...from Zinc and a very pleasant evening with 7 of the nicest people you could hope to meet and 3 of the finest martinis you could hope to drink. Reaction to Tractors was lukewarm to say the least. It scored an average of 5.625 (thank you Lisa for the half scores). But to be fair I think it was only Lisa, Jane & myself who had actually read the book. Others had got as far as page 50 and no further (although to be fair, Kate's husband really enjoyed the book but was not in attendance to vote - maybe we should give Kate some sort of proxy vote?).
Wedecided to go for something a little shorter for our next read. A poem in fact. And not just any old poem but The Last Post by Carol Ann Duffy our newly appointed lesbian poet laureate. You can find the poem below (thereby saving you the trouble of looking for it or buying it). Its one paragraph long so I think we should all manage to actually read it this time. The next meeting will be in Grado - see http://www.heathcotes.co.uk/collection/grado/index.php (hopefully this is a link otherwise just google Grado Manchester) on 21 September (my Mum's birthday) at 1830. Let me know if you're attending and I'll book. Enjoy -
Last Post
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud ...
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori.
You walk away.
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too -
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert -
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.
You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.
Powerful stuff. See you soon. That's all. J x
6 comments:
Great choice, Jonathan. I can foresee lots of discussion here, and especially from Lisa who loves WWI poets. The poetry evenings have been more successful as a rule, I think, because we all have to comment.
And a fun evening Monday, by the way. Enjoyed it very much even if I was one of the reviled ones who hadn't read the book..
Hear Hear on the night! Really enjoyed it. Always great company. Very interesting to get everyone's personal perspectives as well.
Having a general dislike of poetry (based solely on my own not inconsiderable intellectual inadequacies at not being able to grasp most of it) I am looking forward to this one because, as Nanny says, am a big fan of Owen, Sassoon et al. I see she takes Dulce et Decorum Est almost as a starting point so will be interesting to get a modern perspective.
And I'm looking forward to getting some context on this poem as although I love it on a face value level I can see that there is more to it that I just don't understand yet... J x
For contrast we could consider Andrew Motion's poem written a few years earlier.
The Five Acts of Harry Patch
'The Last Fighting Tommy'
by Andrew Motion
I.
A curve is a straight line caught bending
and this one runs under the kitchen window
where the bright eyes of your mum and dad
might flash any minute and find you down
on all fours, stomach hard to the ground,
slinking along a furrow between the potatoes
and dead set on a prospect of rich pickings,
the good apple trees and plum trees and pears,
anything sweet and juicy you might now be
able to nibble around the back and leave
hanging as though nothing were amiss,
if only it were possible to stand upright
in so much clear light and with those eyes
beady in the window and not catch a packet.
II.
Patch, Harry Patch, that's a good name,
Shakespearean, it might be one of Hal's men
at Agincourt or not far off, although in fact
it starts life and belongs in Combe Down
with your dad's trade in the canary limestone
which turns to grey and hardens when it meets
the light, perfect for Regency Bath and you too
since no one these days thinks about the danger
of playing in quarries when the workmen go,
not even of prodding and pelting with stones
the wasps' nests perched on rough ledges
or dropped from the ceiling on curious stalks
although god knows it means having to shift
tout suite and still get stung on arms and faces.
III.
First the hard facts of not wanting to fight,
and the kindness of deciding to shoot men
in the legs but no higher unless needs must,
and the liking among comrades which is truly
deep and wide as love without that particular name,
then Pilckem Ridge and Langemarck and across
the Steenbeek since none of the above can change
what comes next, which is a lad from A Company
shrapnel has ripped open from shoulder to waist
who tells you "Shoot me", but is good as dead
already, and whose final word is "Mother",
which you hear because you kneel to hold
one finger of his hand, and then remember orders
to keep pressing on, support the infantry ahead.
IV.
After the big crowd to unveil the memorial
and no puff left in the lungs to sing O valiant hearts
or say aloud the names of friends and one cousin,
the butcher and chimney sweep, a farmer, a carpenter,
work comes up the Wills Tower in Bristol and there
thunderstorms are a danger, so bad that lightning
one day hammers Great George and knocks down
the foreman who can't use his hand three weeks
later as you recall, along with the way that strike
burned all trace of oxygen from the air, it must have,
given the definite stink of sulphur and a second
or two later the gusty flap of a breeze returning
along with rooftops below, and moss, and rain
fading over the green Mendip Hills and blue Severn.
V.
You grow a moustache, check the mirror, notice
you're forty years old, then next day shave it off,
check the mirror again - and see you're seventy,
but life is like that now, suddenly and gradually
everyone you know dies and still comes to visit
or you head back to them, it's not clear which
only where it happens: a safe bedroom upstairs
by the look of things, although when you sit late
whispering with the other boys in the Lewis team,
smoking your pipe upside-down to hide the fire,
and the nurses on night duty bring folded sheets
to store in the linen cupboard opposite, all it takes
is someone switching on the light - there is that flash,
or was until you said, and the staff blacked the window.
Did you see the front page of Saturday's Times Review
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6749972.ece
Some discussion of Carole Ann Duffy's war poetry and other war poetry.
The picture of the little boy with the soldier really captures the horror of war.
Jewels
Link seems to have gone awry so I'll try again.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6749972.ece
Jewels
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