A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

Name:
Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Sunday 2 August 2015

Catcher in the Eye done Good

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

Years ago, I saw a painting in an art gallery that has made me reflect on the beauty of memory, capturing and preserving a precious moment in time. Yes, a photograph can do much the same, but a painting is so much more than a photograph; it reads aloud to the inner ear, thus inviting the inner eye to appreciate its every deliberate brush stroke in much the same sense and sensibility as one might appreciate iambic meter in a poem. As with all creative endeavour, the art lies in its artlessness, artist rewarding observer with an insight to a process that requires we tap into reserves of feeling of which the chances are we are not consciously aware.

Memory may fade, but the art-poem remains a part of us and will be sure to manifest itself in our approach to life, love, nature and human nature…; indeed, to  just about everything.

‘Oh,’ I hear some people say, ‘but that’s only if you have the imagination…’ Bollocks, to that! Imagination can and does work on our consciousness, yes, but it also works on the subconscious, possibly to even greater effect. So never let anyone lead you to believe you have no imagination; the human condition is better than that even where, sometimes, human nature fails us. 

Imagination is that Catcher in the Eye of which we may or may not be well aware but which, in any case, remains one of the sweeter mysteries of the human condition. 

CATCHER IN THE EYE DONE GOOD

Young girl with daisies
in the hair darts across a greeny field;
though brooding sheep
keep a sidelong watch on playful lambs,
the merry scene
attracts a frisky foal, prancing
at a boundary fence

Innocence

Young girl with daisies
in the hair glimpses a pretty butterfly,
gives laughing chase;
one tangent wing at a finger's tip,
angel face glowing
hope’s pink blushes, elusive happiness
caught on canvas

Copyright R. N. Taber 1974; 2001

[Note: An earlier version of this poem - under the title 'Brush Strokes' - first appears in Love and Human Remains: poems by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2000.]

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Wednesday 1 October 2014

V-A-N-I-T-Y, Conversations with a Mirror


How many of us, I wonder, and how often, dare look to our shortcomings and confront home truths...?

How many more of us, I wonder, act upon what we discover?

This poem is a villanelle.

 V-A-N-I-T-Y, CONVERSATIONS WITH A MIRROR

Mirror, mirror on the wall
all you see I'd share;
talk me true, walk me tall

Mind-Body-Spirit in freefall,
racing heart laid bare;
mirror, mirror on the wall

Pride, answering Ego's call
to pose with flair,
talk me true, walk me tall

Inclined to pose as the Jekyll
in Hyde’s lair;
mirror, mirror on the wall

To the toll of any warning bell,
I'll turn a deaf ear;
talk me true, walk me tall

Home truths haunting me still,
(lies, lies, I swear...);
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
talk me true, walk me tall

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; revised edition in e-format in preparation.]


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Tuesday 5 August 2014

Figures in a Landscape OR Home Truths, Chief Protagonists in Art Forms


Regarding my You Tube channel, it appears that some viewers have not realised they should keep the sound on to catch the poems I read over the latter videos nor that the poem is also included in the description that accompanies each video. Hopefully, this information will add to your enjoyment as Graham and I have a lot of fun shooting the videos and writing the poems. We don’t have a state of the arts video camera, though, so don’t expect a BBC level production:


Meanwhile...

Among all art forms, it is possibly a painting that brings us closest to considering home truths we prefer to keep at bay...? Could that be because all art probes the secrets of nature and human nature that, as we connect with and relate to it, in one way or another, we cause at least some to surface? T

Art, indeed all the arts, are one of the rare occasions when time really does wait for us to make our mark (for better, for worse) and make ourselves heard... whether or not anyone chooses to look, see, hear, listen...

FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE or HOME TRUTHS, CHIEF PROTAGONISTS IN ART FORMS 

Colours, plain enough
to see, tricks of light
portraying the same scene
if differently, discerning inner eye
homing in selectively

Familiar enough backdrop;
humanity busy scrapping,
hell-bent on settling old scores
under the very noses of arguably
elected ‘betters’

Society stripped of dignity,
its integrity left wide open
to question, hypocrisy ripped
away like ozone, ways of seeing
increasingly less clear

Earth Mother going it alone;
world conforming
to tribal identities, a conflicting
evolution, pictures in an exhibition
up for speculation

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]

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