A slipping Glimpser

Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning was a better painter than he was a poet, I think you’ll agree, but if, like him, you find yourself off balance what seems like most of the time, then take heart - as I do when I read his description of what it takes to find your way to inspiration in everyday life. To slip, to fall, to be unsteady & uncertain might just grant the odd insight or two.
Or at least I find it helps to look at life that way!

Each new glimpse is determined by many,

Many glimpses before.

It’s this glimpse which inspires you – like an occurrence

And I notice those are always my moments of having an idea

That maybe I could start a painting…….

….the real world, this so-called real world,

is just something you put with, like everybody else.

I’m in my element when I am a little bit out of this world:

then I’m in the real world – I’m on the beam.

Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right;

when I’m slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting!

It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me:

I’m not doing so good; I’m stiff.

As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping, most of the time,

into that glimpse. I’m like a slipping glimpser…..

(Wllem de Kooning, Sketchbook1: Three Americans, 1960)

Poetry Party 2: Wearing Purple

Take a poem with the lines

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

(Jenny Joseph. Warning)

add one thrift shop impulse-buy red hat and what do you get? Just to show you the power of the pen, you get the Red Hat Society.

Founder Red Hat Queen Bee Sue Ellen Cooper bought the hat, read the poem and now The Red Hat Society boasts thousands of members, its own credit card, online shop and travel perks. There are few rules but you have to be over 50 and you must wear red and purple at Society functions.

Not being over-50 I can’t describe it as well as they can:

"The Red Hat Society began as a result of a few women deciding to greet middle age with verve, humor and elan. We believe silliness is the comedy relief of life, and since we are all in it together, we might as well join red-gloved hands and go for the gusto together. Underneath the frivolity, we share a bond of affection, forged by common life experiences and a genuine enthusiasm for wherever life takes us next."

- Sue Ellen Cooper, Queen Mother

Their website continues:

While visiting a friend in Tucson several years ago, Sue Ellen impulsively bought a bright red fedora at a thrift shop, for no other reason than that it was cheap and, she thought, quite dashing. A year or two later she read the poem "Warning" by Jenny Joseph, which depicts an older woman in purple clothing with a red hat. Sue Ellen felt an immediate kinship with Ms. Joseph. She decided that her birthday gift to her dear friend, Linda Murphy, would be a vintage red hat and a copy of the poem. She has always enjoyed whimsical decorating ideas, so she thought the hat would look nice hanging on a hook next to the framed poem. Linda got so much enjoyment out of the hat and the poem that Sue Ellen gave the same gift to another friend, then another, then another.

One day it occurred to these friends that they were becoming a sort of "Red Hat Society" and that perhaps they should go out to tea... in full regalia. They decided they would find purple dresses which didn't go with their red hats to complete the poem's image.

The tea was a smashing success……

Poetry Party

On Saturday we held our version of a Burns’ Supper – a Poetry Party.

The rules are simple. You come, you eat, and in the company of friends, you recite or read a poem.

Any language, any topic, any poet, any time.

This year our guests represented Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Turkey and Australia and we read and listened to poems in English, German and Turkish from thoughtful through witty to downright hilarious.

For the first time our daughters joined us, and I was particularly impressed by Rhianna’s 13 year old friend who’d come along with her parents and who had not only found a poem, but was eager to read it to us. (Beautifully.)

Beka, the youngest, wanted to do the Mulan ballad we’d found a few weeks ago, but as it is a just a little bit long, performed instead ‘In the Dark, Dark Wood, there was a Dark, Dark House……” followed by T.S. Eliot’s Jellicle Cats, gamely read by the recovering Rhianna.

Although inspired by annual dinners in honour of the Scottish poet Rabbie Burns, a haggis and a tartan tablecloth was our Poetry Party's only concession to the man who penned Auld Lang Syne. Grown up guest Don was, however, handsomely kilted for the occasion, for which I thank him. He had Beka and at least one of the adults present snorting with laughter as he delivered, totally straight-faced after years of story time practice, Roald Dahl’s cautionary tale of Goldie Pinklesweet from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

(Over the years we’ve been giving these parties, Roald Dahl is a consistent Top Tenner. Friends who find the idea of reading a poem terrifying, find Dahl well within their comfort zone and then they're on a roll....)

My husband chose Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ – his personal credo really, and Claudia hit a similar note with a German poem on singing out to the best of your ability even in the face of darkness.

Hit of the evening for me was Turan’s poem in Turkish; no, I don’t speak a word; but his reading and the sheer well, poetry, communicated powerfully. I let him leave without getting hold of his translation but as soon as I do, I’ll post it.

The evening was convivial and low key. We aren't into the technicalities of writing poems, or any one-up-manship on favourites, but we each paused for a moment to enjoy words and word play; the profound and the troubling, some wit and some wisdom. And prior to the party we spent a couple of enjoyable hours locating old favourites and finding new voices.

Until I track down the diverse poetry my guests chose, to share with you later , I’ll leave you with the one I read, which the BBC says is Britain’s favourite post-war poem. That’s not all I discovered about it while researching for this post. More tomorrow.

Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Read Warning online at www.poemhunter.com

Blossoming and Burgeoning

Why on earth am I going to post on vegetables?

Because my children plan to inscribe their mother’s headstone with my mantra “Eat your greenery” and I’m reading Jane Grigson’s English Food, that’s why.

In last night’s chapter on vegetables Jane got in impressive cultural references to Shakespeare, W.S Gilbert and the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, who wrote of his ‘vegetable love’ to his coy mistress at a time when vegetable meant the whole burgeoning and blossoming natural world and not a shrivelled grey green knob nestling in a plastic bag at the bottom of the freezer.

Only two vegetables are actually native to Britain, sea kale and samphire, both found on sea shore shingle and cliffs, and both of which most people now would find harder to recognise than kohlrabi and celeriac.

We usually holiday on the Suffolk coast, and on one of our walks along the beach last summer I suggested picking and trying to cook some of the seakale, which looked to me pretty abundant on the shore just above the tide’s reach. Dismay turned to triumph when my girls learnt from their dog-walking companions that sea kale is a protected species so no nipping along the beach instead of to the Co-op. Oh, and by the way, it isn’t sea kale anyway, it’s sea poppy. So there, Mum. Can we have fish fingers and peas?

But the coast still isn’t clear; I’ve discovered sea poppy is good for coughs, so here we are in January, flu and colds everywhere. Maybe I'm on to something.

Pictured: sea poppy. Nasty. Poisonous roots. Don't feed to children.