Poem of the Week - 2011

[Scheherazade]

* We will post a new poem every week to be discussed by our members.

* Please post a new poem only on a Monday (please wait till it is Monday in your corner of the world) and state the week the poem is posted for.

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This week's poem:

The Broken Heart

News o' grief had overteaken
Dark-eyed Fanny, now vorseaken;
There she zot, wi' breast a-heaven,
While vrom zide to zide, wi' grieven,
Vell her head, wi' tears a-creepen
Down her cheaks, in bitter weepen.
There wer still the ribbon-bow
She tied avore her hour ov woe,
An' there wer still the hans that tied it
Hangen white,
Or wringen tight,
In ceare that drowned all ceare bezide it.

When a man, wi' heartless slighten,
Mid become a maiden's blighten,
He mid cearelessly vorseake her,
But must answer to her Meaker;
He mid slight, wi' selfish blindness,
All her deeds o' loven-kindness,
God wull waigh 'em wi' the slighten
That mid be her love's requiten;
He do look on each deceiver,
He do know
What weight o' woe
Do break the heart ov ev'ry griever.

~ William Barnes

[Paulclem]

I'm glad you've started this thread Scher. A good poem to kick off.

I like the accent of the poem. You can hear the voice - which for me seems to be a man's.

The focus of the poem is her grieving, and he is seem just through his effect on her. On first reading it, it seemed as if the two stanza structure would be a his 'n hers but God impinges on "his" stanza, and very much takes it over with condemnation.

[The Comedian]

I really enjoyed this poem Scher -- the sound was absolutely delightful. This may sound ignorant of me, but is there a specific dialect that the poet is trying to replicate? Is it Middle English? Ye Olde English is not my forte.

What struck me the most was the second stanza in which G-d is set up as an advocate and judge for the suffering of women, or at least of this particular woman whose philandering husband brought her to grief. This G-d's attention to the fidelity of men and their obligations to the suffering they cause when they breach the marriage contract.

[LitNetIsGreat]

It's written in rural Dorset dialect - south of England.
There's a sort of guide here:
http://www.dorsetshire.com/cgi-bin/d...pl?mode=NORMAL

You can get a taste for the sound of it here from another of his poem's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfPn1PVX7IU

Real farrrmers the Dorrrest folk arghh.

Edit:
Oh this is a good one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwob_...eature=related

[Paulclem]

31st January 2011

I'd like to post Spell by Carol Anne Duffy. If you scroll down past Rhyme, it is the poem beneath.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003...ardianreview30

I've used this poem in my basic English workshops to introduce poetry to people who have never read any.

I'm interested in your take on the poem - which I will be using in the future - and a more uncontaminated view of it - ie yours.

[OrphanPip]

It's cute how it plays with the spelling, you can get a sort of playful double meaning out of the words.

[Paulclem]

Yes - I've used it for spellings and effects in my basic English class.

[OrphanPip]

Ya, I can see it being an effective tool for that.

The misspelling is more interesting in a lot of ways, if we take it literally, than the poem underneath.

[Paulclem]

Yes. I think it demonstrates what a poem can do with words by twisting them to get new meanings from them.

[Paulclem]

It's dirk. The clods are block with reen.
The wand blues in the trays.
There's no mean.

Looking at the second stanza - if you correct the spellings you get:

It's dark.The clouds are black with rain
The wind blows in the trees.
There's no moon.

Of course a poem is not meant to be "corrected", but the title "spell" suggests this as an exercise. if you do it for the whole poem, you get a fairly bland poem about someone snuggling their teddy whilst there's a storm outside. There's a sense of foreboding and perhaps anticipation of something. But if you go back to the original poem and look at the words again, then you get quite an alarming violence coming through.

For example the original dirk also mens dagger.
The wand blues in the trays I always imagine to be cigarettes smoking that blue smoke in the ashtrays.
There's no mean could be there's no meaning.

"Sloop will have drums in it" also makes sense. Sloop - ship - drums - cargo?

You get this dual effect of interpreting the poem by taking the meaning of the words as misspellings, or a more mysterious dual meaning, and of course spell refers to a kind of magic - poetic magic?

What do you reckon?

[OrphanPip]

Yes, I thought there was an evocation of the magical connotation of "spell" in the poem when I first read it.

I'm not sure if there is a second meaning intended directly, but there may be something more visceral evoked by the words used. There's maybe an evocation of the emotions a child feels alone during a thunderstorm.

[Ecurb]

I'd coddle my own toddy now, but we're not allowed to dink on the jib.

[Paulclem]

Yes, I thought there was an evocation of the magical connotation of "spell" in the poem when I first read it.

I'm not sure if there is a second meaning intended directly, but there may be something more visceral evoked by the words used. There's maybe an evocation of the emotions a child feels alone during a thunderstorm.

I'd agree with that, but I think the evocation is intended. The duality I mentioned earlier seems to be encapsulated in the apparent misspellings.

reeftips /rooftops/reefers?
bomb going off/ bimbo going if!
My hurt/ my heart

dirk/ dark
wand/ wind
no mean/ no moon/no meaning

smuggle/ snuggle
blankets/ blinkers
coddle/cuddle
toddy/ teddy
Sloop/ sleep
drums/dreams

The implication is that in the wider environment of the child under the blankets, there's smuggling, whisky (toddy which is cuddled), ships (sloops for smuggling?), blankets that are blinkers to whats going on, drugs (reefers), violence (bomb and dagger), sex (bimbo).

It seems to have the funny effect of developing more links the more you look. For example smuggling - sloop - drums - no moon perfect for smuggling - weapons. Under the regular poem seems to be these undercurrents. Or is it a meaning too far?

[Ecurb]

I like the smuggling interpretation. The poem is certainly fun, and having fun with words is a big part of poetic enjoyment. I’d compare "Spell" to another poem that, instead of changing the spelling of words, changes the order of the words:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/anyon...etty-how-town/

I’d suggest that the cummings poem is more startling and profound than “Spell”, but they remind me of each other. Why is “with up so floating the many bells down” so beautiful, while “with so many bells floating up and down” so prosaic? And how did cummings figure that out?

I think “Spell” gives beginning students a taste for that kind of question, and it’s a simple, short poem that lends itself to several relatively simple interpretations.

[Paulclem]

I agree. The Cummings poem is brilliant. I think the line you quoted undulates quite musically.

The simplicity of Duffy's poem made it great for learners new to poetry. As a lad I used to think that poems were over analysed, but I realised later that it was merely my lack of literary experience - and perhaps laziness too. I also now know that the reader contribute quite a lot to the meaning too.

I think that it's such a short poem that Duffy has had the opportunity to carefully consider every word and their implications. So I was able to sell the idea of poetry - loose associations, numinous links and implications, to poetically inexperienced learners. The spelling part, and the looking up the unknown words like dirk meant they used concrete means to discover the dark and fleeting implications in the poem. it worked well.