What I admire, Max, is the way you are finding your way back into truly intriguing memories, very uch paying attention to a specific place.
Doug
On 2012-12-05, at 5:24 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Ah, Patrick, Verna was a product of 1930s Auckland.
>
> Left school at 14 and was lucky later to be accepted for nursing training.
>
> 1935 was the great year for Labour when her father was part of the first NZ Labour Government.
>
> In colleges there would be May Day songs from the UK, and I learned some in Auckland in the 1950s.
>
> There should have been more contact between trade union lefties and student lefties, but I think
> they tended to be ignorant of each other.
>
> Not enough marches and demonstrations compared with other countries.
>
> The gentility of the Albyn Singers still seems pathetic when I consider what vital musics they ignored.
>
> Max
>
> On 05/12/2012, at 11:12 PM, Patrick McManus wrote:
>
>> Hi Bill thanks for this re hard times for a socialist-I have a cassette
>> called 'may day song book' celebrating may days 100 years -I believe from
>> Melbourne -perhaps is Verna there ?
>> Make you a copy
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Max Richards
>> Sent: 05 December 2012 05:34
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: ' Aunt Verna and the Choir'
>>
>> Aunt Verna and the Choir
>>
>> Dear Verna, more than an aunt to me.
>> Having only had a girl, how you
>> mothered me, your only nephew.
>>
>> Life-long defiantly left-wing,
>> defending Stalin till his death
>> from his critics' 'sheer propaganda';
>>
>> distrusting everything American,
>> 'big business', bankers, Ford cars.
>> Your kitchen bounty was
>>
>> that of a generous socialist.
>> Your garden, and uncle Basil's,
>> touchingly private enterprise.
>>
>> Then there was your 'ladies choir'!
>> How many annual recitals
>> did my mother and I attend?
>>
>> (Father made some brazen excuse.
>> Too musical to tolerate it,
>> he'd be playing poker with mates.)
>>
>> Albyn! the name I just recall
>> but not the woman whose choir it was.
>> You were one of her faithful.
>>
>> In some small hall, unheated
>> on a wintry night, clutching
>> scarves to our throats, watching
>>
>> you and your friends lift up their chins
>> and sing, their strained expressions,
>> painful exposing of stretched necks,
>>
>> none longer than yours, Verna.
>> I sense constriction in my throat
>> just feeling the memory.
>>
>> Will no one tell me what you sang?
>> Nothing too melodious,
>> nothing too folksy,
>>
>> nothing like a Spiritual,
>> nothing foreign,
>> unless in bland translation.
>>
>> Rose-bud, rose-bud, rose-bud red?
>> by the road-side
>> some-some-thing.
>>
>> As Friend, other nights, of the Soviet
>> Union, at movies like Potemkin,
>> your faithful voice should have blended
>>
>> with the People's choir: Revolution!
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Something else is out there
godamnit
And I want to hear it
C.D.Wright
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