Bosoms heaving with pain

In post about celebrity funerals I published the other day, I noted that many of them are said to have been attended by one hundred thousand mourners. However, sometimes the turnout, though smaller, is just as impressive in a different way, by virtue of the great emotion being felt by all. An example is the funeral of the Reverend George Gilfillan of Dundee, to which thirty thousand people came.

This great occasion was well commemorated in a poem by William Topaz McGonagall. The news that some autographed poems of his fetched large sums at auction recently gives me an excuse for quoting it in full:

The Burial of the Reverend George Gilfillan
On the Gilfillan burial day,
In the Hill o' Balgay,
It was a most solemn sight to see,
Not fewer than thirty thousand people assembled in Dundee,
All watching the funeral procession of Gilfillan that day,
That death had suddenly taken away,
And was going to be buried in the Hill o' Balgay.

There were about three thousand people in the procession alone,
And many were shedding tears, and several did moan,
And their bosoms heaved with pain,
Because they knew they would never look upon his like again.

There could not be fewer than fifty carriages in the procession that day,
And gentlemen in some of them that had come from far away,
And in whispers some of them did say,
As the hearse bore the precious corpse away,
Along the Nethergate that day.

I'm sure he will be greatly missed by the poor,
For he never turned them empty-handed away from his door;
And to assist them in distress it didn't give him pain,
And I'm sure the poor will never look upon his like again.

On the Gilfillan burial day, in the Hill o' Balgay,
There was a body of policemen marshalled in grand array
And marched in front of the procession all the way;
Also the relatives and friends of the deceas'd,
Whom I hope from all sorrows has been releas'd,
And whose soul I hope to heaven has fled away,
To sing with saints above for ever and aye.

The provost, magistrates, and town council were in the procession that day;
Also Mrs Gilfillan, who cried and sobbed all the way
For her kind husband, that was always affable and gay,
Which she will remember until her dying day.

When the procession arrived in the Hill o' Balgay,
The people were almost as hush as death, and many of them did say
--As long as we live we'll remember the day
That the great Gilfillan was buried in the Hill o'Balgay.

When the body of the great Gilfillan was lowered into the grave,
'Twas then the people's hearts with sorrow did heave;
And with tearful eyes and bated breath,
Mrs Gilfillan lamented her loving husband's death.

Then she dropped a ringlet of immortelles into his grave,
Then took one last fond look, and in sorrow did leave;
And all the people left with sad hearts that day,
And that ended the Gilfillan burial in the Hill o' Balgay.


"The other day" isn't quite right, as the previous post was published one year ago today but I ain't going to mess with Pater's words.  I think it is a coincidence that two of the remaining draft posts that Tony left were about funerals.  He was not a maudlin fellow and these were not drafted at a time when such things were especially on his mind.  Anyway, no more funeral posts after this one.  Not a vintage post, this, composed as it is mainly of someone else's work.  But he was always an admirer of the work of others – from a safe distance – something he passed on to me.  

Lesser-known Rudyard

Most Englishmen have no problem in meeting with with Triumph and Disaster, and are fully aware not only that the female of the species is more deadly than the male, but also that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Few realise, though, that some of Kipling's seemingly high-flown pronouncements are actually ironic or even sarcastic.

A poem he wrote in 1919 is called The Gods of the Copybook Headings. Hardly anyone nowadays has any idea what the title means; you will have to look here if you want to find out what a copybook is, and even then it is not easy to understand exactly what the sly old devil is saying. It could be that he is making a plea for common sense, but perhaps he is pouring scorn on traditional values.

One verse has given us a colourful image in its third line:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire

But there is a reason why I have been reminded of these fusty old verses. Let us, holding our noses, turn to the paranoid commentator Glenn Beck, conspiracy theorist, rabble-rouser and darling of Fox News and the loony right. He used the last two verses of the poem in a video trailer and read the entire poem except the final lines on air in his broadcast on October 7, 2010, making an attempt to explain it in terms of today's politics and his own beliefs.

If, on November 6th, one of the possibilities facing the US is realised, he will have a powerful friend: Glenn Beck is a Mormon.
.

