I hope it was useful. It was more than a little self-indulgent, whereas
your poem sustains multiple readings. I was much in agreement with Sheila
too. (I noticed the Abba reference)
Well done; it's good work
L
On 2 October 2014 18:26, Jill Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Lawrence,
> Many thanks for all those memories about the area, and the city. I
> wonder how much changed it is. Obviously, I'd have no real idea.
> As for the bridges, you are correct. However, I did go there via the
> ferry from Slussen, thus there was that small bridge to cross to get
> to the wharves as well. And my train comes in from Gullmarsplan, so
> more bridges in my particular journey that day. Simply by way of
> explanation.
> There is still a lynx in Skansen, in fact mother and father lynx and
> two playful littlies - though that was another visit, not this
> particular day. No elephant that I could see. Bears, reindeer, elk,
> owls, wolves, mostly. I haven't been into Gröna Lund though walked by
> it, and the Tivoli. They still have bands there. I also passed the
> Abba museum and there is a trace of an Abba reference in the poem.
> And I'm glad the poem withstood a second reading.
> Thanks,Jill
> ________________________Jill Jones www.jilljones.com.au
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics"
> To:
> Cc:
> Sent:Thu, 2 Oct 2014 11:27:21 +0100
> Subject:Djurgården
>
> Hi Jill
>
> I had a pleasant evening thinking on and off of Djurgården and
> Stockholm
> in general. It stayed with me until this morning; but within minutes
> of
> consciousness return the shipping forecast cleared my internal screen
> and
> speaker for new thoughts. Dover, Wight, Portsmouth, Plymouth
>
> Then I was too busy coping with the heating being on in the bus to
> revert.
> (I complained and the driver told me that it's autumn. I said the
> weather
> hasn't broken yet and he said they don't think like that.)
>
> I wonder if Stockholm bus drivers are still largely from
> Jugoslavia-as was.
>
> I've reread your poem, keeping my enthusiasm for the city in some
> check;
> and I still think highly of it, the poem.
>
> I was confused yesterday by your reference to bridges because I
> remembered
> only one, crossing the little channel to the north,
> Djurgårdsbrunnsbron, or
> something like ; and that seems to be the way it is; so now I think
> you
> mean in that part of Stockholm generally.
>
> It's over 20 years since I was there; so the enthusiasm is mental in
> at
> least one way. At that stretch, memories are unreliable. Djurgården
> features a little in the last Kurt Wallander novel by Henning Mankel.
> That
> novel's helped to adjust my thoughts a little, quite apart from many
> I knew
> being dead. A dark side of Sweden - Palme's assassination, paranoia
> re
> USSR... I was coming back for the ferry just before Xmas 1991 when
> there
> was a bomb explosion in Central Station. I was at the Djurgård town
> by
> Gröna Lund and Skansen so there were people around. Everyone looked.
> I said
> out loud that it was bomb; and, interestingly, someone said "No, this
> is
> Sweden." I said I was a Londoner and I knew the sound of a bomb.
>
> It turned out to be neo Nazis I believe.
>
> The very interesting sound artist Ake Hodell used to live there on
> Falkenbergsgatan as I remember. I went there the once.
>
> He made a tape-based text-sound composition called Djurgård ferry
> over the
> River Styx - Djurgårdsfärjan över floden Styx. Well worth a
> listen. It's on
> the web.
>
> I never went to Gröna Lund though I heard Status Quo playing there
> some
> time in the 70s - heard them from Södermalm, where I tended to stay.
>
> I remember Skansen, the zoo etc. My friend greeting a goat "hello
> smelly
> goat" either in the 70s or the 90s, long ago anyway. And a lynx,
> visibly
> crazy pacing backwards and forwards over its hill. A large hill but
> small
> for a lynx, which needed a territory more like the size of the city.
> And 2
> elephants side by side in a shed rocking in distress.
>
> But then Djurgården is so called (Djur = animal) because it was
> earlier a
> royal hunting territory
>
> I doubt whether any of that is much use. I had better not write more.
> Save
> perhaps that then and possibly now if you stand at the northern end
> of
> Mosebacketorg and look out it is the scene described from the main
> character's point of view at the start of Strindberg's Red Room as he
> looks
> at Old Town and then east to Lidingö and out into the archipelago.
> To one
> who grew up in a city newly-flattened by bombing that was interesting
>
> Enough already, enough old man's memories.
> Thank you for a fine poem
>
> L
>
>
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