Eliot originally wrote these poems for sharing with his godchildren, later collecting them in a book that used his nickname given by Ezra Pound.
The Covid19 virus continues to keep people apart but the readers were determined to use digital methods to meet over the Internet the entire year using the Zoom app. While we might have enjoyed each other's company more if we were physically close, the distance has not been an insuperable obstacle, as this session of humorous poems showed.
We dressed in fancy ways to illustrate the whimsical poems we were reading. We extracted all the humour that rhyme and nonsense encourage. How is it one may ask that a serious poet not given to rhyme, one whose fame arrived with The Waste Land expressing the sombre fears and brokenness of four years of the first world war, could write with freedom and comic verve on the threshold of yet another war? But that's exactly what T.S. Eliot did in one of the poems recited (The Naming of Cats)
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
...
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
Lear's original 1846 Book of Nonsense was composed of limericks. Later other poems like the famous Owl and the Pussy Cat were added.
There is no doubt that humour and nonsense bring out the best in poetry. How memorable these poems are; fortunate those who are introduced to them as children for they leave in their wake the unending joy of remembering and reciting them !
Full Account and Record of the Humorous Poems Session on Dec 3, 2021
The next KRG reading will be the novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai will be on Fri, Jan 28, 2022.
Arundhaty
Darren Sardelli when young
Darren Sardelli is a humorous poet who knows how to get kids excited about poetry. He’s been invited to speak at over 800 schools and libraries, nationwide, where he’s transformed reluctant readers and writers into poetry fanatics. Growing up, Darren had very little interest in writing. He’d rather be riding his bike, playing sports, or figuring how to excel at his favourite video games. After an inspirational dream during his junior year at Loyola University (Maryland), everything changed. Darren discovered how much fun poetry could be. He started writing and has never looked back.
He is the author of Galaxy Pizza and Meteor Pie (School Poems That Are Out of This World!) (2009) and WHAT IF? (2021). Besides his poems have appeared in scores of children's books. Sardelli lives in Long Island, New York. He has his own website at https://laughalotpoetry.com/
The first poem is about sneezing without using tissues to smother the wet spray – it may have a bearing on Covid, said Arundhaty.
Little Boy Blue,
please cover your nose.
You sneezed on Miss Muffet
and ruined her clothes.
You sprayed Mother Hubbard,
and now she is sick.
...
From now on use tissues
so no one gets wet!
The second poem concerns the famous lame excuse for not brining in your homework – ‘the dog ate my paper’! Here the dog seems to have engaged in a series of practical chores like sweeping the floor, shining the windows, folding clothes and fluffing pillows – but in the end it ate the essay that the boy had written on “How to Clean My Room.”
Devika
Devika appeared on Zoom with black face paint to simulate a shadow for the poem My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson. First a bio of the poet:
Robert Louis Stevenson was the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a prosperous civil engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella Balfour. In his teens he aimed to learn writing by imitating various models in prose and verse. He attended Edinburgh Academy and other schools before entering Edinburgh University.
He had shown a desire to write early in life, and once he was in his teens he deliberately set out to learn the writer’s craft by imitating a great variety of models in prose and verse. His youthful enthusiasm for the Covenanters (i.e., those Scotsmen who had banded together to defend their version of Presbyterianism in the 17th century) led to his writing The Pentland Rising, his first printed work. During his years at the university he rebelled against his parents’ religion and set himself up as a liberal bohemian who abhorred the alleged cruelties and hypocrisies of bourgeois respectability.
R.L. Stevenson – painted mural portrait of the Scottish author, poet, and essayist in the Colinton railway tunnel near Edinburgh
In 1873, in the midst of painful differences with his father, he visited a married cousin in Suffolk, England, where he met Sidney Colvin, the English scholar, who became a lifelong friend, and Fanny Sitwell (who later married Colvin). Sitwell, an older woman of charm and talent, drew the young man out and won his confidence. Soon Stevenson was deeply in love, and on his return to Edinburgh he wrote her a series of letters in which he played the part first of lover, then of worshipper, then of son.
In 1876 Stevenson met Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, an American lady separated from her husband, and the two fell in love. Stevenson’s parents’ horror at their son’s involvement with a married woman subsided somewhat when she returned to California in 1878, but it revived with greater force when Stevenson decided to join her in August 1879. Stevenson reached California ill and penniless. His adventures, which included coming very near death and eking out a precarious living in Monterey and San Francisco, culminated in marriage to Fanny Osbourne (who was by then divorced from her first husband) early in 1880. About the same time a telegram from his relenting father offered much-needed financial support, and, after a honeymoon by an abandoned silver mine (recorded in The Silverado Squatters, 1883), the couple sailed for Scotland to achieve reconciliation with the Thomas Stevensons.
Soon after his return, Stevenson, accompanied by his wife and his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, went on medical advice (he had tuberculosis), to Davos, Switzerland. The family left there in April 1881 and spent the summer in Pitlochry and then in Braemar, Scotland. There, in spite of bouts of illness, Stevenson embarked on Treasure Island (begun as a game with Lloyd), which started as a serial in the magazine Young Folks, under the title The Sea-Cook, in October 1881. Stevenson finished the story in Davos, to which he had returned in the autumn, and then started on Prince Otto (1885), a more complex but less successful work. Treasure Island is an adventure presented with consummate skill, with atmosphere, character, and action. The book is at once a gripping adventure tale and a wry comment on the ambiguity of human motives.
In June 1888 Stevenson, accompanied by his family, sailed from San Francisco in the schooner yacht Casco, which he had chartered, on what was intended to be an excursion for health and pleasure. In fact, he was to spend the rest of his life in the South Seas. They went first to the Marquesas Islands, then to Fakarava Atoll, then to Tahiti, then to Honolulu, where they stayed nearly six months, leaving in June 1889 for the Gilbert Islands, and then to Samoa, where he spent six weeks.
