Dear O Sung Wu,

I also love "Madame Butterfly," especially the
famous aria - "One Fine Day," which is so emotive
and gives me goodebumps.

I tried to analyse what makes a success ul poem.

The reason a successful poem works isn't easy to
sum up. There's a perfection in the selection of words
and word order, an effective matching of the mood to
the metre; a certain balance, a reaching out with language;
a wholeness. To achieve this success the poet craftsman works
hard with language before saying, "That's it; it's right."
Or at least that's how I imagine it.

Back in 1949, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, wrote a poem,
called, "Over Sir John Hill." It's about a hawk who is
hunting in the estuary of the Taf and the Towy at
Laughame in South Wales where Thomas lived. Thomas was often
criticised for his loose use of language. Llareggrub language
is was called. But the critics were wrong -according to
later litereary experts.
Thomas, like other great poets, took pains with
language. A testament to his careful craftsmanship in the
writing of "Over Sir John's Hill, is found in the forty pages
of work sheets now held in the library at Harvard University.

This sobering and majestic poem begins:

"Over Sir John's hill,
The hawk on fire hangs still;
In a hoisted cloud, at drop of dusk, he pulls to his claws
And gallows, up the rays of his eyes the small birds of the bay..."

No Llareggub language here!

I have to explain that the "Madame Butterfly at Nagasaki,"
poem by Dorothy Auchterlonie (Green) is one of my favourites
and was part of an anthology of Australian poetry that I
had to compile while studying at uni.

Choosing a theme for an anthology of Australian poetry was
not an easy task. Colleagues at work suggested a variety of
themes, from Australian women poets, and feminist issues,
to "Propoganda" poems, war and "Protest" poetry, Aboriginal
poetry, bush ballads, landscape poems, traditional love
poems, poems about sex and sexuality, cities, suburbs...
And the list went on ...

cont'd...

cont'd ...

And just as I was starting to make up my mind, a crisis
in the Persian Gulf made it up for me. A crisis by the
name of President Saddam Hussein, who in the dead of
night on 2 August 1990, sent his army to swallow up
Kuwait, his neighbour and former ally, and so bring one-fifth
of thw world's proven oil reserves under his personal
control. The Gulf oil nightmare had at last come true,
just when the world was starting to relax, bringing with it the
real threat of nuclear war.

An anthology based on an anti-nuclear theme of Australian
poetry suddenly became for me, the assignment I wanted to do.
I feared that our world could become so obsessed with the
problems of hatred and aggression, that it would allow
peace and love to be regarded as soft and weak. Yet our
survival on this planet depends on their dominance.
Otherwise Stephen Vincent Benet's prophecy could easily
come true:

"Oh where are you coming from soldier,
gaunt soldier
with weapons beyond any reach of my mind
with weapons so deadly
the world must grow older
and die in its tracks if it does not turn kind."

"We need new ways of thinking to cope with
the nuclear age. It is here that writers,
with their concern for the human condition
and their special skills with language, can
enable us to imagine the horrific reality
of nuclear arms and nerve us to build an
alternative future..."

Dear SteeleRedux,

Thank You for sharing with us your
awesome poem.

It made my spirit fly!

- 'Up, up the long, delirious burning blue'...

and then...

- 'Put out my hand, and touched the face of God'. Almost as if he had a premonition of his own demise ?

Dead at nineteen years eh, while at the controls of his Spitfire in a mid-air prang ? If a warrior who flies is meant to die, then what better way for him to go ? But what a damnable waste of a young talanted life.

Thank you for your contribution STEELEREDUX, it's indeed appreciated.

Hi there FOXY...

Your eloquence with the written word really astounds me, one can only imagine having a conversation with you ? Still you are, after all said and done, a Librarian surrounded as it were with books, information and every imaginable source of data ? So it's little wonder you possess such an incredible knowledge of the English language, in all it's various forms.

Sorry, I deviate the topic of course is Poetry. A way I suppose of concentrating all the good things people think, say and do, and consigning them into just a few well chosen words ? The trick is, being able to assemble those words, to somehow make them agreeable, attractive, memorable, and poignant ? While it's true, poetry covers all human emotions, life, death, love, loss, and even humour etc.
The greatest of Poets seem able to write material that can cover anything and everything.

Why I like prose, as opposed to what you'd call ordinary narrative, it would seem that much more of a story can be covered by just a few well chosen words, with clever even 'ingenious' punctuation ? I believe it's imperative when reading poetry that punctuation is closely observed otherwise some stanzas can appear to make no sense at all ? Still I'm no expert when it comes to poetry, other than having a great deal of love for it.

Thanks again FOXY for your prodigious articles, I really do appreciate them.

Dear O Sung Wu,

I was really lucky at high school - in my
English teacher who instilled in me the
love of Shakespeare and Literature.
I went on to study Literature at uni Thanks
to that wonderful woman. She was an inspiration!

Thank you again for your kind words.
However, I owe everything I know today to that
teacher. She opened my mind.