What’s in a name….

I’ve posted here before some pictures of Michele’s stained glass compositions. Her other interest is designing jewellery – there’s a link on the blogroll to her site.

She’s often stuck for titles for her various creations, and wondered whether there were any suitable lines or descriptive phrases from poetry that might be useful.

One possibility that I found was from Drummond – “Phoebus arise,/and paint the sable skies,/with azure, white and red.” Or maybe from Shakespeare’s LLL – “They sparkle still the right Promethean fire.”

Anything referring to light or astronomical matters also make good titles – she’s recently used “Midnight shadow” and “Solar Flare” – as well as colours and textures. I’m stuck for ideas, and any suggestions would be gratefully received.

[Michele adds]: Just to clarify I thought that it would make an interesting design challenge for me to create jewellery with poetic phrases as inspiration.

haiku

I thought it would be fun to invite some more audience participation. After lengthy and detailed discussions with some patrons of the blog, the executive decision has been made to hold a haiku fiesta on the topic of “censorship” (thanks to Mishari for that suggestion).

Furthermore, “haiku” will be interpreted liberally (as will the topic) – there’s no insistence on a strict 5/7/5 format (although obviously that’s acceptable too); haiku-like is fine. I expect wiki will have some information if anyone’s still unsure about the form.

This isn’t a competition, just a bit of fun, so I hope I can encourage as many people as possible to have a go….better start the ball rolling, I suppose, although I anticipate much better efforts than this from the audience (this will be only my second ever haiku/senryu):

ten minutes to write
half a second to delete
but who has more fun?

Ghazoggerel….

I tried to write some sort of ghazal for Carol Rumens GU thread. The intention was to produce my usual sarky, cynical piece with a sour punchline but it didn’t turn out that way….heck, it’s not even a ghazal, although its influence is still reasonably obvious….

On-line

Tangling webs that we all love to weave
Practising daily our fake make-believe

Summoning spirits to speak in our name
Encouraging others to play a new game
Searching for ways to confound and deceive

Arguing, ranting, debating and quibbling
Looking for love or its more sordid sibling
Panting, romancing and hunting for Eve

Talking to those we’d pass by in the street
Making good friends we’re unlikely to meet
Clumsily offering help as they grieve

Questing for facts just to settle a quarrel
Reading hot gossip on people immoral
Proving ourselves to be rather naive

Giggling shamelessly each time we pun
Hoping that others are sharing the fun
Knowing it’s late, but you don’t want to leave

Dreaming of readers admiring our writing
Provoking our foes and enjoying the fighting
Forgetting reality, just being me

WYSINWYG….

I, a meaning, comfort you.
nearby is complexity and literal significance.
the Eden vows elide gracefully:
even now the lines emerge mindlessly ordered.
cynicism keeps evolving, reaching out for the heart,
entities proliferate reaching every tenable ecological niche:
this is overkill; unless soon….

a new day tumbles harmlessly
emitting terrible ancient light;
electrifying new transience!
dawn is something a deity values and needs;
the air glows, encouraging daybreak….

I (no other) will be existence,
leading out nations,
guiding in new births,
overcoming tired history;
calming again towards evening,
genesis over.
rejoice in earth’s seasoning….

Now you see them, now you don’t….

Here are some more plant pics, all taken in 2003 or 2004. To me they’re pretty pictures; to the two roe deer we saw in the garden this morning (a doe and last year’s fawn), they would seem to be more of a menu….we watched them for several minutes before deciding enough was enough (the doe was munching her way through a rather nice shrubby dogwood, one of the coloured stem types….)

Hedgelands, August 2004.

Airy delights….grasses and grass-like foliage were Michele’s particular thing, and a big feature here….they still are, except now not always the pretty ones….

Helenium – don’t ask me which one….a tiny nursery just up the road has a big range, from which we supped well….

Neat contrast, but again I’ve forgotten which corydalis this is….everything planted was recorded in a big book, all seed sowings recorded in another, and I was rigorous about labelling; so if this little beauty ever resurfaces I’ll probably be able to identify it….

Colour clash….says it all….

Clematis “Fair Rosamond” [sic - picture label misspelled.] One of my favourites, and a great contrast squirming through a Cotinus. Fortunately these early- to mid-season Clematis cope well with neglect. Anyone who plants one of her close relatives, C “Nelly Moser” should be shot, though; it’s one of the few plants I loathe….

Late summer hot colours….

Carpinus leaves (I forget which species; it’s one of the more uncommon ones.) One of Michele’s “arty” pictures, taken in Autumn at Batsford Arboretum. She was looking for ideas to translate into stained glass.

Pedantry (notes)*

Alas, modern poetry – I knows it well¹.
All feelings, no structure, and (of course) no rhymes.
It may not be all bad², but who can tell?
Without yardsticks³, who can measure the crimes?

Present tense, adjectives to the fore, I feel.
Get ready: this is what I feel; having felt
No more is required of me – this is real.
You want writing? Given the hand I’ve been dealt?

Here, you, read my experiences, my life;
My sad life is poetry⁴, surely enough
Interest for you; or would you wield the knife,
And mutilate this honest, heartfelt stuff?

