Where am I?

So – I sent four poems off to Stand magazine. standmagazine.orgThese are: “Three Poems for the End of a Friendship” and “One Poem for Leonard Cohen”.  Stand is a highly prestigious magazine and so I expect the poems to come back to me with the speed of a ricocheting bullet.

Actually, it wouldn’t be so bad if they did come back quickly.  At least you’d know.  But the turnaround is generally slower than the turning circle of an ocean liner.  And the longer they take, the more your hopes build up; the sadder you feel when they return to you with that inimitable thud on your doormat that only a returning manuscript can make.

Come to Think About it….

there’s a poem there.  I’ll be off now before it escapes.  And then I’ll polish it and hone it and send it off somewhere – and so the whole ghastly process begins all over again.  (I’ve written the poem now – 27/8/08 – I think it’s pretty good)

Still don’t know about the poems I sent to Ambit. www.ambitmagazine.co.uk These include Frogs, the best thing I’ve ever written, I think.  So if that comes back I shall be sad.

TTFN!

Waking up Jewish

It’s Mark’s birthday today. I made him a card myself, with a poem inside. On the front I put a joke which had to be read from left to right in order to make sense. But Mark read it from right to left and didn’t get it. I was disappointed. He said he must have “woken up Jewish”.
Recent Poems

I now have a clutch of poems and I’m going to send them all off somewhere to seek their fortune. Wish them luck as you wave them goodbye!

James and Jim

Sometimes this blog has to get literary - sorry if you don’t like it, but there it is.  And I woke up today with Henry James on my mind.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James

I used to mix up Portrait of a Lady www.online-literature.com/henry_james/portrait_ladywith Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man- which is odd really because James Joyce’s name seems to follow on from Henry James’s.  You could have a whole line – Joyce Grenfell followed by – erm – well, anyway, you see what I mean.

I don’t think Henry James gets the credit he deserves.  Really, he was a proto-feminist – a lot of his work is really about the invidious position of women and the impossibility of being sincere in your sexuality.   But people just can’t stand his sentences.  Here’s an example:

“Nothing was less to have been calculated in the business than that it should now be for him as if he and Waymarsh were comparatively quite at one.” www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/ titles/ambassadors/about.htm

I’ve read this sentence countless times, and I still don’t know what it means.  Come back Proust, all is forgiven!

Incidentally, the excellent film version of Portrait of a Lady www.imdb.com/title/tt0117364/starring Nicole Kidman makes clear what the text does not.  Still doesn’t explain that sentence though!

Hello everybody peeps!

You can’t say you don’t get value for money on this blog. Yes, that’s right – another poem. Here it is:

O do not reason out your love

don’t give it paths and passwords

you love because you love

there’s no reason. There’s no rhyme.

And of course the title of the blog goes back to Harry Enfield and his amazing performing Stavros, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yICyNLWAmvkwho he said was based on the guy who worked down the chip shop. Did he swear he was Elvis? www.mp3lyrics.org/k/kirsty-maccoll/theres/

Have a listen and remember Kirsty McColl. http://www.kirstymaccoll.com/information/memorial/obit/herald/

Just when you thought it was safe to come back to this blog…

This is of course a reference to the tag-line (if that is the phrase I want) for the seminal 70’s film, Jaws blogs.laweekly.com/judith_lewis/ la-water/just-when-you-thought-it-was-s/ -

- and I’m afraid Cohen is resurfacing once again and preparing to bite off your arm, as I’ve just been given “The Essential Cohen”, www.amazon.com/Essential-Leonard-Cohen/dp/B00006NSH8 a retrospective walk through the man and his music – a bit like exhibiting a painter’s work.  You know – there’s the famous picture of his muse that everyone has on their wall (Suzanne)  then the dark blacks and greys of one hand on his suicide with those astonishing glimpses of rose light.  You can see the Jewish and the Zen influences without the programme pointing them out (Who by Fire)www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2T274bXIxU - and as you move on you can see the work maturing, the colours deepening, the palate broadening, until you come to the flowering of later works (Hallelujah) www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmIwhich has been copied everywhere www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ- and then you sit arrested, poleaxed, by your favourite painting of all time, the one that never fails to pierce your heart and wound your mind with its sublimity – “If it Be Your Will”. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ You sit before the canvas in a kind of swoon, dead to yourself, until the curator comes jingling his keys, when you get up and take a final walk through the last rooms, including Ten New Pictures www.amazon.com/ Ten-New-Songs-Leonard-Cohen/dp/B00005Q45Wand his most recent which are in a different style and include a couple of copies of Old Masters. www.dearheather.com/You exit with a sigh as the curator locks the door.

