Happy poetry day!

I have had a terrifc poetry month and I hope that you have too.

Poetry is the expression of those ephemeral feelings that we all have. The taste of red. The sound of mushrooms. The smell of the rain on the roof.

For me, poetry and the arts are a reflection of all of the excitement and fun and mystery and frustration that we all feel everyday. Each of us is involved in the creative by merely living our daily lives. Self transformation is the manifestation of that urge to create. Careful observation deepens our experience.

I wish I had a better offering for the end of poetry month, but here is a poem I wrote for my mother's birthday several years ago...

Evening Prayer

going to sleep
finding myself
again returning
to look for you
in the room
of my thoughts.

My mother, lying down,
we sleepers, our heads,
on soft, sinking pillows,
darkness folded double over us,
the day being over,
we both sleep.

When I sleep
I will try
to dream of my mother.

(Can you still hear them,
those crickets of Summer?
They have all flown away from here.)

Under the cobwebs
of haze blown
by a thousand
other sleepers,

or under stars,

the same ceiling
will will turn
and span over both of us.

I wonder Will you dream of me?

We sleepers are
such willing travelers.

May one who is never sleeping,
watch over that vast track
which lies between us.
And may that path
become shorter and shorter…
Until it is but to reach across it
and touch hands.

End of poetry month poems

Chris was memorizing his "end of poetry month" poem today and recited it for me. We will be having a poetry party this Friday. What is a poetry party? I don't know, but Chris told me that all parties require refreshments -- and that includes poetry parties.

Here is his poem "A witch was in a hardware store" by Jack Prelutsky

A witch was in a hardware store,
she radiated gloom.
A clerk asked "may I help you?"
She replied, "I've lost me broom!
I've had that broom for ages,"
she continued through her tears.
"I must replace it right away,
for midnight quickly nears!"

The clerk said sympathetically,
"I'm sorry for your plight
However, we sell splendid brooms,
youll have one by tonight."
He added, "Let me show you some,"
and led her through the store.
"Our newest brooms sweep cleaner
than the brooms we've had before."

"No, no!" the witch protested,
"I prefer a broom thats old,
like the one in the corner
with the noticeable mold."
"We were about to throw it out,"
the clerk replied, nonplussed.
"A broom like that will never do
to sweep up all your dust."

"Yes, yes!" she shrieked, and snatched it.
"Its mine at any cost
Its practically the double
of the broom I said I'd lost."
The clerk said, "We deliver,
and can send it out today."
"No need!" she cackled, grinning,
and she flew that broom away.

Homework

So I am posting my "Poetry Class" homework. Most poets say that a poem is never really finished, you just decide to leave it alone. That is true especially in the case of poems that are written in all of fifteen minutes. I am still hopeful that some of you have had inspiration of your own and will also want to post your "assignment" on the blog. I am posting my poem so that no one will feel self concious if their poem is not first rate :)

A sleep and a forgetting
a day's lost chance:

where you could have been the one
who sat down at dinner parties
and played the piano so well;

where you could have been the one
who taught all of the children
at the birthday party a new dance
so they forgot all about presents;

where you could have been the one
who built a log cabin out in the woods
with just an axe and a pencil
and never cared about being alone;

where you could have been the one
who spoke with a foreign accent
and had all the maps of the city;

where you could have been the one
to make a paint and plaster of paris world
and not bother about who liked it.

Instead you were asleep and forgetting,
a days lost chance,
the missing car keys,
or the loose change that falls from
someone's pocket into the black crack
between the sofa cushions

I think we need one of those dogs
that when you throw something away
always brings it back for you
to try and throw it away again.

I think we need to train a bird
that flies to the dry land
of lost dreams
and comes back
the dream in its beak
to let you know its safe
to start all over.

Poetry Class

A common assignment in university writing classes is to take a first line from someone else's poem (or any line from someone else's poem, for that matter) and use it as your own first line. The Collins poem that I posted earlier this week utilized a pretty similiar device. Creating this springboard is a terrific way to make a commentary on the other poem or just to get an easy start on your own ideas. It might seem like cheating, but it pays homage to the pieces of poetry and language that are part of the spiritus mundi or collective conciousness or whatever you want to call it. Your safe as long as the other poet is given their due (and is dead).

