Happy Poems – Dec 7, 2018

Pamela, Geetha, Devika, Saras

This poetry session was announced as a year-end occasion to recite ‘happy’ poems. Readers therefore chose humorous poems for the most part; or poems exhibiting the lightheartedness of major poets who have shed their seriousness on occasion.

Saras, Hemjit, Shoba

It was a time to dress for the coming holiday season in gay clothes. Thommo was sure he would stand out as the most gaily dressed with his fancy blue silk shirt with coloured squares, but he didn’t reckon with the bold yellow, red, and black printed shirt Joe wore (of Thai origin, presented by his daughter, although it looked gorgeously African); and a turban wrapped with KumKum’s dupatta!

KumKum, Priya, Thommo

The women were colourfully dressed too, many in red for the season. Unfortunately, Priya arrived with such a bad case of voice lost, that she excused herself after wishing us in sign language, and left to recuperate from her pharyngeal stifle.

Pamela, Geetha, Devika

It was also an occasion to celebrate at year-end for having read six wonderful novels and a hundred or more moving poems through the year. Thommo arranged a dinner in the dining hall of the Yacht Club for readers and their partners – but no partners, other than reading members, could attend. Butter chicken, matar paneer, kadai mixed vegetable, and salad, followed by mango cheesecake was on the menu, with plenty of tandoori parathas and rotis.

Kavita, Pamela, Geetha, Devika, Saras

Joe and Kavita

We came up with the final list of six novels for next year and included an extra month to read short stories; this time, stories of the Pakistani author, Saadat-Hasan Manto translated from Urdu. That means we will have just five Poetry sessions in 2019.

Pamela & Geetha

At the end KumKum and Shoba pronounced it was a lovely session and here we are in a radiant group:

(standing) Joe, Kavita, Devika, Shoba, Zakia, Geetha, Pamela, Thommo (sitting) Saras, Hemjit, KumKum

Full Account and Record of the Poetry Session on Happy Poems Dec 7, 2018

A few readers had expressed a desire earlier to read short stories, specifically the volume titled Manto: Selected Short Stories, translated by Aatish Taseer. Saadat-Hasan Manto was the Urdu writer who migrated to Pakistan after Independence. Instead of Poetry in Feb 2019 we will read and discuss the ten (some say, twelve) short stories in this volume.  The list of six novels for reading in 2019 was also finalised.

Manto - Selected Short Stories

Present: Joe, Kavita, Pamela, Saras,Geetha, Devika, Hemjit, Shoba, KumKum, Zakia, Thommo

Virtually Present: Gopa

Absent: Sunil, Preeti, Priya (sick, but came to say hello)

Gopa

She introduced the short poems of Spike Milligan (1918 – 2002) with an introduction to his life. “Patrick Sean Milligan, known as Spike Milligan, was the Indian-born, British-Irish comedian, actor, and playwright. He was best known for his radio program, the Goon Show. Some of the best British comics were his contemporaries and collaborators from the 1950s to the 1980s — Jimmy Grafton, Eric Sykes, Larry Stevens, Peter Sellers, and John Cleese of Monty Python fame. He was also a novelist, author of Puckoon (1963) which has been selected for reading at KRG this year in May by Priya & Thommo. Milligan wrote what is known as ‘literary nonsense’, though not everything he wrote was nonsensical. He suffered from depression at times in his life, and what he wrote in those periods were not of the Edward Lear or Ogden Nash type.

Spike Milligan (1918 - 2002) will be remembered for the Goon Show

I selected some of his comic poems, including On the Ning, Nang, Nong, perhaps his best known; even today it is one of the top ten verses taught in primary schools in the UK.”

You can read more about Milligan and his fond memories of India at:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/poetica/the-poems-of-spike/4658076

Once when Spike Milligan appeared in Scottish kilt and tartan, he was asked “Is anything worn under the kilt?” He replied, “No, it’s all in perfect working order.”

Voice file of Gopa’s recitation

Joe

Joe introduced the author of the poem The Canticle of the Sun in these words:

“Saint Francis, known as Il Poverello, the poor one, lived from 1181 to 1224 in the Umbria region in central Italy about 180 km north of Rome. Even today it is a picturesque region, hilly, with fields of wheat, olive trees, oranges and figs. The poem I am going to read was written late in the life of Saint Francis as verses of of praise to nature, which were to be sung by the friars of his order to the greater glory of God. He added some verses toward the end on peace because the region was involved in hostilities which he wished to stop, and the final verse concerning death was added near the end of his life. It is interesting as literature because it is perhaps the oldest surviving document in Italian, written in the Umbrian dialect, at a time when it still retained a lot of Latin forms and words.

Saint Francis - Fresco by Cimabue, (detail from Madonna in Majesty with the Child, Angels, and St. Francis), 1278-80, Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi

Joe read the poem in the original and allowed the readers to follow the parallel English, side by side. He said the verse on Water affected him most:

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,

which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Joe narrating Saint Francis’ life, photo courtesy Zakia

The wonderful choice of the four adjectives makes clear the precious nature of this gift, and impresses on us that water comes with such qualities, and it is we who make it foul and impure. It is we too who waste the resource in thoughtless ways, leaving others lacking.

That he praises death (“our Sister Bodily Death”) in the final verse is a koan that asks for an understanding. Perhaps the saint was living with death all the while, and seeing it as the final threshold that had to be crossed, willingly, to realise true joy. Shall we will our death when the time comes?

Francis or Francesco as he was known (the little Frenchman, nickname given by his father) was born as Giovanni Bernardone, to Lady Pica of French Provençal origin, and Pietro Bernardone a prosperous cloth merchant of Assisi. He was a happy and carefree young man with lots of friends and even some military ambitions. At some point he became dissatisfied with his life, and grew serious, and perhaps heard an inner voice. He would go off to the ruined hillside church of San Damiano and meditate. As he grew distant from friends he thought he heard a voice calling from the crucifix to repair the church; which he duly did, borrowing money and spending some of his father’s and putting in the manual labour and soliciting help. But the voice was not satisfied, and he understood that it was not a physical church he was being asked to rebuild; it was the life of the church itself that needed reformation.

When it came to framing the rules of his order, called the Friars Minor, he took three cardinal passages from the Gospel.

1. To hand over wealth to the poor. (Mark 10:21)

2. To share the good news with others, but to take no money or spare clothing for the journey (Luke 9:3)

3. To leave everything and follow Jesus first. (Matthew 16:24)

His life was occupied in inspiring his friars to care for the sick, even lepers, and by his example he showed the joy that could be lived in a life so spent. Saint Francis was an inveterate traveller and went on missions to far-off places including a visit to the Sultan in Egypt in order to put a stop to the warfare of the Crusades and to preach to him.

Francis, Scenes from the Life of the Saint - Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, 1325, fresco, Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence 

He became blind, and suffered ailments, and at one point he was lacerated with the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on the cross. He is known as the Patron Saint of Ecologists for the great love he had for nature, and his readiness to talk to creatures as if they were his own brothers and sisters. This poem is an example. 