During his months of wandering around the South Sea islands, Stevenson made intensive efforts to understand the local scene and the inhabitants. As a result, his writings on the South Seas (In the South Seas, 1896; A Footnote to History, 1892) are admirably pungent and perceptive. He was writing first-rate journalism, deepened by the awareness of landscape and atmosphere, such as that so notably rendered in his description of the first landfall at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas.
Robert Louis Stevenson with his family (wife Fanny to his left, to his right, stepson Lloyd and mother Margaret) and Samoan household
In October 1890 he returned to Samoa from a voyage to Sydney and established himself and his family in patriarchal status at Vailima, his house in Samoa. Though Stevenson spent just four years in Samoa, his South Pacific period assuaged his tuberculosis and brought a ‘sense of a reawakening to life’, says the biographer Joseph Farrell in his book, Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa. In 1890, having travelled through France on a donkey and roughed it in California, the writer settled with his wife Fanny on the Polynesian island of Upolu, where eventually he was given the local name Tusitala — ‘Teller of Tales’ — and wrote an impressive total of 700,000 words. The climate suited him; he led an industrious and active life; and, when he died suddenly, it was of a cerebral haemorrhage, not of the long-feared tuberculosis. He left unfinished Weir of Hermiston, which promised to be his single greatest work. In gratitude to their ‘Teller of Tales’, the Samoans cleared a path to the summit of Mount Vaea, and buried RLS like a chief at the top.
Immediately after his death, biographers and commentators praised Stevenson lavishly, but this idealised portrait was attacked in the 1920s and 1930s by critics who labeled his prose as imitative and pretentious and who made much of Stevenson’s college-day follies. In the 1950s and 1960s, however, his work was reconsidered and finally taken seriously by the academic community. Outside of academia, Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde continue to be widely read over a century after they were first published and show promise of remaining popular for centuries to come.
Stevenson had always wanted his Requiem (below), written by him, to be inscribed on his tomb. Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
References:
For a tour of literary places associated with RLS see:
A comprehensive RLS website is available at:
Other references:
My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson, is among his most famous poems for children, which appeared in A Child's Garden of Verses in 1885. It is written in iambic heptameter, seven iambs per line. Stevenson begins the poem by considering how little use a shadow has:
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
But the shadow has properties that lend itself to fun:
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
But one morning when he was up and about before the sun was up, he found,
... my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
No sun, no shadow. Saras mentioned a Tamil movie by Anand Ravi (The Man Who Lost His Shadow) in which a guy goes to the police station to report he has lost his shadow. He is eccentric and quickly becomes known in the town. Geetha chimed in with a story on WhatsApp of a little boy who is scared by the shadowy figure following him about.
Geetha
In his poems for children, Crawley uses rhyme and light humour as he engages with subjects of animal life and school days. He is the author of the nonfiction book Sidelights on Wisconsin (1988) and the children’s poetry books Cat Poems (2005, illustrated by Tamara Petrosino), Dog Poems (2007, illustrated by Tamara Petrosino), and Reading, Rhyming and ’Rithmetic (2010, illustrated by Liz Callen). His work has been featured in many anthologies.
Crawley has produced thousands of human-interest stories during his career in journalism. He was a features reporter for the Pittsburgh CBS affiliate, and is known for his rhyming stories. Crawley also wrote and produced the documentary Celebrating 50 Years in our Hometowns.
His honours include several Emmy awards. Dog Poems was chosen as one of the Best Children’s Books of the Year by the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee. He lives in Pittsburgh.
Dave Crawley was born in 1948 in Frankfurt, Germany
Crawley, 72, was hurt in 2017 after plunging off a 22-foot pier into the river in a contraption to promote an event. He suffered serious injuries and has not been able to work since.
The young student in the poem is mortified to see her teacher on a Saturday:
I saw her buying groceries,
like normal people do!
There was nowhere to hide in the store and she hoped the teacher would not meet her mother and snitch on her behaviour in school. The concluding thought is
Some people think it's fine to let
our teachers walk about.
But when it comes to Saturdays,
they shouldn’t let them out.
Joe
Joe recited a poem written by a well-known Victorian era poet, Mary Howitt. She was born Mary Botham, at Coleford, Gloucestershire, where her parents lived at the time. Her father, a was a well-to-do surveyor and former farmer and, looked after some mining property. There were four siblings: Anna, Mary, Emma and Charles. Mary began writing verse at a very early age.
Mary Howitt, 1799-1888
In 1821 she married William Howitt and began publishing jointly with him. She and her husband wrote over 180 books. The Howitts lived initially in Derbyshire, where William worked a pharmacist. Later he gave up the profession to concentrate on writing with Mary, mainly poetry and other contributions to annuals and periodicals. A selection appeared in 1827 as The Desolation of Eyam and other Poems.
The couple knew other literary figures of their times, including Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In 1837 they toured Northern England and stayed with William and Dorothy Wordsworth.Their work was generally well regarded. Mary's Hymns and Fireside Verses achieved some fame.
William and Mary moved to London and in 1844 counted Tennyson amongst their neighbours. Mary Howitt had some years earlier arranged that the children's writer Hans Christian Andersen would visit Hillside to see the haymaking during his trip to England in 1847.
In the early 1840s Mary Howitt’s attention was drawn to Scandinavian literature. She set about learning Swedish and Danish and then translated into English and introduced novels of Fredrika Bremer. Howitt also translated many of Hans Christian Andersen's tales.
She edited the Pictorial Calendar of the Seasons, translated Joseph Ennemoser's History of Magic, and took the chief share in The Literature and Romance of Northern Europe (1852). She also produced a Popular History of the United States (2 vols, 1859), and a three-volume novel called The Cost of Caergwyn (1864).
