It has been claimed, and denied, that the failure of BBC's Radio 4 Today
programme (6 a.m. - 9 a.m.) to broadcast would be taken as an alert signal
for UK's Trident submarines, suggesting that UK had been "taken out"
I wonder if the Captain of HMS Teapot ever worries that postings on
PoetryEtc have dropped: "not much poetry coming out of the UK - little bit
from Raynes Park and that's it - I do hope they're all right. Keep an eye
on it Number One. If there's nothing next time we check, maybe we ought to
consider lobbing one towards Moscow"
(HMS Teapot is cartoonist Steve Bell's name for a UK expeditionary
force.Teapot it was which went to the Falklands)
L
On 13 August 2014 11:33, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> poetryetc at this time of year is always quiet, I seem to remember -
>
> holiday and travel time for the northern hemisphere...
>
> Otherwise I expect by now someone would have wondered aloud whether
> pouchily
> and
> springlessly
> were maybe uncomfortable coinages from Bill.
> But let them pass...
>
> I have some difficulty with eye sockets changing
> probably because for me a socket is made of bone.
> The turn at line nine is welcome, yet -
> eight lines of 'concreteness' seem to me to call for a turn
> that does not lapse into a big abstraction -
> Hopkins poems have similar problems shifting from the experiential to the
> abstract.
> Is there a way for 'beauty' to be held over until we can sense what might
> bring it to mind.
> Lines ten to twelve don't quite do this.
> Choughs? fussing and fossicking?
> sinister birds with sharp beaks.
> For you, Bill, but not for me.
>
> (Earlier today in the park I noticed a dead magpie - handsome but very
> dead.)
>
> Oddly I am about to post a verse snap with 'beauty' in it.
>
> Max in Melbourne
>
> On 13 Aug 2014, at 8:04 am, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Compensations
> >
> > Cheeks hang baggy.
> > Face spills onto pillow.
> > Eye sockets fold and droop
> > forgetting former close bone cling
> >
> > Skin sags pouchily from shoulder
> > bone, as if from Brahman cow.
> > Muscles think before flexing,
> > withdraw springlessly.
> >
> > Yet beauty still bounces,
> > choughs fuss and fossick.
> > And tonight - so they say,
> > The moon will be Super.
> >
> > bw
>
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