Saint Francis in Ecstasy, painting by Giovanni Bellini

I must add that no Pope before the present one dared to assume the name Francis, for it means that he has taken a special observance of the Saint’s unique charisma as something to imitate. Nobody can imitate Francesco, but he is the most universally loved of all saints. A final footnote: the second encyclical letter of the Pope Francis I was on Care for Our Common Home the Earth, and he took the title from this poem, Laudato Si’, Praise be to You.

COP21 Paris – Pope Francis I donated a pair of shoes to stand in the Place de la Republic standing in for a protest that was banned by police

Kavita mentioned that Pope Francis decided not to occupy the top floor of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, and instead resides in a two-room apartment in a communal building, living with other priests in the Domus Santa Marta. Thommo noted the hymn All Creatures of Our God and King, authored by Saint Francis, is based on this poem.

Kavita

Kavita read a poem by Roald Dahl, called Television. The important message is contained in the first six lines:

The most important thing we've learned,

So far as children are concerned,

Is never, NEVER, NEVER let

Them near your television set –

Or better still, just don't install

The idiotic thing at all.

Roald Dahl, British writer and poet

For good measure Dahl enumerates the disease that overtakes TV besotted children:

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES!

Throw away the TV, and instead fill the house with books and then the miracle will happen:

They'll now begin to feel the need

Of having something to read.

And once they start – oh boy, oh boy!

You watch the slowly growing joy

That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen

They'll wonder what they'd ever seen

In that ridiculous machine,

When the poem ended there was a rousing ovation for the lines. Naturally, for we’re a Reading Group. Kavita mentioned that she has caught herself busily thumbing through WhatsApp messages while in the company of her children. Now she puts down her mobile right away.

Roald Dahl (1916 – 1990) was born to Norwegian parents in Llandaff, Wales. He was one of six children raised by his single mother following the death of both his father and a sister when he was three. After school he went on a journey to Newfoundland with an Exploring Society, and then briefly worked for Shell Oil in Dar es Salaam. He joined the Royal Air Force in Nairobi when WWII started and survived a crash landing in the Libyan desert. After recovering from his injuries in Alexandria he returned to action, taking part in battles and becoming an ace fighter pilot. Later, after a posting to Washington, he supplied intelligence to MI6.

After the war he began writing for children while raising five himself with his first wife, American actress, Patricia Neal, whom he married in 1953. They divorced after 30 years, and he later married Felicity Crosland. His daughter Olivia died of measles at age seven, and his infant son, Theo, sustained brain damage in a car accident. After the accident, Dahl combined with a toymaker and a neurosurgeon to invent the Wade-Dahl-Till (WDT) shunt, which was used to treat thousands of children by draining excess fluid accumulation in the brain. 

Dahl began his writing career with fiction and nonfiction for adults. He published nine short story collections, including Over to You (1946); two novels, Sometime Never (1949) and My Uncle Oswald (1979); and several screenplays for films, such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. Dahl was awarded the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award three times.

His 19 books for children include some famous ones such as James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), and the Whitbread Award-winner The Witches (1983), and Matilda (1988), which won the Children’s Book Award.

He wrote two memoirs, Boy (1984) and Going Solo (1986), and is the subject of the biographies Roald Dahl: A Biography (1994), by Jeremy Treglown, and Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock (2010).

Roald Dahl, middle aged and balding

The Roald Dahl Foundation and Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity, established by his second wife, Felicity Dahl, offer grants in the areas of neurology and hematology. The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre is located in Buckinghamshire, England, where Dahl spent most of his adult life. Dahl died in 1990 at a hospital in Oxford of a rare blood disorder. He was 74.

Pamela

Pamela was going to read The Tale Of Custard The Dragon by Ogden Nash. It is anthologised in many books of poems for children. The poem invites the reading parent to enact the whole menagerie of characters. It tells the story of a girl Belinda and her four pets with these names:

Kitten – Ink

Mouse – Blink

Dog – Mustard

Dragon – Custard

The first three were brave, the fourth was a funk of a dragon! The rhyme pattern is aabb and provides a galloping rhythm for children to rejoice in.

Pamela felt there was too little available on Ogden Nash, but search and you will find, as Google says. Ogden Nash was a whimsical American dabbler in light verse, who left Americans in stitches with his verse, often two- or four-liners, but sometimes extending to long storied verse, like the tale of the dragon, recited by Pamela.

Ogden Nash - The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery cover

His best known collection is sub-titled The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery; the title was undoubtedly chosen by him. In his verse Nash combined puns with elaborate rhymes and sometimes extended lines that ended in a resounding crash of unexpected rhyme; one could not but admire the wit.

Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York. His father had a business in Savannah, Georgia, which required him to spend time in New York. This meant Nash’s formation was a composite of the relaxed South and the cosmopolitan East. Nash attended Harvard briefly and then dropped out because his family couldn’t afford to keep him there.

He worked for a while in a school and then went to work on Wall Street. He failed but moved on and took a job in advertising, creating slogans to be splashed on New York’s tram cars. From there he got a job in the advertising department of Doubleday, the publishers. Nash demonstrated he had an aptitude for catchy slogan-writing.

He tried to write serious poetry. Of that attempt he later recalled: “I wrote sonnets about beauty and truth, eternity, poignant pain. That was what the poets I read wrote about, too — Keats, Shelley, Byron, …” Later he decided he had better “laugh at myself before anyone laughed at me,” and confined himself to what he has become famous for. Louis Untermeyer, the critic who wrote the foreword to the Golden Trashery remarked that Nash’s poetry was “interesting to brows of all altitudes.”

Nash collaborated with Christopher Morley, the poet and essayist, and found his voice when he began composing humorous pieces. The first was this, placed in the New Yorker published in the Jan 11, 1930 issue about a senator named Smoot from the state of Utah (Ut. For short):

INVOCATION

(Smoot Plans Tariff Ban On Improper Books — News Item)

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)

Is planning a ban on smut.

Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot Of Ut.

And his reverend occiput.

Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,

Grit your molars and do your dut.,

Gird up your l--ns,

Smite h-p and th-gh,

we'll all be Kansas

By and by.

Nash’s serious business was to amuse his readers. He was not afraid to mutilate words and join them in unforeseen ways to achieve his aim of sudden revelation in a startling rhyme.

Nash soon had a second poem accepted by the New Yorker, and quickly gained ground in other periodicals. 1931 saw his first collection of verses, Hard Lines, published with illustrations by Otto Sogolow. The book was a great success and seven printings were sold out in 1931. Nash was making forty dollars a week writing these verses which was better than his advertising job paid him. He took a position on the staff of the New Yorker in 1932 but wrote on a free-lance basis. Between 1930 and his death in 1971 he placed 329 poems in the magazine.

The targets of his satirical verse were hardly offended, for they often laughed as much as other readers, at noticing their failings displayed in such comic ways.

After Nash married in 1931 and brought a family into the world he wrote The Bad Parents’ Garden of Verse. As the father of two little girls he wrote Song to be Sung by the Father of Six-months-old-Female Children:

I never see an infant (male),

A-sleeping in the sun,

Without I turn a trifle pale

And think is he the one?

Oh, first he'll want to crop his curls,

And then he'll want a pony,

And then he'll think of pretty girls,

…

Oh sweet be his slumber and moist his middle!

My dreams, I fear, are infanticiddle.