Mary's wife and his brother went for a few years to Australia. When they returned from Australia, William wrote several books describing its flora and fauna. Their son, Alfred William Howitt, achieved renown as an Australian explorer, anthropologist and naturalist.
Mary Howitt's name appears on least 110 works. She received a silver medal from the Literary Academy of Stockholm, and on 21 April 1879 gained a civil list pension of £100 a year. In her declining years she joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1886 her Reminiscences of my Later Life were printed in Good Words (a 19th-century monthly periodical established in 1860 by the Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan). The Times wrote of her and her husband:
“Their friends used jokingly to call them William and Mary, and to maintain that they had been crowned together like their royal prototypes. Nothing that either of them wrote will live, but they were so industrious, so disinterested, so amiable, so devoted to the work of spreading good and innocent literature, that their names ought not to disappear unmourned.”
Mary Botham Howitt contracted bronchitis and died in Rome on the 30th January 1888 at the age of 88. She was remembered as a spreader of “good and innocent literature”, in her Times Obituary.
In the poem, The Spider and the Fly, where a cunning spider flatters and invites a fly into his parlour for prandial purposes, Joe was dressed to play the role of the spider:
The invitation begins:
Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The fly demurs, knowing the danger:
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again.”
The spider does not give up and tries various stratagems:
“I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;
Will you rest upon my little bed?” said the Spider to the Fly.
...
...
I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;
I'm sure you're very welcome -- will you please to take a slice?”
Still the fly is wary. The spider tries some flattery:
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself.”
The fly continues to be reluctant, but the spider, knowing the curiosity of the hunted, weaves a web and sings out:
“Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple -- there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!”
Falling prey to this bit of adulation, the fly comes flitting by –
Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlour -- but she ne'er came out again!
There is a very good recitation of this poem by Aurora Adams on youtube.
KumKum
KumKum was reciting from a poet who would have celebrated his 161st birthday on Dec 2, 2021, the day before the session.
Oliver Herford (1860 – 1935) was an American humorist. So was his sister Beatrice Herford. Both contributed to the Mantor, Life, and Ladies' Home Journal. Oliver Herford studied Art at the Slade School in London and the Académie Julian in Paris. After completing his Art education he moved to New York, where he worked until his death on July 5, 1935.
Oliver Herford was Editor of Life magazine during 1882–1934 – photgravure by Doris Ullman in 1925
Oliver Herford was born in Sheffield, England Dec 2, 1860. His father, Rev Brooke Herford, was a Unitarian Minister, and mother Hannah, a homemaker. The family moved to Chicago in 1876, then to Boston in 1882. Oliver graduated from Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1879. Antioch was known from its early days for its path-breaking liberal education.
A witty quote by Oliver Herford
Oliver Herford cartoon – The Lion and the Dandelion (click to enlarge)
Herford's cartoons and his humorous verses appeared regularly in The Masses and Punch, and Harper's Weekly, Life, Century Magazine and more. He was a sought-after artist of that time. He wrote and illustrated more than 30 books. He even tried his hand at humorous plays. He made a success of whatever he did. Herford married Margaret Regan in New York on May 26, 1904. Their marriage lasted until Herford's death in 1935; Margaret died the following year.
KumKum read a humorous poem by Herford called The Bashful Earthquake. It's about an earthquake that ends with a whimper. First it went
Bumpyty-thump!
Thumpyty-bump!—
Houses and palaces all in a lump!
But the earthquake is grieved at the destruction it has caused, and looking on it, decides to cease its rumbling. But not before the dormouse has been rattled in its sleep:
... the Dormouse had just turned into bed,
Dreaming as only a Dormouse can,
When all of a sudden his nest began
To quiver and shiver and tremble and shake.
But by then
The Earthquake by now had become so weak
He’d scarcely strength enough to speak.
The earthquake wished to reassure the dormouse but
No one will know what he meant to say,
For all at once he melted away.
Pamela
Pamela's choice was a poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton who has been having something of a revival on television with a streaming series on Netflix featuring the detective stories of Father Brown.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (1874 –1936) was an English critic and author of verse, essays, novels, and short stories, known also for his exuberant personality and rotund figure.
G.K. Chesterton – novelist, journalist, essayist and poet
Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s School and later studied art at the Slade School and literature at University College, London. His writings up to 1910 were of three kinds. First, his social criticism, largely in his voluminous journalism, was gathered in The Defendant (1901), Twelve Types (1902), and Heretics (1905). Politically, he began as a Liberal but after a brief radical period became, with his Christian and medievalist friend Hilaire Belloc one who favoured the re-distribution of land. This phase of his thinking is exemplified by What’s Wrong with the World (1910).Chesterton’s third major concern was theology and religious argument. He converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1922. Although he had written on Christianity earlier his conversion added edge to his controversial writing. His best-known works arising from his conversion were St. Francis of Assisi (1923), the essay in historical theology The Everlasting Man (1925), and St. Thomas Aquinas (1933).
In his verse Chesterton was a master of ballad forms, as shown in the stirring Lepanto (1911). When it was not uproariously comic, his verse was frankly partisan and didactic. His essays developed his shrewd, paradoxical irreverence to its ultimate point of real seriousness. He is seen at his happiest in such essays as “On Running After One’s Hat” (1908) and “A Defence of Nonsense” (1901), in which he says that nonsense and faith are “the two supreme symbolic assertions of truth.” Readers will find in this essay a brilliant analysis of the contrasting styles of nonsense in Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. He believed that Nonsense is ‘a kind of exuberant capering round a discovered truth.’
Many readers value Chesterton’s fiction highly. The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), a romance of civil war in suburban London, was followed by the loosely knit collection of short stories, The Club of Queer Trades (1905), and the popular allegorical novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). But the most successful association of fiction with social judgment is in Chesterton’s series on the priest-sleuth Father Brown: The Innocence of Father Brown (1911), followed by The Wisdom… (1914), The Incredulity… (1926), The Secret… (1927), and The Scandal of Father Brown (1935). This life history is taken from Brittanica.com.
