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Fortean Poetry & Poems

V

Vibracobra

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 25, 2005
Messages
37
Well here's a new thread,
nay more of a twine,
in praise of the poems
in whole, verse or line,
whose juice is distilled
from fortean vine.
Can't be assèd to Google
So here's one of mine.


My one and only wish:
that you were a Yezidi.
I'd encircle you with chalk
and always you'd be with me.


Apologies if a similar thread already exists. I searched but couldn't find one.
 
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Click to expand...
 
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed
Click to expand...

I've never understood that line. Its contrast with the rest of the poème, because it doesn't seem to match up with the subject or thème. Can anyone explain this to me?

And once that's done, post a sonnet or haiku for whatever reason.
 
Always liked this one by Benjamin Shillaber:

Late one evening I was sitting, gloomy shadows round
Me flitting,--
Mrs. Partington, a-knitting occupied the grate before;
Suddenly I heard a patter, a slight and very trifling matter,
As if it were a thieving rat or mouse within my closet door;
A thieving and mischievous rat or mouse within my closet
Door,--Only this, and nothing more.

Then all my dreaminess forsook me; rising up, I straight-
Way shook me,
A light from off the table took, and swift the rat’s dstruc-tion swore;
Mrs. P. smiled approbation on my prompt determination,
And without more hesitation oped I wide the closet door;
Boldly, without hesitation opened wide the closet door;
Darkness there, and nothing more!

As upon the sound I pondered, what the deuce it was I
Wondered;
Could it be my ear had blundered, as at times it had
Before?

But scarce again was I reseated, ere I heard the sound repeated,
The same dull patter that had greeted me from out the
Closet door;
The same dull patter that had greeted me from out the closet door;
A gentle patter, nothing more.

Then my rage arose unbounded,--"What," cried I, "is
This confounded
Noise with which my ear is wounded—noise I’ve never
Heard before?
If’t is presage dread of evil, if’t is made by ghost or devil,
I call on ye to be more civil—" stop that knocking at the
Door!’
Stop that strange mysterious knocking there, within my closet door;
Grant me this, if nothing more."

Once again I seized the candle, rudely grasped the
Latchet’s handle,
Savage as a Goth or Vandal, that kicked up rumpuses of
Yore,--
"What the dickens is the matter," said I, "to produce
this patter?"
To Mrs. P, and looked straight at her. "I don’t know,"
Said she, "I’m shore;
Lest it be a pesky rat, or something, I don’t know, I’m
Shore."
This she said, and nothing more.

Still the noise kept on unceasing; evidently ‘t was increasing;
Like a cart-wheel wanting greasing, wore it on my nerves
Full sore;
Patter, patter, patter, patter, the rain the while made noisy clatter,
My teeth with boding ill did chatter, as when I’m troubled
By a bore—
Some prosing, dull, and dismal fellow, coming in but just
To bore;
Only this, and nothing more.

All night long it kept on tapping; vain I laid myself for
Napping,
Calling sleep my sense to wrap in darkness till the night
Was o’er;
A dismal candle, dimly burning, watched me as I lay
There turning,
In desperation wildly yearning that sleep would visit me
Once more;
Sleep, refreshing sleep, did I most urgently implore;
This I wished, and nothing more.

With the day I rose next morning, and, all idle terror
Scorning,
Went to finding out the warning that annoyed me so
Before;
When straightway, to my consternation, daylight made
the revelation
of a scene of devastation that annoyed me very sore,
such a scene of devastation as annoyed me very sore;
that it was, and nothing more:

The rotten roof had taken leaking, and the rain, a passage
Seeking,
Through the murky darkness sneaking, found my hat-box
On the floor;
There, exposed to dire disaster, lay my bran-new Sunday
Castor,
And its hapless, luckless master ne’er shall see its beauties
More—
Ne’er shall see its glossy beauty, that his glory was before;
It is gone, forevermore!
Click to expand...
 
The Abominable Snowman

The Abominable Snowman
by Ogden Nash

I’ve never seen an abominable snowman,
I’m hoping not to see one,
I’m also hoping, if I do,
That it will be a wee one.
 
hokum6 said:
Always liked this one by Benjamin Shillaber:

Late one evening I was sitting, gloomy shadows round
Me flitting,--
Mrs. Partington, a-knitting occupied the grate before;
Suddenly I heard a patter, a slight and very trifling matter,
As if it were a thieving rat or mouse within my closet door;
A thieving and mischievous rat or mouse within my closet
Door,--Only this, and nothing more.

