193 Is That a Poem?

In August 2020, I wrote about the Queen’s English Society (QES). Click to See  

I make occasional contributions to its quarterly magazine, Quest.  Most articles published in Quest are serious forays into aspects of the English language such as the use of punctuation or the seeming demise of the apostrophe.  

My offerings are always of a much lighter tone than the others such as how much I hate Scrabble or how I abhor the use of phrases like “twenty-four/seven” and “any time soon.”  I’ve had 22 pieces published so far and the feedback that appears after any of them shows that the Quest readers have spotted that I am not a serious, intellectual man of letters.

About two years ago, the QES introduced a quarterly poetry competition.  I have found this event to be somewhat problematic.  The first difficulty I encountered was working out, what is a poem?

I’ve always thought that a poem is a piece of writing in which the words are arranged in a way that conveys information, emotion, and above all, has rhythm or pattern.

I don’t believe that rhyme is essential in a poem although I do feel that rhyme or assonance can add to the beauty of poetry.  I very much enjoy reading “Poem in October” by Dylan Thomas and I have found that its rhythm is improved by reading it to myself in an imagined Welsh accent.

After reading the QES winning poems in the early competitions, I realised that my idea of what a poem is differs from that of the judge.

Theft  

By the time I return, he’s in love  

with someone else. They live  

in a garden with clothes lines  

flapping, the sound of children.  

He sits there, sketching,  

delicious slivers of drawing.  

She leans on her elbows,  

watching. They can’t see me.  

I creep round the edges.  

One of their children  

has lost a blue shoe, I find it  

under a rose bush, I pick it up,  

it’s mine now. Mine.  

This is a winning “poem” according to the QES judge but I find it pretentious and poorly punctuated prose with random line-length.  It is not a poem – in my opinion.

No one lives in a garden and clothes lines can’t flap. The comma after ‘flapping’ should be a full stop but then, ‘The sound of children.’ isn’t a sentence.  

Why the comma after ‘sketching’ and what on earth is ‘a sliver of drawing.’?  There should be full stops after ‘shoe’ and ‘bush’.

Why do poems with rhyme seem to be so out of fashion nowadays?  £5,000 was awarded to the winning poem in the latest Poetry Society national competition.  The whole thing is 26 lines long.  Here are the first six:

The Time I was Mugged in New York City

I told people that the travel sickness pills
made me stupid. I entered JFK with a red
suitcase and no one to greet me. A man
came up to me, dressed in black. I found
myself in a car park by an expensive van
and he was holding my luggage. Get in, he said. 

How on earth can that piece of prose be described as a poem?  It has neither rhythm nor pattern and certainly no rhyme.  Remove the random line length and it no longer even pretends to be a poem:

The Time I was mugged in New York City

I told people that the travel sickness pills made me stupid. I entered JFK with a red suitcase and no one to greet me. A man came up to me, dressed in black. I found myself in a car park by an expensive van and he was holding my luggage. Get in, he said. 

£5,000?  WTF!

I have never been tempted to write a poem on the QES competition’s set theme.  I don’t think much of set themes.  

No one ever said to Keats anything like, “John, I would really like you to write a poem about the song of the Nightingale.  Can you get something to me by end of the month please?”  

No, Keats was inspired by hearing its song while sitting in a garden in Hampstead.  I think it’s interesting that the word “Nightingale” doesn’t appear anywhere in the 80 lines of the poem.  I wonder if it would have had the lasting world-wide acclaim and admiration if Keats had titled it “Ode to a Pigeon” rather than “Ode to a Nightingale”.

During Covid, I was moved to write a poem.  It is actually a parody of “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” by W B Yeats.

Yeats imagined the thoughts of an Irish airman who had volunteered to fight for the United Kingdom during the first world war.  

Ireland gained independence in 1921 and in 1918, when that poem was written, no Irishman would sign up to fight out of loyalty or patriotism to the UK.  The airman just wanted to fly.

This is Yeats’ first verse:

I know that I shall meet my fate 

Somewhere among the clouds above; 

Those that I fight I do not hate, 

Those that I guard I do not love; 

My version was written as a result of a trip to Tesco when I (and everyone else within 40 miles) heard that they had toilet rolls in stock.

