Oh! It's so sad and sweet.
My daughter is 10. She's pretty good at short stories. She's even written a novelette! Her poetry is mostly about what she knows - Me, her family, friends, dreams. She's learning the different types. It's so sweet.
Oh, thank you! Aren't you sweet! Writing is one of her best talents and I will definitely be encouraging it! Gotta say g'night!
I enjoy a bit of poetry I suppose Robert Service is the stuff I delve into most, stirring stuff.
I've just posted a 1 off quiz of first lines that I did for another site.
Back to the game.
stanza
One Night Stanza (the title of our pub poetry readings; I lost all mine when my computer crashed terminally!
)
I once met Simon Armitage and some snotty Lavinia woman at an event called One Night Stanza. I was among the first to hear Armitage's poem, Gooseberry Season, which I'll type up now-- this will be the poem's web-première, despite having been written 10 years ago at least. I like it, apart from the 'philosophy' in the forth stanza.
Which reminds me. He appeared
At noon, asking for water. He'd walked from town
after losing his job, leaving a note for his wife and his brother
and locking his dog in the coal bunker.
We made him a bed
and he slept till Monday.
A week went by and he hung up his coat.
Then a month, and not a stroke of work, a word of thanks,
a farthing of rent or a sign of him leaving.
One evening he mentioned a recipe
for smooth, seedless gooseberry sorbet
but by then I was tired of him: taking pocket money
from my boy at cards, sucking up to my wife and on his last night
sizing up my daughter. He was smoking my pipe
as we stirred his supper.
Where does the hand become the wrist?
Where does the neck become the shoulder? The watershed
and then the weight, whatever turns up and tips us over that razor's edge
between something and nothing, between
one and the other.
I could have told him this
but didn't bother. We ran him a bath
and held him under, dried him off and ressed him
and loaded him into the back of the pick-up.
Then we drove without headlights
to the country boundary,
dropped the tailgate, and after my boy
had been through his pockets we dragged him like a matress
across the meadow and on the count of four
threw him over the border.
This is not general knowledge, except
in gooseberry season, which reminds me, and at the table
I have been known to raise an eyebrow, or scoop the sorbet
into five equal portions, for the hell of it.
I mention this for a good reason.
I lost all my own work for the last 4 years.
Leaves of grass - here today gone tomorrow - in the end is the beginning etc.
Playing gooseberry
I'm really glad for you and her.