I'm not much into poetry but that's only because, probably, I'm a savage. Consider me inspired. Looking forward to when you do two marathons in a week to make up for this one missed ;-)
Oh gosh that's tricky. Recently I was looking back over some of the Irish poetry we did at uni - did you do that same course in Irish poetry since Yeats? And rekindling my love for Louis McNeice and John Montague. I also picked up a really nice anthology in a charity shop called The Poetry Pharmacy which orders poems according to the situation they are most helpful or healing for...they are all good but I really like Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert as a superb poem about the end of a long relationship with an unbeatable first line:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
Also I got a Simon Armitage anthology for Christmas and I love him a lot.
They are all men though. I thought about that when I was looking thorough the book of Irish poems. Only one is female and yet at Uni I don't remember that ever being discussed.
I do wish I could go back in time and do that course again, don't you? x
Hi luv. I do remember the Irish poetry course and, yes, lots of men! Also, yes, let's go back in time and do it all over again. How lucky we were. David Whyte is my current squeeze, but this morning I also discovered this one, by Ellen Bass, and it got me good, so I'm going to look more of her up pronto x
Here's another I have bookmarked, I liked it because it reminded me of being with my dad when he was dying and having Albie with me all the time, who was only a few months old...
Migration by Tony Hoagland (yes another bloke dammit)
This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friend
to the office of the adoption agency.
I bet sometimes she doesn't know
What threshold she is waiting at—
the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;
the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.
But next year she might be standing by a grave,
wearing black with a splash of
banana vomit on it,
the little girl just starting to say Sesame Street
and Cappuccino latte grand Mommy.
The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—
So you have done 7 marathons already!? - I'm tired just typing that. To achieve 50 in a year, it means you have to do one every week more or less. It seems a very difficult task. Has anyone done this before?
I’m upto 8 now, as of a few hours ago 🫡 I enjoy running for various reasons, some of which I hope to explore a bit through writing here. It is a challenge for sure. I feel lucky to be able to run and to have freedom to choose that. My legs may groan at me but I’ll keep going as long as I can. Lots of people are running more than me, some people don’t run at all. It takes all kinds 🤣
I'm not much into poetry but that's only because, probably, I'm a savage. Consider me inspired. Looking forward to when you do two marathons in a week to make up for this one missed ;-)
Excellent Mr.Speedy !🌈👏
Poetry is much better for you by every metric than running or indeed any sports. FACT.
Drop me some of your fav poems Mils? I'm ready to roll.
Oh gosh that's tricky. Recently I was looking back over some of the Irish poetry we did at uni - did you do that same course in Irish poetry since Yeats? And rekindling my love for Louis McNeice and John Montague. I also picked up a really nice anthology in a charity shop called The Poetry Pharmacy which orders poems according to the situation they are most helpful or healing for...they are all good but I really like Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert as a superb poem about the end of a long relationship with an unbeatable first line:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
Also I got a Simon Armitage anthology for Christmas and I love him a lot.
They are all men though. I thought about that when I was looking thorough the book of Irish poems. Only one is female and yet at Uni I don't remember that ever being discussed.
I do wish I could go back in time and do that course again, don't you? x
This one stops you in your tracks for sure. Thanks for sharing luv. I’ll check out Gilbert and Co also on your recommendations x
Hi luv. I do remember the Irish poetry course and, yes, lots of men! Also, yes, let's go back in time and do it all over again. How lucky we were. David Whyte is my current squeeze, but this morning I also discovered this one, by Ellen Bass, and it got me good, so I'm going to look more of her up pronto x
IF YOU KNEW
What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.
A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
Ooo yes that is quite powerful isn't it.
Here's another gut puncher I read it at my dad's funeral...
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Failing and Flying is fantastic. I was also flawed by another one of his just now, 'Alone'. Wow.
Oh thanks yes that's a lovely one.
Here's another I have bookmarked, I liked it because it reminded me of being with my dad when he was dying and having Albie with me all the time, who was only a few months old...
Migration by Tony Hoagland (yes another bloke dammit)
This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friend
to the office of the adoption agency.
I bet sometimes she doesn't know
What threshold she is waiting at—
the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;
the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.
But next year she might be standing by a grave,
wearing black with a splash of
banana vomit on it,
the little girl just starting to say Sesame Street
and Cappuccino latte grand Mommy.
The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—
and hope moving from one location to another
like the holy ghost that it is.
So you have done 7 marathons already!? - I'm tired just typing that. To achieve 50 in a year, it means you have to do one every week more or less. It seems a very difficult task. Has anyone done this before?
I’m upto 8 now, as of a few hours ago 🫡 I enjoy running for various reasons, some of which I hope to explore a bit through writing here. It is a challenge for sure. I feel lucky to be able to run and to have freedom to choose that. My legs may groan at me but I’ll keep going as long as I can. Lots of people are running more than me, some people don’t run at all. It takes all kinds 🤣
Wow!!! 👌