Autumn

There was a flock of field fares on Sunday making a tremendous hullabaloo in one rather small tree. They reminded me of storks clacking their beaks in Segovia. That was apropos of nothing.

Annual invasion of fieldfares and redwings happened started today. They have stripped the well-loaded rowan tree nearest the house of its berries and gone off in search of more. So far they have not gone for the holly berries, but they will. I keep wondering if holly berries take longer to ripen, or maybe they just aren't as nice to eat as rowan ones.

titter...

I shall read your posts in a Joyce Grenfell voice now, soop

merlotgran A good many years ago, a lady said to me...whenever hear your voice, I think of Joyce Grenfell.

I read that at my SiL's funeral Scarlet21 I still tend to well up when I think of it.

I love Christina Rossetti's poem 'Uphill'

I have passed on Christina Rossetti's poem 'Remember me when I am gone away' to several friends to use at memorial services.
I have found great comfort in both writing and reading poetry. I am glad I learnt so many off by heart at school and college - there is usually one that is appropriate to any situation.

I loved that book, G'mum. In fact, I have great respect for Sheila Hancock. We have't had her for a web chat, have we?

I loved Joyce Grenfell.

If any of my lot speak about me in a Sunday voice, I'll come back and haunt them.

Reading Sheila Hancock's book "Just Me" and she quotes Joyce Grenfell:

"If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone,
Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must,
Parting is hell,
But life goes on,
So sing as well."

This isn't poetry but something happened last night which made me remember a letter that someone once sent me which started with the lines 'extrasensory is inadequate to describe your vision'. No one has ever written anything to me like that before or since . Have you seen 'Bright Star' Ariadne?

"I have but two thoughts; your beauty and the hour of my death. Would that I could have possession of both in the same moment." (Keats to Fanny) one of my favourite bits of Keats' prose.

I love Keats, prose and poetry, too, Tegan.

La Belle Dame is my favourite poem; I'm in love with Keats .

I'm sure someone started a poetry thread a while back where people posted their favourite poems. I really enjoyed that and I don't do poetry!

Scarlet21 please don't confine yourself to poetry - join in on other threads too!

Poetry has been my passion throughout my career as an English teacher and now I have time to read more and write more. DD teaches English too, and DGD1 is now in Y13 with English as her best and favourite subject. So, as you can imagine, I am kept well up to date, and it is part of the joy of being with them down here.

Keats wrote some good stuff young.

What gets me is the depth to so much poetry even though it's been written by such young people.

One of my most satisfying moments as a teacher was when a mature student came to me at the end of an A-level course to thank me for introducing her to poetry. Tegan, you will probably get more from poetry as an adult than you would have done at school.

..that was a reply to the one before.....[I think it was Lewis Carroll that started me off; my son loved poetry when he was a child, as well, and I gave my daughter an anthology when she was 18, with the inscrption 'what every 18 year old wants on her 18th birthday'. Start 'em young, I say!]

Please do, Scarlet .

Tegan - somebody gave me a book of poems called Palgrave's Golden Treasury when I was about nine and I was hooked! Don't worry if you don't understand every poem - I studied Gerard Manley Hopkins as part of my degree and I really enjoy his work, but there are many parts I don't understand. I just like the sound of the words.
I also enjoy Pam Ayres - a lot of her work is really funny. I have a very wide taste in poetry and I refuse to be limited by what some academic thinks is superior. You have a lot of pleasure ahead of you!

I have no wish to argue with any other member, so I will just stick to posting the odd poem.

The one I've joined hasn't but I'm hoping the Derby one might have.

Tegan, the only way to get into poetry is to read it and decide what you like - eventually you can work out why you like it. Your local U3A might have a poetry group you could join. I think ours has, though I have joined enough already, so haven't got into that one.