A fig for embryo Lohengrins!

I'll open all his safety pins,

I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle,

And give him readings from Aristotle.

Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring,

And Tabasco sauce for his teething ring.

And an elegant, elegant, alligator

To play with him in his perambulator.

Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water

To marry somebody else's daughter.

Nash was a hypochondriac. A collection of his medical complaints, comic, of course, appeared in Bed Riddance. Typical is Fahrenheit Gesundheit:

Nothing is glummer

Than a cold in the summer.

A summer cold

Is to have and to hold.

A cough in the fall

Is nothing at all,

A winter snuffle

Is lost in the shuffle

And April sneezes

Put leaves on the treeses,

But a summer cold

Is to have and to hold.

…

Oh, would it were curable

Rather than durable;

Were it Goering’s or Himmler’s,

Or somebody simlar’s!

O Chi Minh, were it thine!

But it isn’t, it’s mine.

A summer cold

Is to have and to hold.

Ogden Nash had a stint in Hollywood from 1936 to 1942. He wrote three screenplays for MGM but none was a hit. He made good money however. Nash met the humorist S. J. Perelman in Hollywood and became friends. They agreed to collaborate on a musical, based on a book by Perelman, with lyrics by Nash, and music by Weill. It was One Touch of Venus, which became a big hit in 1943 on Broadway and ran for 567 performances.

Nash later gave himself over to writing children’s poems in the 50s and 60s, but his other line, that of whimsical poems, continued to pour from his pen. Custard the Dragon, the poem read by Pamela, was written in 1959.

The critic Blair terms humour of the variety of Ogden Nash (as well as James Thurber’s) as the “dementia praecox” school of humour. He could consciously introduce spelling errors to accord with rhyme, for example, in the limerick Arthur:

There was an old man of Calcutta,


Who coated his tonsils with butta,


Thus converting his snore


From a thunderous roar


To a soft, oleaginous mutta.

Many of Nash’s shorter poems are like pithy aphorisms:

It is easier for one parent to support seven children than for seven children to support one parent.

Undoubtedly, close observation of the world has led him to this and other perceptive conclusions. One critic called Nash “a philosopher, albeit a laughing one,” who writes about the “vicissitudes and eccentricitudes of domestic life as they affected an apparently gentle, somewhat bewildered man.”

When Nash died in 1971, farewell tributes were rendered to him in imitation of his mangled meter. For example, the poet Morris Bishop wrote:

Free from flashiness, free from trashiness,


Is the essence of ogdenashiness.


Rich, original, rash and rational


Stands the monument ogdenational.



Nash’s work remained unique. Many others have demonstrated a gift for repartee or cutting observation, but none in the sustained, good-humoured, rule-breaking manner of Ogden Nash. “He is easy to imitate badly, impossible to imitate well,” said a critic upon his death.

Thommo referred to a song Puff, the Magic Dragon.

Noble kings and princes would bow

whenever they came.

Pirate ships would lower their flags

when Puff roared out his name.

Oh!

Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea

and frolicked in the autumn mist

in the land called Honah Lee.

Saras

Saras also chose Ogden Nash, reading the poem called The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus. It’s about this boy called Jabez Dawes who didn’t believe in Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas) and takes his heresy viral:

Like whooping cough, from child to child,

He sped to spread the rumor wild:

'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes

There isn't any Santa Claus!'

Jabez Dawes Christmas Eve surprise

And then comes his reckoning when Santa Claus comes down the chimney:

'Jabez' replied the angry saint,

'It isn't I, it's you that ain't.

Although there is a Santa Claus,

There isn't any Jabez Dawes!'

The final verse tells people to beware of sneering at Santa Claus, for Donner and Blitzen (the names of two of the eight reindeers in lore who pull the sleigh of Santa Claus) licked the paint off Jabez Dawes! You can listen to a startling presentation of the poem on Youtube.

Saras quoted a 4-liner from the pen of Nash:

To keep your marriage brimming


with love in the loving cup,


Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;


Whenever you’re right, shut up.

This is from a poem called A Word to Husbands.

Here below is a commemorative postage stamp in honour of the poet:

Ogden Nash - A 37¢ commemorative stamp for the poet was issued on his birth centenary, Aug. 19, 2002

These be the poems that can be traced on the stamp:

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks 

Which practically conceal its sex. 

I think it clever of the turtle 

In such a fix to be so fertile.

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other is milk.

Senescence begins

And middle-age ends

The day your descendants

Outnumber your friends.

The trouble with a kitten is

THAT

eventually it becomes a

CAT.

An elderly bride of Port Jervis

Was quite understandably nervis

Since her apple-cheeked groom

With three wives in the tomb

Kept insuring her during the servis.

The camel has a single hump;

The dromedary, two;

Or else the other way around.

I'm never sure. Are you?

A PDF file on poemhunter.com contains a plethora of Ogden Nash verses.

Geetha

Geetha took up a poem of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894) which satirises the well-known poem of Longfellow, A Psalm of Life. That poem written to inspire people to greater effort in their lives, begins:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. ca.1879

To give a good dusting to this old poem Holmes responds:

“Life is real, life is earnest,

And the shell is not its pen –

“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”

Was not spoken of the hen.

Thommo said a notable phrase lifted from Longfellow’s poem is “footprints on the sands of time” taken from this stanza:

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

This is parodied and transformed by Holmes into:

Lives of roosters all remind us,

We can make our lives sublime,

And when roasted, leave behind us,

Hen tracks on the sands of time.

There was laughter among readers thinking of hen-tracks on the sands of time!

Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809, and died there in 1894. 

After graduating from Harvard College, he studied study of law before turning to medicine for a career. He took his medical degree in 1836. He taught Anatomy and Physiology in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. In 1847 he assumed a similar position at Harvard University holding it until 1892. All of his literary work was performed as a sideline to his medical work during forty-seven years.

His literary tastes ran to comic and satiric verse. He contributed his verses to American periodicals, generally written for occasions; in 1836 he published a collection. His main life work was teaching and practice as a doctor. The poems he wrote were first declaimed in the literary societies of the college.

He published prose reflections, in 1858, titled The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, essays carrying a genial strain of humour. His was an aphoristic train of thought and he is quoted for may of his pithy maxims. This was followed by other volumes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table, and later by The Poet at the Breakfast Table. The latter is full of liberal thinking. He was also author of a valuable medical work on puerperal fever. 

When the civil war (1862-1865) broke out, Holmes wrote war lyrics during the conflict to inspire others, displaying the simple patriotism of the Americans who fought for independence from the British a hundred years earlier. His son of the same name with Jr. as postfix became Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932.

Holmes wrote a number of memorable poems. He wrote a magnificent poem, Old Ironsides, that aroused people to protest against a famous old warship being broken up for scrap:

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,

Where knelt the vanquished foe,

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,

And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor's tread,

Or know the conquered knee;—

The harpies of the shore shall pluck

The eagle of the sea!

Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution

Many of his sayings must stand among the finest specimens of American wit and humour:

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

Holmes harboured striking and original thoughts. In his time he stood out as brilliant exemplar of the American mind at its most free and liberal.

(See:

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/oliver_wendell_holmes/biography)

Devika

The poet chosen was James Thomas Fields (1817 – 1881), an American publisher and author.

