Tag Archives: De-versify

Night

10 Sunday Jan 2016

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From William Blake’s Night – it is a longish poem so I won’t repeat it all here but the first verse is charmingly descriptive :

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest.
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower
In heaven’s high bower,
with silent delight
Sits and smiles at the night.

How lucky was he to anticipate the night with such equanimity. The nightly tortures of the insomniac would have a very different take on the coming of darkness with the inevitable restlessness.

Once when I couldn’t sleep I wandered around and looked up at the clear starry night and wrote :

I looked up and saw stars tonight; they were so bright and clear.
What is up there, I don’t know, but this I hold quite dear:
That all is well as long as they are shining in the sky.
The velvet cloak of night enfolds and all I ask is why –
Why does humankind not follow the zigzag paths of youth
To find the answers to our quest for some forgotten truth?

I looked up and saw stars tonight as sleep eluded me.
On distant stars, I pondered on what elements might be.
What don’t we yet know? How we yearn to fill in all the blanks,
But it is how we deal with these that keeps me coming back
To why we are and how the wise just offer up their love
With constancy and honesty – how much our lives improve.

I looked up and saw stars tonight, then one fell through the sky,
What power I can only guess, sends light to feast the eye.
To sit and ponder in the night, to think to hope to pray,
So that we might be happier at the opening of each day.
We are so small against this web of infinite space and time.
Some look and note the fact of it while others make a rhyme!

Very best wishes  – Denny Bradbury

A Prayer In Spring by Robert Frost

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

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Spring

Spring

“Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.”

Robert Frost, an American poet (1874-1963) is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life. His poems frequently used settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, just as Denny Bradbury does in her new collection ‘De-versify’ where she draws often on her love for the Dorset countryside such as in her poems “Waiting for Blossom”, “Lost Meadows” and “Kingcup and Friends” where she talks about the beauty of nature, often potentially threatened by the intrusion of man:

“… .. We all have been guilty by absence, design or merely a shake of
The head in resigned
Acceptance of what the men in dark suits were planning to plant next to
burgeoning shoots
Be it wind farm or pylon or merely a road we sighed and we tutted
but never did goad
Now as we look with fresh eyes do we see the reinstatement of the humble and
wonderful bee.”

‘ Lost Meadows.’

Like Denny, Robert Frost often drew on the rural life he wrote about to examine complex social and philosophical themes. Frost was one of the most popular and critically respected American poets of his generation and was honoured frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer prizes for poetry.

His poem “A Prayer In Spring” begins illustrating to the reader a reminder that the present contains a bounty of wonderful gifts, regardless of what the harvest itself may bring. That it is a time of rebirth and fertility and that we should hold onto the here and now for as long as possible.

Denny Bradbury tells of something similar in the last verses of both her poems “Kingcup and Friends” and “Gossamer Green” where she talks of Nature’s cycle:

“…Meadowsweet silver birch chestnuts red
Lavender provender hops for your bed
Room for all there’s room for more
Love and leave
Glory
Nature will restore!”   ~ ‘Kingcup and Friends’

“…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.” ~ Gossamer Green

“A Prayer In Spring” goes on to illustrate numerous other aspects of beauty that can be found in nature – a field of white flowers, the bees buzzing about the daily tasks in an orderly fashion, and the “perfect trees” that exist in this idyllic setting. Even the bird, appearing unexpectedly and heading straight for the blossom does not disturb the peaceful scene but adds to it.

Through his poem, Frost uses the metaphors of different creatures within the beauty of nature to illustrate the love of God – his message is twofold, celebrating the perfect universe and showing that we too can reach God through the tools he gives us in life.

The Spring by William Barnes

21 Thursday Feb 2013

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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

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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.”

Phenomenal Woman – Maya Angelou

07 Friday Dec 2012

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Phenomenal Woman Born in April 1928, at the age of eighty four Maya Angelou is an American poet, author, actress, director, screenwriter, dancer and activist who, over the course of her life so far, has published six autobiographies, five books of essays, several books of poetry and is credited with writing numerous plays, movies and television shows that span more than fifty years.  She has also worked for Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in her capacity as a civil rights activist.

Her poetry book, entitled Phenomenal Woman, published in 1995, is a collection of four poems which takes its title from a poem she wrote which originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978, in which Angelou describes the physical and spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive:

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,

They say they still can’t see.

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

“..Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me….”

Much of Angelou’s poetry can be traced to African-American oral traditions, especially in her use of the personal narrative, just as the poet Denny Bradbury does in her poem “So Grey the Sea” from her new collection “De-versify” in which she talks of fighting for what is rightfully hers in terms of a place in society:

“..They’re dead and gone
But me, I’m here
No-one will take
What’s mine
D’you hear?

I won’t go back to
Where I’m from
Its in the city
I belong…”

“Phenomenal Woman” is a poem that encapsulates the power that Angelou felt women have, even if they are not a classical beauty, simply through a woman’s attributes such as “the fire in her eyes …and the joy in (her) feet”. Her exultation of the phenomena that is woman herself shows a strength borne from the harrowing experiences Angelou suffered as a child, when she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and as a result of her uncles murdering the man responsible, became mute for five years, believing his murder to be her fault.   As Denny Bradbury writes in her poem “Purposely Drifting”:

“..Inner calm will be your amazing strength..”  For Maya Angelou this was certainly true and she has gone on to lead an inspirational life.