Then all my dreaminess forsook me; rising up, I straight-
Way shook me,
A light from off the table took, and swift the rat’s dstruc-tion swore;
Mrs. P. smiled approbation on my prompt determination,
And without more hesitation oped I wide the closet door;
Boldly, without hesitation opened wide the closet door;
Darkness there, and nothing more!

As upon the sound I pondered, what the deuce it was I
Wondered;
Could it be my ear had blundered, as at times it had
Before?

But scarce again was I reseated, ere I heard the sound repeated,
The same dull patter that had greeted me from out the
Closet door;
The same dull patter that had greeted me from out the closet door;
A gentle patter, nothing more.

Then my rage arose unbounded,--"What," cried I, "is
This confounded
Noise with which my ear is wounded—noise I’ve never
Heard before?
If’t is presage dread of evil, if’t is made by ghost or devil,
I call on ye to be more civil—" stop that knocking at the
Door!’
Stop that strange mysterious knocking there, within my closet door;
Grant me this, if nothing more."

Once again I seized the candle, rudely grasped the
Latchet’s handle,
Savage as a Goth or Vandal, that kicked up rumpuses of
Yore,--
"What the dickens is the matter," said I, "to produce
this patter?"
To Mrs. P, and looked straight at her. "I don’t know,"
Said she, "I’m shore;
Lest it be a pesky rat, or something, I don’t know, I’m
Shore."
This she said, and nothing more.

Still the noise kept on unceasing; evidently ‘t was increasing;
Like a cart-wheel wanting greasing, wore it on my nerves
Full sore;
Patter, patter, patter, patter, the rain the while made noisy clatter,
My teeth with boding ill did chatter, as when I’m troubled
By a bore—
Some prosing, dull, and dismal fellow, coming in but just
To bore;
Only this, and nothing more.

All night long it kept on tapping; vain I laid myself for
Napping,
Calling sleep my sense to wrap in darkness till the night
Was o’er;
A dismal candle, dimly burning, watched me as I lay
There turning,
In desperation wildly yearning that sleep would visit me
Once more;
Sleep, refreshing sleep, did I most urgently implore;
This I wished, and nothing more.

With the day I rose next morning, and, all idle terror
Scorning,
Went to finding out the warning that annoyed me so
Before;
When straightway, to my consternation, daylight made
the revelation
of a scene of devastation that annoyed me very sore,
such a scene of devastation as annoyed me very sore;
that it was, and nothing more:

The rotten roof had taken leaking, and the rain, a passage
Seeking,
Through the murky darkness sneaking, found my hat-box
On the floor;
There, exposed to dire disaster, lay my bran-new Sunday
Castor,
And its hapless, luckless master ne’er shall see its beauties
More—
Ne’er shall see its glossy beauty, that his glory was before;
It is gone, forevermore!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

The rhythm and structure of that poem is very similair Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven"
 
William Blake - The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
 
Can't forget old Edgar Allen Poe's twist on Atlantis:

THE CITY IN THE SEA
by Edgar Allan Poe
1831

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters he.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes–up spires–up kingly halls-
Up fanes–up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave–there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

THE END
Click to expand...

And then Alfred Lord Tennyson goes cryptozoological:

The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
Click to expand...

And I'm not going to quote the entire Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which has curses, ghosts, sea monsters, the lot...
 
Iggore said:
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed
Click to expand...

I've never understood that line. Its contrast with the rest of the poème, because it doesn't seem to match up with the subject or thème. Can anyone explain this to me?

And once that's done, post a sonnet or haiku for whatever reason.
Click to expand...

It's a long sentence but I take the meaning to be that the statue has outlived both the inspiration and the mechanical arts of its creator. The suggestion is that there was a wide gap between the ideal and the real. Now even that reality has fallen into ruin.

"Mocked" has a strong double-meaning in this context, standing for both imitated and ridiculed. :?:
 
Blake was a master of esoteric and spiritual design. All his poems rock.
 
disgruntledgoth said:
The rhythm and structure of that poem is very similair Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven"
Click to expand...

