Two for Joy by Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse's 2010 collection Two for Joy

I have posted a number of the poems from this excellent collection and I think that they can largely speak for themselves.  The collection is where we could call a "prequel" to the book The Presence, Abse's memior of the time after the sudden death of his wife in a car crash. 

That is an intensely personal work and it feels an amazing privilege to have been allowed into his inner world.  The collection Two for Joy is sub-titled "scenes from married life" and what we get is more of the powerful love of their marriage, not the stuff of Hollywood chic flicks but real everyday love. 

Reading these poems with the foreknowledge of the pain Abse felt after his wife's death makes them bitter sweet - but then isn't all love edged with that fear that one day one of you will have to go it alone. When we come to the end of the collection and again deal with death these are poems that I am not ashamed to say created a physical reaction, these are poems which will make you cry.

The Presence by Dannie Abse

Found in Dannie Abse's 2010 collection Two for Joy

Though not sensible I feel we are married still.

After four years survival guilt endures.

I should have said this, could have done that,

and your absent presence has left a weeping scar.

Like a heartbeat, you are indispensable.

Each year, I think, the cries of the dead retreat,

become smaller, small. Now your nearness is far

and sometimes I sense you’re hardly there at all.

When in company, when my smiles persist,

your distance briefly is like the furthest star.

It’s when I’m most myself, most alone

with all the clamour of my senses dumb,

then, in the confusion of Time’s deletion

by Eternity, I welcome you and you return

improbably close, though of course you cannot come.

After the Memorial by Dannie Abse

Found in Dannie Abse's 2010 collection Two for Joy

Some spoke of her unostentatious beauty;

she, passionate moralist, Truth’s sweet secretary.

No-one hear the sobbing of the angels.

Well, I have my own weeping to do.

(If angels could weep they would become human.)

I lived her life and she lived mine –

not only in the easy valleys of Pretend

where bosky paths descend to lake where no swan

is singular (and fish ignore the hunched Angler)

but here where the uphill road to happiness

has ordinary speed limits,

and still the revelation is

that there can be such a thing

until it must yield to a dead end.

So now our marriage book is drowned

(there seemed magic in it)

and she is both manifest and concealed –

manifest because I see her everywhere,

concealed because she is nowhere to be found.

Another Country edited by N Jenkins, K Jones, & L Rees

Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales

I have discovered that I am not much of a fan of Haiku, what I really enjoyed from this collection were the occassional prose poems which had Haiku within their midst - these had an expansion of thought which was engaging.

Most of the Haiku themselves left me unmoved, a few raised a smile with a clever witticism, but only half a dozen stood out as great poetry.

On of these was by Ken Jones:
Ageing address book
the living squezzed
between the dead

Another by Hilary Tann:
calling home -
the colour of mother's voice
before her words 

Postcard to His Wife by Dannie Abse

Found in Dannie Abse's 2010 collection Two for Joy

Wish you were here.  It’s a calm summer’s day

and the dulcamara of memory

is not enough. I confess without you

I know the impoverishment of self

and the Venus de Miol is only stone

So come home.  The bed’s too big! Make excuses.

Hint we are agents in an obscure drama

and must go North to climb 2000 feet

up the cliffs of Craig y Llyn to read

some cryptic message on the face of a rock.

Anything! But come home.  Then we’ll motor,

just you, just me, through the dominion

of Silurian cornfields, follow the whim

of twisting narrow lanes where hedges

have wild business with roses and clematis.

Or we could saunter to the hunkered blonde

sanddunes and, blessed, mimic the old gods

who enacted the happy way to be holy.

Meanwhile, dear, your husband is so uxorious

absence can’t make Abse’s heart grow fonder.

An Interrupted Letter by Dannie Abse

Found in Dannie Abse's 2010 collection Two for Joy

 

In this room’s winterlight the travail of

a letter to a new widow. Solemn,

the increasing enterprise of age.

I stutter. Consoling words come slow,

seem false, as if spoken on a stage.

It would be easier to send flowers.

I think of her closing her husband’s eyelids

and I look up.  Siberian snow hesitated,

then parachuted into our garden

for hours, confiscating yesterday’s

footprints. Shall I send flowers?

But now my wife, unaware in the far kitchen,

suddenly sings, captivating me,

my pen mid-air above the muffled page.

When we were young, tremulant with Spring,

often off-key she’d sing her repertoire –

dateless folk songs, dance tunes dated.

In her Pears-suds bath I’d hear her,

in the Morris Minor with our kids.

I must return to my hiemal letter.

Sing on love, as once you did, sing and sing

for past youth, for hunger unabated.

The Penny Pincher's Book Revisited ... By John and Irma Mustoe

The Penny Pincher's Book Revisited: Living Better for Less

The key fact about this book is that John and Irma are not just about saving money they are about "living better".  It is this attitude rather that the strict application of all of their tips that it important. 

I was surprised to find that we are already a long way down the road of penny pinching, but also that living in an all male household there is a major road block due to at least 40% of all tips centring on the reuse of used stockings...

While there is a risk of the house and body both ending up covered in oddments of old carpets and wallpaper a more attentive approach to life and consumption is desirable - there is an oft quoted stat that UK households throw away around £700 of edible food a year, this careless waste must come from a moral disconnection when there is a waste not just of money but of people and that planet's resources on such a systemic scale.

Used copies of the book are on Amazon for a 1p so John and Irma would be horrified if you actually paid the RRP of £7.99 - but to really get into the swing of it ask me and I will lean you my copy...

 

The Nail by Stephen Cottrell

The Nail: Being part of the Passion

I am a big fan of Stephen Cottrell's writings, and this is another excellent collection made up of 'defences' given by various characters from the final days of Jesus' life, each positioning themselves away from responsibility or blame.  This is an effective device for opening the story up, and challenging any assumptions that there are "good guys" and "bad guys" - all have blood on their hands and yet you find yourself identifying with them, the power of the imagination expressed here is remarkable.

I was reading these on my own, and they sat comfortably along side the Maitland Stations of the Cross, they are doing much the same thing and each they were companions rather than repetitious. I drew on both for the Stations of the Cross I was preparing for Northern Leg of Student Cross, but they could be used in lots of different ways, they originated as "performance" monologues for use on Good Friday, they would make an excellent focus for a study group.