Who Killed The Thought-Fox?

Perhaps it is the decline of winter
as a season – and I visualise now
the paw-prints at their best in a
Christmas snow – but it is more
than this: a cruel warmth
melts the habitat, and freedom to
roam has been curtailed by trips and
traps set by new hunters who know
no better. If this is acceptable
than anything else that could be
imagined to the full might as well
die too, and the murderers can come
running with their measuring tapes
sizing up this final kill.

– 2006

Candy and his dog have a good relationship. I think this is because they are growing old together and only one of them can talk.

Piggy is very clever and has a lot of brains. ‘His head opened and stuff came out and turned red’.

The poet’s point is to make him move so slowly. Sex isn’t everything.

The man is weak because he is desperate to give in to his sexual urges when he should still be holding on to them.

Candy is the oldest person on the ranch and so is his dog.

His pronunciation of asthma is purely phonetical. Maybe if he could see it written down he would know it had a ‘th’ in the middle, not just ass-mar!

Michele Roberts, the writer, has thrown emotional writing to a new level so teenagers can read and sometimes understand it.

Reading ‘Flight’ opens your mind so you are able to read for the first time ever.

Piggy and his glasses were a perfect formula they worked together. Piggy was nothing without his glasses and glasses are nothing without Piggy, they are a perfect team.

Snowball puts on Old Major’s fundamentals.

Curley visits a broffel every month.

Curley’s wife has sausage curls and a fatal flaw.

Christmas

White-sound
of snow;
a huge yawn of the sky-mouth
that shouts wind and ice
like knife-slice
and hammer-blow:
winter warms for Christmas
in its cauldron of cold.

A fox nudges snowflakes
with his feather-soft caress of nose.
He dream-drinks each
to the icicle sharpness of both eyes
and enters invisibly
this white-world
in a fire of red fur-glow.

All melts.
All is one.
All merges in the
stall of this moment. Snow again
falls and
falls and
falls.

There is a man, iron-strong,
walking in this moment.
His snow-crow hair is like a scarf
around head and neck,
black-white/white-black,
and he moves in the wind-hover
like a ghost.

When he speaks the hills tremble.
“This is Christmas,” he intones
in an earth-tremor voice,
holding in his hand the scent of fox
like a glove: fur-warm, snow-soft,
shrouding bones.

White-sound
of snow
and this man in its cauldron of cold.
Fox is still watching,
indelible paws never growing old.

– 1998

[Written in memory of Ted Hughes who died in this year]

He learns that Mrs Dubose has been suffering from a morpheme addiction.

If he had had an affair then she would be seen to be standing up for herself and that would be a strength. If he had merely left the toilet seat up she would be over-reacting and that would be a weakness.

Curley’s wife flirts with men on the raunch.

This poem has a formal rhyme schream.

Men like to thrash around with their testosterone whereas women like to keep themselves dignified.

In the first stanza the woman becomes a hare.

The significance of the title is that George and Lennie are doomed to walk around America like a mouse.

The pigeon is called Grey Breasts, just like the daughter.

The attitude expressed is very admiral.

The ‘iron gates of life’ are other words for a chastity belt and he wants to get through it.

Ralf doesn’t realise the impotence of adults.

The generals are glutinous.

Of course setting is important. Without a setting they could be anywhere – inside, outside, in a car or even in space!

The left side of the poem is the description of rodney marsh

The Christmas
(after Ray Carver)

the Christmas with bells on
the Christmas when you were alone
the Christmas with knowledge of snow
the Christmas as smorgasbord
the Christmas transcending home
the Christmas where angels fall
the Christmas pretending to have a chimney
the Christmas inside bonhomie
the Christmas long-distance call
the Christmas in someone’s war
the Christmas behind mystery
the Christmas becoming childhood
the Christmas writing Stocking Fillers
the Christmas through mulled eyes
the Christmas with an open door
the Christmas you misunderstood
the Christmas bloody number one
the Christmas that passes by
the Christmas of frozen breath
the Christmas on cocktail sticks
the Christmas from a store
the Christmas beyond death
the Christmas pouring killer roads
the Christmas wanting more
the Christmas inside soap operas
the Christmas that’s left over
the Christmas you can remote control
the Christmas at a year’s end
the Christmas for lovers
the Christmas of a lost soul
the Christmas card you never send
the Christmas when Ray’s car broke down
the Christmas lived with the old
the Christmas with kids before they’ve grown
the Christmas as an abstract noun
our Christmas

– 1995

It will take a lot more than a short, simple, vague poem to put me off the way I live.