His Autobiography was published in 1936. Even among Chesterton fans, few know that in addition to his extraordinary books and essays, he was an exemplary husband and father. He was an incurable romantic, and spent years of his life wooing his wife, Frances—long after he was married to her, in fact. He wrote poems for her on their anniversary.
Chesterton and his wife, Frances – they were childless but he had many godchildren he nurtured
On one occasion Chesterton remarked to his friend GBS, “To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England.” Shaw retorted, “To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it.”
Chesterton’s girth gave rise to an anecdote during the First World War, when a lady in London asked why he was not “out at the Front”; he replied, “If you go round to the side, you will see that I am.”
The poem Pamela chose, The Song of the Quoodle, begins with an indictment of humans:
They haven’t got no noses,
The fallen sons of Eve;
Even the smell of roses
Is not what they supposes;
The miss so many smells –
The brilliant smell of water,
The brave smell of a stone,
...
The scent of scentless flowers,
...
The scent of scentless flowers,
The breath of brides’ adorning,
The Qoodle who has access to all these smells is reduced to pity:
They haven’t got no noses,
They haven’t got no noses,
And goodness only knowses
The Noselessness of Man.
Pamela was taken by the last stanza. Dogs, she said, have no protruding nose, only two orifices above the mouth, and yet their capacity to discern smell is far higher than that of humans; Joe said people have estimated dogs have a hundred times keener olfactory sense. The Phoenix Veterinary Center estimates dogs possess 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to about six million in humans, and the part of a dog's brain that is devoted to analysing smells is about 40 times larger than ours.
Devika gave the example of a dog Brandy which was removed from the Bolghatty golf green along with other dogs and taken 35 km out of Kochi. It returned. Now the hotel at Bolghatty has decided to adopt the dog. Arundhaty says cats also have a superior sense of smell; they are territorial said Geetha. Then there was the case of a bandicoot (a big rodent, whose etymology is from Tamil) that was trapped by Arundhaty and taken several kilometres away to Sacred Heart College in Thevara and let loose, but made its way back to her home.
Pamela also liked the lines where a Biblical reference is made:
The park a Jew encloses,
Where even the law of Moses
Will let you steal a smell.
A Society of G.K. Chesterton exists; it exhibits all his works, but it is oriented to his Catholicism.
Priya
Priya dressed the part of Miss J.Hunter Dunn in A Subaltern’s Love Song by Sir John Betjeman. The word Subaltern is chiefly encountered in modern social commentary as representing people in society who live in conditions of subordination, belonging to castes, classes, ages, genders, and races, who suffer discrimination. But Betjeman's poem is using the original military parlance; a subaltern is a junior officer below the rank of captain.
John Betjeman was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death in 1984. He utilised traditional poetic forms, and wrote with a light touch about public issues, celebrated classic architecture, and satirised contemporary society. He was able to laugh. His first book of poems, Mount Zion, was published in 1931, gorgeously; it was paid for by a friend.
Betjeman’s poetry was widely read and also praised by literary critics. The sudden fame won by his Collected Poems (1958 ) brought him a wide reputation. Betjeman was also admired by such poets and critics as Edmund Wilson and W.H. Auden.
The poet skilfully used 19th-century poetic models. Betjeman was a born versifier, ingenious and endlessly original. He was always attentive to the sound of his words, the run of his lines, the shape of his stanzas. Louise Bogan had high praise for Betjeman’s work: “His verse forms, elaborately varied, reproduce an entire set of neglected Victorian techniques, which he manipulates with the utmost dexterity and taste.” We meet no imperfect or false rhymes in the process.
In Summoned by Bells (1960), Betjeman recreated his personal past in richly-detailed poems. Because the poet was able to recall so accurately the time and place of his own childhood, Mills attributed to Betjeman “an almost Proustian memory.” Philip Larkin concluded that “Betjeman has an astonishing command of detail, both visual and circumstantial.”
The poems from both High and Low (1967) and A Nip in the Air (1976) were included in the fourth edition of Betjeman’s Collected Poems. Larkin, writing in his introduction to the volume, explained that Betjeman was a difficult poet for many critics to approach.
Uncollected Poems was published in 1982, two years before the poet’s death. It was of uneven quality and had some ‘duds’ but it also included poems no sensible reader would want to miss. The best of them touch on dying, an undying fixation of Betjeman. He is the laureate of contemporary death, and has traced, in poem after poem, its horribly normal advance from the preliminary twinge to the fatal X-ray photographs and the final hospital bed.
Sir John Betjeman was a man of many talents and interests – BBC broadcaster, Poet Laureate, architectural enthusiast
Betjeman was a genial person who developed numerous close friendships with a variety of people over the years, and was in the habit of writing letters to them. His voluminous correspondence was published posthumously beginning in 1994. Betjeman remarks that he wrote letters in order to avoid writing poems. A critic said “To write letters ... so that the reading of them brings the writer into the room with one, is a rare gift, but Betjeman certainly had it.” Humour runs through the collection.
Betjeman wrote several works on architecture, and remained passionately involved in architectural preservation efforts. He made numerous appearances on television to promote preservation.
Betjeman who helped save St Pancras station from demolition in the 1960s is shown walking into the new station for the first time – sculptor Martin Jennings
Betjeman championed such causes in his poetry as well; he wrote lovingly of the places of his childhood, of the buildings and monuments in danger of destruction. Betjeman had another documented career as a British spy when he was posted during WWII to Ireland. The IRA (Irish Republican Army) discovered the fact and intended to assassinate him. However the intelligence chief of the IRA thought better of it after reading Betjeman's poems. He was swayed by reading Continual Dew, a 1937 volume that contains several poems about Ireland and another about Oscar Wilde. The assassination was aborted – thus we learn of IRA’s real weakness, poetry.
