Randall Jarrell

 A Chekhov fan, a good poet. I came back to 'Randall Jarrell Selected Poems' looking for a humorous lesson from the master that might inform my review-writing with pulsarpoetry. I had forgotten the impact and delicate precision of his verse, also the quantity of childhood recollection this slim, green volume contains... that dual perspective, so popular now - Tim Rice on the radio saying it's all happened by 10 - offers a way of engagement used here with the stable, keen-edged vocabulary of a passing age.  

Jarrell then, sits well with current companions Mandelstam and Rumi. and CGJung.  Blessings be among them.

Rom

A great sadness to hear Nnorom Azuonye has passed away.  Poet and pastor, founder of Sentinel Quarterly he promoted Nigerian literature for more than 20 years and gave many local poets an encouraging lift with SQL and his quarterly competitions which were the model arrangement of such things.  Along the way he published my first submitted poems and then, a few years later, invited and accepted my first manuscript.  He put me squarely on the first stepping stones of my poetry writing. 

A generous, sympathetic and good man. He could talk alright, and I will miss our conversations.

Nnorom died on 21 January and leaves behind his wife Thelma and four children whom he loved very much.

The Party Wall

Pyramus and Thisbe: prompted by last night's rain, a thought led to the marionettes in the oddly poignant 'Being John Malkovich'. One google string leads to another. The Pyramus and Thisbe Society is a body of surveyors and lawyers and, on special occasions, their spouses.

Mari...

full poem once accepted somewhere maybe 

...my bones are dead.
No cell retains a strand of life
to edge me on the infinite...
   a corpse of balsa boxes fixed
with glue and pin

The more i think of it, the more the history of creating the animate comes to mind, from Pygmalion and Galatea to Shakespeare's human statue and Pinocchio, then Shaw's rather awful funny version of improvement, and a thousand cautionary tales current today. Aye, AI.  The captured human heart.

 

November 23

 With other cares aside,  appearances and reviews multiply this month, 3rd of 3 city walk poems accepted by Stepaway Outreach, hard on the heels of By Royal Fort, taken for the inaugural edition, i think, of Engine Idling. Station to Station will be in the Gloucestershire Poetry Prize anthology published sometime over winter.  Gee, Glos is a hard nut to crack.  The Worst Thing appears in the Ofi Press #73. And the Raoul Julia Dracula pictured above is the cover of The Crank #9. 

This month's Pulsar reviews will / i understand they will / include my splutterings on a book of poems by Matthias Goritz translated from the German by Mary Jo Bang.  I thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for the current direction in poetry, or for a new direction of their own.  And finally,

ACTIVIST ALPHABET, an exhibition of prints and poems by Christine Felce includes 'A memorable evening of poetry with with Adam Horovitz JLM Morton and Dominic James, plus open mic on the theme of climate change (sign up on the night) 7pm, Friday 17 November, The Museum in the Park, Stroud. 

The Sergeant

As i pick my way through bishops and presbyters of the ancient Christian church: a few lighter thoughts on earlier days of sacrifice and excess bubble to the surface.  As a for instance, Alcoholic Husbands is a phrase i hear quite often. Poor men who once were heavy drinkers. 

I have a long picked over, short verse on Achilles - The Sergeant - in this week's dearbooze.com and the young god of wine will soon recline on his drunken ship in The Crank, Back on the Wine Dark Sea.  

Dear Booze eh? This montage includes Bruegel's Tower as i am put in mind of my early and not-unbalanced verse on grog and separation. 'I recall the vaults of Babel, its palm wine jars and mead...' Skol.

 

Athelney

This week DG Sentinel published Elf Counsel unexpected and sweet.  One of five presented at the inaugural and short-lived Bard of Hawkwood Mayday eisteddfod 2015.  I’d like to wrastle it into shape, at least insert a dropped ‘in’ around the middle:  but I love the photo sourced by Dweebs Global.  It looks like Saxon pedigree to me, but what I do know? Nuthin. 

Athelney runs: 
Riddle/ The Great Army / Brother Rex / Elf Counsel / Late Home
and starts, with stage direction and intro:

More skald than bard, we-eat together,
I make the same obeisance to the court
[show the Roman tonsure] So:

For an eisteddfod, with rhymes of flood
my bid for bard at Hawkerwood and should a verse
or two run bad, Speak Out and we’ll move on
through Athelney, that swollen plot of land,
an island, whale-humped on the Levels,
laced about with deep canals, the spot
where Alfred’s cake shop stood.
So pet your nettles & get settled
for a turn on the flood, this river-ish  Riddle…

NFTs

Prompted by the Summer edition of Rattle; an enthralling interview and its showcase of Non Fungible Tokens Poets, I've spent $25 on Tezos and tried a short poem as the basis for content text on AI artworks. Have you tried the controls, the market? I've hardly got started.  

It's a right "Come all ye".