October 2023 – Words for lost

We found plenty of material related to this month’s theme of ‘Lost and Found’.

John Ward’s ‘The Liverpool Overhead Railway’ vividly brought to life this lost transport system, aka the “Docker’s Umbrella”, which once ran for 6 miles along the Liverpool waterfront.

‘I am’ ‘….like a memory lost’. So wrote John Clare, while incarcerated in the Northampton asylum.

At the age of 5 Elizabeth Bishop ‘lost’ her mother permanently to an asylum. The poet’s ‘One art’ is the art of losing. She finds that, in many instances, losing ‘…is no disaster’ but she struggles to apply this to the loss of her partner.

We heard a recording of Andrew Rumsey, Bishop of Ramsbury, performing his gentle song ‘It’ll come to me’. Billy Collins’ ‘Forgetfulness’, in which so much is lost from the poet’s memory, is poignant while hilarious.

Donald Hall mourns the loss of his father, a sweet memory of whom is found in a bottle of home-made ‘Maple syrup’. Visiting his father’s grave – ‘My father before me’ – , having recently lost also his mother, Clive James is resigned to his own mortality.

In ‘Isle of Skye’, our own Ken Gambles reflects on loss of parents in a poignant scene from a family holiday.

The Nobel Laureate Louise Glück died earlier this month. In the bleak ‘Lost love’, the very short life of her older sister leads to a greater loss.

In Robert Frost’s ‘The impulse’, a farmer loses his wife, but not to the grave. Another wife has walked out in Roger McGough’s ‘Mummy won’t be home for Christmas’, but this is a tale of lost and found. Its happy ending makes it sound like a Christmas pop song and indeed it was recorded by The Scaffold. The same poet’s ‘Cinders’ is movingly personal, as he reflects that his baby daughter’s adulthood will inevitably be lost to him. Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form team’ is disappointed by his (or maybe her?) life as an adult – a matter of early promise lost?

In ‘The curse of Minerva’, Byron mourns the loss of the Parthenon marbles, in a violent polemic against Lord Elgin, and Scots in general. An apparent perplexing reference to “fair Filey’s towers” looks different in print.

In John Donne’s ‘Song’ (Go and catch a falling star…), the cynical poet is sure a faithful woman can’t be found. The metrical and rhyme scheme of this poem is striking, as are its rather necromantic and folk-tale images.

‘The way through the woods’ (Rudyard Kipling, sounding like Walter de la Mare) has been long lost to nature but ghosts still find a way through. This also has a notable scheme of rhythm and rhyme.

Charlotte Mew is shocked by the loss of a long-familiar outlook in ‘The trees are down’.

‘The tooth fairy’ in Maggie Christie’s poem seems to carry out her work under duress and wonders why the lost teeth attract a payment, unlike lost blood.

Attila the Stockbroker finds ‘Harrogate’ to be something of a lost cause.

In ‘Rook shoot’ by Ted Walker, you have only to find a rookery to find an easy target.

‘Barthelemon at Vauxhall’ by Thomas Hardy tells how the eponymous violinist and composer finds in the dawn air the notes of a new hymn tune, setting the words of Bishop Ken (!).

Chris Short’s ‘Hoard’ was inspired by the ancient artefacts found in Staffordshire in 2009. You can read it on this site, with illustrations of some of the finds referred to.

Dannie Abse’s ‘Not Adlestrop’ has fun with echoes of Edward Thomas’ famous ‘Adlestrop’. In the latter, the poet finds a moment of communion with nature, while the modern reader may feel nostalgic for the loss of steam trains. In the former, which unlike the latter has no discernible scheme of rhyme or rhythm, the poet and a pretty girl find a brief but exciting connection.

Of course we could not ignore Milton’s epic ‘Paradise Lost’. We had a short extract (just 21 lines out of over 10,000…) concerning Eve’s yielding to temptation, which was still a lot longer than the telling of the same episode in Genesis (39 words).