Narrow Gate Press

What quest or rest?

2011-12-22T13:01:00.000Z

Christmas is a jolly time, you might think not the ideal time for posting a more disturbing poem.

But think about it: our northern world has settled Christmas - the birth of a new beginning - at the very darkest time of year. This is for a reason. Old things must perish in winter's frost for spring to be possible. We cannot profitably drag the old into the New Year and expect everything to improve of itself.

We cannot sail home without work and a map, or think that a rudderless boat could reach the shore. Now is the time to leave behind what doesn't work, to study, find or make a map, and begin.

This poem opens but does not close questions about who we are and what we think we are doing in this the only life and moment we have.

Looking for a poem from David Henschel's Heres and Nows to suit the mood for the ending of a year, I was first going to post The Blackbird, as being one of David's most beautiful poems.

But I find I've posted it before. Of course you're welcome to read it again - poems grow by being revisited.

Here is What quest or rest?

You are adrift. – I tell you
You are adrift and do not know it.

– Towards what bourne then are you going
In this no longer rimmed confusion?
Do you have lodestone, compass, map
Recognise stars to steer by?
What do you do when winds
Pull every which way whirling thoughts –
Let down your anchors? What anchors
Have you, engines, oars in case of breakdown
Lifeboats do you carry? Indeed
What flag or flags do you sail under –
Only old bones’ anarchy and ending?

Let us change metaphors.
Unwrap your layers like Peer Gynt’s onion.
– What heart have you that is really you?
At any given moment, stop! – say this I am
And hear your thoughts clash swords
While all your civil wars break out like eczema;
Then raddle up your brow
To perceive battles’ end the morrow
Beyond tomorrow
When your spirit and your circumstances
Sign the grand peace.

Come then to the green table.
Leave seas and wars, turn lawyer, diplomat
Bargain the terms on which you will
Be what you become
(Rubbing your wants like shoulders on the bars
Of what you cannot do –
Upon what terms do caged beasts sign truce?).

Yet if they could I could you could
What choice between the warring selves
Would satisfy one’s soul
Quell ferment, light up firmament
And in what quest or rest bring peace?

Burning Heart Press

2011-12-20T16:32:00.000Z

Burning Heart
logo

There are several more books coming soon from Narrow Gate Press. These new books are on practical themes to do with love and sex, and I shall be issuing them under a different imprint.

Under the new 'Burning Heart Press' imprint will be books on the subjects of dating, overcoming premature ejaculation, and solving erection problems.

There is already a Burning Heart Press facebook page at www.facebook.com/Burning.Heart.Press where there is more information about work in progress.

Treasured Chests

2011-12-12T10:59:00.003Z

Sharon Gordon's beautiful photographs
matched with poems old and new.

This is our second book! Beautiful photographs by Sharon Gordon of the nude female form.

The photographs are matched with poems, some well known and ancient, from Chaucer through Shakespeare to Whitman, one from the late Beat poet John Esam (a beautiful man whom I knew personally), and some new poems by unknown and previously unpublished poets.

This is a project that Sharon started way back in 2001. No-one would publish it, although I am told one company who rejected it then came up with their own version of Sharon's idea shortly afterwards. Anyway Sharon put her photographs in a drawer and forgot about it. Then she saw 'Heres and Nows' and realised we could go it alone without the hassle of using a big publishing house.

So much time having gone by, some of the original models no longer wanted to be in the book. Although we had signed model releases, Sharon never wants to create bad feeling, so she found more friends who were happy to have their beauty recorded.

In one case Sharon even agreed to take a photograph especially to illustrate one of the new poems - actually my own poem on page 52 - thanks Sharon!

The mood of the text varies from high art to humorous.

It is possible to get a hint of the delights within using the 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon. Also I have uploaded some additional images - hover your mouse cursor under the 'Look Inside' image on the top left of the Amazon page.

Clocks go back

2011-11-01T16:49:00.000Z

There has been a long gap between posts - other projects (of which more soon) have taken up my time.

