Umbrellas

It's been a busy end to Sunday. I've just send Boyne Berries 20 to the printer, to be printed. I hope all will be well with it. I'm delighted that former editor of The Meath Chronicle, Ken Davis, will launch the magazine.

Issue three of Three Drops from a Cauldron is now online and includes my poem Endymion Calls to the Moon which is apt considering the supermoon of the last couple of days. It's an older poem and I'd been reading John Keats' poetry at the time;

A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.   Endymion Book 1, Keats   My mum is always likely to quote something at you and these lines are oft repeated. Usually I now say: "Really, do you think so?"   What else, oh I saw a movie today called A Date for Mad Mary which was kinda cool. And it rained, that's where the umbrella comes into this, and I thought the streets looked romantic in the rain.   Laters!

Seascapes and Angels

Ivan Guaderrama Contemporary Angel

 



Back to Elizabeth Bishop today and I really should get a copy of her collected poems.

Seascape

 

This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels,
flying high as they want and as far as they want sidewise
in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections;
the whole region, from the highest heron
down to the weightless mangrove island
with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings
like illumination in silver,
and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots
and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture
where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower
in an ornamental spray of spray;
this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope:
it does look like heaven.
But a skeletal lighthouse standing there
in black and white clerical dress,
who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better.
He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet,
that that is why the shallow water is so warm,
and he knows that heaven is not like this.
Heaven is not like flying or swimming,
but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare
and when it gets dark he will remember something
strongly worded to say on the subject.

 

Elizabeth Bishop

Juniper

I was looking for the names of autumn berries and came across this poem, which is too cute not to share.

Winter Sleep

 

When against earth a wooden heel

Clicks as loud as stone on steel,

When stone turns flour instead of flakes,

And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,

When the hard-bitten fields at last

Crack like iron flawed in the cast,

When the world is wicked and cross and old,

I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

 

Little birds like bubbles of glass

Fly to other Americas,

Birds as bright as sparkles of wine

Fly in the nite to the Argentine,

Birds of azure and flame-birds go

To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:

They chase the sun, they follow the heat,

It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!

It's not with them that I'd love to be,

But under the roots of the balsam tree.

 

Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr

Is lined within with the finest fur,

So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house

Of every squirrel and mole and mouse

Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather,

Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together

With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,

Sweeter than anything else in the world.

 

O what a warm and darksome nest

Where the wildest things are hidden to rest!

It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep,

Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!

 

Elinor Wylie

Kite

Hey blog just popping in while my vegetable soup cooks. Boyne Berries 20 has gone to the printer for a second proof. I tried to rush an edit this morning but then a number of errors cropped up so I walked away and came back later and there were no problems at all.

I'd fun today flying a kite, among other things.  I think I might have a new poem so I'm going to try and write it, a bit, next.

A KITE IS A VICTIM

By Leonard Cohen
From: The Spice-Box of Earth
March 1965

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won’t give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you’ve written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don’t let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

Boyne Berries 20 First Proof

Voila! Voici le premier projet de la revue, aka the first draft of BB20. I'm fairly happy with it, aside from some margins to be changed and making sure things match up.

Just a note to anyone who has not received a reply to their submission to be mindful that Boyne Berries 21 has not been finalised yet and you can expect a reply in the coming weeks. Thanks for being patient.

The Boyne Writers' Group will resume their fortnightly meetings this Thursday at 8 p.m. in The Castle Arch Hotel, Trim.



Three Drops from a Cauldron

Triple Goddess, Maid, Mother, Crone

 

Three Drops from a Cauldron is a fortnightly web journal. I'm pleasantly surprised tonight to have a poem accepted for the September 16th issue.

The roots of this journal sprouted from the editor’s (Kate Garrett) long-term obsession with folklore and mythology – particularly of the Welsh variety – and poetry. And who better to represent this than Cerridwen and her cauldron?

Cerridwen was a sorceress in Welsh legend, who has since been elevated to deity status – she is the crone goddess of poetry, magic and inspiration.

Cerridwen was also the accidental mother of Taliesin, the greatest of Welsh bards. According to legend, this is due to a mishap involving three stray drops from her cauldron of inspiration. These tiny drops of powerful potion turned her servant-boy Gwion Bach into the celebrated poet-storyteller, but not before a series of shape-shifting incidents that resulted in his being eaten by the sorceress.

Thanks to Adrienne Leavy, editor of Reading Ireland: The Little Magazine , for her generous review of Boyne Berries 1916 in the latest issue of Reading Ireland which is a 1916 centenary issue.