• De:versify – New Poetry
  • Welcome
  • About
  • Blog
  • Reviews and Comments
  • BORVO
  • Denagerie of Poems
  • The Reunion
  • Contact

Denny Bradbury Books

Denny Bradbury Books

Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Spring by William Barnes

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

beauty, De-versify, Dorset poet, folklore, nature

Spring

Spring

When wintry weather’s all a-done,

An’ brooks do sparkle in the zun,

An’ nâisy-buildèn rooks do vlee

Wi’ sticks toward their elem tree;

When birds do zing, an’ we can zee

Upon the boughs the buds o’ spring —

Then I’m as happy as a king,

A-vield wi’ health an’ zunsheen.

Vor then the cowslip’s hangèn flow’r

A-wetted in the zunny show’r,

Do grow wi’ vi’lets, sweet o’ smell,

Bezide the wood-screen’d grægle’s bell;

Where drushes’ aggs, wi’ sky-blue shell,

Do lie in mossy nest among

The thorns, while they do zing their zong

At evenèn in the zunsheen.

An’ God do meäke his win’ to blow

An’ raïn to vall vor high an’ low,

An’ bid his mornèn zun to rise

Vor all alike, an’ groun’ an’ skies

Ha’ colors vor the poor man’s eyes:

An’ in our trials He is near,

To hear our mwoan an’ zee our tear,

An’ turn our clouds to zunsheen.

An’ many times when I do vind

Things all goo wrong, an’ vo’k unkind,

To zee the happy veedèn herds,

An’ hear the zingèn o’ the birds,

Do soothe my sorrow mwore than words;

Vor I do zee that ’tis our sin

Do meäke woone’s soul so dark ’ithin,

When God would gi’e woone zunsheen.

Like Denny Bradbury, who, in her new collection “De-versify” writes poems such as “Gossamer Green” which describes the beauty that can be found in nature and the seasons:

“…Who ordered beauty like this to be?
Who claims the ultimate mystery?
Little eight legs busying time
Eyes ever watchful waiting for rime
Frosty mornings when winter is here
Now to go burrowing Hard Jack is near..”

so too does William Barnes, a native Dorset poet like Denny herself, write poems on themes such as love, natural landscape and regional life. Born in 1801, he wrote over 800 poems, a number of which were in Dorset dialect, such as “The Spring.”  A friend of Thomas Hardy, Alfred Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, his poems are characterised by a sweetness and tenderness of feeling, his deep insight into humble country life and character and an exquisite feeling for the beauty to be found in the local scenery.

Just as Denny in her poem “Waiting for Blossom (I)” describes the beauty of spring as the blossom begins to push its way into the world:

“… Hawthorn is late this year
February bees come in March
Eyes that long searched for colour
Now see the wonderful hint of blossom
Soon it is everywhere
Brilliant white of blackthorn
Champagne pink of cherry
Dappled rose of apple
All framed by nature’s green
Bringing gladness and smiles…”

Barnes’ refers to how :

“…When birds do zing, an’ we can zee

Upon the boughs the buds o’ spring —

Then I’m as happy as a king,

A-vield wi’ health an’ zunsheen…”

and how, when things go wrong, the sound of the birds can soothe his sorrow far more than any words could:

.. An’ many times when I do vind

Things all goo wrong, an’ vo’k unkind,

To zee the happy veedèn herds,

An’ hear the zingèn o’ the birds,

Do soothe my sorrow mwore than words;…

Both Denny Bradbury and William Barnes also demonstrate a love for folklore in their poetry (literally meaning ‘the learning of the people’).

The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

animals, De-versify, nature, punctuation, The Thought-Fox

The Thought-Fox

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Just like Denny Bradbury in her new collection of poems “De-versify”, where she draws upon her love of the Dorset countryside and writes often about the wisdom and mystical powers of nature and animals, the rural landscape of Hughes’ youth in Yorkshire exerted a lasting influence upon on his work. To read his poetry, is to enter into a world dominated by nature and especially by animals and the Thought-Fox, in his collection The Hawk in the Rain, is often been acknowledged as one of the most completely artistically satisfying of  all the poems in his first collection.  As Denny does in her poem “Hare in the Moonlight”,  as seen below, Hughes also illustrates the conflict between violence and tenderness.