Try it for yourself with one or all of these lines or one of your own:

My love is like a red, red rose (Robert Burns 1794)

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting (William Wordsworth)

Do not go gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas)

Through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

I was of three minds, like a tree, in which there are three blackbirds (Wallace Stevens)

Time does not bring relief, you all have lied (Edna St Vincent Millay)

Something there is that doesn't love a wall (Robert Frost)

She walks in beauty, like the night (Byron)


We can post the results throughout the week, if you like. At least, I will post my attempts, and hopefully you will feel inspired to submit yours as well.

Why is the Dunbar House closed?

Salman Rushdie has said, "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep." I don't know if Oscar Wilde would have agreed, but it is true that poetry can address rights and wrongs, joys and injustices in a way that prose cannot. The language of poetry can conjure up feelings that surprise us. It can be the knife which cuts right to the heart.

Here is a poem written almost one hundred years ago which does just that, by Dayton's own Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Dunbar was the first African American poet to be widely known and published. He died of tuberculosis in 1906 at the age of 34. The poem, I think, is best out loud.

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

poetry out loud.

I have been short on time of late -- which is much less incriminating than saying you are short on ideas...

I wanted to revisit a previous web recommendation for the NEA website Poetry Out Loud. You can link to performances from the nationwide Poetry Out Loud competitions over the last several years at http://www.poetryoutloud.org/about/

Today's poem for the day is from the website www.poetryoutloud.org

Litany

By Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine . . .
Jacques Crickillon


You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

Spring Cleaning

Tommorow, at our house, we will be engaging in the age old practice of spring cleaning -- I noticed that coincidentally, I have written a poem with that name -- a work in progress, I guess -- but pomme frites allows the cravenly amateur. Feel free to help with my eventual improvement :)

Spring Cleaning

There is a reason why the spring flowers
seem to us so bright;

Its that we see them against a background
still mostly greys and whites.

Their vibrant cries are breaking Winter's
weary mantra of same same same

They sweep away the sepia tones with a besom
until the world seems light again

They wipe with a pink cloth, the dust
and cobwebs from our eyes;

And tempt to us to live out the
rest of time as birds and butterflies.

Its a palliative art
this coming on of spring;

I am waking and forgetting
that all must sleep again.

Haiku: At the Symphony

Cellos are swelling,
Plaintive violins soaring;
My heart sheds a tear.

Sapere ex libris

I got out my Norton's Anthology of Poetry today. It is heavy. When put it on the bathroom scale, the dial moves three tick marks. The pages are thin like tissue paper, and there are lots of them. It has poems from the Beowulf of long ago all the way to Leslie Marmon Silko and Yusef Komunyakaa, both poets I saw read when I was in college.

Here is a poem from somewhere in the middle of that anthology, from the great, gloomy Emily Dickinson -- a poem about descending into madness. It is so sunny a day here, one can read a melancholy poem with little more than a shudder -- I hope it is not overcast where you are --

You will notice that her poems lack titles -- they are most often designated by number in a chronological order assigned to them after her death, or else by their first line.

280

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,And I
and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down--
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing--then--

Hound - dog haiku from Jocelyn

I guess anyone who has had a dog has felt this way before -- it definitely does reduce the situation to its essence!

Don't look innocent
You had a warm bath, then went
Straight back to the mud.

by Jocelyn

Trivialities

I happened upon this quote from George Eliot: "It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness -- calling their denial knowledge."

This quote about enjoying the little things is by way of introduction to the very small poems called haiku. Haiku is another form of poetry that we usually learn about in grade school -- its smallness makes it seem simple enough to talk about with small children; but the simplicity of haiku belies a potency and concentration sometimes difficult to find in the constant avalanche of verbiage that is a hallmark of our age. Haiku is the maple syrup of poetry, ideas found and then boiled into a sweet essence.

Typically we think of haiku as being in three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllable, and 5 syllables again. Really, the parameters of a good haiku poems are pretty malleable. I do think that for writing your own haiku, 5-7-5 is a good starting place. Many haiku tend to have nature as a theme -- almost all traditional haiku have some reference to the natural world.

