
sit beside the fire and think
of
all that I have seen
of
meadow-flowers and butterflies
in
summers that have been;
Of
yellow leaves and gossamer
in
autumns that there were,
with
morning mist and silver sun
and
wind upon my hair.
I
sit beside the fire and think
of
how the world will be
when
winter comes without a spring
that
I shall ever see.[3]
For
still there are so many things
that
I have never seen:
in
every wood in every spring
there
is a different green.
I
sit beside the fire and think
of
people long ago
and
people who will see a world
that
I shall never know.
But
all the while I sit and think
of
times there were before,
I
listen for returning feet
and
voices at the door.
(Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI1_RPMJ3M0
sung by Adele McAllister)
Sam's
Song at the Doorstep of Cirit Ungol
In
western lands beneath the Sun
the
flowers may rise in Spring,
the
trees may bud, the waters run,
the
merry finches sing.
Or
there maybe 'tis cloudless night
and
swaying beeches bear
the
Elven-stars as jewels white
amid
their branching hair.
Though
here at journey's end I lie
in
darkness buried deep,
beyond
all towers strong and high,
beyond
all mountains steep,
above
all shadows rides the Sun
and
Stars for ever dwell:
I
will not say the Day is done,
nor
bid the Stars farewell.
(Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C0k-qcEsMM,
sung by Adele McAllister)
4.
Zakia
Vijay
Seshadri (born 1954)
Three
Persons
That
slow person you left behind when, finally,
you
mastered the world, and scaled the heights you now command,
where
is he while you
walk
around the shaved lawn in your plus fours,
organizing
with an electric clipboard
your
big push to tomorrow?
Oh,
I’ve come across him, yes I have, more than once,
coaxing
his battered grocery cart down the freeway meridian.
Others
see in you sundry mythic types distinguished
not
just in themselves but by the stories
we
put them in, with beginnings, ends, surprises:
the
baby Oedipus on the hillside with his broken feet
or
the dog whose barking saves the grandmother
flailing
in the millpond beyond the weir,
dragged
down by her woolen skirt.
He
doesn’t see you as a story, though.
He
feels you as his atmosphere. When your sun shines,
he
chortles. When your barometric pressure drops
and
the thunderheads gather,
he
huddles under the overpass and writes me long letters with
the
stubby little pencils he steals from the public library.
He
asks me to look out for you.
We hold it against you that you survived.
People better than you are dead,
but you still punch the clock.
Your body has wizened but has not bled
its substance out on the killing floor
or flatlined in intensive care
or vanished after school
or stepped off the ledge in despair.
Of all those you started with,
only you are still around;
only you have not been listed with
the defeated and the drowned.
So how could you ever win our respect?--
you, who had the sense to duck,
you, with your strength almost intact
and all your good luck.
(The poem Joe recited to Seshadri's parents in their home, from The Long Meadow)
5.
Thommo
Charles
Lamb (1775 – 1834)
The
Old Familiar Faces
I
have had playmates, I have had companions,
In
my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
All,
all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I
have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking
late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
All,
all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I
loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed
are her doors on me, I must not see her —
All,
all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I
have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like
an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left
him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like,
I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
Earth
seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking
to find the old familiar faces.
Friend
of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why
wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So
might we talk of the old familiar faces —
How
some they have died, and some they have left me,
And
some are taken from me; all are departed;
All,
all are gone, the old familiar faces.
6.
Saras
Shel
Silverstein (1930 – 1999)
1.
Where The Sidewalk Ends
There
is a place where the sidewalk ends
and
before the street begins,
and
there the grass grows soft and white,
and
there the sun burns crimson bright,
and
there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to
cool in the peppermint wind.
Let
us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and
the dark street winds and bends.
Past
the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we
shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and
watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to
the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes
we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and
we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for
the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the
place where the sidewalk ends.
(Website:
http://www.shelsilverstein.com/
2.
Messy Room
Whosever
room this is should be ashamed!
His
underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His
raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And
the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His
workbook is wedged in the window,
His
sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His
scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And
his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His
books are all jammed in the closet,
His
vest has been left in the hall.
A
lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And
his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever
room this is should be ashamed!
Donald
or Robert or Willie or--
Huh?
You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I
knew it looked familiar!
