July 2022 – Are you sitting comfortably?

We noted with sorrow the recent death of our stalwart member and founder of the group John Forster, whose poetic favourites we will celebrate at our next meeting.

We were delighted to welcome two new attendees who had ventured ‘south of the river’ to find out what we get up to.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” “And was Jerusalem built again….?” Surprisingly, these classics weren’t asked at our session on Questions.

William Blake did however feature. His ‘The Tyger’ wonders at the existence of such a beast.

Rainer Maria Rilke asks ‘What will you do, God, when I die?’ (a poem from ‘The Book of Hours’). His interesting theology has been compared to that of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

We heard extracts from TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’; beginning ‘My nerves are bad tonight…’ from A Game of Chess, and ‘Who is the third who walks always beside you…?’ from What the Thunder Said. Memorable and enigmatic images.

Wilfred Owen conjures up hellish horrors in the ferocious ‘Mental cases’. The images in the same poet’s ‘Anthem for doomed youth’ are more muted, but certainly haunting.

Charles Hamilton Sorley, another poet who died in the Great War, aged only 20, celebrates the pleasure of running in ‘The song of the ungirt runners’.

Yet another casualty of the Great War, Edward Thomas, imagines choosing wonderful gifts for his wife in ‘And you, Helen’.

UA Fanthorpe’s ‘You will be hearing from us shortly’ is funny but also unsettling. We do not hear the responses of the doomed applicant. Another uncomfortable interview is recounted in Wole Soyinka’s ‘Telephone conversation’. In this case the applicant’s voice is heard, to powerful effect.

We hadn’t time for ‘The Olchfa reading’ by Adrian Mitchell, which we have had before (as also the above UA Fanthorpe poem) at a session on Work. The questions are the splendidly inappropriate ones asked by an audience of schoolchildren.

In WH Auden’s ‘Ballad’ (Oh what is that sound…?), the tension gradually increases to the point of terror. In considerable contrast is the same poet’s cosy ‘Night mail’, which saves its question until the last line.

We had some teachings of Rumi, in the form of questions and answers. The answer to the first, ‘What is poison?’ was particularly striking.

WH Davies’ ‘Leisure’ (What is this life if, full of care…?) could be summarised in today’s terms as mindfulness. The middle verse brought to mind Wendell Berry’s image of ‘day-blind stars’, which we enjoyed in May 2022.

ee cummings’ poem beginning ‘ i thank You God’ is full of wonder for the natural world. It appears to be a rather loose sonnet.

We heard at least the first poem from Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions (Il libro de las preguntas). Playful and often surreal, these offer a feast of thought-provoking images.

Michael Longley’s ‘Birdsong’, while conjuring up the characteristic songs of various birds, seems to deal with the experience of a dementia sufferer.

In contrast, Father William is still in full possession of his amazing faculties but has soon had enough of his son’s questions, in Lewis Carroll’s hilarious ‘You are old, Father William’.

Fran Landesman’s ‘After we’ve gone’ speculates on the future and futuristic inhabitants and furnishings of her house – her imagined ‘plastic grass’ has unfortunately now very much arrived. I note that this poet, who earned the epithet ‘godmother of hip’, wrote the lyrics of ‘The Ballad of Sad Young Men’, hauntingly sung by Davey Graham on his classic album ‘Folk, Blues and Beyond’.

We heard more futuristic imaginings in Craig Raine’s ‘A Martian sends a postcard home’. We had to work out what Earthly things the Martian is describing. It is in effect a sequence of riddles.

Christina Rossetti’s ‘Uphill’ is an extended metaphor which may also be considered a riddle.

Once you’ve solved those riddles, you may like to take up our latest challenge – the ‘Questions‘ quiz.