A jug of wine, a book of verse...

I don't like poetry much but have always been a keen versifier. I set a couple of sonnet-writing competitions some years ago (this is an example) but didn't enter them myself. However, I did once enter another competition, which called for a poem about either chlamydia or some form of contraception. I wrote:

There was a young lady called Lydia
Whose sex life just couldn't be giddier.
She gave not a rap
For the pox or the clap,
But was terribly scared of chlamydia.

This got an honourable mention but at the time I published the post I did not know that my poem was going to be really published. Then the branch of the pharmacy which had sponsored the competition produced a booklet containing all the best entries, and mine was one of them.

It occurred to me when I came across my copy of the booklet the other day that I had never announced to my friends that I had been given this signal honour, so I am doing so now.

The name of the sponsoring pharmacy, by the way, was Laycock Chemists. 

The hounds of spring arrived some time ago

I always like to write about spring, and, inspired by some glorious weather, I spent some time last week assembling a little spring anthology. Then I realised that it was too late for publication; historically, spring starts on the day of the vernal equinox, which usually occurs on the night of 20/21 March. There is a school of thought which says it should be 1st March; ridiculous antipodeans have it on that date but call it the first day of autumn.

So the Other Men's Flowers Festival of Spring will have to wait until next year. Meanwhile, here is a reminder of two well-known celebrations of the season.

One version of the anonymous Spring In The Bronx goes:
Spring has sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonder where the boidies is?
Some say the boid is on the wing,
But that's absoid; the wing is on the boid.

Seven hundred and fifty years earlier W. de Wycombe (or, more likely, someone else) composed a piece of six-part polyphonic music. In the Wessex dialect of Middle English, the words are:
Sumer is ycomen in,
Loude sing cuckou!
Groweth seed and bloweth meed,
And springth the wode now.
Sing cuckou!

Ewe bleteth after lamb,
Loweth after calve cow,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Merye sing cuckou!
Cuckou, cuckou,
Wel singest thou cuckou:
Ne swik thou never now!

This is fairly comprehensible to us today except for the activities of the bulloc and the bucke: "sterteth", "verteth"—what are they up to? (It's a bit like Paul Jennings' fictitious proverb based on place names: Woman erith, Man morpeth.)

Apparently the line means the bullock stirs, the stag farts; the current critical consensus is that the stag is making "a gesture of virility indicating the stag's potential for creating new life, echoing the rebirth of Nature from the barren period of winter".

Oh, right.

Jesus, Bjork, Tom Lehrer, the Pope and 21 others are quoted in Irish court

No, not really. Sadly, it is unlikely that even the looniest of the faithful will launch an action against the atheists who have published a selection of 25 quotations in defiance of the revised Irish blasphemy law which came into force on 1st January. The law now provides for a fine of €25,000 to be levied against anyone found guilty of "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".

You can study the quotations here. Some people may well find them offensive, particularly as the new law, unlike the old one, covers all religions; this means that not only Christians of any kind but also worshippers of Siva, Allah, Xenu, Zoroaster, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Yahweh/Elohim/Adonai and all the rest of the pantheon now have (in Ireland) the legal right to be offended and to sue.

Five years ago I published a French limerick:
Il y avait une personne de Dijon
Qui n’aimait pas trop la religion
Il disait ‘Ma foi!
Ils m’emmerdent tous les trois
-Et le père, et le fils, et le pigeon.’

...but modestly refrained from appending my own English version of it:
There was a young man of Dundee
Who didn't much like the Big Three
He said, 'I despise
Those God-awful guys
The Father, the Son, the H.G.'

Blasphemy, undoubtedly, but I print it now without fear of the consequences, since the Irish Act states "...that it shall be a defence to proceedings for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary [etc.] value in the matter to which the offence relates”. I am sure that, as in the Lady Chatterley trial, it would not be difficult to find any number of distinguished literati happy to attest to the important place these limericks should occupy in their respective literary canons.

