Hello, folks, from London UK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

“Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.” ~Gwendolyn Brooks

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” - Leonardo da Vinci

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” - Robert Frost 

“How do poems grow? They grow out of your life. “– Robert Penn Warren

Hello, Everyone, from London UK,

Reader G H has emailed to ask if the personal pronoun ‘I’ in my poems is yours truly. Well, the answer is both yes and no.  The ‘I’ is multiple voices, including mine.

Over the years, I have met many inspiring people, had inspirational tales related to me by probably as many strangers I’ve met in passing as family and friends.  Much of what I have learned, I try to pass on to readers, hence a multi-vocal ‘I’.I daresay much the same can be said for the authors of all art forms.

Feedback suggests that readers are happy with this, and can see how it fits in with the multidimensional nature of what I am trying to say in many poems.  Hopefully, I succeed more often than I fail; in either case, it often depends as much upon whether or not the reader can relate to a poem at the time as the poet’s ability to draw the reader into a poem and let him or her work through and arrive at their own take on it. Needless to say, how they finally relate to it, if at all, the poet will probably never know…

The natural world  is a constant inspiration to us all, of course, especially to the gardener who has a special relationship with nature I have always admired, even envied. More than one gardener has told me how they so look forward to spring, seeing leaves return to the trees and listening to what they have to say as they rustle in a breeze or survive a storm. Oh, yes, there is a poet in everyone...

Do feel free to email me – rogertab@aol.com - any time. I try to reply or at least acknowledge as many as possible, but only read those with ‘POETRY’ in the subject field. Sometimes, I am feeling unwell  and manage to hit a wrong key, whereupon emails disappear, so apologies to anyone expecting a reply, but has not received one. 

As regular readers well know, years of hormone therapy for my prostate cancer has played merry hell with my thought processes and general memory, so I am not as comfortable with new technology as I once was, not to mention that I can't always see the letters on a my p c keyboard too well these days either. 😉

Can you wonder that I sometimes struggle to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life?😉 Ah, but the struggle always brings its own reward...😁

Take care, folks, keep safe and stay positive,

Many thanks for dropping by and I hope to be back with a new poem soon,

Hugs,

Roger 

“

 

Conversation Piece(s)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

The original version of today’s poem was written in 1976 and has appeared in several poetry magazines and anthologies. I have since made some revisions, but retained lower case throughout. Why? Because I still feel it makes the point that conversations are like jigsaws; as we try to piece it all together,  we may well find ourselves making poor (not necessarily bad) guesses,  as if our bigger picture in our mind's eye doesn't quite correspond to that on the box cover. 

Now, this may not be one of my best poems, but it remains a firm favourite of mine, not least because it turns on a theme to which I will return time and again in my later poems; a breakdown of communication between two people on a meaningful, personal level in modern society, not least for each of them looking at the same picture in the same conversation's frame, but from different perspectives. The result can be thoughts and conversations left hanging, not unlike gaps in a jigsaw looking to be filled. In terms of conversation, this can only be resolved once those concerned accept the need to keep the same picture in view while allowing for its being approached from different angles.

Here we are in an age of increasingly sophisticated technology, yet fewer and fewer people ever sit down and talk to each other, and I don’t mean making small talk or talking at people (because we so love the sound of our own voices?) or IM'ing on social networks, Internet chat rooms and mobile phones....  I mean face to face sitting down and talking things through, and listening to each other.

Oh, but I have met so many people - members of my own family included - who will only talk about something if they know they are gong to like what they hear; so much as any hint of opposition to their point of view, and they don’t want to know. As for confronting home truths, that is rarely if ever on the agenda; nor can they be persuaded by any suggestion of a mutual exchange.

So is it any wonder that so many relationships fall apart, family members become estranged, best friends become sworn enemies and work colleagues cannot stand to be in the same room as each other....? 

It takes two to talk and two to listen or the chances are there will be more wrong assumptions, misunderstandings, misinterpreted actions or words distorting our personal space than man-made waste polluting the atmosphere.

When did YOU last have a worthwhile two-way conversation or frank exchange of views with someone close rather than let them eat away at your patience till it snaps...or worse? A jigsaw requires patience to piece together the picture on its box. While some of us may well feel we live in boxes, those cover pictures may well be very similar, but rarely the same unless we happen to be on much the  same wavelength. Could that be why the Spirit of Love excels at human jigsaws...?

CONVERSATION PIECE(S)

not a bad day,

so I’ve heard say 

over the jam

could have been worse;

by the way, I saw a hearse this morning

outside number five

good to be alive,

even in a cactus twilight creeping

under the skin

there’s a scratching 

at the door, better let the cat in I suppose,

but before I do...

tell me, who else 

knows about us or even suspects 

anything...?

here we sit, you and I,

like figures at that hearse, scratching away

with each eye...

for something to say 

after clocking up much the usual

hours apart...

what’s that?

okay, I’ll go let in

the cat

Copyright R. N. Taber 1976; 2012 

[Note: An earlier version of this poem has appeared on the blog under the title  Conversation Piece, also in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2000] RNT