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Tag Archives: poems

But What’s a Poem?

21 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by la Clarina in Poetry

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

MOOC, poems, Poetry, teaching

Rant ahead, I warn you. A mild rant – but still.

So I took this MOOC – let’s name no names – about poetry. I don’t write poetry, but I greatly admire the skill of compressing meaning into a limited amount of words, structured and highly shimmering. I’ve always yearned to achieve at least a little of that focused effectiveness… And last year, in the spirit of “you won’t know until you try in earnest”, I’ve decided to stop yearning, and try instead. So I took a MOOC – and liked it a good deal. I’m not saying that I wrote good poetry, mind – but exploring the mechanism was absolutely fascinating. Continue reading →

Alexandros, after all

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by la Clarina in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alexander the Great, Alexandros, favourite poems, Giovanni Pascoli, History, poems

I’ve been musing on first favourite poems – and, after some consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that my first favourite poem must have been Giovanni Pascoli’s Alexandros. Which is a tad strange because, as a rule, I don’t enormously like Pascoli – a late 19th/early 20th century Italian poet with a rather pathetic vein, only saved, in my admittedly biased view, by a keen interest in history.

Narrative poems, you know. Stories – the usual obsession. Continue reading →

The Playmate and the Eiderdown

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by la Clarina in Books

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Limits and Renewals, poems, Rudyard Kipling, Short Stories

A poem of Kipling’s. It goes with the story “Aunt Ellen”, from the 1932 collection quiltLimits and Renewals.

SHE is not Folly — that I know.
Her steadfast eyelids tell me so
When, at the hour the lights divide.
She steals as summonsed to my side.

When, finger on the pursèd lip;
In secret, mirthful fellowship
She, heralding new framed delights.
Breathes, ‘This shall be a Night of Nights!’

Then out of Time and out of Space.
Is built an Hour and a Place
Where all an earnest, baffled Earth
Blunders and trips to make us mirth;

Where, from the trivial flux of Things.
Rise unconceived miscarryings
Outrageous but immortal, shown.
Of Her great love, to me alone . . .

She is not Wisdom but, may be.
Wiser than all the Norms is She
And more than Wisdom I prefer
To wait on Her — to wait on Her!

Quite who “she” is, is open to debate. I have always liked to see in this charming lady either an imaginary companion or a child’s quirky and playful imagination…

Anyway, here you can find the story – and it is of the laugh-out-loud variety. One has to wonder at the sharp contrast with another, similarly named aunt, Helen Turrell, in The Gardener…

Ah well, we’ll come to that one too, sooner or later. For now, have fun with Aunt Ellen, and the eiderdown quilt, and cars that bound marsupially with a noise of ironmongery in revolt.

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