You know what that last post was a load of balls. I feel as if I `m a mile underwater and I started writing before I had something to say. It was never going to be good . That’s the problem with this blogging thing sometimes you aren’t inspired. I am reading Ted Hughes at the moment , re reading I should say and the first pome in the collection( by Simon Armitage another good poet) is The Thought Fox. I was looking glumly at the last slab dullness and it reminded me that sometimes you have to wait. I `m sure almost everyone in the world knows this but in case anyone does not …THE THOUGHT-FOX
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
The key point of the poem is when the Fox appears not as distant , almost imagined but real and pungent .Ted Hughes suddenly switches to a surprising description of the olfactory sensation of Fox. The idea is in your head.
Now that would be nice.......
Update: as some people have bothered to post below feel abit mean about this remark. I`m afraid the truth of CU`s critique rather struck me .
"A ring of truth in some parts, nonesense in others; much like the source material." I was thinking you have to start with an idea not look at some information and hope it looks like one. Its odd isn`t how most people settle down to a niche and do their thing . I still haven`t decided exactly what I am going to do with this.No doubt the answer is creeping about in the darkness as I write.
Blimey I get dull when I have a cold
24 comments:
If you can read Hughes with a straight face after all the Private Eye parodies, you are a more serious individual than I am.
I think that goes without saying anyway C I can imagine though.
He`s one of my faves nonetheless
He was a git.
Yes he was wasn`t he Phillipa . Odd how that happens I suppose that wasthe subject of Amadeus , how an undeserving vessel may have a gift aa better man does not
Ted Hughes is not going to get you through tomorrow. I have seen him recite his stuff in Cambridge, wish I had had the nerve to ask him about his life and write about it. I'm still desperately trying to find the time to read "A Lover Of Unreason". How can a woman possibly kill herself and her child because of a man? I have Sylvia Plath's letters to read too, you are now inspiring me to foresake my blogging and read, read, read instead, retreat to my former life.
You have inspired me to dive into my collection of Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, I'm sure you have them too. But I do also adore Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood", especially the Richard Burton version.
Goodnight Mr Pugh, from Myfanwy Price.
I saw him reciting at the Southbank one lunchtime Ellee. I didn`t know much about his private life then and I`m not really a writer biography sort of chap.
I am quite pleased with myself I`ve been reading a lot recently. Its because the TV is now so bad I can`t stand it anymore
I remember John Martyn's Mrs talking of how people would write to say how his songs inspired love and really touched them (they are touching) and that actually he was a git and as a husband was pretty awful. Also of James Taylor's success with Carol King's 'You've got a friend' but his time with his wife Carly Simon wasn't so succesful professionally. His second album, Sweet Baby James, was a massive success, buoyed by the single "Fire and Rain", a song about his experience in an asylum and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr. Perhaps real happiness is about the mundane and the highs we enjoy in poetry and song just can't be maintained on a day-to-day basis. We'd be exhausted. When I asked my english teacher if T.S.Elliot really sat down and deliberately constructed all those literary allusions (yep, he probably did) she answered, and I took it that, that the poem is not important for what it was meant to be but what it is. And when you taste the rain or turn the light off it is your taste and your darkness, not mine. Perhaps these gits produce metaphors for our own feelings, not theirs.
Sorry I'm waffling now. Time for bed said Zeberdee!
Carol king is afvourite of mine as is TS Elliot P, I think i know what you mean.The essay ,"The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthe and otner structuralist stuff got dif of the author boigraphy error
You have too much time on your hands Mr N. - I suggest a riduclous, expensive and time consuming hobby as the way forward! Say nude golf, or speed boats, or space exploration...
I haveno time on my hands Mut and unless I start spending less time doing this I will find myself unemployed
Happy Valentine's Day, is Mrs N a happy bunny?
Happy Valentine, love.
Still sore but I love you.
Yikes N- as posted below I was genuinely impressed at your ability to wend many points into an article.
errr...have you seen how short my posts are?
Worry not CU I `m not precious about that sort of thing , not the tiniest bit.
What you said was quite right . I don`t want to get into sourcing out of the way stuff because
a its difficult
b I wanted to do an accessible chat about the news
BUT thinking about it , it seems to me that you have to add something more of your own
If I thought you were talking bollocks I would say so.Instead I was thinking about ways to improve.
Theres no harm in that. Even if it is a silly hobby you want to do it as well as you can.Otherwise its no fun.
Well I liked this thread and the original post immensely. Not dull at all when bunged up with cold.
The rebel inside me wants to publish the foulest lymeric I know here, but that's one for the vault along with the Lubbock joke. You see, it would be a bit like taking a whoopee cushion into a cathedral - great fun at the time but I'm sure I'd feel much diminished afterwards.
Such inner turmoil this blogging lark.
Oh come on K out with it !!!.I must tell you this true story though. I was visting St. Peters in Rome with Mrs. N and we were with a coach party of Americans (it was cheap)
One of the US women touched the christ figure in the inner bit and it wobbled. I watched in horror as , in the middle of the sea of quietly prayerful muttering ,the worst acciedent ever ,unfolded. It wobbled and wobbled and ..didnot fall.
When we got outside I thought I must have imagined it and I said to the woman "Did you nearly push that cross over"
She burst into tears she had been in a sort of catatonic shock ever since.
Not a great tale I suppose but it was spellbinding for that second or two
Oh come on K out with it !!!.I must tell you this true story though. I was visting St. Peters in Rome with Mrs. N and we were with a coach party of Americans (it was cheap)
One of the US women touched the christ figure in the inner bit and it wobbled. I watched in horror as , in the middle of the sea of quietly prayerful muttering ,the worst acciedent ever ,unfolded. It wobbled and wobbled and ..didnot fall.
When we got outside I thought I must have imagined it and I said to the woman "Did you nearly push that cross over"
She burst into tears she had been in a sort of catatonic shock ever since.
Not a great tale I suppose but it was spellbinding for that second or two
Being a little too self-critical, N. People come here for your wide-ranging wit and sharp line in electicism.It's like a refuge from all the mind numbing flame wars/"blogging about blogging" that seems to currently infect much of the blogosphere. Alas. Let me put it this way -anyone who can attract 20 ish comments in response to a post about Ted Hughes, is a fairly gifted blogeur in my book. That said, wouldn't short, sharp bouts of daily blogging be a lot easier on your constitution?
I had to re-read that a couple of times. I think that was heartless of you (ha ha) But yes, funny.
No I refuse to tell the lymeric which I heard at an Ivor Biggun gig and it involves a Rabbi called Keith and the subject of circumcision. It is really gross - I may put it on the PHITCH blog but even there ??
Here's another true story instead:
I was on night-shift one Easter and decided to volunteer for the last hour of the vigil preceeding the dawn service at the church. I entered the church which was in total silence and pitch darkness - as I made my way accross the stone floor my railway boots made a funny squeaking noise and I couldn't stop giggling. Then I bumped my shin on a pew (I couldn't see) and muttered "F*** !! Jeeeesus Christ !" my how it hurt. I sat in a pew for ten minutes meditating and as the sun came up this Gregorian chanting started. The whole choir had been sitting in the darkness behind me at the time and I hadn't known.
Well I wanted to try to do an article once or twice a week or something approximating to it ,rather than a daily thing.
I prefer other peoples daily blogs really and I don`t see what I could add.
K- Brilliant. I`ve got a similiar story but it will have to wait . Duty calls .
I remember Ivor Biggun ( and the red nosed burglars)ho ho that dates you.
Gotta go
Can someone leave me a message. I am so alone.
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