Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
 

JOHN KEATS IS DEAD SO…

 John Keats is dead, so take me to the library

Cheerfully, and with aesthetic purpose,

Some fine day, when real people

Are living various lives I will not judge -

So that I can read what he actually wrote

And understand why some things last

More than two centuries

And some don’t.

Coleridge is dead and Auden too

Let me judge them for what they wrote

Not have some childish tantie

Where I go all porno ‘cos I need attention

And want to say everything before my time

Is irrelevant.

Shelley and Wordsworth, thank you

For teaching me that all things must pass

And knowing not just to bandy names about

For effect, claiming knowledge which I do not have.

Byron, Whitman, yes you were guys who liked

Immediate sensational effect, and so do I

(Don’t we all?), but while my cat being run over

Or my dog crushed by a garage door

Might have more effect on me than any poem,

Just the way sexual experience does,

Thanks for the wisdom that this in itself is not poetry.

Poetry is heart and brain and skilful words.

(Above all skilful words).

We all have strong emotions, but

Strong emotions themselves are not poetry.

In the landscape of our childhood, shrieking and

Stamping our feet are a good way to let it out,

But thank you for making me more grown-up.

Wallace Stevens is dead too, and

Bill Manhire is not getting any younger

And neither is Hera Lindsay Bird

For none of us are. Pause. Breathe.

Have a lie-down if you must

And look at the landscape again in twenty years time.

Coda [by Flanders and Swann]

What gets the prizes and wins awards?
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers….
At Oxford and Cambridge, and Yale and all,
and at Berkley, they really have a ball,
'cos the higher the brow, the harder they fall,
For Belly Belly Bum Bum Belly Belly Bum Bum Pee Po Belly Belly Bum Bum, Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.