A little wordplay wouldn’t be out of place,
Given that metre and rhyme have been eschewed.
No-one’s asking for a complete volte face⁵;
Just a short step back from preoccupation with the unmetrical lewd.⁶

And an amnesty aimed at alliteratists⁷:
I’ve never quite understood the strange appeal
Of The Dominant Letter; yet it persists
As the lone weapon in the poets’ arsenal¹⁰.

Wait! I do them a disservice – the indent’s¹¹
Also popular with the modern verser;
None here, though, the software on this blog’s too dense¹²
And I’m no advanced master of the cursor.¹³

Frankly, I might as well have written this whole thing
In prose; would have saved on paper¹⁴, all those aimless
Line-breaks are rather wasteful, and don’t really sing.
Still: a nod to the modern – let’s end rhymeless¹⁵….

*Yes, Billy: the title is a nod to Raworth, although this piece is emphatically not a parody of his, nor was it inspired by it. The rant came first, the footnotes subsequently accumulated, and then I needed a title….one which, on reflection, has little relevance to the doggerel per se….
¹As you are all aware by now, I know nothing about modern poetry (or indeed any poetry.) But why spoil a misquote, Horatio?
²Of course it isn’t; my target here is bad modern poetry (which admittedly forms a not insubstantial fraction of the whole….)
³I avoided the cheap pun – did you notice?
⁴This is projection, btw, not confession….
⁵Yes; I know….it’s an eye rhyme, OK?….I won’t make a habit of it….
⁶Disclaimer: the ridiculous length of this line reflects the author’s technical incompetence, rather than any attempt at parody.
⁷Is there such a word? If not, then I have yet another neologism to my credit….although “alliteralists” might be more elegant….
¹⁰Oh, come on – I’m allowed one slant rhyme per doggerel….and btw, I can count; I just decided on a whim to number the footnotes in base 8….why not….?
¹¹“Indentation” is the better noun, although Chambers (I’ve long thought one should more properly write Chambers’, yet no-one does) does allow “indent”….still, I’m sure I don’t need to explain the reasons for my choice here….
¹²….and now a homophone masquerades as a rhyme; ye gods, standards have slipped further than I realised….
¹³On a point of order: if one were to try to do indents (and rumours abound that there are geeky ways of achieving them on WordPress – invisible white dots, saving text as image, downloading a separate editor, etc), cursor control would play no part. But meaning is subservient to rhyme in doggerel land. Still, indent-unfriendly editing software is hardly ideal for a poetry blog¹⁶….
¹⁴Don’t get all picky; you know what I mean….
¹⁵….not only rhymeless (or rather, rhyme poor), but there’s not a single joke, pun or wordplay of any flavour here; no pretty phrasing, no allusions to canons ancient or modern; just a few crass bog-standard rhymes to season a grumpy old scroat’s rant; which is kinda the point¹⁷….
¹⁶….sorry, that should of course read “doggerel blog” (precious little poetry here, as any fule no….)
¹⁷….oh, and that I’ve finally worked out how to do superscripts²⁰ (subscripts, too, as it happens, although they weren’t needed here….)
²⁰….although they don’t seem to work in the title; hence the initial asterisk….

PS I somehow feel I’ve devoted too much time writing what can only be described (even by the standards of this blog) as a pointless exercise. Footnote play (footnotesy?) is, I know, unoriginal, and banging on about modern poetry is fogeyish rather than clever. Mea culpa. (And apologies to those who preferred to see more garden pics; soon, I promise….)

Block party….

I have written
all the doggerel
that was in
my head

and which
probably
put you off
your breakfast

Forgive me
it was atrocious
so twee
and also cynical

****

Dashes to dashes, it’s quite absurd,
Emily’s stuck for a rhyming word.
Fie! to the critics, they chortle in vain;
Dickinson’s writing “immortal” again….

****

I pondered rhyming words aloud,
But couldn’t find a match propitious.
I hope when next I spy a crowd,
The genus rhymes, unlike narcissus….

No Rime for the Ancient Gardener….

There’s a hole in my mind where a poem should lie
And the echo is driving me crazy.
My doggerel gland’s temporarily dry
(Which explains all those pictures of daisies*.)

The literary world isn’t rocked by this news
(It’s the story they wanted to hear.)
That cynicalsteve is becalmed by the blues
Is a cause for rejoicing and cheer.

But before you get carried away with delight
Spare a thought for the writer behind -
If doggerel doodoo makes bloggers take flight,
The backlog may poison my mind….

*It also explains the imprecise rhyme; I’m not intentionally going through an Emily phase….

Beards in the garden….

Two of my favourite garden residents: one ate the other….

Salvia leucantha – I had dozens of tender Salvia species, which needed a phenomenal amount of work to renew each year by cuttings. My favourite genus….I had a particular soft spot for S. confertiflora, which flowers very late (November here), and whose foliage has the most unforgettable aroma (not your typical culinary sage pong; savage and meaty). Michele hated it….

How can your heart not sing when in the cherry blossom season?

The veg patch used to be so productive….I haven’t been down there for two years….

Michele threatened me with a fate worse than death if I published this picture; but if she’s daft enough to show me how to fiddle with the picture archive….

cynicalsteve’s message to the world….

Mush, mush….