work song

I should be workin on the Lobo

but I'm tired

and I'm dreaming I'm a hobo

on the rails

but I drill my days to the Lobo

yes, I drill my long spring day to the Lobo

yes, I'm working at the Lobo

and I'm tired.

yawn

Something I think about a lot.

Where did Philip Larkin get his title for “This Be The Verse” (They fuck you up your mum and dad)? Consider Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem”:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

So we have to figure that “they fuck you up your mum and dad” was the verse that Larkin was asking to have engraved on his tomb. It didn't happen. The grave reads “Philip Larkin, writer,” and yet “This Be the Verse,” is in fact the mental headstone by which most people locate the memory of the poet. Usually when one small piece so dominates a career, we in the know all think “Bah! Really? ‘Blowin in the wind’? ‘Aooo Werewoves of London. Aooo.” But here, in a clear code, Larkin has told us by the purview of his title that this, in fact, be the verse dude wants ‘graved on his grave. So it all worked out.

more weather

Randolph Scott

There is an old west, an old south, and old east money, but you have to leave the country for an old north.

the weather

it is raining

here a small dinosaur is several inches off the surface of the earth

here she splashes back down to the planet

and that is why they call it spring.

Wednesday posts on Best American Poetry

Dear Fonz

I post on wednesdays on the Best American Poetry blog.  This time I wrote about a poem that demonstrates an aspect of reality and meaning that is not easy to communicate outside poetry.   

Jennifer