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere in Tesco’s push and shove.

Those that I barge, I do not hate

Those that I don’t, I do not love.

My shopping is just essential

And will only fill two small bags.

Their urge to buy seems exponential

Topped up with toilet rolls and fags.

No rise in price could bring them grief

Nor driving rain keep them away.

It was all done through gritted teeth 

I ventured forth that dreadful day.

I balanced all, brought all to mind.

Was it all really so worthwhile

To find the worst in humankind

By standing in a Tesco aisle?

Most songs, especially those written more than 50 years ago, are melodic poetry and many have haunting memorable tunes. 

Here are the first two verses of ‘You Belong to Me”.  It was written in 1952 and despite the final line of every verse being perhaps a little threatening, it is basic poetry.

See the pyramids along the Nile 
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me.

See the marketplace in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
Just remember when a dream appears
You belong to me.

Virtually all the lyrics of the Beatles’ songs have a fundamental poetic element to them.  This is the first verse of “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You”, one of their earliest songs from 1964.

I don’t want to kiss or hold your hand

If it’s funny try and understand

There is really nothing else I’d rather do

‘Cos I’m happy just to dance with you.

Modern songs just aren’t the same.  Here is the opening passage of “Shape of You”, Ed Sheehan’s best-selling song, ever.  It spent 14 weeks at Number 1, and its total combined sales at the moment stand at 5.09 million:

The club isn't the best place to find a lover
So the bar is where I go
Me and my friends at the table doing shots
Drinking fast and then we talk slow
Come over and start up a conversation with just me
And trust me I'll give it a chance now
Take my hand, stop, put Van the Man on the jukebox
And then we start to dance, and now I'm singin' like

See what I mean?  

You probably can't remember the tune either.

19. Hesperody

I am elated.  I’ve written a poem!  Yes, I have, a real poem that rhymes and everything.  At the moment I feel like someone waking up after a bang on the head and finding they had acquired the ability to play the piano.  After all these years, I’m a poet!

I know virtually nothing about poetry but I’ve been on the Internet all morning and so now I am an expert.  The Internet’s great, isn’t it?  I think I’m going to set myself the task of becoming an expert on a different topic every day before lunch.

On April 4^th in Poetry in the raw, I quoted something written by WH Auden. 

“A bit pretentious,” I expect you were thinking.  “What’s a Philistine like Wilton doing quoting a poet?”

I’m going to tell you about someone who dwarfs Auden, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Keats and perhaps even, Pam Ayres.  

This is the opening verse to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a song written in 1931, with lyrics by Desmond Carter and performed by Al Bowlly.

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick.

Brunswick is in Germany.

Long ago, seemed as though

The town was getting verminy.

Desmond Carter is largely forgotten now and was never classified as a poet but his lyrics in this song and in those he wrote for many of the songs composed by George Gershwin, are sheer poetry.  Al Bowlly was a jazz singer and crooner who is mostly forgotten now too.

Okay, so Carter used Robert Browning’s opening line of The Pied Piper of Hamelin but look what he did with it!  He turned it into a thing of joy.  Fantastic!  If you can’t think of a rhyme, make up a word. Can you think of a word to rhyme with Germany?   I can’t.   

Carter did what Shakespeare did but Shakespeare’s inventions were necessary for the narrative and not for rhyme.  Desmond Carter was certainly no Shakespeare but he couldn’t half put a few words together.  

Shakespeare has been credited with inventing more than three thousand words and many may surprise you: blanket, generous, critic, educate, worthless, exposure, investment, noiseless, arouse, obscene.   Shakespeare even invented the word ‘torture’.   Hard to believe it - but he did.  (Don’t argue.  It says so on the Internet.)

The Spanish Inquisition was in its full throes during Shakespeare’s time.  It is possible that one day, guards walked into the cell of an accused man and said something like,

“Enough pussyfooting around.  We’re going to try something we’ve heard about from England.   It’s called torture.”