“Hare in the moonlight
Staring at stars

Hare in the morning
Hiding in grass

Hare at his boxing
Playing around

Hare with her babies
Wisdom abounds

Hare caught in trap
Set cruelly by man

No escape for her
Try as she can….”

The Thought-Fox is a poem about writing a poem – when the poet senses a presence outside, it is not just an actual presence of an animal he is picking up on, but the stirring of an idea within his imagination that is causing him to be restless. At first the idea has no clear outlines – not seen but felt – and it is the task of the poet to coax the idea out. These beginnings of a poem are compared to the stirrings of an animal – a fox, whose body is invisible but who feels its way forward nervously through the darkness.

As Denny does in her poem “Seagull takes the Biscuit”, where she changes the rhythm of her stanzas during the course of the poem:

“Seagull sweeps in across the leaden  sky
There are rich pickings here for him to try…

Seagull is canny wise as owl his eyes are full of light
When he descends on promenade….”

Hughes breaks the rhythm of his verse by his use of punctuation and line-endings in his third and fourth stanza, to mimic the unpredictable nature of the fox’s movements and as the fox gets closer so the language and punctuation of the poem reflects this as the fox shoots off into his lair.

The question is raised – did the fox exist at all or is it merely a metaphor for the creation of a new poem that the poet is finally able to write, having coaxed the idea from the depths of his imagination:

“…The window is starless still, the clock ticks,
The page is printed.”

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

08 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

alliteration, beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins, love poem, nature

The Windhover

The Windhover

As Denny Bradbury can often be found to do in her new collection of poetry, “De-versify”, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Windhover” is a love poem that is not directed at a particular person but at life itself. A Jesuit priest who died at the young age of 44, he was torn between his literary and religious callings throughout his life, swinging between joy and despair both in his poetry and about the poems he wrote.

Written at the end of May in 1877, Hopkins’ sonnet “The Windhover” starts with such enthusiasm and emotion that it immediately shows itself to be a love poem, just as Denny Bradbury does in her poem “Gossamer Green” where she describes the infinite, intricate beauty of nature that dies and begins again with a creature as small as a spider:

“Gossamer tablecloth covering green
Tiny creatures never to be seen
Gossamer threads weaving over all
Holding early dew in autumn’s thrall

Who ordered beauty like this to be?
Who claims the ultimate mystery?…

….Gossamer napkins scattered and left
Summer no longer leaving bereft
All those who revel in warmth of the sun
Dying for living the cycle is spun.”

Hopkins felt that “The Windhover” was the best thing he ever wrote. It starts off slowly for the first four and a half lines, with a rich repetition of sound:

“I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy!..”

He uses alliteration and repetition to highlight the stirring this creature makes him feel in his heart, whilst at the same time describing how the bird relishes in both the freedom and the restriction within the air.

Denny Bradbury, in her poem “Lost Meadows” uses alliteration to describe the beauty of the lost meadows:

“Light flooded meadows brimming with sweet honeyed flowers
bedappled with dew
Butterflies, bumblebees, damosels too drunkenly stagger
in nectar filled hue
How is this image today now expressed as fields drunk with pesticides
only are dressed….”

Hopkins’ language turns from describing the kestrel’s flight in the first part of the sonnet to describing how that same mixture of fighting against the wind  brings about a new and exhilarating experience can be found within other areas of nature, and  ultimately within his own soul:

“…………………then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind.  My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird – the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.”

Hopkins’ sweeps his readers up in his rhythms and then dashes them down again in the strident sounds of his final line.