Ballyburbling

Ballymackleduff, Derryfubble, Benburb: Address of subscriber in the Northern Ireland Telephone Directory

Oh, the world was full of grievin’, an’ when I’d had enough
I packed me bag and set me face towards Ballymackleduff;
White houses nestle there, all far from toil an’ trouble
(O the lough an’ the sea birds, an’ sweet Derryfubble!).

I thought me heart would melt for joy, an’ nothin’ might disturb
The peace that I’d be findin’ in beautiful Benburb.
O, the friends of me youth was there to make me comin’ merry,
First I drank with Mick the Tanner just a mile from Fubblederry

An’ Roaring Pat was waitin’ in the bar at Mackleben.
‘Begod,’ says he, ‘have one with me’; three jolly Irish men
With all the pints o’ porter, the gossip an’ the cackle.
’Twas dancin’ in the road we was that goes to Berrymackle.

Then up spake Mick the Tanner that was born in Fubblemack:
‘The boys at Ballyfubble will be glad to see ye back –
Let’s be goin’ to O’Reilly’s, where the Fiddler of Benbally
An’ the Fubblederry Fluter is in his Dancin’ Palais

An' the girls from Ferrymackle an’ from Bubblefurbyduff
Is doin’ all the jiggin’ an’ the rock-an’-rollin’ stuff.’
Ah, hadn’t we the time at all at Glubbymacklederry
With all the folk from Grabble an’ from Ballygubble ferry

An’ Mackledubblegurgle, an’ Blubberderryglen
An’ the lasses from Dubmackle, an’ the rantin’ Burble men,
The Squintin’ Men from Brackle, an’ Mrs Tom Macnally
An’ the seven black-haired sisters that live over in Duffbally.

An’ wilder came the music from the Fubblederry Flute
An’ Mick was drinking Guinness from the Widow Leary’s boot
An’ Roarin’ Pat was fightin’ with a man from Derryburble
That laid him out and wrote a sign that said DO NOT DISTURBLE.

Oh, shut was all the factories, and open all the bars,
There was laughter in the lamplight and kissin’ by the stars,
Delight in Derryfubble; and Benburb was full of song;
Ah, Ballymackleduff! Why did I stay away so long?

Paul Jennings

A moment of calm

All too seldom do we take the time to pause, to free ourselves briefly from the pressures of modern life and quietly meditate. Well may we ask, as did the the one-legged Northamptonshire cricketer W.H. Davies:
What is this life, if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

Or, as the Florentine poet Luciano Sparafucile put it: Durante le fermate nelle stazione è vietato servirsi della ritirata.

It's not easy, of course; we have lost the ability to relax, to contemplate, to enjoy silence and inaction. But music can always help us: a simple melody like this, soothing yet somehow inspiring, has the power to transport us to a place where the Weltanschauung is one of infinite tranquillity.

...But only God can make a tree.

Most people know that blowing your nose is, to the Japanese, a disgusting practice. It is ironic, therefore, that they find admirable another activity which is very similar, in that it requires no skill, takes very little time and produces nothing of any value. This is the composition of haiku ; the word originally meant heavenly wind-breaking, but nowadays refers to
"a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 morae, in three metrical phrases of 5, 7 and 5 morae respectively[1]. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura. In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, while haiku in English usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku".

[To understand this fully you really need to follow the links to morae and kireji, though this may not help you much.]

Quite clear so far?

The rules are often interpreted loosely when writing haiku in English, and the usual result is a piece of staggering banality, for example:
When it is snowing
It is good to stay indoors:
Writing stuff like this

...or,

Today is the day
For Grumio to have fun
Let us wish him well

Remembering poems

From the Guardian, September 2005:

Lord Wavell was unlucky, a manager of retreat in the first years of the second world war and absent from its later victories. Lying didn't come easy to him and, unlike Montgomery or Mountbatten, his successor as viceroy of India, he cut no dash. His great love and solace was poetry, the reading and reciting and not the writing of it, and it's for one book of poetry that, outside the realm of military history, he will be mainly remembered.

In 1944 Jonathan Cape published an anthology of Wavell's favourite poems. It became a large and unlikely success: it has been rarely out of print since and by 1979 had sold almost 130,000 copies.