Coming now to the poem Priya chose, it is about a real girl. This is how Betjeman describes her in real life: (before going on to recite the poem with gusto)
“During the war, I was in the Ministry of Information located in the University of London building on Gower Street. There was a girl there in charge of the catering who was Perfection of Beauty among us sea-green intellectuals with spectacles and unhealthy faces. There she was keeping up our spirits, quite a different sort of person. She used to wear a red coat, had red burnished cheeks, a shock of black curly hair, darkling brown eyes and a constant smile. When the bombs fell, who came and bound up our wounds? –– this lovely creature! Lots of us were in love with her and when I first saw her I thought to myself: that girl must be a doctor’s daughter, and she must come from Aldershot. And by Jove you know, I found out when I got to know her better, she was a doctor’s daughter and she did come from near Aldershot … So I wrote a poem about her called A Subaltern’s Love Song. It’s really my love song about Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. That was her name.”
In the Times obituary for Joan Jackson, née Joan Hunter Dunn (13 October 1915 – 11 April 2008) she was recognised as the muse of Sir John Betjeman for this poem.
Joan Jackson, née Joan Hunter Dunn (13 October 1915 – 11 April 2008) was the muse of Sir John Betjeman for his poem ‘A Subaltern's Love-song’
Her own reaction to Betjeman showing her the poem (published in Horizon magazine in 1941) in a taxi, is recounted in an interview she gave in 1965; she spoke glowingly of the moment, and how the knowledge brightened the drab wartime days.
After Priya read the poem Devika remarked: "Priya, you totally suit the part.”
Priya who totally suits the part – but who is her Betjeman?
It's worth noting that Betjeman was tolerant and open in his interactions with people, a fact that The Guardian noted in this article. There was some talk about the very British settings of the poem – lime-juice and gin, tennis courts, golfing, and dated British cars. Priya thought the ending was a surprise – engagement – preceded by the words ‘ominous, ominous.’
Saras
The poem was on Arithmetic, her weakest subject, said Saras, though she loved Geometry. Since it is written by Carl Sandburg, whom she chose for the previous poetry session in October, one may refer to that session for Sandburg’s bio. It was a nice poem and Saras was reminded of an episode in Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayan in which the father gives the son a problem of Simple Proportion in arithmetic with mangoes as the example: “Rama has ten mangoes with which he wants to earn fifteen annas. Krishna wants only four mangoes. How much will Krishna have to pay?”
This problem gets Swaminathan to wondering whether the mangoes are green or ripe. He asks his father, but the father insists on the answer first, and then he will tell Swaminathan whether the mangoes are green or ripe. Swaminathan is helpless for he thinks an essential point to determine the answer has been left out, and so it continues ... The whole story is here. The episode is very well treated in the TV series.
One of Sandburg’s verses defines Arithmetic in this fashion:
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
It’s also a nursery rhyme:
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven--
or five six bundle of sticks.
Zakia liked the poem and said it reminded her of younger days.
Shoba
Shoba read a famous poem of Edward Lear, The Akond of Swat. Akond, also spelled Akhund, is a religious leader, teacher, or scholar in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Lear had been recited by Zakia before.
You may consult A Short Bio of Edward Lear written last year when Devika recited The Jumblies by the same poet. Using Google Chrome as the browser for this link you will be taken directly to the point where the biography starts. When Shoba said Lear was the youngest of 21 children, Arundhaty hoped it was by several mothers, else it would have been very tough for the poor woman. No said, Shoba, it was by one mother. What was the father thinking! (He wasn't)
Swat was ruled very peacefully by the Akond and it did not come to the notice of the British Foreign Office until he died. The news tickled Edward Lear, and another person, George Lanigan in America. The obituary inspired both of them to write poems on the occasion – Lear's belonged to the type of nonsense verse, for which he was famous.
George Lanigan wrote A Threnody lamenting the death of the Akond of Swat which begins:
What, what, what,
What’s the news from Swat?
Sad news,
Bad news,
Comes by the cable led
Through the Indian Ocean’s bed,
Through the Persian Gulf, the Red
Sea and the Med-
Iterranean—he’s dead;
The Ahkoond is dead!
etc.
When Shoba finished reading Edward Lear’s take on the demise of the Akond of Swat everyone was in stitches. Joe said Lear must have lined up all these rhyming words in a row and used them one by one in his stanzas. Geetha remarked ’No match for Joe,’ probably referring to the Trump haikus he's been inflicting on KRG, now mercifully ended with the New Year.
Saras wondered if this is the region from which Malala Yousufsai comes. Yes, Malala is from Swat, the region of Pakistan which is close to the border with Afghanistan, said Saras. Then we must add one quatrain for Malala, Joe replied. Geetha said she would leave that to Joe, who by the next day had written several more stanzas, gathered here below.
Malala Yousufsai is known for human rights advocacy, and especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan had at times banned girls from attending school. See:
For Malala Yousufsai:
You educate girls, guarantee their rights,
You set up their schools, but did not take fright,
from CRACKPOTS,
True Akond of Swat.
The sweat of your learning did earn you grief,
The Taliban punished your strong belief
with GUNSHOT,
True Akond of Swat.
You led a brave life and had an impact,
You won the Nobel for your daring act,
prize UNSOUGHT,
True Akond of Swat.
You came up to Oxford, and got degrees,
You graduated with a PPE,
Well THOUGHT,
True Akond of Swat.
November saw you wedded to Malik,
We wish you the best and a life euphoric,
Is it the JACKPOT?
O true, Akond of Swat!
Suggestions have been made that Lear’s poem follows the ghazal form. You can read more at The Akond of Swat and the Ghazal.