Yup, that's deliberate. Shillaber wrote it as a parody a few years after Poe did The Raven.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Iggore said:
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed
Click to expand...

I've never understood that line. Its contrast with the rest of the poème, because it doesn't seem to match up with the subject or thème. Can anyone explain this to me?

And once that's done, post a sonnet or haiku for whatever reason.
Click to expand...

It's a long sentence but I take the meaning to be that the statue has outlived both the inspiration and the mechanical arts of its creator. The suggestion is that there was a wide gap between the ideal and the real. Now even that reality has fallen into ruin.

"Mocked" has a strong double-meaning in this context, standing for both imitated and ridiculed. :?:
Click to expand...

At first glance, I thought it could mean that the ruler ignored and mocked is people somehow, and that as a result, the statue, and the land, are both in ruin.
Anyway, maybe Shelley just needed a filler line, and it worked out well enough. Or maybe he just put it in to give people something to try and decipher.

I never was a big fan of sonnets. I never really liked writing to rules, but I guess it was all the rage at one time and the chicks dug it. Poetry isnt my thing, obiviously. I'll stick to drawing and painting thank you very much.
 
IIRC, the ancient druids used to have poetry contests (although right now I can't find a suitable reference - perhaps someone here can help?).
Anyhow, the idea reappears in a new form in Japan:

Japan takes to the ring for poetry boxing
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Last Updated: 11:44AM BST 04/06/2008

The jabs are fast and the blows occasionally low, but no-one lays a glove on their rival in the noble Japanese art of Reading Boxing.
Regional heats are under way in a 10-year-old sport that Katsunori Kusunoki dreamed up to combat the shyness and reluctance to participate that he has increasingly noticed in his students at Kanto Gakuin University.

"In Japan, young people especially find it very hard to communicate or express themselves, so I wanted to give them an opportunity to find their voices," he said.

"Japan has a long tradition of poetry and I thought that it would be more interesting to turn the event into a 'battle' in a ring," he said.

The next series of bouts are scheduled for Saturday evening in Yokohama, with 200 verbal combatants vying to move on to regional finals and, eventually, the national finals in November.

Fights pit two boxers against each other, reading their own poems inside a ring complete with red and blue corners.

The subject matter varies wildly - from politics through critiques of celebrities, food and the unfairness of life as a student - and after each boxer's three minutes are up a seven-strong panel of judges votes on the winner.

Combatants are permitted to use props, but those that score the highest rely on their words, voice and delivery, Kusunoki said.

In the final round of a tournament, the remaining contestants are required to improvise a poem thrown at them by one of the judges.

The first winner of the Poetry Boxing Lightweight division, Mariko Wakabayashi, 17, thought up a poem incorporating the word "butter" in a matter of moments.

The competitors come from all walks of Japanese life and all age groups.

The oldest pugilist was in his 90s at a recent event, according to Kusunoki, although he particularly admires young Japanese who take to the ring for their "pureness" and straight-talking.

"It's very difficult to stand up there and speak, but it gives me energy," says Takuho Tanase, a high-school teacher from Tokyo who has been verbally sparring for more than a year.

"I delivered a poem about women and love and I was able to get a lot of my own emotions into it, which was good, I think," he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... oxing.html
 
The Two

You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock
The Two
On your left and on your right
In the day and in the night,
We are watching you.

Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them who disobeyed our word;
To those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef,
We were the formal nightmare, grief
And the unlucky rose.

Climb up the crane, learn the sailor's words
When the ships from the islands laden with birds
Come in
Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives:
The expansive moments of constricted lives
In the lighted inn.

But do not imagine we do not know
Nor that what you hide with such care won't show
At a glance
Nothing is done, nothing is said,
But don't make the mistake of believing us dead:
I shouldn't dance.

We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall.
We've been watching you over the garden wall
For hours.
The sky is darkening like a stain
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.

When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant.
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come and are standing round
In deadly crescent.

The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black remov-
ers van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Comes the women in dark glasses and the humpbacked surgeons
And the scissor man.

This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
Or do.
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Trim the garden, wind the clock,
Remember the Two.