Here is a very well known haiku that you may have heard before by Basho, famous Japanese poet of the 17th century:

Clouds appear
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon

Here is my haiku -- as always, I hope you will write one too! (And then we can post it :)

Twigs blown down last fall
that laid all winter in the yard
have new leaves this spring

Psalm is hard to Pspell

I had a very nice weekend trip to visit my sister's home and see some of my family there. I had really wanted to post something special for Easter, but with all of the hustle and bustle to get ready for the journey -- I never had time.

So I am posting a post-Easter psalm. Psalm is a word taken from the greek "psalmos." It is used to reflect the hebrew word meaning -- to pluck or to play a stringed instrument. A psalm is somewhat like our modern notion of a hymn.

For us, the psalms may seem to lack the rhyme and rhythm of many of our hymns, but they have poetic devices of their own. For instance, the psalmist may sometimes seem to repeat himself, except in reverse -- this is called chiasmus. Here is a pretty simplistic example -- it can get more complicated: ""And let the beauty of the Lord be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands, yea the work of our hands establish thou it."

The Hebrew literary tradition is also one of very strong imagery and metaphor: "Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; and they that dwell together. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together." (Psalm 98) or "My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread."

The psalms are a very ancient, very beautiful form of poetry. Here is part of one of my favorites:

Psalm 61 (in part)

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee,
when my heart is overwhelmed:
lead me to the rock
that is higher than I

For thou hast been a shelter for me,
and a strong tower from the enemy.

I will abide in thy tabernacle forever.
I will trust in the covert of thy wings.

lost and found

I think that it is remarkably easy to forget the beauty and mystery in the everyday -- the bumpy skin of an orange -- the way that birds cock their heads to the side to look more carefully -- the funny things that we say and think. One way to recapture the fascination with the mundane is through a found poem. A found poem is one that is made of a very simple group of phrases, like the description of the dishes on a chinese menu, or the instructions to put together your entertainment center -- that are joined in a new way, like broken into lines or bunched into stanzas. One of the most famous found poems is by William Carlos Williams:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
the were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I hope that you will try to write or "find" your own found poem today (or tomorrow or the day after that) Here is mine -- ta da:

Ants and Grasshoppers

Stop that
don't work
so hard

you make
me feel
bad like

I have
to work
too and

I just
want to
read today

Some of Elyns favorite childhood poetry

Here is a contribution from the newest Pomme Frites blogger --If I learn this poem it might just be the thing that tips the scales of ettiquette at our dinner table! Though I am not exactly sure which direction that they would tip.

The Goops

by Gillette Burgess

The Goops they lick their fingers
And the Goops they lick their knives:
They spill their froth on the tablecloth
Oh, they lead disgusting lives!
The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew;
And that is why I'm glad that I
Am not a Goop, are you?

poems especially for children

When asked who is favorite poet was, my son Tobin said "Jack Prelutsky." Prelutsky poems are pretty funny and usually come with hilarious illustrations to back them up. The younger we are when we start to enjoy poetry, the more natural it feels -- and it is pretty easy to move past "Hickory Dickory Dock" just by going to the library. The poetry is early in the 800's, dewey-decimal-wise.

Here is today's poem:
I Chased a Dragon Through the Woods, by Jack Prelutsky

I chased a dragon through the woods,
haranguing him all day.
"I'll catch you soon!" I taunted.
"You can never get away.
There's no escaping me, my friend,"
I confidently cried.
"You might as well stop running,
there is nowhere you can hide."

"I think that I will simply lop
your head off with my sword."
The dragon stopped and whirled about
and ominously roared.

"You'd better think again," he boomed,
and glared into my eyes.
"In case you hadn't noticed,
I'm a dozen times your size.
It's evident that I'd prevail
if ever we should fight,
I'm quite accomplished with my claws,
and furthermore, I bite!"

I thought about the dragons words,
and I couldn't disagree-
I chased a dragon through the woods,
and now he's chasing me.

