Eek!!  Excellent!!!

I look foward to being able to sit down in a quiet room with some headphones and a cuppa to have a listen later.  Thanks domino!  And thanks Poetry Please and Radio 4.  Oh and thanks radio iplayer!!!

Oh my!!! WHAT A TREAT! I need to sit down today and listen these in peace....

The 'The Sunlight on the Garden' By Louis MacNeice was very melancholic, it was very weird to listen. Reminded me about Hal. But brilliantly read, somehow sad poem.

‘Bright Star‘ By Keats was very lovely, Damien's voice was very swift and the whole poem went on like water. Liked it!

‘Lullaby‘ W.H Auden, I don't know what I was expecting but that is very dark lullaby. There is no better than Damien whispering softly poems.

‘To Althea from Prison‘ By Richard Lovelac, dark but powerful poem. "When (like committed linnets) I with shriller throat shall sing" <---- that part. I tried at least three times say it myself until I got it.

‘True Love‘ By Wislawa Szymborska,  at first I thought this was very sad and bitter poem. I didn't quite like when Damien read that only cause I wouldn't want to hear such things coming out of his mouth. When he said "True love. Is it little necessary?" it made me frown and I answered "yes". I had to save the situation Had to read it and try to figure out the meaning of this poem. The ending kind of turns the poem over and says that there is true love and everything writer meant on the poem she thinks opposite in the end. Which I think is quite genius.

"Let the people who never find true love 

keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die."

 

‘Well Water‘ By Edmond Jabes ooh I liked this one. Like reading writers thought straight from the head as they are. I don't know how to explain it better. Had to hear it twice, Damien reads it very well. The very beginning is so good.

‘The Bluebird‘ By Charles Bukowski, MY FAVORITE!!! That smokey sound on Damien's voice while he reads it was.. super hot. Sorry! But I could almost picture him on the corner drinking whiskey, little drunk and smoking (smoking isn't good but that pic in my head). Swoooon for that voice... Going to be listening this forever...

 

‘Aunt Julia‘ By Norman MacCaig, very vivid poem indeed, there was so many emotions in Damien's voice in this, makes him perfect reader cause he can pick up those emotions from paper and bring that poem to life.

This really made my Monday, hopefully everyone enjoyed this as much as I did!

 

 

 

I could not find Well Water by Edmund Jabes at all, so I typed it up while listening.  I don't know how the structure is, just went by Damien's pauses.

 

True Love

Wislawa Szymborska

 

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way – in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?
Listen to them laughing – it’s an insult.
The language they use – deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines –
it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who’d want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die. 

Well Water

Edmund Jabes

 

Fetch the well water

give thirst a moment

of respite

the hand

the chance to save

night of the eyelashes

be seen.

object shines for hand

noise grazes noise

water rings memory

the term

the foreworld

gone beyond care

the adventure is faithful to the fire dream's knell

I am 

I was hinged

long line of dear

I see, shall see, confidence of the tree in the fruit.

chalk days

the slates flutter with first fruits

words survive sign and landscape ink

roads the infinite

the gift of the face

to the seasons wrinkles

to the earth

great rivers.

Bluebird

Charles Bukowski

 

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up? 
you want to screw up the
works? 
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe? 
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you? 

Aunt Julia

Norman MacCaig

 

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
I could not answer her - 
I could not understand her.

She wore men's boots
When she wore any.
-I can see her strong foot,
stained with peat,
paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel
while her right hand drew yarn
marvelously out of the air.

Hers was the only house
where I've lain at night
in the absolute darkness
of a box bed, listening to 
crickets being friendly.

She was buckets
and water flouncing into them.
She was winds pouring wetly
round house-ends.
She was brown eggs, black skirts
and a keeper of threepennybits
in a teapot.

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
By the time I had learned 
a little, she lay
silenced in the absolute black
of a sandy grave
at Luskentyre.
But I hear her still, welcoming me
with a seagull's voice
across a hundred yards
of peatscrapes and lazybeds
and getting angry, getting angry
with so many questions
unanswered.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing all the poems, whimsy!

The poems referred to as cynical by the presenter are the ones I find most touching. Not sure what that says about me, other than that I am a realist who knows the world is a broken place and we are broken in it. Imperfect love is the only human kind of love, and I enjoy most those poets who recognize that.
Damien's voice is perfect for poetry. He's a master at it. We are very fortunate to have found him.

'True Love' rings very deeply with me, as I've been broken and badly damaged by love. It is easier to live without it. The cool clarity of aloneness is so much gentler than the crippling compromises that come from bending your heart and will to the service of something more powerful than yourself. People see the outside of it, but don't know the inner workings. The last few lines of the poem turn the knife in the heart of the rest of it.
Now that I've said all that, you can understand why 'Bluebird' means so much to me.

Molonians! 

Which of the 8 poems readings by Damien in Poetry Please's 'June Miscellany' is your favourite?

 

 

VOTE in the POLL at the top of this thread 

and comment below!

 

Please also vote in the Poetry Please Bloomsday Poll!

 

I chose Bluebird. I also liked To Althea from Prison but Bluebird seemed to resonate more. I loved Damien 's reading of it. You could just imagine a surly, whiskey soaked man in a bar, his voice gravelly from too many cigarettes thinking about the secrets in his heart, not allowing himself to be happy

Thank you for voting Rosie!
'Bluebird' was a close second for me, powerful poem, read powerfully. Commanding performance.

It is impossible to choose just one in truth, ALL are stunning... so my reasoning for Keats is simply the additional smile it gave me with reference to Hal.

This is really pretty tricky!!  Favourite poem, or favourite reading??!  I mean - all of the readings are superb.....so it has to come down to the poem, right?

I really like 'The Sunlight in the Garden' because I do love rhyme and metre in a poem...and it is very satisying on that account - very musical!

Keat's imagery is beautiful....and I agree, domino - it brought a smile to my face to hear Damien reading Keats, so that has to be a favourite.  But 'Lullaby' and 'To Athena from Prison' are also loaded with beautiful imagery....

'The Bluebird' is incredibly evocative....actually made me think of Hemmingway! And we're all a bit of a sucker for the hard man with the soft underbelly, right?!  But then 'Aunt Julia' was also very evocative....

I think the only certainty is that I'm pretty undecided!

I love how much Radio 4 have been using Damien for their poetry readings. Fingers crossed for lots more :)