What's in your basket?

I happened to come across a very wonderful blast from the past this week, when I stumbled upon Michael Mackmin, in a supermarket. When I remarked on the pomegranates in his basket he was able to relate their literary significance:


Proserpina was the daughter of Demeter and was, while picking flowers
in Sicily, carried off to Hades by Dis (king thereof).
As a child I liked the picture of this, for some obscure to me, then,
reason, in the Children's Encyclopaedia - possibly not unrelated to the
swish of thin robes, bare toes etc. Dis knew that he'd only get to
keep her there if he could make her eat. In the end, just before she
was rescued ( and after her mother had wandered up and down the earth
for six months creating sorrow and desolation and winter) she was
persuaded to eat, and managed a meal of six pomegranate seeds. So she
had to be Dis' wife for six months and could return to the upper earth
for the other six. Thus explaining spring.
See also W. Shakespeare, Winter's Tale,

O Proserpina
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon - daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes...............


Not surprising, in the slightest, because Michael is the editor of the wonderful poetry magazine in England called The Rialto. See their website: www.therialto.co.uk, better still buy the magazine it is one of the best literary mags in the land (and still financed by The Arts Council). I hope Michael will look kindly on my return to poesy if that is what I achieve this year. The episode in the supermarket made shopping a discovery and gave another spin on this time of the year: from Eliot to Mackmin in one leap. The Ides of March next perhaps, now who can help me on that road to discovery?

Winter in Wells, Norfolk

After the hint of doom and gloom in last week's entry, look at this for an uplighting sight. Yes, the seals have come out in Wells, here in the UK, for a bit of people watching. What you can't see, is the other side of the camera, where an orderly line of people has gathered to see this wonderful sight. Seal mums with their cubs in the milky sunlight. Enough to bring-out the poet in everyone.

This is also the week where Jennifer had an eye op to remove a cyst. Painful, yes, but what a place to test the clarity of vision.

So I declare that Spring is here, and I am moved to write a line or two:

Stretch your finger, cup your hand,

break the mercury in the sand:

each rounded pool of light

lets us determine what is right.

New shoots, new beginnings...

I am reminded, at this time of the year, of spring to come through the crispness of winter. T S Eliot was not too keen on April:

 

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

 

In my first published poem I saw it like this:

 

Father come to me, watch the black stare

of green eyes: falling winter lays dread

upon thought of spring.

 

I think it's all to do with knowing what's coming; but surely the inevitably of life needn't be the dullness of life?

 

As I said in my last blog, I haven't been writing new stuff as much as I should; and this year that is what I want to do. Be a wellspring to myself. Use Pound as my beacon. Why Pound, well he used the process of creativity in writing as a life-long study, mantra and occupation. He couldn't write a letter without seeing that as a creative exercise. No 'Dear....' for him. Here's his opening to Wyndham Lewis:

 

Cher VVwvyndammmn

 

Makes us rethink the email, possibly?

 

As it happens I'm just about to plant some fruit bushes, so whatever, I will see some new beginnings.

 

It is also our granddaughter's birthday tomorrow: she is 5 years old. What a stage in life. To think, Mozart had written his first piece of music but then. No pressure!

 

Let me end, by going back to what I wrote as a biog piece in 1966 when the "Father...' poem was published:

 

Contemporary poetry should be: purity of word with scarcity of evaluation.

 

Until next time: keep planting.

 

 

Happy New Year to you, and you, and you, and you...

Here we go again. A grand start. A run at it with no clothes on. Or the dregs of yesteryear, as a reflux.

 

What say you?  I say; more & better. Well, time is running out, as many a soothsayer has been saying.

 

More writing, for me. Not difficult, seeing as I have had a dose of the block for quite some time. I need an incentive; and not just a special occasion which trumpets words of an echoing kind.

 

No,  real words that get-up the nostrils and make you snort.

 

Don't know if blogs are good enough for that. Far too ethereal. Might have to go back to real words, on real paper, in real books; for someone to realise in later life.

 

But for now, a dinger ling on the bell of life. There, off you go. Wave as you wiz by.