Memoirs and poetry

One could write one's Memoires, but then one would not be able to publish them until one was dead, or until "they" were dead; or one would have to tie two fingers together while writing, to prevent one pointing at anybody! 

What do others do? Lady Ottoline Morell and her 'blooming' friends (Bloomsbury group in the 1920's in Britain) were always gossiping about each other in their books, camouflaged or not, and spoiled good friendships among other things. 

Some of what one could write about should perhaps never even be mentioned, what was left out in other's such writings? One wonders. Self damning evidence of an odd nature, no one will ever know-or will they? Its quite a thought, and when one is little and parents suddenly say: "Hush the children are present" one wonders too what was said in the same way.

How Victorian parents prevented one from learning about the big world outside the "playroom", they offered the child little communication and understanding about the difficulties and trials of life, today it is another matter-perhaps they know toooo much. We just had to find it out for ourselves, and that was definitely educational, according to what degree one lived.

It took me until I was 35 to figure out that absolutely nobody saw the world just like me, and very few understood what inspired and moved me, most just looked askance. 

The hush things of life, they are probably best "let lie" as the outcome of the telling may only turn out to boost or de-frame (my own meaning and word) the writer him/herself. All the same it is a fascinating subject this subject that I haven't defined. No doubt all I write has been written before but this is when I am exploring the thoughts for myself. 

My friend is writing her 'memoires' but those are for the children when they grow up, I expect that will be more chronological and without the "embroideries"(or juicy bits!), but with plenty of humour.

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How can one totally express oneself on all subjects as well as the delicate intimate subjects? Maybe music is most able to tell the truth, the dramas of life when it comes to strong feelings of the heart, mind and body; the composer can express the most unmentionable secrets that only he knows the full meaning of; on the other hand in poetry once one has committed words to paper there they stand, loud and clear. The reader, of course deciphers the meaning each in his own way, this also happens with music, but being more abstract it is less immediately apparent. The rise and fall, the quickening of the rhythm, the slow elegant dying of sound create in each individual a different experience, a child will dance and maybe think of its parents and gains experience growing up through the different age groups, the feelings, passions, dreams and interests will change the message to suit the situation they find themselves in at the given moment; or there may be no response at all! 

The romantic poets spelt it out as far as they dared, clothing it in elegant language designed to impress and bring forth expected admiration- one feels sometimes too much; the everyday naturalness that is the closest expression of the now in the heart, only comes through with difficulty, between the gaps in the eloquent curtains of protocol. Perhaps to move down-to-earth, the poet Rabbie Burns got to the core without the gloss. 

In nonsense rhymes one seems to loose this craving for fame, vocabulary is free too and lets fly with elegant metaphors which, reading between the lines, let loose the dragons of passion, the joys and sorrows of every day pathos and sprouts a flower of art that has the whole man in it- the whole story- but then again it is more akin to music the words creating its rhythms and patterns that intoxicate, their sounds taking our senses on the beautiful abstract walk of the dream that otherwise spelt out in “black and white” would emphasise the ordinary, the vulgar, the banal, the drudge of things of little interest to our over active brains.

How often we seek the power and glories, are we not content with the everyday? The rising of the sun, the growing of the trees, here we bump into the Chinese mind, the Taoist sits looking long at a tree to decide which branch should be lopped off- he becomes the tree to do so- the cutting out of all description in a poem by these sages simplifies the expression, and with only the essence squeezed out of the very core of the artist he writes the few words that “say it all”, this is communication with words. 

One word sets the scene, or idea, the next sets the mind in the direction the poet wishes to take one and leading you there, expectant, he says look. One looks and is suspended in the nearness, the very presence of the “happening” that seems to take place for the first time in your mind and leave you there like a secret spider let down into paradise. 

“That is your definition “, I hear you say. True, too true but we live in our own brains and find it hard to be other than our own observers of the phenomena of life. I cannot speak for others but one can together learn to see how others see in time, and with a sympathetic harmony of life’s rhythms see many more points of view than our own little knotted mass of experience, that muddled in the archives of the brain, tease us from time to time, eventually becoming our only looking-glass to the world around us.

“Modern” poetry, like modern art, seeks to pull at these threads of the minds established knowledge to create the poem, so much then depends on who it is that reads, for without the (greatness of stored experience- I want a better word here, I had magnitude but I don’t know just now??? Literary goods and chattels!) MAGNITUDE??? of brush strokes, sounds, colours, joys, sorrows, in short experiences deeply lived and felt, how can we read and give the poem the potency it deserves - or does it - being only an old button to push and release hidden gems of rhetoric in our consciousness. A word can say so much to some, we who have been so close to the war, react powerfully to mention of the slightest kind referring to it, so awe inspiring the horrors in its wake. Others look upon it as a TV documentary, a happening stored in some tiny insignificant corner of the mind to wonder at and then forget. 

So art is what one brings to it, gives it, not what it is alone, and to my Granny Young’s verse “Life is what you make it”, maybe an old cliché but nevertheless a true one.

Oh, lovely is the lee, and can you smell the flowers, the salt sea breezes, the feel of the sand between your toes, the stones smooth in your hand, the sound of the stones knocking together, the tall firm trunk of a tree and ride on the wings of the seagulls calling, calling, dance in the seaweed waved by the blue-green water, tossed on the beach by a dragon-charging-wave and be flung on the sands like a lump of clay, winded, but alive? If you can, then you can appreciate poetry. 

Its much more than that, now I am guilty as the 19th C poets, of romanticising, but I do not feel I do, it is what is, unembroidered.

My father in his little photographic diary of 1968 wrote out these words:- 

"Reverie" 

A cathedral as boundless as our wonder.

Whose quenchless lamp the sun and moon supply

Its choirs the winds and waves

Its organ-thunder. 

Its dome the sky.

I am not sure where it came from and as I haven't got internet just this moment I cannot look it up, but it fitted suddenly just after having written what I did about poetry as if I was meant to find it there just then. I can communicate with my father almost first hand even now when he died 38 years ago.