Me... a poetry anothology? must be course work...

Ok,

part of my OU course on poetry is to create an anthology of poems, culled from an anthology of animal orientated poetry...

The Bear - Frost (p23 - 24) beautiful imagery, hidden in a simple rhyming structure (though the repetition of Greek amuses, its as if he runs out of words)

Blue Moles - Plath (p39 - 40) more beautiful imagery, though perhaps vivid would be a better description

I have a Gentle Cock - Anon (p 126 - 127) made me laugh, and the switch between the straight description of the animal and then innuendo of the last line is stunning:-)

On a Dog of Lord Eglinton's - Burns (p188) the simile of a dog's life is pointedly made

Widgeon - Heaney (284) - Euwwww

In the Introduction to the Book of Beasts, the anthologist describes anthologists as despots, and maybe I am... My anthology is based on what attracted me in a single scan read through. So they tend to be shorter, punchier and cause an immediate emotional reaction - be that a smile in Frost description of the Bear's "fundamental butt", or the heart wrenching imagery of the dead moles by Plath. I have a Gentle Cock appeals (I freely confess) to the school boy in me, and from the last line, where you go from a description of a cockerel to something far more suggestive, I suspect the long forgotten author as well.

Burn's use of simile struck me as pointed and poignant - and I could imagine the same thoughts going on behind the soft brown eye of a hunting dog looking across a hall at the human animals around the piste.

And Heaney, well the idea of using the windpipe of a half dead bird as a flute is always going to cause an emotional reaction...

So a completely different blog from normal... It even gets a bibliography...

Muldoon, P. (Ed) (1997) The Faber Book of Beasts. London. Faber & Faber

TTFN

Paul

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paul Willgoss MBE

Not a lot more to add to the title... apart from a HUGE grin, and an even bigger thank you to the people who nominated me for this honour. I'm hoping those 3 little letters will help with the awareness raising element of what I do, and work have helped in putting together a press release and getting it out today, so hopefully they'll be something to kick off 2010 with:-) http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/59282/supplements/23 TTFN Paul
Read more

Something a little bit political...

Well the legs still don't want to run, walk and climb is fine, run makes them feel a bit leary ... Probably the two most contentious words in the congenital heart world (UK branch) are "safe and sustainable", a quick trawl of the support websites or facebook will show many a group being set up to save a hospital or a ward. I won't be joining any of them. Not because I don't care, but because I care too much. The origins of Safe and Sustainable go back to the Bristol Hospital Enquiry, and quite simply this is designed to ensure that the surgery that heart kids get is the the most appropriate, done by well trained and supported surgeons who are used to doing the operations and are in a surgical setting which are designed around the needs of the child going through the surgery and their family. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. I want every heart kid to get the best surgery available to them, I want their parents to be given the best advice, support
Read more

12% of a plan…

  It’s been a month.     A month since the new heart valve was inserted… the chaffing has died down, I’ve been sensible and built my walking up, restarted my apple fitness plus bits and bobs (boy has it been a long time since I bent like that, or cycled/spun like that) and I’ve been for two runs – a gentle 3k which worked as a prelude to my return to my local parkrun… I finished, my tally went up 1, and I remembered just how tough it is to run the first mile on so soft, dry sand… In hindsight I would’ve been better to walk the first third and conserve my energy (and pool of fitness) to the prom and the grass thirds…   Relive 'Return to Parkrun!' Yes, it does look the first bit is out to sea…  Monday was a random day off work to get out and do something, so with a bit of head scratch and some nifty plotting on the OS Mapping app I wandered along the canal, and then down the Transpennine Trail & “loop line”… Almost pancake flat, I know it well from ma
Read more