During the Zoom session Zakia was seated by a window view of the backwaters and the reflections of the setting sun on it. Saras and Devika appreciated the view. Zakia is longing to have the KRG readers over at her place as soon as the danger is past.
Thommo
Thommo’s predilection is for songs and this time he chose one called Seven Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory. It is composed by an Irish duo and the song became very popular in the sixties in Ireland and UK when the singers toured.
Seven Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory was composed by Mick Foster and Tony Allen, a musical duo from Ireland. Foster & Allen began back in the seventies playing in Country Music bands around Ireland. In 1975 they formed a small group and went over to the UK to work the Irish music venues on a short tour.
Tony Allen and Micky Foster, the Irish duo who are still touring the world after 40 years
Mick & Tony had at this stage the idea of working together as a duo, playing ‘easy listening’ music with a touch of traditional Irish instrumentals. When their UK tour finished they decided to let the band return to Ireland whilst they stayed behind to try and break into the public eye. They played several venues in the London area and the reaction was very favourable; so much so, they decided to remain as a duo and Foster and Allen was formed.
It was difficult at the beginning and after a time working around the circuit in the UK and Ireland, they released their first single record The Rambles of Spring. This made a good impact on the Irish market and Foster and Allen were soon in demand for cabaret venues all over Ireland and to a lesser extent the UK. At the end of 1978 Foster and Allen released the single A Bunch Of Thyme in Ireland, which entered the Irish charts and became their first top-selling No. 1 single.
It was not until 1982 that this single was released in the UK. It was played by all the radio stations in Britain and was soon in the pop charts. It climbed rapidly to number 18 in the UK Singles Chart. At the time, Mick & Tony were in the U.S. on a tour. They were contacted and told to fly back to Britain immediately as they were required to appear on television’s Top of the Pops.
Demand for Foster and Allen's services at venues all over Ireland and the UK increased at this point. They released another single Old Flames which also made its way into the UK Charts. They did their first concert tour of the UK in 1983 and this tour was boosted even more by the release of another single Maggie. This reached number 27 in the UK singles chart and, along with A Bunch Of Thyme, these became the signature tunes for the duo. Since then they have toured the UK twice each year.
In addition to the UK tours, Foster and Allen have toured the U.S.A, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. They had five No. 1 Hits in Australia/New Zealand. They have also appeared on numerous TV shows in Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales as well as Australia, USA and Canada, and they have had their own TV series on RTE Television in Ireland.
In the early days Mick & Tony performed on stage as a duo, but in 1982 (when the concert tours started) they added a band to their show thus giving a much fuller sound to their program. On the recording front, Foster and Allen have to date released a total of 27 albums, all of which have gone into the British charts. This is a great achievement for a middle-of-the-road ‘easy listening’ act.
Foster and Allen celebrated their 30th Anniversary together in the music industry with the release of their new album Foster & Allen Sing The No. 1’s which was a Top 30 Chart hit in the UK during Christmas 2005 bringing the sales of their last three albums in the UK and Ireland to over 500,000 units.
The duo recently completed their “World Concert Tour – 2005/2006” which took them on tour to the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, U.S.A., Australia and Ireland.
Thommo got Seven Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory as an LP from a person who worked on ships. He recalls the first line from the those days:
Oh, dear, what can the matter be?
Seven old ladies were locked in the lavatory;
They were there from Sunday 'til Saturday,
And nobody knew they were there.
It is sung to the tune of an 18th century nursery rhyme with the same first line, also known by the name Johnny's So Long at the Fair, which dates from the 1770s. Public lavatories were coin operated at the time when the song was composed. That's how the term ‘spend a penny’ came into vogue. The lyrics have been parodied for political purposes and an example survives from the Wisconsin State Journal of 1864. It was used to exhort parents who had become lax about schooling during the American Civil War (1861 – 1865) to put their children back into free public schools:
Oh dear! what can the matter be?
Dear! dear! what can the matter be?
Parents don't visit the school.
They visit the circus, they visit their neighbors,
They visit their flocks, and the servant who labors,
They visit the soldicrs with murderous sabres;
Now why don't they visit the school?
They care for their horses, they care for their dollars,
They care for their dresses, and fancy fine collars;
But little, we think, do they care for their scholars,
Because they don't visit the school.
The version of Seven Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory that Thommo sang differed a bit from the lyrics posted in the pre-session readings sent by Joe, but no matter. A well-enacted one is on Youtube. The stanza that got the most laughs was,
The fifth old lady Elizabeth Bender;
She went there to fix a broken suspender.
It snapped up and ruined her feminine gender,
And nobody knew she was there
Everyone agreed this was the funniest and most hilarious stanza of the lot. They congratulated Thommo on the singing. Pamela said, “Wish we were all there to join in the singing together!” Thommo's rejoinder was, “Not in the toilet, I hope.”
Zakia
Zakia said Seven Old Ladies would have been a good way to end this happy session, full of mirth. She presented a poem by T.S. Eliot called The Naming of Cats, published in the 1939 volume called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of whimsical light poems about feline psychology and sociology.
Although Zakia said T.S. Eliot needs no introduction, readers who wish to delve into his development as a poet can refer to T.S. Eliot – A Brief Bio that Joe provided for his 2019 reading of the poem The Hippopotamus. If Google Chrome is used as the browser this link will take the reader to the precise spot of that 2019 post where the bio is located (this new extremely useful feature of Chrome everyone should exploit, called Copy link to highlight).
Old Possum was Eliot’s nickname, given him by Ezra Pound, his mentor, whom he called il miglior fabbro in the Dedication of his poem The Waste Land. It translates as ‘the better craftsman,’ and is a reference to The Divine Comedy of Dante. In Canto 26 of the Purgatorio, the poet Arnault Daniel is paid this compliment. Eliot passes the compliment on to Pound, who helped edit Eliot’s drafts of The Waste Land.
