BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: POETS & POETRY

WALT WHITMAN READING "AMERICA"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZvdKjKL7hQ


W.H. AUDEN ON GIVING POETRY READINGS & LECTURES 
ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

Spirit is willing to repeat
Without a qualm the same old talk,
But Flesh is homesick for our snug
Apartment in New York.

from  "On the Circuit"
**
"As someone said, when T.S.Eliot was young his poems were middle-aged, when he was middle-aged his poems were old, and 
when he was old his poetry was posthumous."

Oscar Levant. The Unimportance of Being Oscar (New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968)

**

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POETRY & PROSE, ACCORDING TO BRENDAN BEHAN

Brendan Behan was once invited to Oxford to take part
in a debate about the difference between prose and
poetry. His opponent spoke for almost two hours. Behan
rose to his feet and promised to be brief. He recited an old
Dublin rhyme:

There was a young fella named Rollocks
Who worked for Ferrier Pollocks.
As he walked on the strand
With a girl by the hand
The water came up to his ankles.

"That," declared Behan, "is prose. 
But if the tide had been in, it would've been poetry." 

Brian McDevitt
Glenties, Co Donegal

in IRISH INDEPENDENT
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/brendan-behans-ability-to-be-succinct-was-out-on-its-own/40769558.html
**

OF POETRY AND  KITING CHECKS or WHAT IS A RHYME FOR FORGERY
 
    The following item appeared in Time magazine’s Miscellany
For January 6, 1958:
 
        In Jersey City , Samuel Silverman, 22, in jail
Awaiting trial on a check forgery charge, casually scribbled a verse that police promptly confiscated as evidence:
 
              I bounced a check,
              A cop bounced me.
              The Judge said, “Son,
              You’ll do about three.”
**
 
A POETRY READING I AM GLAD I MISSED

"The incident of the audience member screaming at the Ilkley festival when Cave Birds was performed (Other Lives, 18 September) is recollected by Philip Larkin in a June 1965 letter to Robert Conquest: “At Ilkley festival, a woman shrieked and vomited during a Ted Hughes reading. I must say that I’ve never felt like shrieking. We had the old crow over at Hull recently, looking like a Christmas present from Easter Island. He’s all right when not reading.” 

Graham Chesters
Chair, The Philip Larkin Society
**
 
ON TRYING TO FIND A RHYME FOR CLEOPATRA

To Cleopatra
I cried out: "O put Ra-
mses behind you." (At that time
I could not come up with a decent rhyme)

LJP
**

WHY ANGLO-SAXON POETRY IS UNRHYMED

"Anglo-Saxon poetry is unrhymed because the noise of the rowlocks does not suggest rhyme."
    Robert Graves

**
on WILLIAM LYON PHELPS TEACHING AT YALE

"The professor asked his students to discuss the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" technique. One young man handed in his exam reading, "Only God knows the answer to your question. Merry Christmas." Professor Phelps returned the paper after Christmas with the note, "Happy New Year. God gets an A—you get an F." 

Wikipedia
**

"I used to construe only Homer and Xenophone, but I have lately been put into Aeschylus."
                 Matthew Arnold at age 10
**
POETS & DOCTORS

"I have come to believe that it is flesh alone that counts. The rest is that which we distract ourselves when we are not hungry or cold, or in ecstasy. In the recesses of the body I search for the philosophers' stone. I know it is there, hidden in the deepest, dampest cul-de-sac. It awaits discovery. To find it would be like the harnessing of fire. It would illuminate the world. Such a quest is not without pain, who can gaze on so much misery and feel no hurt? Emerson has written that the poet is the only true doctor. I believe him, for the poet, lacking the impediment of speech with which the rest of us are afflicted, gazes, records, diagnoses, and prophesies."

Richard Selzer. Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976)


**

JOYSTICK

Poetry is not designed
To keep readers out,

Jump in & have a good time,
Wonders abound:

Talking ravens, naked giraffes,
A mariner haunted

By an albatross, evenings
Starched by moonlight,

Mansions with haunted rooms,
Slant rhymes

Odes, limericks for the asking
No joystick required

Louis Phillips


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