I’m reading a wonderful book: ‘Now All Roads Lead To France’ by Matthew Hollis, about the last years of the poet, Edward Thomas. It’s a glorious achievement; careful, full of insights and emotional power, and as griping as a thriller. Adam Foulks’s review quotation on the back cover has it about right: “It tells the story of a compelling figure from a half-forgotten England whose influence on contemporary writing seems to grow and grow.” Carol Ann Duffy’s says in part: “The care and diligence which Matthew Hollis brings to the duty of biography gives his prose the quality of light…” I’m loving it; can’t put it down; don’t want to finish it. If you want to read some of the recent reviews, you can find them here.

The book has reminded me of the great friendship between Edward Thomas and Robert Frost, in honour of which I’m posting a Frost poem; one he wrote in 1916 with Thomas in mind, as he explained in the 1950s:

“One stanza of ‘The Road Not Taken’ was written while I was sitting on a sofa in the middle of England: was found three or four years later, and I couldn’t bear not to finish it. I wasn’t thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other. He was hard on himself that way.”

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

For more Tuesday poems you can look at the main Tuesday Poem page where a poem is posted each week. Further poems can be found on the blogs of the Tuesday poet members in the sidebar.

We are the happy owners of something we call the Yellow Book: its official name is Osteria d’Italia. It’s the best possible food guidebook for Italy and it’s helped us find delicious and comparatively simple meals in places we’d never have discovered by ourselves – a basement enoteca in Arezzo (an amazing layered onion soup); a few tables in the side room of a deli in Fiesole (fresh tortelli with a walnut sauce) and a taverna deep in the Umbrian countryside (the best chicken I’ve ever eaten and a fresh strawberry pannacotta that I still dream about).

So when we drove down from the Fréjus Tunnel to have dinner with a friend in Siena we consulted the Yellow Book to find a simple but delicious lunch along the way. ‘Da Drin’ in Sori seemed a good choice and their special stuffed veggies sounded lovely. Yes, it was open for lunch on Fridays; no, it wasn’t too far from the motorway.

Result? Well, not really. ‘Da Drin’ isn’t actually in Sori; it’s in a frazione of Sori that was very hard to find and we missed many turnings, even after asking for directions along the way. And I admit that my heart fell when we finally found the right road up to Capreno: the name should have given us a clue although I think even the most intrepid goat would blench at the camber and gradient. Still, we persisted – well, I say “we”; I mean Bruce did; by then I was in my award-winning state of unhelpfulness offering only high-anxiety comments like “aaaah, look out!” and “yikes, can this be right?” and “oh no!”. I freely admit that I would not like to be the driver with that going on beside me. Especially the bit that involves high-pitched shuddering gasps on hairpin bends.

Well, we got to Capreno in one piece and clambered up more verticality to the trattoria, where they had just closed the kitchen, at 1.45pm. No, they couldn’t serve us any food, and yes, they were slightly sorry about that but not, it seems, quite sorry enough to whip up some pasta and a salad to reward us for our perseverance. So we lurched back down the impossible hill and got back on the motorway.

But yesterday the Yellow Book came good again with a perfect trattoria in a little village close to our homeward road: ‘Da Gagliano’ in Sarteano.  I had this to start:

grilled pecorino and  slice of prosciutto with fresh fig sauce. It was ottimo. So was everything else.

So we’re not Sori.

I’m not convinced that travel necessarily ‘broadens the mind’, although I do believe that not travelling probably makes for a much-narrowed perspective on the lives of others. But as Horace (in verse translation) said, “they change their climes/and not their minds/who haste across the sea”: travel alone isn’t enough to effect alteration or extension of perception and thought.

But of course, travelling is a fascinating experience itself and as we are presently driving down through France on our way to Italy I’m also presently intrigued by this state of suspension; the apparent absence of attachment that I think Eliot is talking about in this part of “The Dry Salvages”.

“Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.”

There’s certainly a sense in which contemplation of the past and the future seem suspended together in equal balance, and seem simultaneously distant, when you undertake long journeys. (This is probably not unrelated to the ease of driving on French motorways: you put your car into cruise control and don’t have to re-adjust it for hours. But it’s more than that, too.)