Eliot wrote the cat poems at various times in the 1930s and sent them in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939, with cover illustration by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley. Other illustrated versions have come out. The most famous musical adaptation of the poems is Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which was premiered in the West End of London in 1981 and on Broadway in 1982. It became the longest-running Broadway show in history until it was overtaken by another musical by Lloyd Webber, The Phantom of the Opera.
Andrew Lloyd Webber with director Trevor Nunn and some of the cast of 'Cats'
Ironically, the biggest hit in the musical was the song Memory sung by Elaine Page as a cat called Grizabella who does not figure in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The character came from an unpublished poem by Eliot titled Grizabella the Glamour Cat that had been given to Lloyd Webber by Eliot's widow and literary executor, Valerie Eliot.
Elaine Page as Grizabella the Glamour Cat
The British Library holds some of the original letters by which Eliot conveyed the poems, typewritten on the letterhead of The Criterion quarterly which he edited. Here is one introducing the Old Gumbie Cat called Jennyanydots, addressed to Alison Tandy, daughter of his friend, Geoffrey Tandy – a writer, broadcaster and scientist who worked at the Natural History Museum. Click to enlarge.
On Christmas Day 1937 afternoon Geoffrey Tandy read five Practical Cats poems on BBC ‘Regional’ radio. When the collection was published Eliot himself drew the original cover
There is no doubt who is the most famous of Eliot’s cats – Macavity, the Mystery Cat; but Zakia chose The Naming of Cats, no easy matter, as Eliot confesses:
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
The names Eliot puts forward –
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names
Then branching to the more exotic ones:
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But Eliot uncovers the greatest secret about cat names:
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
In pondering upon this final arcane secret, Eliot has a sudden rise of divine afflatus and reveals –
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.
The Poems
Arundhaty
Two poems by Daniel Sardelli
Little Boy Blue
Little Boy Blue,
please cover your nose.
You sneezed on Miss Muffet
and ruined her clothes.
You sprayed Mother Hubbard,
and now she is sick.
You put out the fire
on Jack’s candlestick.
Your sneeze is the reason
why Humpty fell down.
You drenched Yankee Doodle
when he came to town.
The blind mice are angry!
The sheep are upset!
From now on use tissues
so no one gets wet!
My Doggy Ate My Essay
My doggy ate my essay.
He picked up all my mail.
He cleaned my dirty closet
and dusted with his tail.
He straightened out my posters
and swept my wooden floor.
My parents almost fainted
when he fixed my bedroom door.
I did not try to stop him.
He made my windows shine.
My room looked like a palace,
and my dresser smelled like pine.
He fluffed up every pillow.
He folded all my clothes.
He even cleaned my fish tank
with a toothbrush and a hose.
I thought it was amazing
to see him use a broom.
I’m glad he ate my essay
on “How to Clean My Room.”
Devika
My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
Geetha
Saw My Teacher on a Saturday by Dave Crawley
Saw my teacher on a Saturday!
I can't believe it's true!
I saw her buying groceries,
like normal people do!
She reached for bread and turned around,
and then she caught my eye.
She gave a smile and said “Hello.”
I thought I would die!
"Oh, hi ... hello, Miss Appleton"
I mumbled like a fool.
I guess I thought that teacher types
spend all their time at school.
To make the situation worse
my mom was at my side.
so many rows of jars and cans.
so little room to hide.
Oh, please, I thought, don’t tell my mom
what I did yesterday!
I closed my eyes and held my breath
and hoped she go away.
Some people think it's fine to let
our teachers walk about.
But when it comes to Saturdays,
they shouldn’t let them out.
Joe
The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt
Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;
Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the Spider to the Fly.
"There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,
And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!"
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "for I've often heard it said,
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!"
Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, " Dear friend what can I do,
To prove the warm affection I 've always felt for you?
I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;
I'm sure you're very welcome -- will you please to take a slice?"
"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "kind Sir, that cannot be,
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!"
"Sweet creature!" said the Spider, "you're witty and you're wise,
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you 're pleased to say,
And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day."
The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,
And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.
Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,
"Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple -- there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!"
Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly,
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue --
Thinking only of her crested head -- poor foolish thing! At last,
Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlour -- but she ne'er came out again!
And now dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.
KumKum
The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford
The Earthquake rumbled
And mumbled
And grumbled;
And then he bumped,
And everything tumbled—
Bumpyty-thump!
Thumpyty-bump!—
Houses and palaces all in a lump!
“Oh, what a crash!
Oh, what a smash!
How could I ever be so rash?”
The Earthquake cried.
“What under the sun
Have I gone and done?
I never before was so mortified!”
Then away he fled,
And groaned as he sped:
“This comes of not looking before I tread.”
The Bashful Earthquake earth
Out of the city along the road
He staggered, as under a heavy load,
Growing more weary with every league,
Till almost ready to faint with fatigue.
He came at last to a country lane
Bordering upon a field of grain;
And just at the spot where he paused to rest,
In a clump of wheat, hung a Dormouse nest.
The sun in the west was sinking red,
And the Dormouse had just turned into bed,
Dreaming as only a Dormouse can,
When all of a sudden his nest began
To quiver and shiver and tremble and shake.
Something was wrong, and no mistake!
In a minute the Dormouse was wide awake,
And, putting his head outside his nest,
Cried: “Who is it dares disturb my rest?”
His voice with rage was a husky squeak.
The Earthquake by now had become so weak
He’d scarcely strength enough to speak.
He even forgot the rules of grammar;
All he could do was to feebly stammer.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s me.
Please don’t be angry. I’ll try to be—”
No one will know what he meant to say,
For all at once he melted away.
The Dormouse, grumbling, went back to bed,
“Oh, bother the Bats!” was all he said.
Pamela
The Song of Quoodle by G.K. Chesterton
They haven’t got no noses,
The fallen sons of Eve;
Even the smell of roses
Is not what they supposes;
But more than mind discloses
And more than men believe.