The idea for its publication came not so much from Wavell himself as from the traveller and writer Peter Fleming, who was on Wavell's staff in Delhi during his pre-viceregal days as the army's commander in chief in India. In the evening, under a fan and over a drink, Fleming would listen to his boss recite, and talk about Browning and Kipling, and eventually suggested that Wavell compile an anthology and send it to Cape, which had published Fleming's pre-war travel accounts. Cape wasn't impressed. Wavell, far from home and a good library, had quoted many of the poems from his formidable memory. There were frequent mistakes. Cape sent a humiliating letter of rejection in which the general's choice was described as "familiar school recitations advancing in close formation". The situation was retrieved only after Fleming lobbied a Cape director, Rupert Hart-Davis, who reproved the publisher by telling him his letter was "tantamount to a sock on the jaw" to a shy man who had delivered "the complete bones of a tremendously saleable book".

What accounted for its success? My guess is that it made poetry respectable for manly men—Wavell's section on war is called Good Fighting but his section on love is a tongue-tied Love and All That—in an age when reciteable poetry still had a popular appeal. He wrote in his introduction that while, nearing 60, he couldn't claim he could repeat by heart all the 260 or so poems in the the anthology, he thought he could safely claim that he once could.

He apologises for his notes on the poems, saying "'The Notes' are not altogether my fault, the publisher asked for them." But he was far from a bluff fool who kept himself going on the march with a few verses of Kipling. He knew that a key to poetry's success—you might say its departed success—was its memorability, but he also knew that that wasn't its only quality. In 1961, 11 years after his death, TS Eliot wrote, "I do not pretend to be a judge of Wavell as a soldier ... What I do know from personal acquaintance with the man, is that he was a great man. This is not a term I use easily ..."

Ian Jack

[For those who don't know the book, I should mention that Wavell called it Other Men's Flowers: "I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own"—Montaigne, 1533-1592]

Top Sonnets 2008

The OMF Annual Sonnet Bash has come round again and, as promised, I am publishing today all those which were submitted.

These were not numerous, but I knew that in today's world it would be difficult to seduce many readers of OMF away from their questionable pursuits to undertake an intellectual challenge. Happily there were five who did take up their quills and then sent in the results of their labours, and in four cases these were very creditable or even admirable. I am very grateful to the writers of these four.

It has been suggested by cynical and unkind acquaintances that it is all a prank and that I wrote some of these sonnets myself, so I must state clearly that this is a despicable calumny, though all except one I would have been proud to have composed. They were written by 1: Elizabeth; 2: Anonymous; 3: Outeast; 4: Grumio (and friends); and 5: The Dark Lady.

I know only one of these personally and have no connection with any of the others. Honestly.

So here are the five sonnets.

A sonnet for the New Year

Last year the OMF sonnet-writing competition generated world-wide excitement (well, five people entered); there is a report on it here, together with a link to all the entries.

We are fast approaching the season when post-prandial torpor afflicts many and there are long periods during which eructation is the only physical activity that can be undertaken, so a new competition is launched today which may keep a few minds alive. Well, actually, it's not a competition this time; all entries which comply with the conditions will be published and I will send a cheque to the Save the Children Fund for five pounds for each accepted entry, excluding the really rotten ones.

The rules are the same as last year except that there is a new set of line-endings:
might sway sight day
ill deeds skill exceeds
more hate abhor state
me thee

Closing date is 1st January 2009.
At 11th December, four entries have already been received

All entries will be published on 8th January.

Injuries bravely born

I see that last weekend yet another footballing big girl's blouse received a bit of a knock and collapsed writhing in pain until he was comforted and put on his feet again.

Back in the fifteenth century sportsmen were made of sterner stuff. There are several versions of a ballad called Chevy Chase (i.e. a hunt in the Cheviots) celebrating a dispute over hunting rights which led to a mighty battle. After a careful start....

The bowmen mustered on the hills,
Well able to endure;
Their backsides all with special care
That day were guarded sure.

....the fighting was fierce and long, and at close of play only 108 had survived out of the 3,500 huntsmen and warriors involved. Both team captains were slain, the Scottish Earl Douglas by an arrow and the English Earl Percy by a spear.