There is so little time to do everything one imagines to do.

Here is one more poem from David Henschel's Heres and Nows.

It refers to that time in England when we change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time, a time when autumn is well-established, and the trees amaze with gold, copper and red.

This poem is not in the end difficult, but it repays close reading and re-reading. The gold of autumn is ground out of summer by time turning like a mill, and the crocus bulbs dug up by mistake foretell the spring that is to come. So the poem is about time, our relation to time and how that in turn relates to our desire for meaning.

Yet to me the poem is rooted in the present. The very act of digging focusses the mind on the now, as the spade cuts through the earth and finds hidden bulbs.

What does smirrh mean? My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is silent. The word sounds Nordic. Perhaps it is the cold mist smearing the landscape. The only literary use of this word I could find on the web is in a book by John Nichols called The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn (1982). "...the spears of a million bare aspens - only moments ago bursting with resplendent foliage - create a soft gray smirrh across jagged hillsides."

Back to David's poem. For all the references to past and future, the poem takes its being from the damp-drip earth and greyspit sky - from the sensations of autumn now.

Clocks go back

The clocks are back
Two days gone – still
I can’t get round to it: the mill
Of time revolves on summer hours
When grinding autumn gold.
I shall get used to winter’s white and black
Its boney cold
The morning window’s frozen flowers;

But I was digging round the silver birch
The day clocks closed the summer down –
I’d quite forgotten having sown
Beneath the tangle I was forking out
Narcissi, snowdrops, crocuses.
It’s odd – I’ve registered before
How digging focuses
The spirit’s obstinately endless search
For hopeful signs of what life’s all about.

No doubt it needn’t be admired
(Signs do most often go together)
And yet it touched me deeper than the eye
That when I took the dog a walk, smirrh weather
Today at dusk, testing the novel clock,
Both damp-drip earth and greyspit sky
Glowed russet yet with setting summer fired.

I need – don’t you? – both backlook sigh
And the buried bulb-growth’s shock.

Here and Now

2011-06-02T12:47:00.000+01:00

A little late, here is David Henschel's Here and Now. There is no other reality. I think further commentary from me is not necessary.

Here and Now

Enjoy, oh do enjoy
The hereness and the nowness of it.
Whatever is beyond, behind
Be, if you must, aware of
But not too much – no more than serves
To measure by, to savour by
To live by grace within
The here and now.

It is the clumsy man we too much are
That cannot delicately hold the time
Within his juggling mind
And commandeer the chasing heart
Softly to send the blood like fingers
To touch and know the living hour
And store it richly by.

One day we die.
They say we scan
In the last living moments all our span.
We’d wish, I think, to go to Death
Or God
Like guests with gifts
Remembered and collected from our store
Of heres and nows
And say:
This trust of life’s fulfilled,
This gift’s returned, with more I found:
I was not poor.

Easter sun

2011-04-25T14:51:00.000+01:00

I find this poem enigmatic. Does the sun stand for what is highest, finest, most desired?

We could define God as whatever is finest for us, now. That is our god (for better or worse - let it be something more than our small selves).

The breathless tomb. A wordless state. The sun stands for the world we have, and also the world we could have.

Easter sun

When cloud shrouds shredded by the wind
Disclose the risen body of the sun
And cartographic cherubs are imagined
Blowing lively barques on
A thriving trade run

The image of the quiet white angel is discarded
– that guarded solemnly the breathless tomb –
This side of heaven seems enough awarded
And demanded for whoever’s from
Only a man pierced womb.

Panic and pain

2011-03-29T11:55:00.007+01:00

This is the second poem about ideas from David Henschel's Heres and Nows.

The metaphor of seeing ideas like races to be run suggests to me a distance between myself and the ideas, as though I could watch them from a little way away.

This is reminds me of the pool of thought in the poem Thought water. Once again, thoughts are not me, they are something separate, that one bathes in or watches.

Normally we are what we think, what we emote, what we feel. But the body and the heart are no more us than the thoughts that think in us.