Fields was born in Portsmouth, NH. His father was a sea captain and died before Fields was three. At the age of 14, Fields took a job at the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston. His first published poetry was included in the Portsmouth Journal in 1837 but he drew more attention when, on September 13, 1838, he delivered his Anniversary Poem to the Boston Mercantile Library Association.

James Thomas Fields

In 1839, he joined William Ticknor and became junior partner in the publishing and bookselling firm known as Ticknor and Fields, and later in 1868 as Fields, Osgood & Company. With this company, Fields became the publisher of leading contemporary American writers, with whom he was on terms of close personal friendship. He was also the American publisher of some of the best-known British writers of his time, some of whom he also knew intimately. The first collected edition of Thomas De Quincey's works (20 vols., 1850-1855) was published by his firm. As a publisher, he was characterised by a somewhat rare combination of keen business acumen and sound, discriminating literary taste. He was known for his geniality and charm of manner. Ticknor and Fields built their company to have a substantial influence in the literary scene, which writer and editor Nathaniel Parker Willis acknowledged in a letter to Fields: "Your press is the announcing-room of the country's Court of Poetry."

In 1854, Fields married his second wife, Annie Adams, who was an author herself.

Ticknor and Fields purchased The Atlantic Monthly for $10,000 and, about two years later in May 1861, Fields took over the editorship when James Russell Lowell left. In 1871, he retired from business and from his editorial duties and devoted himself to lecturing and writing. He also edited, with Edwin P. Whipple, A Family Library of British Poetry (1878).

Fields died in Boston on April 24, 1881. He is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This biography of Fields is taken from poemhunter.com

By joining KRG, Devika said, she has come to appreciate poetry and the group has fostered her interest. She talked to her daughter who recited this poem, The Owl-Critic, at a competition and won a prize. Devika decided to do it for us. Through reading the poem she got acquainted with James Audubon, the American ornithologist whose name is attached to the premier organisation in America concerned with birds and bird-watching, The National Audubon Society. The other naturalist and writer who is referred to in the poem is John Burroughs:

Examine those eyes.

I’m filled with surprise

Taxidermists should pass

Off on you such poor glass;

So unnatural they seem

They’d make Audubon scream,

And John Burroughs laugh

To encounter such chaff.

…

How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is—

In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck ’tis!

I make no apology;

I’ve learned owl-eology.

There are lots of crazy rhymes in the poem that add to the humour. It culminates with a funny resolution:

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,

The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,

Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic

(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,

And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:

“Your learning’s at fault this time, anyway;

Don’t waste it again on a live bird, I pray.

I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir Critic, good-day!”

Everyone had a good laugh. Geetha said it was an unexpected anti-climax.

Hemjit

Hemjit selected two short poems of Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland. Joe has provided an extensive biography of Burns at an earlier reading in June this year when we read the Romantic Poets. Hemjit mentioned that Scots is a Germanic language spoken in Scotland, and there is also Scottish English which may be seen as a dialect of English, along the lines of what Robert Burns wrote. Burns had a natural gift for poetry and wrote for many public occasions. He was a philanderer who sired many children, in and out of wedlock, and was quite comfortable with having casual affairs. Some consider him the ‘greatest Scot of all time.’

Robert Burns statue, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh

Both the poems concern ‘henpecked’ men, and the term occurs in the titles. The question was raised whether the term is obsolete in the era of supposed gender-equality. There certainly have existed men in all times and everywhere who have been dominated by women; although, in general, it is the women who have been subjugated in patriarchal societies around the world. As for cuckolded men, it is merely parallel to the more numerous cases of men who have been unfaithful to their wives.

In the first poem Burns proves he belongs to the entrenched tribe of patriarchs by cursing the wife of a henpecked husband thus:

I'd charm her with the magic of a switch,

I'd kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch.

Regarding his philandering leading to numerous children out of wedlock, Joe ventured the poet was laying women on the one hand, and also, like a hen, laying poet-ets or poet-ettes along the way. Hemjit said Burns was more amoral than immoral. Hence, Thommo noted, to laughter, he was entitled to the sobriquet, ‘greatest Scot.’

The second poem on the epitaph of a henpecked country squire was notably enjoyed by the women in the group, as Thommo remarked. The lines read

Here lies man a woman ruled,

The devil ruled the woman.

Obviously, it is not the deceased squire, but Rabbie Burns who is speaking.

Shoba

Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore was Shoba’s choice of a happy poem for this session. It is really a book of 256 verses with short lines that sound like proverbs or maxims. Shoba chose the first fourteen. Such verses were common in China and Japan where they were often written on lengths of silk and called ‘fireflies.’ When Tagore visited Japan he collected them in his notebooks. Each ‘firefly’ is short and represents a fleeting thought on the verities of existence. They were gathered in a book containing a decorative design by Boris Artzybasheff on each page with a short ‘firefly’ of Tagore's below. At the end stood Tagore's Nobel Acceptance Speech. The poet’s biography has been treated in adequate detail in several blog posts when KRG celebrated his 150th birth anniversary in 2011.

Fireflies - The original edition of Tagore's maxims

The complete Set of 256 Fireflies may be read at this linked site. Tagoreweb.in is an awesome, total, and complete collection of everything Rabindranath Tagore wrote.

A page from Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore with illustrations by Artzybasheff (click to enlarge)

Shoba was fascinated by the names of Rabindranath’s brothers –Dwijendranath, Ganendranath, Satyendranath, Hemendranath, etc. – all given by their father, Debendranath.

To answer a question raised by Shoba, these short verses were composed by Rabindranath in English originally, not translated from Bengali. Saras loved the line:

The tree gazes in love at its own beautiful shadow

which yet it never can grasp.

On a trip to Malaysia Thommo saw trees full of fireflies along a riverside. They had to go on a punt so that the fireflies would not be disturbed. Thommo also mentioned the Te Anau cave in New Zealand, which they didn't have time to visit. Lake Te Anau in New Zealand leads to amazing 12,000 year-old caves, carved into incredible swirling shapes by the force of the river that flows through them. You can travel through the passages on foot and by boat to find a grotto of thousands of glittering glowworms, native to New Zealand:

Te Anau cave glow worms, native to New Zealand

Fireflies or glowworms are called minna-minni in Malayalam, said Shoba.

KumKum

T. S. Eliot (TSE) was born in 1888 and died in 1965. He has been read several times before. KumKum provided a short introduction. He was one of the twentieth century’s major poets. Besides he was an essayist, playwright, and literary critic.

T.S. Eliot, young in 1919 - Photograph by E.O. Hopp-Corbis Images  

Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sept 26, 1888. His parents were from a wealthy Boston family. Eliot studied philosophy at Harvard and earned his degree in three years instead of the usual four; he then finished a Master’s degree in English Literature by his fourth year. But his studies in Harvard were undistinguished, so much so that his parents got a warning he might be rusticated for his poor grades. [See https://harvardmagazine.com/2015/07/the-young-t-s-eliot, to learn about Eliot’s career in Harvard and how it enriched his poetry]

He studied further at Oxford, and settled down in England. His career branched in many directions. To begin with he was a school-teacher, then he became a clerk in Lloyd's bank. Eventually, he rose to be the literary editor for the publishers, Faber & Faber. Later, he became a director of the company. Eliot edited Criterion, an important literary journal of that time started by him.

