How a Poem is Made.

This short essay has been inspired by C. Day Lewis's advice in his Poetry For You (1944). I will take you through it, as if it were a procedure for something, hopefully in this case pleasant. We start with nature. I would like to capitalise Nature, but I am afraid she/he is not really around these days, and it is this thought that provides the argument or "spin" of the poem. When for example we read nature poetry of the Renaissance - Nature was wild. You could for example find bears and wolves on the continent roaming the woods, though in Britain they had been extinct since 10th century (for bears) and 16th century (for wolves in England). Though they were for the most part wiped out in England by the time of the Elizabethans, they, as representatives of wild Nature were still vivid in the minds, and a reality. Now, unless you live in the States or parts of Northern and Eastern Europe, they are something you see in zoos, in circus shows or on television.

So the bear, with heavy paw, through the woodland

of our history, baits us with her presence, as the wolves

in city and football, howl like Jack Nicholson in Shining,

Here we start with the bear, then as C.Day Lewis puts it, play with double or triple-barrelled comparisons. The reversal of "bait" as in bear-baiting. The reference to Wolverhampton and then the less obvious reference to the movie Wolf. Now we have the first few lines to work with. They are prose-like, but natural rhymes and associations come to mind in the acoustic patterning, we have heavy paw / this yields early thaw, and football, gives us footfall. We will use this to render and construct the poem, as the argument unfolds. After a hiatus, a trip to the city and back, I got to thinking about the Edenic conception of nature and how the birds and beasts

are now in the back garden in the UK. I also saw in the station a Danish magazine called "Big Game" which enraged me. The ladder is a reference to Aristotle's ladder. Entrained refers to the growing of vines and the training of zoo animals to present "wildness".

The birds and beasts of cigarette cards are from Eden

now inhabitants of the suburban back garden

Where in the midst of foreign plants and flowers

they make their home, their they past their hours

Domesticated by bulldozers and the pollution

Feeling safe and secure, the fox, badger and hedgehog

As the really wild growl and rage in presentation

Entrained like vine to demonstrate the Nature

Of man's good husbandry, the absent fathers

Leave tiny chicks and ducklings to the maw

of machinery, crushing the living daylights

As the early thaw of the wild, bleeds into captivity

The footfall of freedom only for the baby-headed

Some try to climb the ladder through appetites

changing, as fatty life, like porkers, decline

But then Africa and Russia leads the proclivity

For hunting and killing, wildebeest and zebras

Big game for big boys with small shoe size

On the sly, like collateral dolplins, the leopard

and big cats, for a few thousand, are extras.