Yet the poet gives thoughts, ideas, words a special value. Perhaps these are touchstone words of truth. Then there is yearning to pass this truth on to others before it is lost.

Panic and pain

Of course lifelong I had been finding
thoughts, or they found me.
But suddenly
it seemed I crossed a frontier to a land
as rich as spring with newnesses and
no more frontiers.
There
ideas like races to be run tore
open panic lest they should be lost
and beat like tides about the swiftening blood.

This is no land of milk and honey quiet.
Only the restless searchers come
here drawing words like water from
deep wells below their spirits’ hills:
to whom the printed page becomes
a joy too much like pain
yearning to be given
in others
birth again.

Ideas

2011-03-17T11:51:00.001Z

This month and next I shall be presenting two poems about ideas from David Henschel's Heres and Nows.

This will lead me to considering silence, the absence of ideas, thoughts or mind activity, which I shall argue is an accompaniment to the state of presence itself.

Then in May we shall have the whole poem Here and Now, which deals with being joyfully in the present. Perhaps later I shall post my own poem, In memoriam David Henschel, which discusses the same thing in relation to what lives on.

That is, we shall talk about the idea of eternity in relation to presence.

We have already touched on the question of what lives on and you can see all these blog entries together on one page by clicking the tag eternity at the foot of this blog entry.

For now, I shall quote a Sufi saying:
Ideas can lead you to the door but they can't take you through.

Ideas

Sometimes they come unexpected –
Ideas as clean as blessings:
Phrases, sentences, clues; keys
To doors to corridors with doors
And suddenly by passages of sight
To halls of understanding
Sunshot domes of light.

I never know why. Wherefrom
Puzzles me infinitely.
They come like birds with beaks of
Olive branches to my ark
From lands of hope and guesswork.

(If shot - an albatross of words
It may be or may seem no more
However others find it gives rewards;
If not – a flake from flying snows
That crystal came but shapeless goes.
How rare the bird which nestles, branch that grows.)

I don’t expect to reach their shore
But I can send their signal from my ark
Into the dark.

iLiterati

2011-03-03T18:37:00.000Z

Here's something interesting - a place where you can upload your novel or short story or poetry book for others to download to their computers or e-readers and read free.

www.iliterati.com - I understand this is supposed to be pronounced i-literati (as in iPad, iPhone, Ford Escort XR3i etc.) not as in 'illiterate.'

Anyway, I wish it well.

Maybe I'll upload something free for people to read in due course - perhaps my first very slim volume.

Poems on the iPhone, iPad, iPod

2011-02-25T15:14:00.001Z

The Kindle version of Heres and Nows is now available at a bargain price of £3.45 including VAT. It is also available from Amazon.com and via direct download to your Kindle.

It looks as though there's already an app for the iPad, iPod and iPhone that allows you to read Kindle books, so it should be possible to download and read David Henschel's Heres and Nows on your iPad, iPod or iPhone already.

The formatting of the sample pages on the Kindle is very odd, and the authors are listed in the wrong order in the product description, but when you actually download it, all is well.

e-books should look beautiful, and I think this one is. It is as close as I could get it to the original paperback version.

Kindle edition of Heres and Nows ready!

2011-02-24T16:49:00.007Z

Finally, after a steep learning curve, I have David Henschel's Heres and Nows in a format suitable for the Kindle Wireless Reading Device
and other e-readers using the Mobipocket format.

The reason it has taken as long as it has is that I wanted the look and feel to be as pleasant as possible, while at the same time using the features that make using an e-reader a different experience from reading a book. For example, there are no page numbers and instead there is a linked table of contents.

Because there are no physical pages, I wanted to make it clear where the end of a poem is, rather than have to turn the page to find out if that was the end or not. To this purpose I have put small printer's leaf ornaments at the foot of each poem.

The link above is still to the paperback version, but the Kindle version should be available by 1st March, and when it is I shall change the link if necessary.

I also have a version ready for the Sony Reader and iPad, iPhone and iPod, so my next thing to learn is how to make it available on those machines.

