That Cry in the Night

                                 That cry in the night

                                 can be a train whistle,

                                 an owl,

                                 or curlew

                                 flying inland in the evening –

                                 the meaning is always the same;

                                 a door swings open

                                 and lets the cold wind in.

Found poem                  

from prose (page 17)                  

The Waiting Game                  

a perfect novel by                  

Kate Christie (1962)                  

                                         

For more found poems see: 

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/poesie-trouvee-unsought-text.html

and
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/way-of-seeing-ronald-searle.html 

and
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2013/04/immured-mustard-field-found.html
 

Mr and Mrs Anon.

To return to the theme of the 'mute inglorious' Mr and Mrs Miltons so despised by Kingsley Amis (see my September posting, Commoners' Rights to the Heroic Quatrain).
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2011/09/commoners-rights-to-heroic-quatrain.html
The defence of Anon must be for me a recurrent fixation because I'm reminded I touched upon it in my Elegy from a Locked Drawer in Sister Morphine (2008), where my youthful protagonist's flirtation with Toby Freemartin takes this turn ...

It was clear we were hitting it off.
    'What is your favourite colour?' he asked.
    'Iridescence,' I answered quickly (paying homage to Marianne Moore).
    'And your favourite poet?'
    'Anon.'
    His smile was wary. I suspected he was more than a little stuck on me but puzzled by the immature elusiveness I often contrived to make myself more fetching.

-

So, evidently, my views haven't changed since my teens.  And certainly my notebooks record any number of memorable sayings, saws and proverbs whose authors are Anon, yet whose utterances, like folk tunes, cling fast to the mind with a grip fiercer than that of any named poet.

Look. Here. I've just this minute taken eight random folk sayings and arranged them in two 'found stanzas' ...

Thought lies in Bed and is beshatten.
Mope-eyed for living so long as a Maiden,
She cannot leap an Inch from a Slut
Yet can correct the Magnificat.

They say Old Maids lead Apes in Hell.
The Body is the Socket of the Soul
Put together with a hot Needle and burnt Thread. 

Then ask: Would you know her Secrets? Who’s to know who’s a Good Maid?

Remember, Sir Kingsley, the ballad, the proverb, the inventive oath, the cautionary tale, owe their origin to Mr and Mrs Anon.

Poésie trouvée ... the unsought text

Talking of poems composed from found objects, the following is practically poésie trouvée insofar as the text fell nigh fully formed into my lap unsought ...

The Poetess Attempts to Eulogise
a Wonder of Nature
in a Lightning Storm

A peculiar feature as to a lightning-stroke
is its photographic properties.

In this connection a poetess
of twenty-two years,
while climbing a tree to eulogise a bird in its nest,
was struck by lightning
and afterwards showed upon her breast
a picture of the tree,
with the nest upon one of its branches. 

This theory of lightning-photographs
of neighbouring objects on the skin
has probably arisen
from the resemblance of the burns to natural subjects
due to the ramifications of the blood-vessels
as conductors,
or to peculiar electric movements
which can be demonstrated by
positive charges on powdered moss spores.

After her accident, the poetess
wrote no other verses
since, as she remarked, there
could be no more vital poetry
than that written on her breast.

Catherine Eisner, 'Ambit' magazine, Issue 198, Autumn 2009. 

(The gestation of a poem as a critical plot twist is a subject explored more than once in my fiction.)

For a critical plot twist, see also remarks on Nabokov’s The Gift, here  . ..
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/did-someone-call-for-recitation.html