I’ve always found walking – in Regent’s Park in London, along the sea cliff on Waiheke, and along the Atlantic boulevard in Key West: all comparatively short journeys of course – to be a good source of reconsideration of anything I’m writing. The physical movement of brisk walking seems to encourage interesting solutions to writing problems to float into my mind, perhaps because if your body’s busy your mind can move into another gear. It feels, when it’s working well, as though some sort of otherwise quiet creative energy has space to breathe. And on this long car journey I think that the suspension of identity – which is one way of expressing something which seems (to me) to be related to Eliot’s poem – is also apparent.

Maybe it’s just that there are fewer practical distractions than usual? Or maybe it’s a form of fugue state, whatever that exactly is – but having now read the Wikipedia entry on ‘fugue state’ maybe I ought to find another alternative: fugue state not only doesn’t sound any fun at all but it’s also apparently a great deal more extreme than what I’m trying to discuss: “Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. After recovery from fugue, previous memories usually return intact, but there is complete amnesia for the fugue episode.”

Anyway. It’s a lovely experience and we’ll be in Italy tomorrow, god willing and the creek don’t rise.

Our climbing beans have slowed down their remarkable production skills and the leaves on our squash vines are tinged with yellow. I’ve given up swimming at the Hampstead Heath Lido and have moved to the heated indoor pools in Kentish Town. Hot soup suddenly seems a sensible choice for lunch instead of salads, and last night I needed an extra layer on the bed.

But we haven’t given up on summer – not yet – and so it’s time to chase the sun south for a few weeks. We’re heading off again next week, driving down through France to Italy and then into Umbria where this glorious organic farm awaits us in all its beauty, along with projected temperatures that make you gasp and stretch your eyes, and imagine that you remember how summers used to be exactly like this in the Good Old Days (yeah, right).

Tomatoes. Figs. Plums. Peaches. Fresh mozzarella. Eggs from the farm’s hens, olive oil from their trees, and wine from their grapes. Salami made in the local salumeria. Breakfast on the front terrace watching the swifts and swallows gather on the power lines and have chirruping conversations about their coming journeys – I imagine them swapping route advice like the worst travel bores in the world.

Swimming in a pleasingly warm but unheated pool.

Walking up to Montegabbione in the late afternoon when everything’s turning pink and gold in the sun.

Drinking prosecco bellinis on the back terrace in the evening and watching the sun set behind Monte Amiata.

How wonderful is that?

I found this cartoon somewhere years ago – I don’t remember where and I don’t know who the cartoonist is – RGJ, whomever that may be. But it’s a treasure and still makes me smile.

Another and more recent catty pleasure is The Catorialist, which sends up The Sartorialist by posting photos of cats along with straight-faced commentaries on their stylishness. (I particularly like the post for Sat 5th June entitled ‘The Case for Pushed-up Sleeves, Milano’.) Enjoy!

I think most Tuesday Poets know the outstanding body of work of the English Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Most readers around the world will also have heard about the recent riots in England. But perhaps not everyone will know of the dignified courage of the community leader Tariq Jahan in Birmingham, whose beloved son Haroon and his two young friends, Shezad and Abdul, were murdered by a hit and run driver during the troubles in their city.

Carol Ann Duffy wrote this to honour their memory. As Mark Antony said in Julius Caesar, “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.”

Birmingham
by Carol Ann Duffy

for Tariq Jahan

After the evening prayers at the mosque,
came the looters in masks,
and you three stood,
beloved in your neighbourhood,
brave, bright brothers,
to be who you were –
a hafiz is one who has memorised
the entire Koran;
a devout man –
then the man in the speeding car
who purposefully mounted the kerb …

I think we should all kneel
on that English street,
where he widowed your pregnant wife, Shazad,
tossed your soul into the air, Abdul,
and brought your father, Haroon, to his knees,
his face masked in only your blood
on the rolling news
where nobody’s children riot and burn.

For more Tuesday poems go to the main hub site, where there is a lead poem posted each week. Further poems can be found on the blogs of the Tuesday poet members, in the sidebar.

I spent two hours this morning walking the Suffolk coastal path north from Orford, where we’re staying once again for a few days. It was a lovely walk in glorious weather along a lonely stretch of coast, with the Orford Ness sandspit to my right and Aldeburgh far ahead. The birds mostly flew too high to identify but there were swallows and larks, and lots of wild flowers to admire as well as farm crops ready to harvest.

And there were absolutely no trains at all, not for miles, but suddenly this strange poem by Frances Cornford popped into my head and wouldn’t go away.

