Skip to main content

The Young Poet Only Writes to the Academic Professor

The Young Poet Only Writes to the Academic Professor

Thanks for the Original Message.
Hell, it's 6:06 PM already and I haven't started cooking dinner.
I guess Jasmine Anderson’s email doesn’t work
and the sky is very grey over Greensborough,
just like yesterday. We'd all really like a poem from her.
She’s one of the main people on our list.

But isn't she always? Damn it!

The garden looks good with a wet path.
'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme' is like something from another time
or Time, as they say in those comics I threw in the recycler.
Let's talk about the transfer of herbs
but as the Pope has said many times
it's an apology makes a world of difference and makes the world different…
They've been saying that for some Time, Popes.
And then there's the job.
Not that they’ve actually given it to you yet,
but you’re thinking you won’t go for it when they advertise it.
A little oregano does wonders in a bolognese sauce.
Simon and Garfunkel, their version was always too sort of Why?
We must attend without going insane in the meantime,
so something has to go…
The Grand Prix? Go? Where? Singapore?

Why do they always say “It was a more innocent time”?
I'll send this thing off to Sydney and see what they do with it.

There the editors write ‘country music’ poems over coffee and tart

down the back table of the Bistro.
At least we can’t really hear the Grand Prix over here.
Here and hear in the one sentence, not sure how that works.
And how about this rain, don’t you know…

Sad lonely ‘country music’ is how they seem to want it,
that’s what they think they’re talking about.
But it could all be one big euphemism.
At least we can’t really hear the Grand Prix over here.
Here and hear in the one sentence, not sure how that works.
No more sestinas.
And how about this rain, don’t you know…

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy?

This is one of two short papers given by Philip Harvey at the first Spiritual Reading Group session for 2014 on Tuesday the 18 th of February in the Carmelite Library in Middle Park. He also gave a paper on that occasion, which can be found on the Library blog, entitled ‘A Rationale for Purgatory’ . Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls in one of her books how her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, would say that when reading poetry we can spend a great deal of time discussing what it means, but the first and main question about a poem is not what does it mean, but why was it written. That is the place to start. Here are eleven reasons that I offer quietly to help us think about this poem: Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy? You may have other reasons and these are invited. We will spend most of our time today looking at meanings, but also at why. I wrote these out as they occurred to me, so there is no priority order. 1.      He wrote the poem because of Florence. Many o
4 comments
Read more

The Walk (Seamus Heaney)

This poem was read aloud at Janet Campbell’s funeral in Hamilton in Victoria in December 2006. Janet was a great lover of poetry all her life, a great reader of poetry, and she read everything of Seamus Heaney. Indeed, when she worked in Melbourne or London bookshops Janet would grab hold of Faber pre-publication copies of Heaney if they came into the backroom, and disappear for days, copying lines onto postcards for her friends, transferring lines into her lifetime of diaries. Diaries that were also a lifeline. Janet read everything, but Heaney was one of the regulars. Seamus Heaney keeps a tight line. He is rarely though completely opaque and the way into this poem is the word ‘longshot’. We only find in the second of the two poems that we are being asked to look at two photographs. Or, at least, poems that are like photographs. Or, better still, strong memories that have taken on in the mind the nature of longshots. The two poems in one are reminders of close relationships.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Poetry of Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams delivers the twelfth John Rylands Poetry Reading last year   This is a paper given by Philip Harvey in the Hughes Room at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne on Sunday the 6 th of December as one in an Advent series on religious poets. The original title of the paper was ‘The text that maps our losses and longings’. Everything Rowan Williams says and writes reveals a person with a highly developed sensitivity to language, its force, directness, instantaneousness, its subtlety, indirectness, longevity. A person though may speak three languages fluently and read at least nine languages with ease, as he does, and still not engage with language in the way we are looking at here. Because Rowan is unquestionably someone with a poetic gift. By that I don’t just mean he writes poetry, I mean he engages with the life of words, their meanings, ambiguities, colours, their playfulness, invention, sounds. We find this in those writings of his that deliberate
Post a Comment
Read more