I doubt if there were any among all the grievously wounded who collapsed in petulant tears like footballers; typical of those who didn't was one English squire who was perhaps the inspiration for an incident in Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

For Witherington needs must I wail
As one in doleful dumps.
For when his legs were smitten off,
He fought upon his stumps.

[Or, in an earlier and more elegant version:
For Wetharryngton my harte was wo,
that euer he slayne shulde be;
For when both his leggis wear hewyne in to,
yet he knyled and fought on hys kny.]

Woman's Constancy

A young person of my acquaintance who has no respect for age and infirmity has pointed out that Other Men's Flowers, while purporting to be a vade mecum for intellectuals, currently contains 49 posts about food and drink and 40 about hats but only 33 about poetry and 17 about art, thus suggesting that eating, drinking and comic headgear are more important to me than than other, more cultured, enthusiasms.

That may well be the case, though I could point out that music gets 69 and literature 57. Still, many of the posts in these categories are merely frivolous or facetious so it is true that the general tenor of OMF is not such as to give sustenance to those in search of edification.

Well, tough titty for them. Anyway, to raise the tone a bit here's a picture of John Donne, and a poem he wrote called Woman's Constancy in which the poet suggests some excuses his lover might make for dropping him. He isn't really being kind, he's just showing that he might well drop her first:

NOW thou hast loved me one whole day
To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers' contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would;
Which I abstain to do,
For by to-morrow I may think so too.


(I discovered this poem in the marvellous website of Anniina Jokinen of Philadelphia, who has translated some of Donne's poems into Finnish but in the case of one of his rude ones was not satisfied with the result.)

Overdue biography

I see that a book about Fazab al-Basry Hashid is being published in the autumn. I was surprised to find that not only is this apparently the first time that anything about him will be published in Europe, but that there does not seem to be a reference to him anywhere on the internet. Many other major Sufi writers and poets, such as Jalalud'din Rumi, Al-Ghazali and Mahmud Shabistari are widely known, but there is nothing to be found about Fazab al-Basry, although in some ways he was one of the most eminent.

I have always admired his writing, though I have only read translated snippets of it in anthologies. He was of course a mystic, though what kind of a mystic he was remains a mystery. However, he may have been one of the most influential men in the Islamic world in the early part of the thirteenth century, and it will be fascinating to learn the story of his life—though in fact very little is known about him—when the biography comes out. I suppose I shall have to buy it, for I doubt if it will be serialised in any of the Sunday papers.

Two into one

Ogden: what a man he was! Linguist, philosopher, inventor of Basic English, co-translator of Wittgenstein's great Tractatus, co-author of The Meaning of Meaning (which quoted the inimitable phrase "The gostak distims the goshes"), described as America's laureate of light verse, creator of memorable couplets such as "If called by a panther / Don't anther"; "You can have my jellyfish / I'm not sellyfish"; and "The Lord in His wisdom made the fly / And then forgot to tell us why" and, most famously, the poet who replied to Dorothy Parker's dictum "Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses" with:
A girl who is bespectacled
She may not get her nectacled
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fassinets.

But actually he wasn't a man; he was two men, and I foolishly conflated them in my mind for many years. Now I have got them sorted out: one of them was called C K Ogden (1889-1957) and the other wasn't; he was called Ogden Nash (1902-1971). What I listed above were the achievements of one or the other of them, and very creditable too.

Confusion of this kind has not come to me with the passing of the years: I have always been prone to it. When I was very young I saw at a cinema in Dijon a film called Méfiez-Vous des Blondes, starring Martine Carol or possibly someone else. The behaviour of the character she was playing seemed to me to be quite inexplicable: sometimes she would be a sweet young blonde happily married to a bank clerk, and at others she would be member of a vicious gang planning a robbery; even her hair style would change from scene to scene in what seemed to be a random manner, though she remained startlingly blonde. The plot became a total mystery to me, for I couldn't understand her motivation at all, or anyone else's.