To a fat lady seen from the train
by Frances Cornford

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

Maybe it was this wheat field that did it? I had just seen someone walking along its edge…

Or maybe it’s the poem’s metre? That triolet form is damnably insistent once it’s got a grip in your head. Either way this poem seems to me such an oddity; a curious mixture of romanticism and mean-spiritedness. But when I got back to the hotel I looked on Google for G. K. Chesterton’s surprising reply, below. (Well, this rejoinder of his still surprises me, anyway; it’s an unexpected note of support for the poem’s subject from such an infamous old misogynist.)

The Fat White Woman Speaks

by G. K. Chesterton

Why do you rush through the field in trains,

Guessing so much and so much?

Why do you flash through the flowery meads,

Fat-head poet that nobody reads;

And why do you know such a frightful lot

About people in gloves as such?

And how the devil can you be sure,

Guessing so much and so much,

How do you know but what someone who loves

Always to see me in nice white gloves

At the end of the field you are rushing by,

Is waiting for his Old Dutch?

And then I also remembered Jenny Joseph’s poem, that most famous one called ‘Warning’, and its mention not only of wearing purple and red hats, but also of summer gloves! I love to think that the poor old “fat white woman” is really a defiant Older Woman having a ball and behaving disgracefully. This is the bit I mean:
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 now you might like to look at what the other Tuesday Poets are offering: if one of the posts on the sidebar mentions a Tuesday Poem you can be sure there’s a poem in there somewhere.

The runner beans! The climbing beans! Both of these have only just begun their great work, with months of pleasure yet to come, and although the broad beans have finished our early potatoes are still delighting us. Oh, the joys of a veggie garden. I have taken this largesse as licence to buy roses instead of vegetables in the farmers’ market which is inarguably a rather shocking indulgence, but the glorious rose scent distracts me from all but the slightest whiff of guilt.

Look at the latest bunch!

They look almost as beautiful as one of Fantin-Latour’s rose paintings.

Next time I photograph one of my bunches of roses I’m going to add a pear to the arrangement. And are those nuts in the foreground, do you think?

WHAT YOU HAVE TO GET OVER
by Dick Allen

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the
distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the
backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you.

From Best American Poetry 2010. Reprinted by permission of Dick Allen.

I thought that Dick Allen was the present Poet Laureate of the United States, although I now believe that’s mistaken: it’s W.S. Merwin who’s now the national Laureate. (I gather that Dick Allen is the State Poet Laureate for Connecticut.) But I was interested to notice how – like Billy Collins, an earlier national Laureate – his work combines a narrative voice of deceptive simplicity with wit and huge emotional resonance: ‘language measured and super-charged’ is what he was once quoted as aiming for.

And while I’m talking poetry why don’t you look at what the other Tuesday Poets are offering: if one of the posts on the sidebar mentions a Tuesday Poem you can be sure there’s a poem in there somewhere.

John Rentoul, the chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday, is always worth reading. Three years ago he started developing a list of prohibited clichés on his blog, and the top 100 banned words and phrases are available on The Independent’s website: the complete Banned List is to be published in book form in October.

Here are the first 30 banned items: I’m temped to say they’re food for thought except that’s a cliché too, although not in the top 100. I’m sorry about number 6: it’s such a delicious irony. Ah well.

1. It’s the economy, stupid.
2. A week is a long time in politics. Or variants thereof, such as, “If a week is a long time in politics then a month seems an eternity.”
3. What part of x don’t you understand? Although this one seems to have nearly died out already.
4. Way beyond, or way more.
5. Any time soon.
6. “Events, dear boy, events.”
7. Learning curve.
8. Raising awareness.
9. Celebrating diversity.
10. In any way, shape or form.
11. Inclusive.
12. Community, especially a vibrant one.
13. Hearts and minds.
14. Celebrity.
15. Makeover.
16. Lifestyle.
17. Going forward.
18. A forward policy.
19. A big ask.
20. At this moment in time.
21. Not fit for purpose.
22. Hard-working families.
23. Apologies for lack of postings.
24. Black hole (in a financial context).
25. The elephant in the room.
26. Perfect storm.
27. Seal the deal.
28. A good election to lose.
29. Game-changer.
30. Beginning an article with “So”.

The original Banned List was, of course, George Orwell’s: you can see his ‘Politics and the English Language’ article here. And Orwell’s six rules of writing hold good.

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

And now I must go and stare despairingly at my own writing …