The next morning you are waiting when he opens.  You have been there all night, your pilgrim feet stamping in the cold.

The Mote in Your Eye

One of our local institutions is Moat Community College. www.moat.leicester.sch.uk I taught there myself for several years.  Mark’s joke this morning was this:

“It would be good if Moat Community College were just made up of little bits of dust floating in the air.”   This made me laugh immoderately.  But maybe you had to be there.

I’ve thought of a better line for yesterday’s Cohen poem.

“Where shrink-wrapped salads can’t forget

In aisle number nine”

I shall change it now.

Today…

..is another day.  We do things differently here.  www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/43/messages/305.html

Eccentrictionary

Here are some more:

cuckoo pint – to drink someone else’s beer  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arum_maculatum

carpe diem -  go on about Doc Marten’s Marten’swww.phrases.org.uk/meanings/carpe-diem.html

99% Inspiration

Bonjour, mes petits choux-fleurs! I have been very prolific over the last few days and have written several poems, including Three Poems for the End of a Friendship and One Poem for Leonard Cohen. Life is falling apart but I seem to be quite cheerful about it! Whilst writing at the chalet I used my “writing mug” which Mark bought me. It has on it a copy of the original cover of “A Room of One’s Own” ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/ Underneath it says, in purple, “Essays and Belles-Lettres”.

Which leads me to wonder – what is a Belle-lettre when it’s chez lui?

Waiting for Yourself

- is the worst thing.  Worse than Waiting for Godot.  www.theatrehistory.com/french/beckett002

If you’re unfamiliar with Beckett, I am the wrong person to talk to.  I find him as depressing as some people seem to find LC.

“I see my shoe.  What is my shoe?  Am I my shoe?  There is certainly a shoe.  At least one shoe.  But one shoe reminds me of another shoe.  And so the whole hideous process starts again…”  Wait, no – that last bit was more like “Black Books”.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Books

I do enjoy Black Books – but more so when  I’m drunk

So, waiting for yourself.  If you’re waiting to sell your house or get a new job, or find a new partner or earn some more money – you’re really waiting for yourself.  And that’s the hardest kind of waiting there is.

You know what Gandhi said:  ”Be the change you want to see”www.worldofquotes.com/ author/Mahatma-Gandhi/1/index.html

Wot no Leonard Cohen?

OK here’s one:

Cohen Koan

What is the sound of 30,000 hands clapping?

Farewell mes petits partisans

PS If you don’t know what a koan is, it’s a short phrase to meditate on.  It’s pronounced “koh-ann” and one original one is “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Dya gettit now?

There Ain’t No Cure for Leonard Cohen

One song I forgot to add to the list was, “There Ain’t no Cure for Love”.  It’s also true that there ain’t no cure for Cohen.  Once you have Cohen in your bloodstream, there’s no getting rid of him.  The man has followed me everywhere – from school to home, from England to France and Spain, from single to married life, he seeps into your every pore and simply refuses to leave.  Although attitudes to LCS, as it’s now known, are more tolerant than before – largely due to greater numbers of sufferers (and I have played my part in the spread of the disease) – still in some circles people with LCS are treated as pariahs   People ;who would smile benignly at an Elvis fan who still believed the King to be alive; openly sneer at you if you admit to being a Leonard Cohen fan.

“The doctors working day and night, but they’ll never ever find

That cure”

My Epitaph

Her body here like seed is sown

- One who loved life – and Leonard Cohen

I will put some links on to sites about Cohen and the tour.  Just want to express the emotions first.

Until we meet again, my Sisters of Mercy!