A bouquet of poems, most of them about nature but also about the banal everyday life, like those stubborn socks that want to be alone or going to parties just to find a lover. The themes are simple, but the tone is witty and comical, putting a small mockery on all the events. The book ends with a longer poem on a child tormented by his parents and how he goes through life with this burden. Quite touching. A really nice moment of poetry that lets itself be discovered easily.
“Late home for supper,
He mustn’t seem drunk.
‘The pob cluck’, he begins,
And knows he is sunk.”
Contents
I. By the Pond / The Christmas Life / 30th December / If I Don’t Know / Haiku : Looking Out of the Back Bedroom Window without My Glasses / Idyll / Being Born / Fireworks Poem / Timekeeping / Song / On a Train / Present / Postcards / Sonnet of ’68 / A Word before Sleep / After Prague / The Sitter / Les Vacances / Dead Sheep Poem / The Lyric Poet / The Mystery / Reading Berryman’s Dream Songs at the Writer’s retreat / The Squirrel and the Crow / John Clare / An Ending / Poem from a Colour Chart of House Paints / Green Island Triolet / The Ted Williams Villanelle / He Tells Her / What I Think / The Sorrow of Socks / The Stickleback Song / Stress / A Hampshire Disaster / A Poem on the Theme of Humour / A Reading / How to Deal with the Press / Traditional Prize County Pigs / Elegy for the Northern Key / Tulips
II. The Teacher’s Tale