Eliot became a British citizen as he comfortably embraced British culture, its intellectual sophistication at that time, and of course, their way of life. After finishing his studies at Oxford, he romanced and married an accomplished young British woman, Vivienne. But, this marriage did not work for either of them. They were separated until she died of heart disease in an asylum in 1947.

In 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, his secretary at Faber and Faber, who was 30 at the time. Theirs was a happy marriage.

TS Eliot to his secretary Miss Valerie Fletcher ...

Religion played an important role in Eliot's thinking. His philosophical approach to life is expressed in all his writings.

Eliot received many awards for his literary works. He was honoured with the Order of Merit in 1948 and the Nobel Prize in Literature, also in 1948; the citation read: “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.”

T. S. Eliot died in London on Jan 4, 1965. Valerie, his widow, lived on till 2012.

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats - first edition, 1939

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, from which Zakia and KumKum were reading at the session, was published in 1939. ‘Possum’ was Eliot's nickname, given him by Ezra Pound, his editor and collaborator in the long poem, The Waste Land. More than forty years later, the famous British composer and conductor, Andrew Lloyd Webber, turned the cat poems into the very successful and popular musical, Cats, which played for decades on the New York and London stage, earning a fortune in royalties for Eliot’s estate.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and second wife Sarah Brightman, with the original cast of Cats - it was the longest running Broadway show of all time when it closed in 2000

Joe elaborated KumKum’s note on Eliot to enhance the understanding of a poetic career which is key to the development of English poetry and the entry into modernism. The original poem that first brought TSE to the notice of the poetry world was The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock published in 1915, although written as early as 1911 when he was barely 22. The images that hallucinate the poem describe nothing about Prufrock, but they were seductive and alluring, even though fragmented. Some of its lines will remain stamped forever in the poetic imagination of English readers and poets:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

What do we make of the Italian quotation at the head of the poem? It is Guido da Montefeltro speaking to the poet Dante Alighieri in Hell from Dante’s Inferno:

If I but thought that my response were made
to one perhaps returning to the world,
this tongue of flame would cease to flicker.
But since, up from these depths, no one has yet
returned alive, if what I hear is true,
I answer without fear of being shamed.

So, is the whole poem a warning from the other side? But look at the images that follow:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

How memorable is that!

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

Is this finally the timid Prufrock trying to make his tentative presence known to the world?

One wonders how TSE came to write at such a young age (27):

I grow old … I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

The very vocabulary of poetry changed forever, and you could write no longer as earlier poets wrote. That was the measure of TSE’s influence. The Waste Land in 1922 continued the revolution, though Eliot later confessed he did not quite grasp himself what he was accomplishing. 

Eliot, however, was influenced not by English poets before him, but by the French Symbolist poets of whom he had read: Gérard de Nerval, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. But the greatest influence which he himself acknowledged came from Jules Laforgue, whom he referred to in these words:

If not quite the greatest French poet since Baudelaire … certainly the most important technical innovator.

[T.S. Eliot, Introduction to Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, 1928]

Thus Eliot’s greatest debt was not to an English language poet but to the French Symbolists, in particular, Jules Laforgue.

Of Laforgue I can say he was the first to teach me how to speak, to teach me the poetic possibilities of my own idiom of speech.

To Laforgue I owe more than I owe to any poet in any language. (1960)

The way Laforgue weaves philosophical ideas into his poems and keeps his own person and emotion away from the poem, is quite characteristic of Eliot also.

Of his early work, Eliot has said:

The form in which I began to write, in 1908 or 1909, was directly drawn from the study of Laforgue, together with the later Elizabethan drama; and I do not know anyone who started from exactly that point.

Elsewhere Eliot said:

The kind of poetry that I needed, to teach me the use of my own voice, did not exist in English at all; it was only found in French.

Leonard Unger concludes that “In so far as Eliot started from an exact point it was emphatically and exclusively from Laforgue.”

[The above is taken from https://www.gresham.ac.uk/short/t-s-eliots-poetic-inspiration-jules-laforgue/]

TSE’s familiarity with Jules Laforgue, who was never considered more than a minor poet in France, came from reading the British critic Arthur Symons's book, The Symbolist Movement in Literature while at Harvard in 1908 browsing in a library. He was impressed with the lines from Laforgue he read and not finding Laforgue’s poetry available in Harvard procured them from Paris. His notebooks of those years were published later under the title Inventions of the March Hare, much after his death. It contains many parodies of Laforgue’s style. But it was when he spent an academic year in Paris and Munich in 1911 that he found his own voice via Prufrock, and thus became the acknowledged torchbearer of modernity in in English poetry.

TSE wrote in 1930 while writing a review in the Criterion: 

I owe Mr. Symons a great debt: but for having read his book I should not, in the year 1908, have heard of Laforgue or Rimbaud; I should probably not have begun to read Verlaine; but for reading Verlaine, I should not have heard of Corbière. So the Symons book is one of those which have affected the course of my life.

In 1912 Eliot returned to Harvard, and assumed a seriousness of study heretofore missing. He studied Sanskrit, and intended to write a thesis on the philosopher F.H. Bradley. But the Harvard saga came to an end when he left for Oxford in 1914 as a 25-year-old, fully intending to return and complete his Ph.D. after a year or two in Oxford. But there he met and married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, after knowing her for a few months, in June 1915. It turned out to be a disastrous marriage. Eliot writes:

I believe I came to persuade myself that I was in love with her simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England.

In letters published later on one can see how completely enraptured TSE was with his second wife, Valerie.

Eliot issued his Collected Poems 1909-1962 before his death, which was just 240 pages long. It’s the volume we are all familiar with. However, Faber and Faber, his publisher issued in 2015 the authoritative edition, The Poems of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1 (Collected and Uncollected Poems) & Volume 2 (Practical Cats and Further Verses), which have commentary and notes on drafts and correspondence which throw light on the poet’s manner of working; about two-thirds of Vol 1 are notes. Together they comprise over 2,100 pages.

Regarding Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the British Library has a trove of TSE’s letters where they first appeared in the affectionate correspondence with members of the Tandy family (Geoffrey, his wife Doris (Polly), and their three children Richard, Alison, and Anthea). Geoffrey was a broadcaster for the BBC.

https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-old-possums-book-of-practical-cats

A letter sent on 10 November 1936 to Alison, the daughter, contains a draft of The Old Gumbie Cat:

T.S. Eliot - Draft of The Old Gumbie cat (click to enlarge)

This was the poem read by KumKum. Eliot’s fond relations with the Tandy family inspired him to write these pieces, much as Lewis Carroll was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland for a friend’s daughter, Alice Liddell, aged 10, who asked him to write the story down after he had narrated it to her and her sisters on a boat ride. He did soon after, and the name he gave was Alice's Adventures Under Ground. The marvellous manuscript of that classic, including drawings, in Lewis Carroll’s hand is on the British Library web also:

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/alices-adventures-under-ground-the-original-manuscript-version-of-alices-adventures-in-wonderland

Show the link to any child (or adult child) for a thrilling diversion.