-- W. H. Auden
 
Maybe not very Fortean, but I like this:

With their silence and slowness, their almost ritual stealth, herons definitely have an air of mystery about them. Dylan Thomas compared them to priests, and in his "Poem in October" you find a line I have always loved: "the mussel pooled and the heron priested shore". There's a poet nobody reads any more, eh?

Fifty years ago he was as big as the biggest rock star; now his modernist take on romanticism rings no bells, strikes no chords, seems insufficiently knowing or cynical for today's sensibility. But he's still out there.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 87233.html
 
I've always thought William Blake was a tad Fortean with this part of his poem Auguries of Innocence:

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Click to expand...

Very Zen ;)
 
So it came to pass, in year of your lord two-thousand-and-sixteen, with the month of June just minutes from slipping away forever, that a singular omission from this fine board (or, indeed perhaps, from this century) didst strike me. And that was tell of the Coast of Coramadel.

I commend this double for your distant recollection, your invigorated introduction, or your listless disregard. But: don't ever say you didn't get the chance.

Poems such as these are woven into my soul, like lath and plaster. I just never get the chance to give them an airing. Let's put up some of your Fortish favourites, please, as I'm in need of some sustenance...


The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo
Edward Lear

On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,
One old jug without a handle--
These were all his worldly goods,
In the middle of the woods,
These were all his worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy Bo.

Once, among the Bong-trees walking
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To a little heap of stones
Came the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
There he heard a Lady talking,
To some milk-white Hens of Dorking--
"'Tis the Lady Jingly Jones!
On that little heap of stones
Sits the Lady Jingly Jones!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

"Lady Jingly! Lady Jingly!
Sitting where the pumpkins blow,
Will you come and be my wife?"
Said the Yongby-Bonghy-Bo.
"I am tired of living singly--
On this coast so wild and shingly--
I'm a-weary of my life;
If you'll come and be my wife,
Quite serene would be my life!"
Said the Yonghy-Bongby-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

"On this Coast of Coromandel
Shrimps and watercresses grow,
Prawns are plentiful and cheap,"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
"You shall have my chairs and candle,
And my jug without a handle!
Gaze upon the rolling deep
(Fish is plentiful and cheap);
As the sea, my love is deep!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Lady Jingly answered sadly,
And her tears began to flow--
"Your proposal comes too late,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
I would be your wife most gladly!"
(Here she twirled her fingers madly)
"But in England I've a mate!
Yes! you've asked me far too late,
For in England I've a mate,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yongby-Bonghy-Bo!

"Mr. Jones (his name is Handel--
Handel Jones, Esquire, & Co.)
Dorking fowls delights to send
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Keep, oh, keep your chairs and candle,
And your jug without a handle--
I can merely be your friend!
Should my Jones more Dorkings send,
I will give you three, my friend!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!

"Though you've such a tiny body,
And your head so large doth grow--
Though your hat may blow away
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Though you're such a Hoddy Doddy,
Yet I wish that I could modi-
fy the words I needs must say!
will you please to go away
That is all I have to say,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!"

Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To the calm and silent sea
Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
There, beyond the Bay of Gurtle,
Lay a large and lively Turtle.
"You're the Cove," he said, "for me;
On your back beyond the sea,
Turtle, you shall carry me!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Through the silent-roaring ocean
Did the Turtle swiftly go;
Holding fast upon his shell
Rode the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
With a sad primeval motion
Towards the sunset isles of Boshen
Still the Turtle bore him well.
Holding fast upon his shell,
"Lady Jingly Jones, farewell!"
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

From the Coast of Coromandel
Did that Lady never go;
On that heap of stones she mourns
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
On that Coast of Coromandel,
In his jug without a handle
Still she weeps, and daily moans;
On that little heap of stones
To her Dorking Hens she moans,
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.



On The Coast Of Coromandel
Osbert Sitwell

On the coast of Coromandel,
Dance they to the tune of Handel;
Chorally, that coral coast
Correlates the bone to ghost,
Till word and limb and note seem one,
Blending, binding act to tone.

