So I get to your poem after all this gab, Jill, but read it first. And like it a lot, like everyone else. That you see & say, & yet your I/eye remains cool enough not to be caught in a lyric sense of oh it’s me saying this with such understanding…
I like the way that you’re using the end words but we’d never know if you didnt tell us, which means the poem works all y itself without any worry about that little formal event.
BTW H is for Hawk is an amazing book, & the writer is a poet, only a few of whose poems Ive seen online: interesting, experimental in a way, but the book is wild in all the good ways…
Doug
> On Mar 28, 2018, at 7:35 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Jill
>
>
>> Thanks, Lawrence. Glad the poem works as poem.
>
> It does
>
>> I know of the Baker book but I realise I've never read it. So I shall
> find a copy.
>
> There's been a new edition with his other book, the title of which I forget
> and which I have not read.
>
> I must do so. I haven't seen my 67 copy for years.
>
> The peregrine is superbly written. It's in the diction, you'll find him
> slowly becoming avian i.e. describing himself as the bird(s)... diction and
> in his narrative of his behaviour, how he stands over – I was going to say
> “stoops over”, but better not use that word, for clarity – evidence and
> then look round in a raptorlike gesture. It's very subtly done.
>
>
>> I didn't know about the pee thing.
>
> I got very excited about that. You think: no wonder they're always
> scurrying on the edge of the field, right down at the foot of the stone
> hedges – I too am too suburban... If you can't stop peeing and your pee
> fluoresces in the vision of something set on killing you, that can arrive
> at 100 mph +, well it's enough to make you give up and hope to come back as
> a sloth next time... Or an elephant. I just saw a photo of a domesticated
> elephant tipping up a tourist vehicle looking for sandwiches.
>
>
> “We” have peregrines on the top of a tower block in London Borough of
> Sutton where I sleep and I have seen them, I think, from afar.... Imagine
> railway workers looking up at the sky to see what I am looking at. The
> station's near the building and provides a good viewing point. I was asked
> once what it was I was watching. I told the man and he obviously thought
> that I was cracked. But they are there.
>
> Sparrowhawks in the back gardens. Far from unknown, especially in an
> overgrown one like mine. One minute there's a bird being a bird and then a
> fast blur and it's gone
>
>
> Yesterday a friend emailed that one of the Tower of London ravens has died
> and she might apply for the vacancy, but that's something else
>
>
>> There is another more recent book, H for Hawk I think it is called and
> maybe (though I might be wrong here) written by a British poet. Don't
> know if it's worth a shot.
> Yes and yes: British and worth a read. Helen MacDonald
>
>
> best
>
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
>
> On 28 March 2018 at 13:50, Jill Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Lawrence. Glad the poem works as poem.
>>
>> I know of the Baker book but I realise I've never read it. So I shall
>> find a copy.
>>
>> I didn't know about the pee thing.
>>
>> Of course, we're more likely to see raptors of various kinds in more
>> open country but we do see them, though rarely, over our suburbs and
>> the city. There is one rumoured to have had a nest in the roof parts
>> of the large sandstone building next to my building on the uni campus
>> on North Terrace, in other words right in the city of Adelaide.
>> However, I've never seen it so don't know if it's an old story, urban
>> legend or what.
>>
>> But very occasionally I will look up from my suburban backyard and
>> see, usually, a peregrine falcon hovering or circling. And then the
>> little birds simply go for it. We did get what we think was an
>> Australian Hobby, another smallish raptor, sitting in our neighbour's
>> large (and now deceased) gum tree during the day for a wee while. And
>> did the bird neighbourhood erupt when that happened.
>>
>> When we go for long drives out bush or further we do a raptor count
>> plus try to identify them - not always easy especially at a distance.
>> We get a lot of wedgetail eagles in certain areas and their floating
>> and hovering are certainly something to see. But the smaller birds
>> such as the peregrine or another common raptor, the nankeen kestrel (I
>> think it has another name these days) are so very very quick when they
>> dive for prey.
>>
>> There is another more recent book, H for Hawk I think it is called and
>> maybe (though I might be wrong here) written by a British poet. Don't
>> know if it's worth a shot.
>>
>> J
>>
>>
>> ________________________
>> Jill Jones
>> www.jilljones.com.au
>>
>> Latest book: Brink, Five Islands Press
>> http://fiveislandspress.com/catalogue/brink-jill-jones
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics"
>> To:
>> Cc:
>> Sent:Wed, 28 Mar 2018 13:13:19 +0100
>> Subject:Re: Snap falcon
>>
>> I like this a lot, both as a poem judged as a poem and for the
>> subject
>> I read j a baker, the peregrine, in the 60s when it came out
>> and it changed me
>> still trying to work out how
>>
>> it's there in the sky of my brain
>>
>> as to patience and also spying, it seems that they can see pee as a
>> lit up
>> line
>> I don't know - maybe like the trail of a high aeroplane or a meteor
>> so you watch the line advance, work out where the line-maker will be
>> vulnerable
>>
>> perhaps rodents know this
>> perhaps that's why they are always peeing
>>
>> and, what was I going to say? yes
>> there's a kestrel hangs over a downland I am fond of
>> it's nearly always there, as would I be, if I could... perhaps it's
>> not the
>> same kestrel, as the robin that sits on my old plum tree is hardly
>> ever the
>> same robin
>> well, anyway, the kestrel seems quite content to spend its days in
>> the sky
>> compensating for and using air currents
>>
>> so, er, yes, thank you
>>
>> and the baker is recommended; quite extraordinary writing; that's an
>> Essex
>> version of peregrine
>>
>> L
>>
>> On 28 March 2018 at 04:37, Jill Jones wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> WHAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT PEREGRINE FALCONS
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’m not sure I have that patience of circling
>>>
>>> or the floating intensity to spy a rodent among weeds
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> and I have no idea what magnifies or frames
>>>
>>> an avian horizon or how air lifts and drags
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> that grip on flight or how inexplicably --
>>>
>>> not unlike the way a gush of sunlight flames
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> or how quicksilver instinct leaps -- as the darting
>>>
>>> wagtail or noisy miner erupts and boldly chases you
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> yes, you mighty air creature, what gives
>>>
>>> They have only small flittery wings, beating
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> and chiacking, surely that’s not the same
>>>
>>> as peril, loss, as coming to an end, that especially
>>>
>>> ________________________
>>> Jill Jones
>>> www.jilljones.com.au
>>>
>>> Latest book: Brink, Five Islands Press
>>> http://fiveislandspress.com/catalogue/brink-jill-jones
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
the way of what fell
the lies
like the petals
falling drop
delicately
Phyllis Webb