Publisher's
Weekly (24 Feb 1975) interview with Jean F. Mercier
I
Cannot Go To School Today
“I
cannot go to school today,"
Said
little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I
have the measles and the mumps,
A
gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My
mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m
going blind in my right eye.
My
tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve
counted sixteen chicken pox
And
there’s one more--that’s seventeen,
And
don’t you think my face looks green?
My
leg is cut – my eyes are blue –
It
might be instamatic flu.
I
cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m
sure that my left leg is broke –
My
hip hurts when I move my chin,
My
belly button’s caving in,
My
back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My
‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My
nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I
have a sliver in my thumb.
My
neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I
hardly whisper when I speak.
My
tongue is filling up my mouth,
I
think my hair is falling out.
My
elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My
temperature is one-o-eight.
My
brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There
is a hole inside my ear.
I
have a hangnail, and my heart is – what?
What’s
that? What’s that you say?
You
say today is . . . Saturday?
G’bye,
I’m going out to play!”
7.
Shoba
Bharat
Trivedi (born
Birth
Of My Poem
I
am pregnant with a pink petite Poem
pulsating
in my mind’s womb.
After
months of creepy cramps,
countless
kicks and
sharp
labour pangs of painful paternity
Now
the time has come to deliver …
My
outstanding offspring!
Should
I welcome you?
into
this world of atrocities and hatred,
where
love is just a four-lettered foul word,
emotions
have distorted into frenzied outbursts,
and
sweet dreams have turned into creepy nightmares …
I’m
not a heartless poet to choke you
to
an instant painless death!
No,
I can’t strangle my potent poethood
to
a genderless abortion…
Soon,
you will be pushed out of my bulging belly,
while
sweat gathers on my tense brow and
my
wet upper lip gleams like a silvery moustache
and
you will be born…
your
tender pink foot-soles will be slapped,
till
your first new born cry echoes in my excited ears!
Oh
my precious prized poetry,
Cling
to my milk-less hairy breast and
suckle
the nectar of love
from
the fountain of my fatherly affection,
while
I sing a loving lullaby for you!
Though,
our unique bond of umbilical cord is severed,
your
advent renders a new connotation
to
my forlorn lonely life.
So
come on, Let’s celebrate!
the
birth of my poem…
8.
Joe
Brian
Hooker (1880-1946)
1.
ANDANTE
Now
gently sinks the long sweet Summer day
In
blossom-breathing dimness. The sharp wings
Of
chattering swallows touch with mystic rings
The
shadowy pool. The last wide Western ray
Glows
tawny-crimson. And from far away,
Each
breeze that stirs the timorous poplar brings
The
moan of herds, the call of feathered things,
The
song and laugh of little ones at play ...
All
beauty. Pain and passion seem as far
From
this calm spot as yon grim city, spread
Behind
the smoke-topped mountains, where the breast
Of
patient earth sobs to the ceaseless jar
Of
steel on stone, the clash of bells, the tread
Of
slumberless myriads. Here is only rest.
2.
FRAGRANCES
When
you pass by me swiftly,
For
a moment all the air
Thrills
with the breath of your passing
And
the summer of your hair.
So,
in the dark and the distance,
There
comes between sigh and sigh
A
breeze and a breath of beauty,
As
the thought of you drifts by.
3.
Cyrano de Bergerac – No Thank You! Speech
Captain:
Your
precious independence! Your white plume!
How
do you expect to succeed in life?
Cyrano:
What
would you have me do?
Seek
the patronage of some great man,
And
like a creeping vine on a tall tree
Crawl
upward, where I cannot stand alone?
No
thank you! Be a buffoon
In
the vile hope of teasing out a smile
On
some cold face? No thank you! Eat a toad
For
breakfast every morning? Make my knees
Callous,
cultivate a supple spine, –
Wear
out my belly grovelling in the dust?
No
thank you! With my left hand scratch the back of any swine
That
roots up gold for me while my right,
Too
proud to know his partner’s business, takes in the fee?
No
thank you. Shall I use the fire God gave to burn incense all day
long?
No
thank you.
Struggle
to insinuate my name into the columns of the gazette?
Calculate,
scheme, be afraid, love more to make a visit than a poem,
Seek
introductions, favours, influences.
No
thank you. NO I thank you. And again I thank you.
But
to sing, to laugh, to dream, to walk in my own way,
free
with an eye to see things as they are.