The metaphor of the sea and shipwreck is as poetry entrancing but also, in my opinion, makes the reader not feel as sorry for him because if the writer could be as creative in life as he is with the pen then he would have nothing to complain about.

John Clare was highly gifted in that he understood exactly what he didn’t understand.

By making reference to genitals she is suggesting sex in a subtle way.

Arthur Hugh Clough attacks greed, materialism and deprocussy.

Damon wanted Phyllis the fair, which in modern English would be Phyllis the Fit.

Stereotypes have a lot to do with the view of people towards things. I think Lively is saying “Wait a minute, just because someone may own a BMW it doesn’t make them better than a person with a Lada.”

A lot of the soldiers would have had hobbies or lots of other things to do when they were not in battles. Poetry was Owen’s hobby.

In the final verse he learns how to relieve himself.

These poems rhyme occasionally but it isn’t deliberate.

Daily London Recipe is one of my favourite poems and in my opnion is exactly right.. That’s what peoples lives is all about – routine. You get up in the morning and go to work by the same road every day, you come home to same woman every day, you eat with her, drink with her and fight with her while there’s some people running after 20 year olds. You just want to have a good time and booze, booze, booze.

In 1995 I began writing an annual Stocking Fillers with Christmas poems and stories for teaching colleagues, initially to entertain and eventually to alleviate as well. I last posted a complete run of these in 2011 on another blog, and will post about 4 or 5 favourites from the very many over the next few days

There is no direct conflict like the threat of death or someone trying to punch your lights out.

The death of Auden’s lover left the poet with a large hole to fill.

John Clare was placed in a lunatic asylum because he was literate.

Golding abandons a group of boys on an uninhibited island.

Dill plays with himself when he is home in meridian.

William Wordsworth is a famous British poet from the lake District. He lived in Dove Cottage and visits are allowed.

I’m sure that at that time when the poem was written all the words made perfect sense, although this is not the case today.

I am Very Bothered is saying that marriage scares you for life.

The poem The Daffodils is indefinitely the most powerful and memorable poem we have to date. Its chronological order makes us feel this is an enjoyable poem to read and hear. It hits us with frivolous sights of wonder.

I am not persuaded by this poem. After all, not everyone has sex in Yarmouth.

Mr Tate’s aiming was not very precise so Atticus shot him.

I think I would be alive if I was Dickie in Examination Day after this exam.

When Damien is sad about Phillis his projection torments him. He then returns to his cottage which provides his climax and is a very old-fashioned English thing to do.

I believe that the paragraph (and I’m sorry to be possibly crude) is when they are both at their climax (sexually). “Yes” followed by a comma (which so far is the only punctuation used) seems too obvious to pass. The lack of punctuality adds to the effect of what she feels.

I believe the speaker is male and the listener female because the listener is always interrupting and criticising.

Blake accuses the rose of being evil – like a woman.

During the war the government forced people to do natural Service and they could not refuse. They were constricted.

The rhythm of Valentine makes your two hips move when it is read.

Examination Day deals with the brusque and abrupt and at every turn it reels and rocks like a roller coaster until it lunges to the ground at the end.

If you were to listen to a scientist such as Simon Armitage’s wife they would probably say that such emotions exist in order to procreate and rank love among lust and carnal pleasure.

Lennie has a leaning problem.

I AM is written in three verses of six lines, with every other line indented. If you turn the page 90 degrees clockwise it resembles castle battlements.

The Twa Corbies is written in a Scottish dialect. This adds to the suffering.

thirteen-year-olds did sex in a science lab. Grown ups would have done it somewhere else.

This poem thinks it is a sonnet but it is not.