All day long they point the sandal
On the coast of Coromandel.
Lemon-yellow legs all bare
Pirouette to peruqued air
From the first green shoots of morn,
Cool as northern hunting-horn,
Till the nightly tropic wind
With its rough-tongued, grating rind
Shatters the frail spires of spice.
Imaged in the lawns of rice
(Mirror-flat and mirror green
is that lovely water’s sheen)
Saraband and rigadoon
Dance they through the purring noon,
While the lacquered waves expand
Golden dragons on the sand —
Dragons that must, steaming, die
From the hot sun’s agony —
When elephants, of royal blood,
Plod to bed through lilied mud,
Then evening, sweet as any mango,
Bids them do a gay fandango,
Minuet, jig or gavotte.
How they hate the turkey-trot,
The nautch-dance and the Highland fling.
Just as they will never sing
Any music save by Handel
On the coast of Coromandel!
 
uair01 said:
Poetry from my spam filters:
http://uair01.blogspot.nl/2015/04/spam-poetry-2.html
Click to expand...

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Interested & don’t know where to begin?
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A secret so easy it will blow your mind!

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and 108 already signed up.

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To stop receiving these.
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Regards,
The Millionaire Maker Team

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Click to expand...

:D:glee:
 
Everyone is always searching for treasure.....

Eldorado Edgar Allan Poe

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—
This knight so bold—
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied—
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
 
It's worth pointing out that Seamus Heaney wrote a few very good poems about Bog Bodies found in Ireland. It's a Fortean-ish subject.
And Thomas Hardy wrote plenty about spirits and reincarnation.

Is typing out a poem in it's entirety a breach of copyright? Must be.
 
davidplankton said:
Is typing out a poem in it's entirety a breach of copyright? Must be.
Click to expand...

I think it must be but it happens all the time in education.

Poets lucky enough to be selected as torments for the young tend to make a bit of money from their personal appearances at events or visiting individual schools. Publication is not in itself likely to pay many bills.

A personal appearance by Seamus Heaney would certainly be Fortean now; he may look like a bog body himself. :rolleyes:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
davidplankton said:
Is typing out a poem in it's entirety a breach of copyright? Must be.
Click to expand...
I think it must be but it happens all the time in education.
Click to expand...

I think that this forum, by any logical definition, is almost-indistinguishable from being a modern-day educational institution.

Which gives us certain rights...

Are articles of association really required to create such a body? And in any case, some people take the study of Fortean matters very seriously, applying almost a religious intensity to their studies. Who's to say this isn't an online unseen university, of parareligious studies? Blessed be the Fort - I am not a number - I want to believe (shhh, don't spoil the effect)
 
davidplankton said:
Is typing out a poem in it's entirety a breach of copyright? Must be.
Click to expand...

Anyway, when Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were married they must have spent some of their evenings holding seances, because they both wrote different poems with the title 'Ouija'.
But to copy them out here would be a breach of my patience as the one by Hughes is a couple of pages long.
 
davidplankton said:
Anyway, when Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were married they must have spent some of their evenings holding seances, because they both wrote different poems with the title 'Ouija'.
But to copy them out here would be a breach of my patience as the one by Hughes is a couple of pages long.
Click to expand...

I like the story that they used the Ouija board to try to win the football pools. The first time they tried it, the spirit correctly identified that Saturday's 13 draws "but anticipated them throughout, by just one match". [Ted Hughes, note in Sylvia Plath Collected Poems (1981), p.276.]

So near, and yet so far.
 
Moth_in_relay said:
I like the story that they used the Ouija board to try to win the football pools. The first time they tried it, the spirit correctly identified that Saturday's 13 draws "but anticipated them throughout, by just one match". [Ted Hughes, note in Sylvia Plath Collected Poems (1981), p.276.]

So near, and yet so far.
Click to expand...
Isn't there a Plath poem which is made up of questions and replies from a Ouija board? If there is it's in that book but I couldn't find it.
 
“Elephantiasus, or Kwashiorkor?”,
Were the words spoken immediately before
The Cumberland Spaceman photo was took,
This utterance by Dad caused Mother to look
Askance at a tramp, climbing the gate,
Her headscarf was ruffled but by then too late,
For the picture was taken, it was in the can,
And Father, mistaken said, "I thought that man
Was suffering from some awful disease,
Not to mind, let’s be off and we’ll see if these
Pics turn out better than the last batch,
Which were ruined because of that bloody Sasquatch.”

D.Plankton, aged 45 and 11/12ths

SolwayfirthSpaceman.jpg
 
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