Except, they wouldn’t have said, “pussyfooting” because that word wasn’t created until the early 20^th Century.  (The Internet again)

The World Champion at creating and inventing words has to be Robert Burns.  In some of his poems, he made up a word at the end of a line for no reason at all and then had to create another word just to get a rhyme.  Just because he put an apostrophe in front of, in the middle of, or after a word doesn’t make it Scottish dialect!  There you are - I’ve said it - Burns’ poems are gibberish. 

Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flainen,

Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen!

If those two lines from ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ aren’t total tosh, what is?  Burns’ apologists will try and tell you that ‘creeshie’is dialect for ‘greasy’, that ‘flainen’ is ‘flannel cap’ and that ‘hunder’ is ‘hundred’.  That means that as well as being a rubbish poet, Burns was also dyslexic.  He couldn’t spell ‘snow’ or ‘hundred’ but he could spell ‘white’ and ‘seventeen’?  Do me a favour!

Ah, that’s better.  I feel like the little boy who shouted out that the Emperor was naked.  Maybe it’s time for a complete reappraisal of Burns’ work and worth.  

I will be seeing Dugald and Joyce in a couple of hours and I will ask them what a ‘sark’ is.  Dugald wears a kilt occasionally and plays the bagpipes, often at the same time.  If they don’t know what a ‘sark’ is, I shall rest my case.  

I know that William Topaz McGonagall, derided today as the worst published poet there has ever been, would never have written nonsense like that.­­­  To deride McGonagall’s poems as the worst ever, is a dreadful slur.  His poems are all (unintentionally) entertaining.

What is the point of poetry?  It is not just for words to have the beauty and capacity to move us to deep feelings and emotion.  Poets are not solely charged with forming beautiful structures with words.  Another function of poetry is to entertain and that is exactly what the poems of William Topaz McGonagall do for whatever reason.  “The phrase “It’s so bad it’s good” was made for McGonagall.

I defy you to read any of his poems without smiling or maybe, sniggering more than once.  This is a verse from  ‘Beautiful Torquay’:

There is also a fine bathing establishment near the pier,

Where the tourist can bathe without any fear;

And as the tourists there together doth stroll,

I advise them to visit a deep chasm called Daddy’s Hole.

Or this, from ‘Descriptive Jottings of London’:

St Paul’s Cathedral is the finest building that I ever did see;

There’s nothing can surpass it in the city of Dundee

Wonderful!  If I had to spend ten minutes in a dentist’s waiting room, I’d rather read a couple of McGonagall’s poems than anything by Burns.   McGonagall also came up with this striking moral couplet:

For the stronger we our houses do build, 

The less chance we have of being killed.

You can’t argue with that.  An MP, intent on standing out from the crowd, could use it during questions to the Prime Minister:

“Would my Right Honourable friend agree with me, that the stronger we our houses do build, the less chance we have of being killed?”

Barratts, the house builders, should adopt it as their motto.  

All Burns has left us with really, is a dreary old song that is only ever sung when people are rolling around drunk at midnight on New Year’s Eve.   I have warmed to him a little recently upon discovering that he did write a couple of poems that contain very strong language indeed.  The first one that I came across is composed of two verses with four short lines per verse.  In that limited space, he has managed to include the ‘C’ word twice. 

Here is my poem.  I knocked out this ode to Caroline.  It took me nearly five minutes.  Do you think she’ll like it?

This morning when I spake with thee, 

Your face and laughter seemed to be,

A glimpse of temp’ry ecstasy.

Your mind and being, called to me

In affirmation of our love.

It matters not when melody,

Doth changeth into rhapsody, 

And plays with sense as remedy;

Will increased vibrant hesperody

Outwing a soaring, joyous dove?

I’m impressed with my first ever poem for these reasons:

1)	It looks like a poem.
2)	Five lines to a verse – much classier than four.
3)	It has the random and exotic punctuation that always occurs in proper poems.
4)	There is a pretentious contraction that an established poet might use, ‘temp’ry’,
5)	It sort of rhymes.
6)	It’s got a couple of archaic words.
7)	There is a kind of flow to it.
8)	It contains an invented word (hesperody).
9)	The second verse appears to everyone to be unintelligible bollocks but most really good poems are, aren’t they?
10)	There should never an odd number in a list.