Link with Blue Logic

2011-02-22T12:37:00.001Z

Narrow Gate Press is now teamed up with Blue Logic so that we can tell you about all their unusual books and eBooks on esoteric subjects.
Click the link!

Thoughts welcome

2011-02-18T17:25:00.000Z

If you have a comment on one of these blog posts it is welcome. If the comment is on an old post I shall link to it from a new post, so that your wise musings are not lost. Time passes in the blogosphere like a shadow.

Thought water

2011-02-18T16:16:00.003Z

A little late, here are my thoughts on David Henschel's poem Thought water.

I need a pool of thought
to dip my mind in
cool and clear and sweetly springing
from some deep source on some high mountain.

We all have thoughts and plenty of them. The overwhelming majority of them are useless.

Worries about things that may never happen, anxieties about what we think other people think of us, resentments of things that could not have been otherwise, dreams unaccompanied by the least intention of working to realise them, items in the news that we're powerless to do anything about, impotent opinions based on no knowledge, churning in the mind of last night's television or a tune that we don't like that won't go away. That is why the denizens of hell are said to gibber.

This is not the pool of thought that the poet is asking for.

The poet is asking for a pool cool and clear and sweetly springing.

It seems to me that there is no room for such a pool unless we first detach ourselves from the thicket of our usual thoughts. I like the idea of the pool being up a mountain. As we climb higher, the thicket of useless thoughts is still there, but we pass through it, it is below us.

Another thought: in the fairytale Sleeping Beauty the prince has to make his way through a thicket of thorns. But those who had gone before perished in the attempt to hack them back. It is an effort doomed to failure. But because it is the right time, the thorn thicket separates before him, without effort. No doubt he came prepared, with a sword and ready to do battle. But no battle was required.

The poet goes on:

There is no pool unless I make one
from depths of spirit in the heights of mind.
It can only be cool if I am clear
only as clear as my own seeing
only as deep as my own loving
only as high as my own thinking.

My commentary: seeing is not thought, love is not thought, and thinking is a ladder, rightly used.

How we wish we could be clear.

It seems a last reality
necessary to truth
to recognise what living water
can only be drawn from one's own well
and nothing comes out
of nothing put in.

Lewis Carroll recommended making the effort to learn a poem by heart. That way, at least there is a corner of the mind that is filled with something worthwhile, something that becomes part of our own inner singing.

The impressions we expose ourselves to - literature, music, theatre, films, the clouds in the sky, the birdsong that even a city has, the smiles of strangers - make our thinking what it is.

Of course it is not I alone
who conjure rain into my earth
or trickle truth and understanding in;
but I am sand to parch my givers
thin earth which gives scant blessing back -
yet I have caves
and through my fissured rock
slowly the water gathers in my dark.

If we have received something then we can only be grateful. We can do nothing of ourselves, though we should like to think otherwise. Even so, I am richer because of these poems made by someone else.

I wish
it lay less deep and more accessible
I wish it lay upon the mountain side
and had the colour of the sky -
in which to bathe would be to fly.

Heres and Nows - price increase

2011-02-11T14:38:00.000Z

Well, I tried to hold the price until 26 February but between the printer and Amazon it's already been put up to £10 and then marked down again by Amazon to £9. This is outside my control.

Since I said I'd keep the price down until 26 February, if anyone wishes to contact me direct before the end of the month I'll send you as many copies as you like at the old price (£6.50). Click the email link and send me your postal address. Don't worry, I'm not going to spam anybody!

Thinking, swimming and flying

2011-02-01T15:13:00.000Z

Thoughts on this next week. Meanwhile why not add your own perceptions? What are thoughts that live in dark caves? Is the best thought so much like the sky that it is nothing at all? What would it be like to have no thoughts?

Commenting on this blog is free! Someone has.

Thought water

I need a pool of thought
to dip my mind in
cool and clear and sweetly springing
from some deep source on some high mountain.