They haven’t got no noses,
They cannot even tell
When door and darkness closes
The park a Jew encloses,
Where even the law of Moses
Will let you steal a smell.
The brilliant smell of water,
The brave smell of a stone,
The smell of dew and thunder,
The old bones buried under,
Are things in which they blunder
And err, if left alone.
The wind from winter forests,
The scent of scentless flowers,
The breath of brides’ adorning,
The smell of snare and warning,
The smell of Sunday morning,
God gave to us for ours
* * * * *
And Quoodle here discloses
All things that Quoodle can,
They haven’t got no noses,
They haven’t got no noses,
And goodness only knowses
The Noselessness of Man.
Priya
A Subaltern’s Love Song by Sir John Betjeman
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament – you against me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.
By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
l can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
Saras
Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many
you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven--
or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice
and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky--
or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and
try again and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply--and you carry
the multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one
and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the other,
how many animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you
five six seven and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay
and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you
two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
you or your mother?
Shoba
The Akond of Swat by Edward Lear
WHO or why, or which, or what,
Is the Akond of SWAT?
Is he tall or short, or dark or fair?
Does he sit on a stool or a sofa or chair,
or SQUAT,
The Akond of Swat?
Is he wise or foolish, young or old?
Does he drink his soup and his coffee cold,
or HOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he sing or whistle, jabber or talk,
And when riding abroad does he gallop or walk,
or TROT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he wear a turban, a fez, or a hat?
Does he sleep on a mattress, a bed, or a mat,
or a COT,
The Akond of Swat?
When he writes a copy in round-hand size,
Does he cross his T's and finish his I's
with a DOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Can he write a letter concisely clear
Without a speck or a smudge or smear
or BLOT,
The Akond of Swat!
Do his people like him extremely well?
Or do they, whenever they can, rebel,
or PLOT,
At the Akond of Swat?
If he catches them then, either old or young,
Does he have them chopped in pieces or hung,
or SHOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Do his people prig in the lanes or park?
Or even at times, when days are dark,
GAROTTE?
O the Akond of Swat!
Does he study the wants of his own dominion?
Or doesn't he care for public opinion
a JOT,
The Akond of Swat?
To amuse his mind do his people show him
Pictures, or any one's last new poem,
or WHAT,
For the Akond of Swat?
At night if he suddenly screams and wakes,
Do they bring him only a few small cakes,
or a LOT,
For the Akond of Swat?
Does he live on turnips, tea, or tripe?
Does he like his shawl to be marked with a stripe,
or a DOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Do he like to lie on his back in a boat
Like the lady who lived in that isle remote,
SHALLOTT,
The Akond of Swat?
Is he quiet, or always making a fuss?
Is his steward a Swiss or a Swede or a Russ,
or a SCOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he like to sit by the calm blue wave?
Or to sleep and snore in a dark green cave,
or a GROTT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he drink small beer from a silver jug?
Or a bowl? or a glass? or a cup? or a mug?
or a POT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he beat his wife with a gold-topped pipe,
When she lets the gooseberries grow too ripe,
or ROT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he wear a white tie when he dines with friends,
And tie it neat in a bow with ends,
or a KNOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he like new cream, and hate mince-pies?
When he looks at the sun does he wink his eyes
or NOT,
The Akond of Swat.
Does he teach his subjects to roast and bake?
Does he sail about on an inland lake,
in a YACHT,
The Akond of Swat?
Some one, or nobody, knows, I wot,
Who or which or why or what
Is the Akond of Swat!
Thommo
Seven Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory by Nick Foster & Tony Allen
Refrain:
Oh, dear, what can the matter be?
Seven old ladies were locked in the lavatory;
They were there from Sunday 'til Saturday,
And nobody knew they were there.
The first was the Bishop of Chichester’s daughter;
Who went in to pass some superfluous water
She pulled on the chain and the rising tide caught her
And nobody knew she were there.
Refrain
The next to enter, was old Mrs. Draper.
She sat herself down, and then found there was no paper.
She had to clean up with a plasterer's scraper.
And nobody knew she was there
Refrain
The third old lady Amelia Garpickle.
Her urge was sincere, her reaction was fickle.
She hurdled the door, she’d forgotten her nickel.
And nobody knew she was there.
Refrain
The fourth old lady was Emily Clancy
She went there 'cause something tickled her fancy,
But when she got there, it was ants in her pantsy.
And nobody knew she was there
Refrain
The fifth old lady Elizabeth Bender;
She went there to fix a broken suspender.
It snapped up and ruined her feminine gender,
And nobody knew she was there
Refrain
The sixth to come was old Mrs. Humphrey
She shifted and jiggled to get herself comfy
Then to her dismay, she could not get her bum free
And nobody knew she was there
Refrain
Seventh to come in was dear Mrs. Mason
The stalls were all full so she peed in the basin
And that is the water that I washed my face in
And nobody knew she was there
Refrain
The janitor came early in the morning.
He opened the door without any warning,
The seven old ladies their seats were adorning,
And nobody knew they were there.
Zakia
The Naming of Cats by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.
I always look forward to our December Session. With this Session we say goodbye to a good year of wonderful reading experiences. And we laugh, dress up, have good fun reading humorous poems.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joe, going deep to find hidden anecdotes on the poets, their muses and their subjects...Very well put together piece.
Thanks, KumKum for your comment. I try to unearth as many interesting facts about the poets as I can, using the indispensable Web and my past reading as a guide.
ReplyDeleteAs you noted when we saw the film ‘The Professor and the Madman’ about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary by James Murray, it was amazing that a dictionary of that size, based on a million chronological quotations culled by thousands of readers all over the world, could be assembled manually in a place called the Scriptorium, a corrugated-iron shed in the grounds of a school. No computer, no Internet.