However, the second verse is not unintelligible bollocks.   It all hinges on the meaning of ‘hesperody’ (pronounced, I have decided, “Ess-per-dee”) and as I invented it, ‘hesperody’ can either mean what I say it means, or it may mean whatever the reader wants it to mean.  I’ve decided to allow that too.   Consequently, it is now the most versatile word in the English language. 

It’s a Humpty Dumpty word. 

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

My “poem” will have different meanings depending upon the mood you are in when you read it.  To some people, ‘hesperody’ could be a feeling similar to the bitterness, anger and resentment felt when you were kept waiting for over FOUR minutes standing in the POURING RAIN in a supermarket car park because your wife, who had the car keys, had stopped UNDER COVER to gossip with a friend she met on her way out – (possibly).  

Alternatively, you might interpret ‘hesperody’ as the feelings you have from glimpsing an object such as a delicate crystal glass bowl, loosely filled with wild flowers picked alongside a dusty rural lane in late summer, while walking through the Suffolk countryside among the ripened, swirling, golden wheat fields and with the sound of a solitary skylark touching you to your very soul, trilling in the sky above. 

Actually, my inspiration as I wrote it, was a neighbour’s car alarm going off.

My first and only other poem was written in March 1966 when I was a student in my first year at Durham.  When founded in 1832, Durham University only had Cambridge and Oxford as models and so copied most of their practices.  I lived in college and we all had rooms on a staircase.  I and about 20 other first year students, including five friends whom I still have to this day, lived on B Stairs in Hatfield College. 

There were two doors to every room and the outer door, The Oak, was closed when the person inside was not, under any circumstance, to be disturbed.  Anyone in this situation was said to, “Have his Oak up.”  (No!  Stop it!  Behave yourself.)

I used to put my Oak up every Saturday night at about 3:00 a.m. when I went to bed.  I could sleep all Sunday morning.   Up at 11:00, Ryvita and marmite for breakfast and then walk down to The Shakespeare for a couple of pints before Sunday lunch back in college.  

The Bedder on B Stairs of Hatfield College was Susan Dinsdale-Davis.   She would begin work at around eight on a Sunday morning, go into every one of the twelve rooms on our Staircase, clean, tidy, wash up cups and plates and make the bed.   Yes, we were spoilt.

Mrs D-D used to get very pissed off with those of us who still had our Oaks up at 11:00 a.m. because obviously, she couldn’t come in to do her work.   She wasn’t even allowed to knock on the door if the Oak was up. 

She was a lovely lady and I felt very bad at the way we took her for granted.  I wrote her a poem to try and make her feel better and also in lieu of an apology.   I think it reads now like a rip-off of someone, possibly A A Milne. 

Mrs Dinsdale-Davis came to tea

With all her friends and her family.

They sat in rows of ascending height

And everything was perfectly right,

That memorable day, now when would it be

Mrs Dinsdale-Davis came to tea?

It wasn’t a Monday or Thursday they came.

They couldn’t come Tuesday and that was a shame,

As Tuesday’s teas are often auspicious 

And the scones on a Friday are always delicious.

But it wasn’t a Friday, so when would it be

Mrs Dinsdale Davies came to tea?

Billy and Jamie and Annie were sick

When Mister D showed them a conjuring trick.

It wasn’t real magic but kids are naïve. 

They didn’t see teaspoons stuffed up his sleeve.

But, oh how they cheered, now when would it be

Mrs Dinsdale-Davis came to tea?

Was it on Saturday?  Couldn’t have been.

Nor on a Wednesday, as then our routine

Is off to play rugby, so all that remain

Is one day a week when I can entertain;

So, it was a SUNDAY!  That’s when it would be

Mrs Dinsdale-Davis came to tea.

And very nice it was too.

Dugald will probably tell me that it is closer to something by McGonagall than anything by Burns.  It was the best I could do but I suppose that McGonagall used that excuse too. 

Bugger!  It’s seven hours later.  Dugald and Joyce have just left.  They did know what a ‘sark’ is and described it in rather more detail than I thought was really necessary.  

Show offs!