05-16-2012, 10:25 AM
I have used it to adorn rather dry documents; to enliven speech with wit, either by the truth of the quote (''O for the touch of a vanished hand
And O for the sound of a voice that is still'')
or ironically, say by quoting some of the old jingoistic stuff of my youth (''Let dusky Indians whine and kneel/An English lad must die'') or
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'
but mainly, there are just some things which I like. I like rolling rhythms like :
''Before the Roman came to Rye, or out to Severn strode
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road a mazy road, that rambled round the shire
And after him the Parson ran, the Sexton and the Squire''
This sort of thing links back to Chaucer, and the characters with which he peopled his yarns. They pop up in Shakespeare, in the minor characters, or even in in ''Grey's elegy'' or Clare. They come again in uniform in Tennyson, and Kipling,and ,still in uniform, in Rupert Brooke, Siegried Sassoon (eg ''Does it matter?...) and Wilfred Owen. TS Eliot even has his own variety, as did Betjeman, as soldiering and shepherding gave way to suburbia.. So...it has helped me because I enjoy it, though I can never say what I am likely to like. Anne Sexton's 'making love to the bed' was more than amusing, but the Lord knows I have waded through some tripe, rather like the idiotic continuo in an opera.
Then there has been the odd romantic assist. Not part of Ten Ways To Bed a Woman, but simply when it seems, to me, natural. I have also suggested, when asked, suitable stuff for funerals -- suitable, that is, for the one or two really bereaved.
I have also written, sometimes quite dire, little pieces to commemorate some important day -- a birth, eg., but these do not leave my notebook.
One further thing. I mentioned above all these old English characters, shepherds etc. But there is a saying that if you scratch an Englishman, you will find a fisher or a farmer. Well, the Ancient Mariner may not have qualified as a fisherman, but it is such a special poem that it calls for its own mention: yes, it is a sea-poem, but also v mystical, and so wonderfully written. The English were not all serfs and churls, you see! Then there was Fitzgerald....
And O for the sound of a voice that is still'')
or ironically, say by quoting some of the old jingoistic stuff of my youth (''Let dusky Indians whine and kneel/An English lad must die'') or
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'
but mainly, there are just some things which I like. I like rolling rhythms like :
''Before the Roman came to Rye, or out to Severn strode
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road a mazy road, that rambled round the shire
And after him the Parson ran, the Sexton and the Squire''
This sort of thing links back to Chaucer, and the characters with which he peopled his yarns. They pop up in Shakespeare, in the minor characters, or even in in ''Grey's elegy'' or Clare. They come again in uniform in Tennyson, and Kipling,and ,still in uniform, in Rupert Brooke, Siegried Sassoon (eg ''Does it matter?...) and Wilfred Owen. TS Eliot even has his own variety, as did Betjeman, as soldiering and shepherding gave way to suburbia.. So...it has helped me because I enjoy it, though I can never say what I am likely to like. Anne Sexton's 'making love to the bed' was more than amusing, but the Lord knows I have waded through some tripe, rather like the idiotic continuo in an opera.
Then there has been the odd romantic assist. Not part of Ten Ways To Bed a Woman, but simply when it seems, to me, natural. I have also suggested, when asked, suitable stuff for funerals -- suitable, that is, for the one or two really bereaved.
I have also written, sometimes quite dire, little pieces to commemorate some important day -- a birth, eg., but these do not leave my notebook.
One further thing. I mentioned above all these old English characters, shepherds etc. But there is a saying that if you scratch an Englishman, you will find a fisher or a farmer. Well, the Ancient Mariner may not have qualified as a fisherman, but it is such a special poem that it calls for its own mention: yes, it is a sea-poem, but also v mystical, and so wonderfully written. The English were not all serfs and churls, you see! Then there was Fitzgerald....