A pretty a day by e.e cummings

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

beauty, punctuation, sexual preferences, stanza, womankind

pretty a day

pretty a day

Edward Estlin Cummings  (1894-1962), referred to as e.e.cummings was an American poet, writer and painter.  Best known for his poetry and his unconventional use of grammar and punctuation, or lack of, his poem “ A pretty a day” shows just how he was a master of ambiguity as even the title of the poem does not give up its meaning easily, and the first thing to notice about the poem is its appearance.  Like Denny Bradbury’s poem entitled “there and then”, from her new collection “De-versify” also written in the same lower case as is familiar to e.e.cummng’s style, she also uses no punctuation and the shape of the poem is such that the first stanza mirrors the third and sixth, the second mirrors the fifth and the fourth stands on its own:

“   mist hides rising sun
people lost has day begun
birds chirrup long song

fields beckon where crops must grow
come till wave arms scare black crow

back bent over no pain
face away from driving rain
raise face sun again…”

In “a pretty a day”, the first stanza mirrors the third and the second mirrors the fourth and the only punctuation in evidence is the punctuation marks just before the last word in each of the stanzas, which changes from stanza to stanza – a comma in the first, a semi-colon in the second, a colon in the third and a full stop in the first – all of which points to a deliberate “misuse” of punctuation on cummings’ part.

But rather than just trying to create a poem with a pretty pattern, the poem is actually about womankind and their sexual natures and preferences. By using brackets in his stanzas, Cummings looks to overload each stanza, therefore making the meaning of the poem harder to grasp. The first stanza is about the transitory nature of a woman’s beauty and how, although it quickly fades there is always more on the way:

“a pretty a day
(and every fades)
is here and away
(but born are maids
to flower an hour
in all,all)

In his second stanza he refers to the woman – as a flower – being cut down; in other words, the seduction of a woman taking place, yet in the third stanza an element of violence is brought in when he talks of how “they tremble and cower”. Perhaps insinuating the violence that can take place in a sexual situation and the fear that induces:

..”o yes to flower
until so blithe
a doer a wooer
some limber and lithe
some very fine mower
a tall; tall

Some jerry so very
(and Nellie and fan)
some handsomest harry
(and sally and nan
they tremble and cower
so pale:pale)

Denny Bradbury, in her poem “Lothario/Lotharia” also takes a look at the seedier side of romance, where the woman breaks the heart of her older man, only to go on and then do the same to someone else and someone else again, in a repetitive cycle caused by having her own heart break by the betrayal of her first love:

……”She’s now on to pastures new
This life long habit is part of Prue
Lothario will feel the rap
Pick up the tab and take the crap

She will walk carefree and flighty
And break another old heart nightly

Another man will fall beside
The road she treads, it’s very wide
In fact it needs to be like that
With bodies strewn so sad a fact

They all want more than she can give
Her first was just who made her live
But he the rotten scoundrel did
The dirty with her best friend Syd…”

In Cummings’ final stanza of “a pretty a day” he compares the sexual preferences of women; one who embraces her sexuality, another who learns to do so and one who turns to religion instead. The final description he gives is of a woman seen merely as a doll- a sexual object for man to enjoy:

“.. for betty was born
to never say nay
but lucy could learn
and lily could pray
and fewer were shyer
than doll. doll”

His poem appears simple in its rhyming words and singsong nature, but within it lies a more complicated meaning that the reader needs to find for themselves – that of how women cope with their beauty and sexuality.

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • April 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • February 2019
  • September 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011

Categories

  • Denny's Diary
  • fairytales
  • Fiction
  • History
  • Literacy News
  • Misc
  • Poetry
  • Polls
  • Reviews

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Latest Tweets from Denny Bradbury Books

  • Rumi on Spring dennybradburybooks.com/2021/03/25/rum… 1 year ago
  • Happy New Year dennybradburybooks.com/2021/01/01/hap… 2 years ago
  • Freedom Lost – Freedom Gained dennybradburybooks.com/2020/04/20/fre… 2 years ago

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Denny Bradbury Books
    • Join 73 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Denny Bradbury Books
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar