Next Meeting - December 5 - Anna Akhmatova and Frank O’Hara

The next meeting will be at 7.30, Wednesday, December 5, at Coffee Corner. We will be looking at poems by Anna Akhmatova and Frank O’Hara, introduced respectively by Mark Shakespeare and myself. If you want to bring something other to read, feel free to do so.

I will make poems available online here & on Facebook by the beginning of next week, possibly email them out, and certainly have some available for the meeting.

As last year, I propose missing the January meeting – January 2 – and meeting for the first time in 2013 on February 6.

Stuart Masters, FRIEND

Our friendship sings of love

As Gwen’s voice has soared and swooped

Over German opera houses and Hainault halls

The children part

A Red Sea of youth embraces corridor walls

As our friend hears a bell

And rushes to the door

Outside is the lunchtime sky

For a short while there are no bells

No lesson plans

Just friendship

Which she loves like Mozart

Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss

And green, too, she loves

The colour of her voice which

Like her friendship

Always takes us to another place

Diane Shorrock, The Perfect Circle

The perfect circle

Beautiful to behold

Strayed into the land of jagged edges 

The circle was tired of perfection

And sought friendship

With the linear and sharp

A piercing of the image

The ultimate form

 Lonely in its beauty

Eager for friendship

Glided over to the equal shape

Of the singular triangle

Who with pointed head

Head butted the circle away

Bouncing from this rebuff

The beautiful circle

Found itself surrounded by

Thick war like zig-zag lines

Angry and ready for war on the shape

Of no beginning and no end

The frenzied lines began to charge

.

The circle sensing danger

With sadness of heart

Shed circular tears of sadness

 For the lost circle of friendship

That could not exist

 In the jagged edge world

Then with circular swiftness,

The circle flew high into the sky

And from above saw the Land of Lines

 In vertical disarray

Escaping the parallel lines of fury

That discharged into the sky

The circle returned home

Happy to return to the Circular Land

Of circular friendship.

Ben Jonson, Inviting a Friend to Supper

TO-NIGHT, grave sir, both my poore house, and I

Doe equally desire your companie:

Not that we thinke us worthy such a guest,

But that your worth will dignifie our feast,

With those that come; whose grace may make that seeme

Something, which, else, could hope for no esteeme.

It is the faire acceptance, Sir, creates

The entertaynment perfect: not the cates.

Yet shall you have, to rectifie your palate,

An olive, capers, or some better sallad

Ushring the mutton; with a short-leg'd hen,

If we can get her, full of eggs, and then,

Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney

Is not to be despair'd of, for our money;

And, though fowle, now, be scarce, yet there are clerkes,

The skie not falling, thinke we may have larkes.

I'll tell you of more, and lye, so you will come:

Of partrich, pheasant, wood-cock, of which some

May yet be there; and godwit, if we can:

Knat, raile, and ruffe too. How so e'er, my man

Shall reade a piece of VIRGIL, TACITUS,

LIVIE, or of some better booke to us,

Of which wee'll speake our minds, amidst our meate;

And I'll professe no verses to repeate:

To this, if ought appeare, which I know not of,

That will the pastrie, not my paper, show of.

Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will bee;

But that, which most doth take my Muse, and mee,

Is a pure cup of rich Canary-wine,

Which is the Mermaids, now, but shall be mine:

Of which had HORACE, or ANACREON tasted,

Their lives, as doe their lines, till now had lasted.

Tabacco, Nectar, or the Thespian spring,

Are all but LUTHERS beere, to this I sing.

Of this we will sup free, but moderately,

And we will have no Pooly, or Parrot by;

Nor shall our cups make any guiltie men:

But, at our parting, we will be, as when

We innocently met. No simple word

That shall be utter'd at our mirthfull board

Shall make us sad next morning: or affright

The libertie, that wee'll enjoy to-night.

Frank O’Hara, For Janice and Kenneth to Voyage

Love, love, love,
honeymoon isn’t used much in poetry these days
and if I give you a bar
of Palmolive Soap
it would be rather cracker-barrel
of me, wouldn’t it?
The winds will wash you out your hair, my dears.
Passions will become turrets, to you.
I’ll be so afraid
without you.
The penalty of the Big Town
is the Big Stick,
yet when you were laughing nearby
the monsters ignored me like a record-player
and I felt brilliant
to be so confident
that the trees
would walk back to Birnam Wood.
It was all you, your graceful white smiles
like a French word, the one for nursery, the one for brine.