Submission from Mom

Yesterday I received a submission of some poems by my mom. They were by her "favorite poet." (Aw shucks) A fan base of one is not such a bad start, I guess. The poem was originally written in the form of a spiral and is adapted into stanzas here. Perhaps it will be interesting to note (for those who cultivate an interest in amateur poetry) that my mother and I both broke the poem up into lines and stanzas in different ways. I hope at some point that pomme frites will be able to publish other previously unpublished works by some of its readers.

Family Rhapsody 1

Today I wore that one red shoe
The one that squeaked so loudly
when we walked together
With the dog’s claws clicking softly
And the warm and gentle wind
made wheels of fire from the tall trees.

In the velvet dark space between
them, an owl watched.
He spoke in a whisper
only I could hear,
“Can one who is lost find
a way home again?”

Promise you will watch for me.
I clutch the key to the secret garden.
Let us go together we three
And open the door
that has been shut for so long
Where Strix and the robin dance,
Where birds make their nests
in the moss on the ground,
And flowers grow
from where long ago
bones dissolved away

Where moments turn to memories
like carbon turns to diamonds
Where we can feel the sun on our skin.
Let’s go home again.
We three. Together.

October 2009

Academy of American Poets

Everyday in my inbox there is an email from the website poets.org. It is my poem of the day. These poems all seem to be very recent additions to the world of poetry -- by poets who, for the most part, are still living. Sometimes I like the poems, and sometimes I don't. However, the website has a lot of other features to help you to link up with poetry on line. Another good website for short poems is poetryoutloud.org. This particular website is an anthology of poems to memorize -- so you can search by length of poem, or by author, etc. I think that memorizing poems is great fun, but I understand that not everyone agrees. Still, it is an easy place to look up a poem you might have read before and want to read again.

The poem in my inbox today was by Rita Dove. She is from Akron, Ohio and graduated from Miami University in the 70's. She has recieved many awards and accolades, including a pulitzer in 1987. She is currently a professor at the University of Virginia. She really likes music and plays the viola da gamba and sings. In 1993, she was the first African American to be poet laureate (as well as the youngest to receive the honor.)

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna
by
Rita Dove

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn,
or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me....
The Heiligenstadt Testament

Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness

I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.

At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed —
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd's
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I
would rage again.

I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible
to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I've named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.

I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can't you see that I'm deaf? —
I also cannot stop listening.

Runcible Spoon

I was talking in the driveway the other day with R. and E. and we were wondering together about the origin of the limerick. I did some research and found that the name "limerick" has to do with a nonsense joke about traveling to Limerick the place -- while the form itself dates from before the Victorian era. It was popularised during the age of Queen Victoria by a writer called Edward Lear.

Lear was the author of the well known, if not a little old fashioned, "Owl and the Pussycat." That poem is the origin of the phrase "runcible spoon." I think that runcible spoon is a nonce word -- a word made up for an occassion (in this case the occasion of the poem.) "They dined on mince and slices of quince/ which they ate with a runcible spoon." Some think that the spork is a physical manifestation of the runcible spoon -- though some think that a runcible spoon would be more like a grapefruit spoon. Incidentally, spork is what is called a portmanteau word -- a word made from two words shoved together, to evoke a combined meaning.

Limericks are usuallly humorous and have a strict rhyming format. Sometimes a limerick can be in rather poor taste, though we like the squeaky clean ones on pommefrits, like this one here:

That I become proficient at dishes
Was one of my mother's dear wishes
though I rubbed with the cloth
almost nothing came off
Which to my mother seemed awfully suspicious

(written by yours truly) (Its so easy! Write one yourself this weekend!)

April Showers

In his poem "The Wasteland," T. S. Eliot wrote:

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
dull roots with spring rain..."

And if today's weather is any indication, he is right. Yesterday we had beautiful sunshine -- today is very blustery.

I had a great love affair with the poetry of T. S. Eliot my last year in high school. I even memorized "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Let us go then you and I/ while the evening is spread out against the sky/ like a patient etherised upon a table...) I think that something like that would seem really pretentious, except that I also knew all of the lyrics to songs like Charma Chameleon by the Culture Club -- which I really don't brag about.

I bring up T.S. Eliot only as a sidebar to today's actual offering which is, perhaps, even more widely known. In "The Waste Land," Eliot references many other poems and stories and plays. This is a common occurence in poetry; it is part of the way that poets speak to us and to each other -- by conjuring up our own memories from the common experience of literature. Just as I carry within myself, almost as part of my own thinking, those lines of Eliot's, he carried other's words within himself.