There is no pool unless I make one
from depths of spirit in the heights of mind.
It will only be cool if I am clear
only as clear as my own seeing
only as deep as my own loving
only as high as my own thinking.

It seems a last reality
necessary to truth
to recognise what living water
can only be drawn from one’s own well
and nothing comes out
of nothing put in.

Of course it is not I alone
who conjure rain into my earth
or trickle truth and understanding in;
but I am sand to parch my givers
thin earth which gives scant blessing back –

yet I have caves
and through my fissured rock
slowly the water gathers in my dark ...

I wish
it lay less deep and more accessible
I wish it lay upon the mountain side
and had the colour of the sky –
in which to bathe would be to fly.

One publisher's struggle with Amazon 'Search Inside'

2011-01-24T18:52:00.000Z

At last! The Search Inside feature on Amazon.co.uk for David Henschel's Heres and Nows actually works! (Click the link to go to the Amazon page, then click on the picture on that page to see inside the book.)

This means that you can go and browse the book on-line just as you would in a bookshop.

I believe that people want to see what they are buying, especially if it's a poet they've never heard of. You have to give something away so that people see the quality, then they'll want more and buy.

I originally asked Amazon to activate Search Inside back in August 2010. The whole process was immensely complicated. The link provided was simply wrong. Then they didn't tell me that my Amazon.co.uk password wouldn't work on Amazon.com. I had to set up a new account.

I finally uploaded the book's pdf file at the end of September.

By early December the Search Inside function worked on Amazon.com but still not on Amazon.co.uk, so again I clicked the link inviting publishers to activate this feature. Once again I was invited to sign up to Amazon.com. I emailed back explaining that I had done all this already and nothing had happened to the book's listing on Amazon.co.uk.

Amazon replied as follows:
We can use the same files on Amazon.com for Amazon.co.uk so you don’t need to resubmit. In future, just contact us if you wish your titles to be active in other Amazon territories.

to which I replied:

Yes please, please do this.

To which they replied:

Your title will be live on Amazon.co.uk within 24 hours.

My advice to other print-on-demand publishers: as soon as you hear from Amazon Search Inside, set up an account with Amazon Seller Central at once and upload the pdf file without delay. Then expect to wait two months before anything happens on Amazon.com. When it does, email them again and ask them to activate the feature on Amazon.co.uk as well.

Kindle edition coming soon!

It's been a struggle but I think I'm there. Watch this blog!

Heres and Nows price held until 26 February

2011-01-21T19:54:00.000Z

Having discovered to my consternation that the entire first stanza of Come peaceful had been omitted from David Henschel's Heres and Nows, I have painstakingly gone through the whole book with simultaneous reference to the original typescript.

The new version of the paperback edition of Heres and Nows with the missing stanza of Come peaceful reinstated, and one or two trivial punctuation errors also corrected, is now available through this link: David Henschel's Heres and Nows, or via the usual link to the upper right of this blog post.

I am holding the price of the new edition down to GB£6.50 or US$10.00 on Amazon until 26th February, thereafter the price will increase to GB£10.50 or US$15.00. This is to allow sufficient margin for high-street bookshops to sell it.

As previously stated, anyone who bought the original version can have the new edition posted to them free of charge provided only that they email me telling me where they bought their copy and sending me a postal mailing address. This offer expires at the end of March 2011. Anyone I already know about and have a mailing address for will get a new copy free without having to ask for it.

Come peaceful – a commentary

2011-01-12T10:56:00.000Z

So what do we do when suffering from the private tempest and the heart's riot?

David's poem (see the post immediately below for the complete poem) describes the internal civil war and the war on the heart that follows from it:

Discharge the armies of my disarray
Which turn from civil forays on my hopes
To plunder purposes heart kept, and bray
Across my sleep their trumpets of dismay.

The poem goes on to suggest two ways out.

First, he hopes for a smile
A touch, or words to knit the mind’s torn ease.

Sometimes sympathy is enough. In my experience this sympathy should try not to justify the sufferer's sufferings. I mean, if your friend is in a hole, don't climb in with them. Instead, offer the hand of friendship. You can offer a hand, but they must make some effort to climb out by themselves.

