poetry – Page 67 – don't confuse the narrator

biscuits and other ambiguities

When I’ve quoted Sandburg – “poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits” – in the past, I have always felt the biscuits were there to represent the everyday, functional side of life: I’ve always assumed he meant Rich Tea, not Hobnobs.

But apparently yesterday was National Biscuit Day, which set me thinking: as I am not really sure which nation was celebrating, I don’t know whether the biscuits in question are the ones you eat with morning coffee or with gravy. And even if it were definitely a British celebration, they might be cheesy biscuits rather than gingersnaps.

Now I am wondering whether Sandberg was thinking of American biscuits – the plain scones eaten with thick sausage gravy – with all the social and regional connotations that they bring to bear. Suddenly hyacinths have become the clear and unambiguous aspect of the quote: a natural Truth alongside the unnecessarily complex human view of things.
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entitled

Last Bank Holiday weekend, I posted Spring lamb with floral trimmings, which included a poem I’ve had in my files for a long time under the title Easter Edition. I’ve always thought it was a weak title but hadn’t come up with anything better. Now I’m wondering whether using the post title, or something similar, such as Lamb with apple-blossom garnish, would be a good idea, or whether it would just be gimmicky.

Tiger moth (insect) — eye-catching, engaging, appealing… qualities of a good title

This got me thinking of poem titles in general. Rather than write a whole new piece on the subject, I’ve adapted the following from Making titles count, a piece I wrote recently for my poetry column in The Woman Writer, the magazine of the SWWJ:
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pockets & bonnets

Among the papers I was sorting last week, there were poems and fragments of poetry I had lost sight of. There were also titles.

Sometimes, like Wendy Cope and her Making Cocoa for Kinglsey Amis, you know that a phrase deserves to be recorded. You don’t know if it will be a line in a poem or a title, but it strikes a chord of some sort. I walked around with the phrase “the inevitability of dragons” in my head for years before I found the poem it belonged in and I still hope to use it as the title for a collection one day.

One of the phrases I (re-)found last week was “On the topology of pockets.” I’m sure it’s the title of a poem, but that poem remains unwritten. When I tried, it morphed into something else entirely.
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time and distance

I have been sorting out papers and have come across a few poems which seem to have slipped through the cracks when copying from one computer to another over the years: I don’t have copies on the current laptop, and I don’t remember seeing printed copies recently.

I haven’t exactly forgotten them, though, as the title or first line is enough to trigger almost complete recall of the words. This is why I find editing and revision so difficult: by the time I commit the words to writing, they have become fixed in my mind.

When I came across Cousin Grace it was like seeing a familiar face – albeit one I feel could do with a make-over:
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