Yes, you've guessed it: towards the end of the film she appeared to meet herself in a bar, and I at last tumbled to the fact that there were two different blondes in the film. My grasp of French was such that I had simply failed to realise that they were not the same person. They weren't supposed to be twins or anything like that and when they were on the screen together I saw that they didn't even look much alike.

Ever since then I have méfied myself of all blondes, with the exception of my blonde daughters who are identical twins; they really do look alike, but when they were born I knew almost at once that there were two of them, and never had any difficulty at all in distinguishing between them, even when they were very small.

The "London" Wreck

No need to commiserate with those who have chosen to put an idiot in charge of their city; they will get what they deserve, all 1,168,738 of them. Many of them are not proper Londoners. anyway: I mean, Bexley? Bromley? Barnet? To hell with the inner city oiks, they said, let's get a toff to sort out our problems.

But for the other 1,028,966, those who had the good sense to put aside their dislike of Ken and vote for him, we must all feel sorry; perhaps it will cheer them up to read about some people who suffered an even worse disaster.

Many of the awful poems of William Topaz McGonagall were accurate and harrowing descriptions of terrible things which happened to innocent people. The best known of his two hundred poems is The Tay Bridge Disaster, but there is another one more appropriate for today. It is called The Wreck Of The Steamer "London":

'Twas in the year of 1866, and on a very beautiful day
That eighty-two passengers, with spirits light and gay,
Left Gravesend harbour, and sailed gaily away
On board the steamship "London,"
Bound for the city of Melbourne,
Which unfortunately was her last run,
Because she was wrecked on the stormy main,
Which has caused many a heart to throb with pain,

Because they will ne'er look upon their lost ones again.

You can read the whole of this magnificent account by following the link above, but here are some couplets from it which will give you the flavour:

'Twas all on a sudden the storm did arise,
Which took the captain and passengers all by surprise...

...To hear mothers and their children loudly screaming,
And to see the tears adown their pale faces streaming...

...A beautiful young lady did madly cry and rave,
"Five hundred sovereigns, my life to save!"

...For three stormy days and stormy nights they were tossed to and fro
On the raging billows, with their hearts full of woe...

Happily, though, there were twenty survivors, who "most heroically behaved". Probably these did not include the beautiful young lady, since:
..she was by the sailors plainly told

For to keep her filthy gold.

Rhyming the Rhythm Method

When writing the other day about a Prophylactic Poetry Competition to celebrate the opening of National Contraceptive Awareness Week, I was quite wrong to suggest that it would not attract many entries: in fact, there were more than fifty.

I have to say, though, that the standard of those selected as winners and runners-up was not very high; most of them had uncertain metre and defective rhymes. I mean, "silly" with "willy" is OK if a bit obvious, but "johnny" with "funny" should have been grounds for instant disqualification.

Anyway, none of those I saw were in the same class as the one I submitted on behalf of one of my correspondents whom I know only as Outeast; he couldn't enter it himself because he lives outside the UK* and couldn't afford the stamp, so he sent it to me in a comment on this post. Pity he didn't win, because I had promised him that the prize would have gone to the Save the Children Fund.

The competition was clearly a success, but I am less certain about the NCA week which has just begun. It may well be that preparations have been hindered by death threats from the Vatican's hit squads, and that at this very moment heavy mobs from Opus Dei are tearing down the displays.

They do these things better in the United States. For instance, over there during National Gall Bladder Week every Main Street has its parade (with the Cholecyst Queen), its banners, and stalls manned by top brass from the Gall Bladder Society of America.

Let the final poetic word on contraception go to Tom Lehrer, who ended his version of the Boy Scouts Marching Song with:
....If you're looking for adventure of a new and different kind,
And you chance to meet a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined,
Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared....Be Prepared!

* I have no idea where; indeed, I know very little about him. Or her? I have an idea that she may actually be a young Turkish widow whom I remember meeting once some years ago under curious circumstances in the Levant. I do know that he/she is a poet of note: a sonnet of his/hers is included among THESE.

