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Agonum said:
Linaria flavirostris (vinterhämpling)
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Toadflax - Linaria maroccana ❤️
pl2000046825.jpg
 
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:oops::oops::oops::oops::oops::oops:o_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_O

OMG!!!! I thought this was the CHICAGO on the MICHAEL album and never gave it a listen until NOW!!!!


I am blowwwn away!
Also, I love Chicago, I lived there for a while 😭

His voval delivery ..... 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
 
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bluemoon7 said:
I REALLY love this poem! The topic, style, the rhythm and language - it´s gorgeous! *saves*
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Me and @Agonum were getting madly excited by this one earlier in the week. See what you think:

www.heraldscotland.com

Poem of the Day: Sparrow by Norman MacCaig

NORMAN MacCaig packs this paean to an ordinary little bird with acute observation and charming imagery. The piece, dated December 1968, can be found…
www.heraldscotland.com www.heraldscotland.com
 
bluemoon7 said:
[...] I thought only corvids bring presents (and cats)
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Slightly different thing but interesting. Can't remember if I already posted this. I meant to but I think I derailed myself, as per!

A dolphin story:

"The story of Pelorus Jack

Pelorus Jack is the first Risso’s dolphin to be granted protection by any government anywhere.

Pelorus Jack — a dolphin not common to New Zealand — accompanied ships traveling between Wellington and Nelson. He was given the name because he would escort boats near the entrance to Pelorus Sound, in the Marlborough Sounds. Discovered in 1888 when he joined a steamer bound for Nelson, Pelorus Jack spent the next 24 years (!) escorting boats from Pelorus Sound to the treacherous French Pass, a narrow stretch of water between D’Urville Island and the mainland. This is a pass that has claimed many boats.

While Pelorus Jack joined boats heading for Nelson at the entrance to Pelorus Sound, he swam to, but never through the French Pass. On the reverse journey, he met ships as they came out of the pass, staying with them for the eight kilometer trip to Pelorus Sound before going his own way. He enjoyed swimming up against the boats and riding their bow waves."
 
zinniabooklover said:
Me and @Agonum were getting madly excited by this one earlier in the week. See what you think:

www.heraldscotland.com

Poem of the Day: Sparrow by Norman MacCaig

NORMAN MacCaig packs this paean to an ordinary little bird with acute observation and charming imagery. The piece, dated December 1968, can be found…
www.heraldscotland.com www.heraldscotland.com
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THIS is exactly the style of poetry I love and aspire to write myself (my humble scribblings)

Simple language, yet BEAUTIFUL imagery, ... you sense his love for nature in every word.

Damn, who is this poet? 😀

"when winter soft-shoes in" :love:
 
zinniabooklover said:
I hadn't considered that.

Full disclosure - I found the word in a book by Robert MacFarlane. 'Landmarks'. I found it today, second-hand. He writes about nature and, uh, landscapes! I haven't read a great deal of his writing but what I've seen I've really liked. This book has lots of glossaries in it relating to uplands, coastlands, flatlands etc. That's where I found my words. Atm, I'm just flicking through the book. Maybe he explains stuff that would answer your question but it's early days for me and this book so I haven't got that knowledge of it.

Actually, what really made me buy the book was this quote after the title page:

"Scholars, I plead with you,
Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?"
Norman McCaig (1983)

I haven't found out yet who Norman McCaig is but I like his quote!
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@bluemoon7

OK, let's get you all caught up.
 
Agonum said:
Maccaig.jpg

Norman Alexander MacCaig (1910–1996) was a Scottish poet and teacher.

By the graveyard, Luskentyre​

From behind the wall death sends out messages
That all mean the same, that are easy to understand.

But who can interpret the blue-green waves
That never stop talking, shouting, wheedling?

Messages everywhere. Scholars, I plead with you,
Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?

Four larks are singing in a showering sprinkle
Their bright testaments: in a foreign language.

And always the beach is oghamed and cunieformed
By knot and dunlin and country-dancing sandpipers.

– There’s Donnie’s lugsail. He’s off to the lobsters.
The mast tilts to the north, the boat sails west.

A dictionary of him? – Can you imagine it? – A volume thick as the height of the Clisham,

A volume big as the whole of Harris,
A volume beyond the wit of scholars.
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zinniabooklover said:
Ah, see, now this is too technical for me. This is the stuff that doesn't interest me at all. I think it's fine for it to be taught at school but it just doesn't get me excited. I'm more interested in this:

"Norman MacCaig is best-known as a great love poet of the natural world. His poems describe toads, dogs, ducks, sharks, horses and birds. He looks at living creatures – animals, people – and places, with an incredibly keen perception. He describes them in their own particularity. If he describes a basking shark, you can be certain that it’s a basking shark, not some other type of big fishy creature.

