Poetry Friday: Les Murray, Playful Genius

In honor of Poetry Friday, I'm posting a poem by the Australian poet, Les Murray. I don't think there's anyone who surpasses him right now for rigorous play with sound. He uses form but makes it feel natural and smooth as silk. And the following poem simply has to be heard to be believed (and appreciated) so it's lucky that there is an audio link (click on the symbol at the end of the poem) at Les Murry's home page.

One of the things I try to teach my students is that you can't get very far with a poem if the subject has been done to death - fresh and new is a better place to start. Well, what bats say in "Bat English" is what I would call Fresh and New.

By the way: It's Les Murray's birthday today. Here's wishing him many happy returns of the day.


Bat's Ultrasound

Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wing
with fleas, in rock-cleft or building
radar bats are darkness in miniature,
their whole face one tufty crinkled ear
with weak eyes, fine teeth bared to sing.

Few are vampires. None flit through the mirror.
Where they flutter at evening's a queer
tonal hunting zone above highest C.
Insect prey at the peak of our hearing
drone re to their detailing tee:

ah, eyrie-ire; aero hour, eh?
O'er our ur-area (our era aye
ere your raw row) we air our array
err, yaw, row wry—aura our orrery,
our eerie ü our ray, our arrow.

A rare ear, our aery Yahweh.


from
Selected Poems, 1986
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Poetry Friday this week is being hosted by Becky over at Becky's Book Reviews

M. T. Anderson, Under Armed Guard

One of the best author photos EVER, bar none. This is M.T. Anderson on the Boston Common with two Revolutionary War re-enacters. Obviously. I think. Or maybe that's friend John Green on one side and friend Tim Wynne-Jones on the other? I wouldn't put it past them. But it's the serious look on Tobin's face that makes it perfect.

The photo appeared in this week's Publisher's Weekly, alongside an interview in which Tobin talks about many things, including those adults who said that Octavian Nothing used vocabulary above a teenager's ability level. Tobin talks about sci-fi where there is a lot of language-building going on next to world-building, and he concludes, "I think kids are excited by language, and they’re not always given credit for that."

Hooray! Well-said. And as far as I'm concerned, I wish some of our leaders would be as honest as Tobin is when he says, about the lessons learned in his research for Octavian, "I think there was also a slow, grinding realization for me of what it is that human beings are willing to do to each other to secure their own luxuries. That was a very sad tutorial I went through, working on this book. There was suffering on an unimaginable scale. I know this is a bit dismal for an interview, but I honestly feel like a full recognition of the capacity of mankind to ignore each other’s suffering is one of the saddest lessons I learned."

I'm all for Hope, I'm all for Change, but first, let's learn the lessons we need to learn, and let's tell the truth about our history, instead of just waving a flag and calling ourselves great. Then , once we've done that, we can turn to optimism and The Dream, if it calls us.

Preaching to the Choir

Yes, preaching to the choir, but I just want to say for the record that I'm proud of all of us who signed the petition. Watch the video at this link:
Authors and Illustrators for Children

Rhythms of the Playground

I read not too long ago about several family members of the Medici family in medieval Florence being exhumed for forensic tests to determine how they died. Not a happy bunch of people - intrigue and mayhem abounded. In honor of Poetry Friday, I'm posting an original poem titled Jump Rope Rhymes in Medieval Florence. I love combining the rhythms of the playground with the darker side of human nature - actually, the darker side of human nature is no stranger to the playground. And as the conversation continues about the current financial crisis, greed, the poor getting poorer, etc., I thought I'd go back to Florence to take a look at lifestyles of the rich and famous.

JUMP ROPE RHYMES IN MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

“We want to see what did they eat, what kind of diseases they had. Did they suffer? I mean, you think of people as wealthy. But maybe they weren't having such good lives.”
Bob Brier, Long Island University, on the exhumation of the Medici

Eight grand dukes
exhumed on a table,
Wealth and a wedding cake.
plague and sable.

Intrigue, vertebra,
x-ray, CAT scan,
who was the daddy,
who was the also-ran?

Welcome, SIDS.
Welcome, pneumonia.
dead Ippolito,
dead Isabella.

Ferdinand says
to Federico:
Strangulation?
Grazie. Prego.

Don Giovanni
dead with fever.
Mother, did he
stab his brother?

Cosimo, Cosimo,
strong and able.
Hell of a skeleton
there on the table.

Ducats, beetles,
DNA, femurs,
bleached-out calcium,
secret lovers.

Rotten molars,
gout, tuberculosis,
perfect host,
perfect hostess.

Murder in the morning,
lunch at the Uffizi.
How’s it going, Wealth?
Bloody shi-shi.

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Poetry Friday is being hosted this week by Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day.

Les Miz-Barack

I'd vote for him just for this.
Les Miz-Barack