Top sonnets for 2007

I did not expect that many of the bare-knuckle fighters, street traders and used car dealers among my readers would accept my sonnet-writing challenge. There are a few intellectuals and top professional men and women who occasionally leaven OMF's banalities with their wit and erudition, but I knew that these would be too busy chairing international conferences or coping with their ministerial responsibilities to spend time on such a frivolous project. And, of course, the prelates among them would be carrying a heavy burden of sacerdotal duties over the Christmas period; one can never expect to get much feedback from high-ranking men of the cloth at peak holy times.

However, I am happy to report that very creditable fourteen-liners were submitted by three of my friends and two unknowns:
• Eric: a distinguished American law professor who mistakenly believes that all lawyers are poets manqué
• Outeast: a person who supplies a nickname but no personal details or URL and who I therefore suspect may be wanted for questioning by the police in connection with a series of axe murders
• Gervase: a Scottish lecturer
• Anonymous: an elderly retired gentleman from Warwickshire
• Grumio: This old reprobate is a resident of Soho but spends much time abroad.

The full texts of their sonnets (in the order in which they were received), and a comment on each by a noted critic are given HERE. The standard was very high; every one of these sonnets has some quality to be commended, so I am unable to pick a winner and I am sending the donation to the Save the Children Fund in my own name. Thank you all.

Poetry competition

Fond of doing jigsaws? Try this for a change. It is a similar mindless waste of time, requiring little skill but a great deal of patience and much trial-and-error, and producing, after a great deal of time and effort, something of no value whatsoever....

Shakespearean sonnets, as we all know, usually have the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG. Writing a pastiche is an absolute doddle, provided that you don’t worry about its meaning. Here’s one I made earlier:

Of that which, dying, consummates its choice
The greater part is taken in extremes.
The single passion and the silent voice
Have need of darkness to escape those dreams
Which turn them, quickening, to such distaste
That by their very virtues are they lost;
A changing nature, summon'd thus in haste
In all humility to bear the cost
Doth swiftly and most eagerly o'ersway
Those forces which of magnitude are free
No less from birth and greater in decay
Old when 'tis born and older still to be;
And neither shall that power be denied
Which is, by human reason, yet untried.

Good, isn’t it? One might almost say it had a dying fall, coming o'er my ear like the sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets.

I offer a challenge to anyone who fancies him/herself as a versifier: Write a fourteen-line sonnet using these words for line endings:

mind about blind out
heart latch part catch
sight creature night feature
you untrue

...then send it to me as a comment to this post before the end of the year. I won’t publish any as comments, but I will post a report on 7th January, with a link to all the entries, and send a cheque for £20 in the name of the writer to the Save the Children Fund.

(As I said, your sonnet doesn’t have to mean anything, but it must sound as if it might; it must not be gibberish.)

Irregular Turkish cavalry commits atrocity

Last January I asked if anyone could tell me the source of a delightful poem which somehow has stuck in my mind for years. A kind reader posted a comment giving me a clue that it was contained in a book by Osbert Lancaster called Drayneflete Revealed. I suppose I must have read it in the fifties but anyway I got hold of a copy today and there was the poem.

The book is a parody of an antiquarian study of an imaginary English town and includes notes on some of its eminent residents over the centuries. One of these is a Miss Amelia de Vere, niece of famous (fictitious) poet Jeremy Tipple, and it is she who is supposed to have written the poem. I quote here all that is known of it, which is entitled Lines on the Late Massacre at Chios:

O hark to the groans of the wounded and dying,
A mother who takes a last lingering look
At her infant aloft, understandably crying,
Impaled on the spear of a Bashi Bazook

O see where the vultures are patiently wheeling
As the Scimitars flash and the yataghans thud
O innocent victims, vainly appealing
To dreaded Janissaries lusting for blood.

As Osbert Lancaster comments: “The two opening verses will serve to demonstrate both the fearless realism of the gentle poetess and her exceptional command of local colour, a command the more extraordinary in that she never, save for a brief visit to Tunbridge Wells, travelled more than ten miles from Draynefleet in all her life”.

I wonder if any modern poet leading a similarly quiet life could conjure up with such verve an evocative picture of a bloody 19th-century battle in the Levant.

[More about Drayneflete HERE]