A
voice that means manhood, to cock my hat
Where
I choose. At a word, a Yes, a No, to fight — or write
But
never to make a line I have not heard in my own heart.
To
travel any road under the sun, under the stars,
Not
care if fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne,
Yet
with all modesty to say:
My
soul! Be satisfied with flowers, with weeds, with thorns even,
But
gather them in the one garden you may call your own.
In
a word I am too proud to be a parasite,
And
if my nature lacks the germ that grows
Towering
to heaven like the mountain pine,
I
stand not high maybe, but alone!
9.
KumKum
Selections
from Tamil Sangam Poetry – translated by M.L. Thangappa.
(Penguin India)
1.
If an elephant is fed
If
an elephant is fed
with
rice
harvested
from the fields
even
a small strip of land
will
feed him for days.
But
when the elephant
enters
the fields to forage,
more
rice is trampled upon
than
eaten.
Acres
of land lie ravaged.
Likewise,
when a wise king
collects
his taxes
methodically,
his
coffers will be full
and
the country too will prosper.
But
when a weak king
and
his ignorant, ostentatious officers
harass
the people for taxes
his
kingdom will be like the fields
trampled
by the elephant.
He
gets nothing
and
his country, too, will suffer.
– Pisirandaiyar
on Arivudainambi,
the
Pandyan king
PURANANURU
184
2.
The bully as lover
Hear
this story friend:
Mother
and I were at home
A
starnger came to the door
asking
for a drink of water.
Mother
said,
‘Pour
him water
from
our jug of gold.’
I
went and poured water for him.
Abruptly
he
grasped me by the wrist.
Shocked,
I cried,
‘Mother,
see what he is doing!’
Then
I knew. It was he —
the
bully of our younger days
who
used to tease us
by
trampling on our sandcastles,
plucking
the garlands from our hair
and
running off with our playthings.
But
alarmed at my cry
mother
came running.
What
could I do?
I
lied to her:
‘This
fellow just hiccupped
while
drinking the water.’
My
credulous mother
began
to massage his back.
And
that rascal
looking
piercingly at me
out
of the corner of his eyes
winked
and smiled.
(what
the girl told her friend)
Kurinji
– Kapilar
KALITHOKAI
51
10.
Pamela
Marin
Sorescu
Paintings
All
the museums are afraid of me,
Because
each time I spend a whole day
In
front of a painting
The
next day they announce
The
painting’s disappeared.
Every
night I’m caught stealing
In
another part of the world,
But
I don’t even care
About
the bullets hissing toward my ear,
And
the police dogs who are onto
The
smell of my tracks,
Better
than lovers who know
The
perfume of their mistress.
I
talk to the canvases that put my life in danger,
Hang
them from clouds and trees,
Step
back for some perspective.
You
can easily engage the Italian masters in conversation.
What
noise of colors!
And
hence I’m caught
Very
quickly with them,
Seen
and heard from a distance
As
if I had a parrot in my arms.
The
hardest to steal is Rembrandt:
Stretch
a hand out, there’s darkness —
The
terror seizes you, his men don’t have bodies,
Just
closed eyes in dark cellars.
Van
Gogh’s canvases are insane,
They
whirl and roll their heads,
And
you have to hold on tight
With
both hands,
They’re
sucked by a force from the moon.
I
don’t know why, Breughel makes me want to cry.
He
wasn’t any older than me,
But
they called him the old man
Because
he knew it all when he died.
I
try to learn from him too
But
can’t stop my tears
From
flowing over the gold frames
When
I run off with The Four Seasons under my armpits.
As
I was saying, every night
I
steal one painting
With
enviable dexterity.
But
the road’s very long
So
I’m caught in the end
And
get home late at night
Tired
and torn to shreds by dogs
Holding
a cheap imitation in my hands.
(from
Hands Behind My Back, translated by Gabriela Dragnea, Stuart
Friebert, and Adriana Varga.)
Bio
of Marin Sorescu from Marin Sorescu Selected Poems, Bloodaxe
Books, 1983, translated by Michael Hamburger (MH). Bloodaxe Books Ltd
(December 31, 1983):
Another
bio:
I am disappointed at having missed such a vibrant poetry session. what interesting mix of pets and poems. beautifully narrated by Joe.
ReplyDeleteHello Priya,
ReplyDeleteYes, we missed you and you missed a delightful session. Nice of you to comment - thanks.
- joe