In the seventh of our series of funny-serious poems, Stephen Payne, Clare Best and Jeremy Wikeley choose poems by Geoffrey Brock, Mark Doty and W.H. Auden
Stephen Payne chose ‘Prof of Profs’ by Geoffrey Brock. Stephen says, “A lot of funny poems are rhymed, but this poem is exceptional in the way the final rhyme is vital to the joke, which is set up with such panache by the immaculate sonnet form (with a rhyme scheme more conventional than that of ‘Ozymandias’). I quit a mathematics degree myself, so it’s a poem with some additional personal resonance; I find it touching, even with the slapstick. Geoffrey Brock is a terrific poet – his first collection, Weighing Light, is one of my top favourites.
Prof of Profs
For Allison Hogge, in memory of Brian Wilkie
I was a math major—fond of all things rational.
It was the first day of my first poetry class.
The prof, with the air of a priest at Latin mass,
told us that we could “make great poetry personal,”
could own it, since poetry we memorize sings
inside us always. By way of illustration
he began reciting Shelley with real passion,
but stopped at “Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”—
because, with that last plosive, his top denture
popped from his mouth and bounced off an empty chair.
He blinked, then offered, as postscript to his lecture,
a promise so splendid it made me give up math:
“More thingth like that will happen in thith clath.”
Read ‘Prof of Profs’ on the Poetry Foundation
Clare Best chose ‘Spent’ by Mark Doty from Deep Lane (W. W. Norton, 2015). Clare says, “I really enjoy the way Mark Doty sets up a strong and engaging narrative line here. Having hooked us with the story and then satisfied us with a conclusion, he proceeds to treat us to the second ‘locking out’. The cinematic precision of his descriptions of twice re-entering his own house through a window, the self-deprecation – these are to me marvellously absurd, and yet they lead the whole poem into the territory of philosophical investigation. Every time I read this poem I chuckle at the repetitions of our sincere human attempts to beautify and understand our lives, and to care for this world.”
Spent
Late August morning I go out to cut
spent and faded hydrangeas—washed
greens, russets, troubled little auras
of sky as if these were the very silks
of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin
then half-restored, after all this time…
When I come back with my handful
I realise I’ve accidentally locked the door,
and can’t get back into the house.
The dining room window’s easiest;
crawl through beauty bush and spirea,
push aside some errant maples, take down
the wood-framed screen, hoist myself up.
But how, exactly, to clamber across the sill
and the radiator down to the tile?
I try bending one leg in, but I don’t fold
readily; I push myself up so that my waist
rests against the sill, and lean forward,
place my hands on the floor and begin to slide
down into the room, which makes me think
this was what it was like to be born:
awkward, too big for the passageway…
Negotiate, submit?
When I give myself
to gravity there I am, inside, no harm,
the dazzling splotchy flowerheads
scattered around me on the floor.
Will leaving the world be the same
—uncertainty as to how to proceed,
some discomfort, and suddenly you’re
—where? I am so involved with this ide
I forget to unlock the door,
so when I go to fetch the mail, I’m locked out
again. Am I at home in this house,
would I prefer to be out here,
where I could be almost anyone?
This time it’s simpler: the window-frame,
the radiator, my descent. Born twice
in one day!
In their silvered jug,
these bruise-blessed flowers:
how hard I had to work to bring them
into this room. When I say spent,
I don’t mean they have no further coin.
If there are lives to come, I think
they might be a littler easier than this one.
Read ‘Spent’ by Mark Doty on poets.org
Jeremy Wikeley chose ‘O Tell Me the Truth About Love’ by W.H. Auden.
O Tell Me the Truth About Love
Some say love’s a little boy,
And some say it’s a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that’s absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn’t do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It’s quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I’ve found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn’t ever there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton’s bracing air,
I don’t know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn’t in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning,
Just as I’m picking my nose
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Jeremy says, “For me, W. H. Auden is almost always humorous in that his poetry is fed by a deep well of generosity and playfulness. Humour in that sense – that way of approaching the world – is one of the things I read poetry for generally. ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’, for instance, with the dogs getting on with their ‘doggy’ life, or the ship that has somewhere else to get to while Icarus falls from the sky. But Auden is also laugh-out-loud funny. The poem I go back to most often is ‘O Tell Me The Truth About Love’, because it’s fun to say aloud, because it gets everything in – from social and political satire to smut and surrealism – and because the ending is as serious as anything.”
Photo by Enis Yavuz on Unsplash