One of the really fun references in "The Waste Land" is to Ariel's Song from Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Here is the song in part:

Full Fathom Five

Full fathom five thy father lies;
of his bones are coral made;
Those are the pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
but suffer a seachange
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding Dong
Hark now I hear them -- Ding Dong Bell.

The Peace of Wild Things

Spring is the time of year when many of us step out of our front doors and reconnect with the world of fresh breezes, green shoots, and mud. I think that each of us who despairs of the winter and wishes for the sun to shine again and for the tree to be reborn is confessing to a connection with something that exists outside of walls and windows -- outside of ourselves.

In a world of climate controlled environments, the alternating gentle sunshine and lashing winds of Spring can be a hopeful reminder that we are not totally in control of our world, nor should we ever want to be. I found this poem in the back of Garrison Keillor's book, Good Poems -- there is a quote in the way back of the book with Berry's bio: "Breathe with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens."

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

a contribution for April Fool's Day by Rachel

Congratulations to Rachel for the ignominious distinction of being the first to make the blog "ours" rather than "mine."

Here is her April Fools Poem by Burges Johnson

SOAP, THE OPPRESSOR
The folks at my house half the time are thinkin' about dirt;
It sort of gives 'em horrors, an' they act as if it hurt.
The sight of just a little makes 'em daffy as can be
They're always washin' sumthin', an' half the time it's me.
It ain't because I wet my feet that gives me colds an' such;
'Tain't runnin' round that keeps me thin it's 'cause I'm washed so much.
It does no good to tell 'em, they're so stubburn. But I hope
That some day they'll discover what deceitful stuff is soap.
I tell you, very often when my hands was clean and white
I've gone along to wash 'em, 'cause it did no good to fight.
When I've stuck 'em in the basin it was plain enough to see
The soap would make the water as dirty as could be.
If folks would give me half a chance, with soap that didn't cheat,
I guess they'd be surprised to find I'm nachurally neat.
I'd take on flesh and leave off havin' colds an' such, I know,
An' no one could complain about the parts of me that show.

As my children reminded me this morning several times, today is April Fools Day. So I thought I might try for something funny. This poem by John Updike pokes fun at a busy day in the life of a scientist. One interpretation of the poem that I read said that it was a "critical look at the coldbloodedness of science." While that may be so, I think it rings even more truly as a commentary on the modern habit of being "busy doing nothing." So many things are done in the course of the poem, yet little is really accomplished. I have days like that all the time.

My favorite line in the poem is "kills a rat by ringing bells." (And by the way -- FRS means Fellow of the Royal Society)

V. B. Nimble, V. B. Quick

Science, Pure and Applied, by V. B. Wigglesworth, F. R. S., Quick Professor of Bioliogy in the University of Cambridge.
-- a talk listed in the BBC Radio Times

V.B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,
Washes, shaves and very soon
Is at the lab; he reads his mail,
Swings a tadpole by the tail,
Undoes his coat, removes his hat,
Dips a spider in a vat
Of alkaline, phones the press,
Tells them he is F.R.S.,
Subdivides six protocells,
Kills a rat by ringing bells,
Writes a treatise, edits two
Symposia on "Will man do?,"
Gives a lecture, audits three,
Has the sperm club in for tea,
Pensions off an ageing spore,
Cracks a test tube, takes some
pureScience and applies it, finds,
His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,
Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,
And, by one o'clock, is gone.

This is the first installment of Pommefrites -- to celebrate National Poetry Month which begins April 1st. The installment is funny in its own macabre way, and includes a nifty puzzle.

The following poem by Stevie Smith might seem to some a bit morbid, but I find that it serves to remind me to be a more vigilant and feeling friend.

In the accompanying painting, The Fall of Icarus, you can see Icarus only if you know where to look. That is the way it is with lots of us, as we cultivate our different mythologies about ourselves for those around us. How hard do we have to look at a person to see the genuine article. Is there an unseen Icarus somewhere in my life?

Stevie Smith -

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.