The universal favourite among the Cat poems is Macavity the Mystery Cat, which was read by Zakia.

Zakia

TSE seems to reach a fluidity of versification and wonderful choice of words and images that he has never surpassed in his more serious poetry. Look at these imaginative metaphors:

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,

He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,

And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

..

And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:

It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.

You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;

Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,

There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.

He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:

At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE !

Joe wrote a parody of this poem with Osama bin Laden as the Mystery Fox when 9/11 happened in America. Here’s the third verse paralleling that of Macavity:

Osama's a mujahid, he's very tall and thin;


You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.


His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;


His Kalashnikov is ready, and his beard is uncombed.


He points his finger at the world, which he proceeds to shake;


And you may think he's half asleep, but he's always wide awake.

We all laughed at the last verse of The Old Gumbie Cat:—

She thinks that the cockroaches just need employment


To prevent them from idle and wanton destroyment.

So she's formed, from that lot of disorderly louts,


A troop of well-disciplined helpful boy-scouts,


With a purpose in life and a good deed to do—


And she's even created a Beetles' Tattoo.

Thommo notes that in 1987 he heard of TSE for the first time at a service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Calcutta. But it wasn’t regarding his poetry.

Thommo

Thommo’s poem was the well-known poem of Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road. Thommo remembered that Joe used the opening verse to introduce the travelogue he had written called, On the Road Again, about travels through 27 countries in a Hyundai i2o in 2016.

Rahul, Thommo, Miriam, Geetha, and Kunju at Thommo's book release on Jan 3, 2013 ‘Atop the World’

Song of the Open Road is an epic poem. Because of its length Thommo read only the first, fifth and last sections. It lays out the liberal and open gaze upon the world that Walt Whitman cherished. The poem itself grew by accretion, as did the Leaves of Grass (LG) of which it formed a part from the second edition onward. In Song of Myself Whitman writes an oft-quoted verse of his:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict

myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes.

Whitman’s subject was America, a new awakening America, and he observed it in all its particulars and gave voice to its future. A useful reference to read is Guide to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass at poets.org

The Song of the Open Road ends with a magnificent invitation:

Camerado, I give you my hand! 

I give you my love more precious than money, 

I give you myself before preaching or law; 

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? 

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

“I SHALL,” exclaimed Geetha joyfully. Thommo declared it was 39 years since she said that to him!

The poet’s biography has been treated before adequately at a session of KRG poetry in 2011. Sections of his poem, LG, have been interpreted as paeans to homosexual love and that community of people has embraced him, but it is not clear. He himself disavowed it, but he did have close friendships with men and boys throughout his life. Nobody has verified his claim that he fathered six illegitimate children. You can read more at Whitman’s wiki site. The critic Harold Bloom considers the first edition of Leaves of Grass as a kind of secular scripture of America.

Regarding his latent homosexuality you can read the article Walt Whitman, Prophet of Gay Liberation. In any event, the verses he wrote are the mildest expressions of poetic homosexual longing, and would scarce raise an eyebrow now, said Thommo. One is surprised to learn that Whitman began his literary career as a novelist. Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times was his only novel, written in 1842 at a time when the Temperance movement was strong. It became his most popular work and sold ~20,000 copies.

When the session came to an end, KumKum pronounced it was a lovely session. Shoba agreed, saying we loved all the poems.

Dinner Pics

The Poems

Gopa – poems by Spike Milligan (1918 – 2002)
1. A Combustible Woman from Thang
A combustible woman from Thang
Exploded one day with a BANG!
The maid then rushed in
And said with a grin,
'Pardon me, madam - you rang?'

2. Scorflufus
There are many diseases,
That strike people's kneeses,
Scorflufus! is one by name
It comes from the East
Packed in bladders of yeast
So the Chinese must take half the blame.

There's a case in the files
Of Sir Barrington-Pyles
While hunting a fox one day
Shot up in the air
And remained hanging there!
While the hairs on his socks turned grey!

Aye! Scorflufus had struck!
At man, beast, and duck.
And the knees of the world went Bong!
Some knees went Ping!
Other knees turned to string
From Balham to old Hong Kong.

Should you hold your life dear,
Then the remedy's clear,
If you're offered some yeast - don't eat it!
Turn the offer down flat-
Don your travelling hat-
Put an egg in your boot - and beat it!

3. The ABC
'Twas midnight in the schoolroom
And every desk was shut
When suddenly from the alphabet 
Was heard a loud "Tut-Tut!"

Said A to B, "I don't like C;
His manners are a lack.
For all I ever see of C
Is a semi-circular back!"

"I disagree," said D to B,
"I've never found C so.
From where I stand he seems to be
An uncompleted O."

C was vexed, "I'm much perplexed,
You criticise my shape.
I'm made like that, to help spell Cat
And Cow and Cool and Cape."

"He's right" said E; said F, "Whoopee!"
Said G, "'Ip, 'Ip, 'ooray!"
"You're dropping me," roared H to G.
"Don't do it please I pray."

"Out of my way," LL said to K.
"I'll make poor I look ILL."
To stop this stunt J stood in front,
And presto! ILL was JILL.

"U know," said V, "that W
Is twice the age of me.
For as a Roman V is five
I'm half as young as he."

X and Y yawned sleepily,
"Look at the time!" they said.
"Let's all get off to beddy byes."
They did, then "Z-z-z." 

4. On the Ning Nang Ning
On the Ning Nang Nong 
Where the Cows go Bong! 
and the monkeys all say BOO! 
There's a Nong Nang Ning 

Where the trees go Ping! 
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo. 
On the Nong Ning Nang 
All the mice go Clang 

And you just can't catch 'em when they do! 
So its Ning Nang Nong 
Cows go Bong! 
Nong Nang Ning 

Trees go ping 
Nong Ning Nang 
The mice go Clang 
What a noisy place to belong 

is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!! 

5. Smiling is infectious
Smiling is infectious,
you catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today,
I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner
and someone saw my grin.
When he smiled I realized
I'd passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile,
then I realized its worth.
A single smile, just like mine
could travel round the earth.

So, if you feel a smile begin,
don't leave it undetected.
Let's start an epidemic quick,

and get the world infected!

Joe – poem by Saint Francis (1181 – 1226)
Il Cantico de Frate Sole

1. Altissimu, onnipotente bon Signore,

Tue so le laude, la gloria e l’honore et onne benedictione.

2. Ad Te solo, Altissimo, se konfano,

et nullu homo ène dignu te mentouare.

3. Laudato sie, mi Signore cum tucte le Tue creature,

spetialmente messor lo frate Sole,

lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui.

4. Et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore:

de Te, Altissimo, porta significatione.

5. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le stelle:

in celu l’ài formate clarite et pretiose et belle.

6. Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Uento

et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo,

per lo quale, a le Tue creature dài sustentamento.

7. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor’Acqua,

la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.

8. Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Focu,

per lo quale ennallumini la nocte:

ed ello è bello et iucundo et robustoso et forte.

9. Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra,

la quale ne sustenta et gouerna,

et produce diuersi fructi con coloriti fior et herba.

10. Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli ke perdonano per lo Tuo amore

et sostengono infirmitate et tribulatione.

