A Poem a Week - Halfway Down the Stairs : A.A Milne

Halfway down the stairs

Is a stair where I sit: 

There isn't any other stair quite like it. 

I'm not at the bottom, 

I'm not at the top: 

So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs 

Isn't up, and isn't down. 

It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town: 

And all sorts of funny thoughts 

Run round my head: 

"It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!"

A A Milne

In honour of writing my last ever philosophy essays I decided to return to one of my favourite pieces of childhood philosophy. This poem by AA Milne has always been around, maybe as a consequence of the fact that have always ended up sitting on stairs reading, because my room used to be at the top of the house and I would get distracted before I got there. I love the simple logic, the trippy nursery-rhyme-type rhythm, and the sense of fun. By next week I will have finished essays for ever and so will be able to get down and start actually exploring the poems, and maybe start posting some books reviews.

Hark! A Vagrant - Dude Watching With the Brontes

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202

Hehehe always makes me giggle....

A Poem a Week- A Note to the Difficult One: W.S Grantham

A Note To The Difficult One


This morning I am ready if you are,
To hear you speaking in your new language.
I think I am beginning to have nearly
A way of writing down what it is I think
You say. You enunciate very clearly
Terrible words nearly always just beyond me.


I stand in my vocabulary looking out
Through my window of fine water ready
To translate natural occurrences
Into something beyond any idea
Of pleasure. The wisps of April fly
With light messages to the lonely.


This morning I am ready if you are
To speak. The early quick rains
Of Spring are drenching the window-glass.
Here in my words looking out
I see your face speaking flying
In a cloud wanting to say something.


W.S. Graham, 1918-1986


This is another poem which deals with the concept of language, I am currently wrestling with essays and this poem manages to somehow articulate a difficulty of articulation. The lingustic worry of having not only words but the right words. I haven't got time to really discuss this poem in detail, but it rewards rereading. I hope you enjoy it.

A Poem a Week- Coombeland : John McCullough

Coombeland

Work of the devil. Dark place where hills

mould men. Where sense and breath adjust

to a muscular camber, the grounds diaphragm

small houses riding contractions, stiff verbs.

Chalk ridges give the dialects backbone.

The hole-ridden earth draws in watery vowels.

Ploughshares bring up guttural relics

flint-teeth with the sibilant ocean inside.

Stroke a nugget of chalk. Already white dust

accents the contours of your fingertips. You inhabit

the past tense, submit to a crumbling tongue

the way the hard c in coombe yields

to liquid and the unsayable ghost of a b

that’s the beat of the land’s hollow heart.

John McCullough


I have no idea where I found this poem but it is one I have since come back to time and time again. I love poems to be spoken aloud and with its onomatopoeic wordiness this poem is almost sensual when read out.  With the final stanza in particular you find yourself caressing the  "c in coombe" which "yields to liquid". You get the sense that this is a poet who really loves the language with all its flexibility and gorgeous verbosity, but despite this manages to be gloriously understated at times, the simplicity of: "Stroke a nugget of chalk" gives the poem a ceasura from the language and allows the poem to still feel light. The conjunction of body language and landscape is also something I find particularly interesting, and this poem places me on undulating downland whenever I am stuck inside.