And yet, listen closely to these poems and he is also doing something else. He is engaging your mind by the way his language works. The actual words he uses, so carefully, in each line, each phrase, of every poem, are carefully chosen, calculated to carry their meaning. Sometimes this makes you wonder if the limits of your world are created by the language you use to describe it ... "

19 Poems of Norman MacCaig – Association for Scottish Literature

asls.org.uk asls.org.uk
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zinniabooklover said:
[...] Listing the poems we've posted so far. I need to revisit all of them today. I think this is all of them:


* By the graveyard, Luskentyre

* Sparrow

*Assisi

*Basking Shark
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@bluemoon7

Sorry! Quite a lot of catching up! Me and Agonum had an ongoing convo about all of this. Agonum posted the Assisi poem which is awesome. It's on the thread somewhere. Or just Google it.
 
zinniabooklover said:
@bluemoon7

Sorry! Quite a lot of catching up! Me and Agonum had an ongoing convo about all of this. Agonum posted the Assisi poem which is awesome. It's on the thread somewhere. Or just Google it.
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He is so deeply philosophical and (yet) he is like an amazed child. These are wonderful qualities ...
 
bluemoon7 said:
This is a treasure! I studied English literauture in the 90s (as a second/"minor" subject), but I never learned much about 20th century Scottish poetry ...
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Tbh, I wouldn't say it gets much attention here in the UK. Not as much as it should. I could be wrong, I'm not up-to-date with Eng. Lit. stuff. It's not my world. But my impression is that Scottish poetry is a minor interest.

Oh dear, oh dear - I'm talking nonsense. Many Scottish poets are celebrated - Douglas Dunn, Jackie Kay, Elma Mitchell (a personal fave of mine), Carol Ann Duffy (ex Poet Laureate), Don Paterson, Walter Scott and Robert Burns (obvs!). And, of course, Norman MacCaig. But I still think Scottish poetry is very much in the shadows of English writers. That's how it seems to me.
 
zinniabooklover said:
Slightly different thing but interesting. Can't remember if I already posted this. I meant to but I think I derailed myself, as per!

A dolphin story:

"The story of Pelorus Jack

Pelorus Jack is the first Risso’s dolphin to be granted protection by any government anywhere.

Pelorus Jack — a dolphin not common to New Zealand — accompanied ships traveling between Wellington and Nelson. He was given the name because he would escort boats near the entrance to Pelorus Sound, in the Marlborough Sounds. Discovered in 1888 when he joined a steamer bound for Nelson, Pelorus Jack spent the next 24 years (!) escorting boats from Pelorus Sound to the treacherous French Pass, a narrow stretch of water between D’Urville Island and the mainland. This is a pass that has claimed many boats.

While Pelorus Jack joined boats heading for Nelson at the entrance to Pelorus Sound, he swam to, but never through the French Pass. On the reverse journey, he met ships as they came out of the pass, staying with them for the eight kilometer trip to Pelorus Sound before going his own way. He enjoyed swimming up against the boats and riding their bow waves."
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Oh, yes, I remember you’ve posted this before. It’s a fascinating story.
 
Agonum said:

Assisi​


The dwarf with his hands on backwards
sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
on tiny twisted legs from which
sawdust might run,
outside the three tiers of churches built
in honour of St Francis, brother
of the poor, talker with birds, over whom
he had the advantage
of not being dead yet.

A priest explained
how clever it was of Giotto
to make his frescoes tell stories
that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
of God and the suffering
of His Son. I understood
the explanation and
the cleverness.

A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered
the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed
the ruined temple outside, whose eyes
wept pus, whose back was higher
than his head, whose lopsided mouth
said Grazie in a voice as sweet
as a child’s when she speaks to her mother
or a bird’s when it spoke
to St Francis.
Norman MacCaig, The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2011)​
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Sorry @bluemoon7

But this one is so awesome. You might have found it but I didn't want to risk you not seeing this one.
 
bluemoon7 said:
Ha, the Metaphysical Poets influenced him! I knew it :cool:
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​

:love:​

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud​

BY JOHN DONNE
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
 
bluemoon7 said:

​

:love:​

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud​

BY JOHN DONNE
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
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This is really weird. I've had John Donne in my head all day via Bob Geldof:

"I am an island
Entire of myself ..."
 
His wittiness is appealing to me. That, and the love for nature—as Bluemoon noted—that comes shining through.
 
zinniabooklover said:
Exactly so! That exact bit. Blew my freakin' mind.
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What I love about poetry like Norman MacCaig writes is, that, yes they are immensely talented and smart, but that is just their backdrop. The heart is more important than all scholarly wisdom ... or let´s say the wisdom can only be a base
 
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