11. Beati quelli ke ‘l sosterranno in pace,

ka da Te, Altissimo, sirano incoronati.

12. Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale,

da la quale nullu homo uiuente pò skappare:

13. Guai a quelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali;

beati quelli ke trouarà ne le Tue sanctissime uoluntati,

ka la morte secunda no ‘l farrà male.

14. Laudate et benedicete mi Signore et rengratiate

e seruiteli cum grande humilitate.

[Notes: so=sono, si=sii (you are), mi=mio, ka=perché, u replaces v, sirano=saranno]

The Canticle of the Sun

1 Most High, all-powerful, good Lord, 

Yours are the praises, the glory, the honour, and all blessing.

2. To You alone, Most High, do they belong, 

and no man is worthy to mention Your name. 

3. Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures, 

especially Sir Brother Sun, 

Who is the day and through whom You give us light. 

4. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour; 

and bears a likeness of You, Most High One. 

5. Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, 

in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful. 

6. Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind, 

and through the air, cloudy and serene, & every kind of weather 

through which You give sustenance to Your creatures. 

7. Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water, 

which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste. 

8. Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire, 

through whom You light the night 

and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong. 

9. Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth, 

who sustains and governs us, 

and who produces varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs. 

10. Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love

and bear infirmity and tribulation. 

11. Blessed are those who endure in peace 

for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned. 

12. Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,

from whom no living man can escape. 

13. Woe to those who die in mortal sin. 

Blessed are those whom death will find in Your most holy will, 

for the second death shall do them no harm.

14. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks 

and serve Him with great humility.

(translated by Regis Armstrong and Ignatius Brady, taken from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, (New York: Paulist Press, 1982)

Kavita

Television – Poem by Roald Dahl (1916 – 1990)

The most important thing we've learned,

So far as children are concerned,

Is never, NEVER, NEVER let

Them near your television set --

Or better still, just don't install

The idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we've been,

We've watched them gaping at the screen.

They loll and slop and lounge about,

And stare until their eyes pop out.

(Last week in someone's place we saw

A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit

Until they're hypnotised by it,

Until they're absolutely drunk

With all that shocking ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,

They don't climb out the window sill,

They never fight or kick or punch,

They leave you free to cook the lunch

And wash the dishes in the sink --

But did you ever stop to think,

To wonder just exactly what

This does to your beloved tot?

IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!

IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!

'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,

'But if we take the set away,

What shall we do to entertain

Our darling children? Please explain!'

We'll answer this by asking you,

'What used the darling ones to do?

'How used they keep themselves contented

Before this monster was invented?'

Have you forgotten? Don't you know?

We'll say it very loud and slow:

THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,

AND READ and READ, and then proceed

To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!

One half their lives was reading books!

The nursery shelves held books galore!

Books cluttered up the nursery floor!

And in the bedroom, by the bed,

More books were waiting to be read!

Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales

Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales

And treasure isles, and distant shores

Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,

And pirates wearing purple pants,

And sailing ships and elephants,

And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,

Stirring away at something hot.

(It smells so good, what can it be?

Good gracious, it's Penelope.)

The younger ones had Beatrix Potter

With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,

And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,

And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-

Just How The Camel Got His Hump,

And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,

And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,

There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-

Oh, books, what books they used to know,

Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

Go throw your TV set away,

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books,

Ignoring all the dirty looks,

The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,

And children hitting you with sticks-

Fear not, because we promise you

That, in about a week or two

Of having nothing else to do,

They'll now begin to feel the need

Of having something to read.

And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!

You watch the slowly growing joy

That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen

They'll wonder what they'd ever seen

In that ridiculous machine,

That nauseating, foul, unclean,

Repulsive television screen!

And later, each and every kid

Will love you more for what you did. 

Pamela

The Tale Of Custard The Dragon – Poem by Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971)

Belinda lived in a little white house, 

With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse, 

And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon, 

And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon. 

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink, 

And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink, 

And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard, 

But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard. 

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth, 

And spikes on top of him and scales underneath, 

Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose, 

And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes. 

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears, 

And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs, 

Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage, 

But Custard cried for a nice safe cage. 

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful, 

Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival, 

They all sat laughing in the little red wagon 

At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon. 

Belinda giggled till she shook the house, 

And Blink said Week! , which is giggling for a mouse, 

Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age, 

When Custard cried for a nice safe cage. 

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound, 

And Mustard growled, and they all looked around. 

Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda, 

For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda. 

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right, 

And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright, 

His beard was black, one leg was wood; 

It was clear that the pirate meant no good. 

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help! 

But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp, 

Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household, 

And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed. 

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine, 

Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon, 

With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm 

He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm. 

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon, 

And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon, 

He fired two bullets but they didn't hit, 

And Custard gobbled him, every bit. 

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him, 

No one mourned for his pirate victim 

Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate 

Around the dragon that ate the pyrate. 

But presently up spoke little dog Mustard,

I'd been twice as brave if I hadn't been flustered.

And up spoke Ink and up spoke Blink,

We'd have been three times as brave, we think,

And Custard said, I quite agree

That everybody is braver than me.

Belinda still lives in her little white house, 

With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse, 

And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon, 

And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon. 

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears, 

And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs, 

Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage, 

But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage. 

Saras – Poem by Ogden Nash

The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus

In Baltimore there lived a boy.

He wasn't anybody's joy.

Although his name was Jabez Dawes,

His character was full of flaws.

In school he never led his classes,

He hid old ladies' reading glasses,

His mouth was open when he chewed,

And elbows to the table glued.

He stole the milk of hungry kittens,

And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.

He said he acted thus because

There wasn't any Santa Claus.

Another trick that tickled Jabez

Was crying 'Boo' at little babies.

He brushed his teeth, they said in town,

Sideways instead of up and down.

Yet people pardoned every sin,

And viewed his antics with a grin,

Till they were told by Jabez Dawes,

'There isn't any Santa Claus!'

Deploring how he did behave,

His parents swiftly sought their grave.

They hurried through the portals pearly,

And Jabez left the funeral early.

Like whooping cough, from child to child,

He sped to spread the rumor wild:

'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes

There isn't any Santa Claus!'

Slunk like a weasel of a marten

Through nursery and kindergarten,

Whispering low to every tot,

'There isn't any, no there's not!'

The children wept all Christmas eve

And Jabez chortled up his sleeve.

No infant dared hang up his stocking

For fear of Jabez' ribald mocking.

He sprawled on his untidy bed,

Fresh malice dancing in his head,

When presently with scalp-a-tingling,

Jabez heard a distant jingling;

He heard the crunch of sleigh and hoof

Crisply alighting on the roof.

What good to rise and bar the door?

A shower of soot was on the floor.

What was beheld by Jabez Dawes?

The fireplace full of Santa Claus!

Then Jabez fell upon his knees

With cries of 'Don't,' and 'Pretty Please.'

He howled, 'I don't know where you read it,

But anyhow, I never said it!'

'Jabez' replied the angry saint,

'It isn't I, it's you that ain't.

Although there is a Santa Claus,

There isn't any Jabez Dawes!'

Said Jabez then with impudent vim,

'Oh, yes there is, and I am him!

Your magic don't scare me, it doesn't'

And suddenly he found he wasn't!

