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POETRY FIRST AID KIT

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Abbie Headon has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Summersdale Publishers Ltd

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eISBN: 978-0-85765-995-8

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Everyday Life

Childhood and Youth

Student Days

The Life Artistic

Beauty and Appearance

Romance

Love's Challenges

Parenting

Family Life

Life's Temptations

Work and Money

Dealing with People

On Health and Emotions

Ageing (Dis)Gracefully

Life's Big Questions

Through the Year

INTRODUCTION

Although many of us can remember staring listlessly out of the classroom window while a teacher tried to inform us about sonnet form, or iambic pentameters, I think it's equally true that for everyone there's a poem, or even just a line or two of poetry, that rings pleasantly in the mind's ear and lingers in the memory (to borrow a phrase from a well-known poem). If you doubt it, just take a look at these and see if they don't stir something within you:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

Once more unto the breach,

dear friends, once more!

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

It seems that a few well-chosen words, arranged rhythmically and with that strange tension between ideas that are easy to understand and ones that stretch our definitions of the world we live in, can lodge themselves in our memories, ready to pop up unbidden in times of need or simply when a particular word arises in conversation.

My aim with the Poetry First Aid Kit has been to assemble a selection of verses that will soothe a perplexed mind in times of difficulty, from situations both deeply serious and all too mundane. Within these pages you will find lines to assist in all sorts of situations, from the schoolroom to the office, from the first sparks of romance to the mellower moments of married life, from business strategies to beauty concerns.

Some poems in this collection were aimed originally at one particular gender, but I believe that the wisdom they contain may apply to anyone. So, when Sir John Suckling advises an unsuccessful suitor that, 'If of herself she will not love, / Nothing can make her: / The devil take her!', I hope that lovers of any gender facing endless obduracy from their beloved may take comfort from his blunt advice.

The book is organised into thematic chapters, to guide readers to the poems that will be of most assistance in specific crises. However, it may be just as pleasurable and restorative to dive into the book at random, or read it from cover to cover, as poetry is a broad and mysterious art form, and who knows where its counsel may lead you…

Whether you're reeling from one of life's blows or simply searching for inspiration, I hope the Poetry First Aid Kit will provide enlightenment, comfort and a smile or two.

Abbie Headon, 2013

EVERYDAY LIFE

If you have a rodent problem that you don't want to deal with:

Anarchism

Rats undermined the wall,
And while men slept
The floods that basined in the hills, smiled at the day,
Crept in by stealth and tore their bounds away:
And onward swept
Where busy towns in tranquil beauty kept
The peace; and with the power of many waters pent
Homes were engulfed and hills in twain were rent.
Steeple and tower
Fell toppling down, and in a breath
Where happiness had dwelt, were devastation,
woe and death,
And these few words were written of the fall:
While watchman slept
Rats undermined the wall.

Albert Annett (1861–1936)

If a heavy grey sky is making you feel depressed:

from The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

If you think it could be interesting to sleepwalk but have never experienced it:

The Imaginative Crisis

Oh, solitude! thou wonder-working fay,

Come nurse my feeble fancy in your arms,

Though I, and thee, and fancy town-pent lay,

Come, call around, a world of country charms.

Let all this room, these walls dissolve away,

And bring me Surrey's fields to take their place:

This floor be grass, and draughts as breezes play;

Yon curtains trees, to wave in summer's face;

My ceiling, sky; my water-jug a stream;

My bed, a bank, on which to muse and dream.

The spell is wrought: imagination swells

My sleeping-room to hills, and woods, and dells!

I walk abroad, for naught my footsteps hinder,

And fling my arms. Oh! mi! I've broke the WINDER!

Anonymous

If you have dropped your aunt's best willow-pattern plate:

The Broken Dish

What's life but full of care and doubt
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails, and such vanities.

We plant pomegranate trees and things,
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks' wings,
To painted ladies courting.

We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue, –
But life's as frail as dishes!
Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese,
They'd both be smashed to shivers!

Thomas Hood (1799–1845)

If mowing the lawn seems a tedious task, bereft of inspiration:

from Leaves of Grass

A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced
babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them
the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair
of graves.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

If you need to ask for a green-fingered friend's help with your garden (again):

Sent with a Flower Pot, Begging a Slip of Geranium

I've sent my empty pot again,
To beg another slip;
The last you gave, I'm griev'd to tell,
December's frost did nip.

I love fair Flora and her train,
But nurse her children ill;
I tend too little or too much;
They die from want of skill.

I blush to trouble you again,
Who've serv'd me oft before;
But, should this die, I'll break the pot,
And trouble you no more.

Christian Milne (1773–1816)

If you need a new perspective on this evening's cooking:

Anglo-Saxon Riddle

I'm a strange creature, for I satisfy women,

a service to the neighbours! No one suffers

at my hands except for my slayer.

I grow tall, erect in a bed,

I'm hairy underneath. From time to time

a good-looking girl, the doughty daughter

of some churl dares to hold me,

grips my russet skin, robs me of my head

and puts me in the pantry. At once that girl

with plaited hair who has confined me

remembers our meeting. Her eye moistens.

Anonymous

If any so-called 'pillars of society' turn out not to be so exalted and worthy after all:

Ozymandias