From grimy feet to grimy locks,

Jabez became a Jack-in-the-box,

An ugly toy with springs unsprung,

Forever sticking out his tongue.

The neighbors heard his mournful squeal;

They searched for him, but not with zeal.

No trace was found of Jabez Dawes,

Which led to thunderous applause,

And people drank a loving cup

And went and hung their stockings up.

All you who sneer at Santa Claus,

Beware the fate of Jabez Dawes,

The saucy boy who mocked the saint.

Donner and Blitzen licked off his paint.

Geetha - poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Parody on “A Psalm of Life”

"Life is real, life is earnest,

And the shell is not its pen –

“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”

Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting,

Be our bills then sharpened well,

And not like muffled drums be beating

On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the great barnyard of life,

Be not like those lazy cattle!

Be a rooster in the strife!

Lives of roosters all remind us,

We can make our lives sublime,

And when roasted, leave behind us,

Hen tracks on the sands of time.

Hen tracks that perhaps another

Chicken drooping in the rain,

Some forlorn and henpecked brother,

When he sees, shall crow again."

Devika – poem by James Thomas Fields (1817 – 1881)

The Owl-Critic

A Lesson to Fault-finders

“WHO stuffed that white owl?” No one spoke in the shop:

The barber was busy, and he couldn’t stop;

The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading

The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding

The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;         

Not one raised a head or even made a suggestion;

        And the barber kept on shaving.

“Don’t you see, Mister Brown,”

Cried the youth, with a frown,

“How wrong the whole thing is,         

How preposterous each wing is,

How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is—

In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck ’tis!

I make no apology;

I’ve learned owl-eology.         

I’ve passed days and nights in a hundred collections,

And cannot be blinded to any deflections

Arising from unskilful fingers that fail

To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.

Mister Brown! Mister Brown!         

Do take that bird down,

Or you’ll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!”

        And the barber kept on shaving.

“I’ve studied owls,

And other night fowls,         

And I tell you

What I know to be true:

An owl cannot roost

With his limbs so unloosed;

No owl in this world         

Ever had his claws curled,

Ever had his legs slanted,

Ever had his bill canted,

Ever had his neck screwed

Into that attitude.         

He can’t do it, because

’Tis against all bird-laws

Anatomy teaches,

Ornithology preaches

An owl has a toe         

That can’t turn out so!

I’ve made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!

Mister Brown, I’m amazed

You should be so gone crazed         

As to put up a bird

In that posture absurd!

To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;

The man who stuffed him don’t half know his business!”

        And the barber kept on shaving.         

“Examine those eyes.

I’m filled with surprise

Taxidermists should pass

Off on you such poor glass;

So unnatural they seem         

They’d make Audubon scream,

And John Burroughs laugh

To encounter such chaff.

Do take that bird down;

Have him stuffed again, Brown!”         

        And the barber kept on shaving.

“With some sawdust and bark

I would stuff in the dark

An owl better than that;

I could make an old hat         

Look more like an owl

Than that horrid fowl,

Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.

In fact, about him there’s not one natural feather.”

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,         

The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,

Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic

(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,

And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:

“Your learning’s at fault this time, anyway;         

Don’t waste it again on a live bird, I pray.

I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir Critic, good-day!”

        And the barber kept on shaving.

Hemjit – two poems by Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)

The Henpecked Husband

Curs'd be the man, the poorest wretch in life, 

The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife! 

Who has no will but by her high permission, 

Who has not sixpence but in her possession; 

Who must to he, his dear friend's secrets tell, 

Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell. 

Were such the wife had fallen to my part, 

I'd break her spirit or I'd break her heart; 

I'd charm her with the magic of a switch, 

I'd kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch.

Epitaph On A Henpecked Country Squire

As father Adam first was fool'd, 

(A case that's still too common,) 

Here lies man a woman ruled, 

The devil ruled the woman.

Shoba – poem by by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941)

Fireflies 

My fancies are fireflies, — 

Specks of living light

twinkling in the dark.

The voice of wayside pansies,

that do not attract the careless glance,

murmurs in these desultory lines.

In the drowsy dark caves of the mind

dreams build their nest with fragments

dropped from day's caravan.

Spring scatters the petals of flowers

that are not for the fruits of the future,

but for the moment's whim.

Joy freed from the bond of earth's slumber

rushes into numberless leaves,

and dances in the air for a day.

My words that are slight

may lightly dance upon time's waves

when my works heavy with import have gone down.

Mind's underground moths

grow filmy wings

and take a farewell flight

in the sunset sky.

The butterfly counts not months but moments,

and has time enough.

My thoughts, like spark, ride on winged surprises,

carrying a single laughter.

The tree gazes in love at its own beautiful shadow

which yet it never can grasp.

Let my love, like sunlight, surround you

and yet give you illumined freedom.

Days are coloured bubbles

that float upon the surface of fathomless night.

My offerings are too timid to claim your remembrance,

and therefore you may remember them.

Leave out my name from the gift

if it be a burden,

but keep my song.

KumKum – poem by T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)
THE OLD GUMBIE CAT

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits—and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!

        But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
        Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
        And when all the family's in bed and asleep,
        She tucks up her skirts to the basement to creep.
        She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice—
        Their behaviour's not good and their manners not nice;
        So when she has got them lined up on the matting,
        She teaches them music, crocheting and tatting.

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots.
All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits—and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!

        But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
        Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
        As she finds that the mice will not ever keep quiet,
        She is sure it is due to irregular diet
        And believing that nothing is done without trying,
        She sets right to work with her baking and frying.
        She makes them a mouse-cake of bread and dried peas,
        And a beautiful fry of lean bacon and cheese.

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
The curtain-cord she likes to wind, and tie it into sailor-knots.
She sits upon the window-sill, or anything that's smooth and flat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits—and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!

        But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
        Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
        She thinks that the cockroaches just need employment
        To prevent them from idle and wanton destroyment.
        So she's formed, from that lot of disorderly louts,
        A troop of well-disciplined helpful boy-scouts,
        With a purpose in life and a good deed to do—
        And she's even created a Beetles' Tattoo.

So for Old Gumbie Cats let us now give three cheers—
On whom well-ordered households depend, it appears.

Zakia – poem by T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965) 
Macavity: The Mystery Cat by T.S. Eliot
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s useless to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE !
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time

Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

Thommo – poem by Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) 
Song of the Open Road
1 
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 
Healthy, free, the world before me, 
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, 
Strong and content I travel the open road. 

The earth, that is sufficient, 
I do not want the constellations any nearer, 
I know they are very well where they are, 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them. 

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens, 
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go, 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them, 
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) 

… 

5 
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, 
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, 
Listening to others, considering well what they say, 
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, 
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. 
I inhale great draughts of space, 
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. 

I am larger, better than I thought, 
I did not know I held so much goodness. 

All seems beautiful to me, 
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you, 
I will recruit for myself and you as I go, 
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, 
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them, 
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me, 
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me. 

… 

15 
Allons! the road is before us! 
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d! 

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! 
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d! 
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher! 
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law. 

Camerado, I give you my hand! 
I give you my love more precious than money, 
I give you myself before preaching or law; 
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? 

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?