You might, for example, ask your friend, or yourself, 'What are you going to do next to improve things? What is the next step?'

The wrong kind of sympathy, even the wrong kind of listening, can make a person's problems more real than they deserve to be. The inner enemy in our internal civil war is often weaker than we imagine. Many (admittedly not all) of the things that are terrible today we laugh at or forget within a year.

It is even possible to recover from a broken heart. (You cannot in any case suffer from a broken heart unless you allow yourself to love in the first place – risking failure is a necessary precondition of success.)

The poet asks for a smile, a touch, or a few words only.

The poem offers us a second option.

... despatch that spirit by which I
Can set the eyes to search again
For lights within my stormy sky
And ears to hear some song behind its rain.

The medieval Sufi, Ibn 'Arabi (AD 1165-1240) wrote:

This noise is the noise of the wind and storm that your ego causes to be raised between the angelic influences and the world in which you live. The storm can only be quieted, and your heart find peace, through the remembrance of God.

It is the noise of our internal strife that plunder[s] purposes heart kept and clouds from us our true nature, which is the song behind its rain. That song, that peaceful place is you.

Come peaceful

2011-01-07T10:38:00.001Z

A proof-reading error for which I am entirely to blame left off the first stanza of the lovely poem Come peaceful, which I reproduce in full below.

I am preparing a new print edition of David Henschel's Heres and Nows which will be ready very soon, correcting this error and one or two very minor errors I have come across while preparing the Kindle edition.

Special offer

For anyone who can provide me with a plausible story that they bought the first edition I shall send free of charge a copy of the new edition as soon as it is ready. Use the email link at the foot of the right-hand column of this web page. Don't forget to supply a delivery address!

Next week I shall post a little commentary on this poem. There is a way through the private tempest and to find the lights within my stormy sky which we shall talk about next time.

Meanwhile I wish you a happy and peaceful New Year.

Come peaceful

Oh make my private tempest quiet
And all cares still:
Come peaceful to the heart’s riot
Whatever can, whoever will.

Discharge the armies of my disarray
Which turn from civil forays on my hopes
To plunder purposes heart kept, and bray
Across my sleep their trumpets of dismay.

If you – bring blessed things to please
This tyrant anguish and my martial fears: a smile
A touch, or words to knit the mind’s torn ease
With meaning’s reconciling guile.

If not – despatch that spirit by which I
Can set the eyes to search again
For lights within my stormy sky
And ears to hear some song behind its rain.

Making an e-book

2010-12-17T11:31:00.001Z

My aim in publishing David Henschel's Heres and Nows was to let these poems live on.

I do this partly in memory of a dear friend, but I wouldn't have done it if I didn't believe in the the poems themselves.

My next step will be to format this book for eBook readers, such as Amazon Kindle Reading Device, the Sony Reader and others. I believe it is even possible to read books (with some limitations no doubt) on an iPhone, and few things could be more suitable for reading on an iPhone when stuck on a bus or a crowded train than a poem.

This is not the death of the traditional book but another way of reading. I have now got a Kindle device and it is going to be excellent to take as many books as I want on holiday without having to fill up my suitcase with them.

I am reading Steve Weber's eBook manual which is full of useful information about marketing eBooks, but the book itself appears to have been created by uploading the file to Amazon's Kindle converter with no subsequent proofing. For example, there is no contents page and there are still hyphens in the middle of lines where line breaks used to be.

When I uploaded a pdf of Heres and Nows to the Kindle converter the result, as I have mentioned before, was a horrible mess. Poetry needs much more care with formatting than plain text.

I see no reason why an eBook should not be as beautifully-presented as a paper book, and that will be my aim when preparing David Henschel's Heres and Nows in eBook format in the New Year.

So far I have converted my original word processing file into HTML and am patiently going through the code line by line, eliminating the bloated code that results from automated conversions, and putting in the simple tags that I hope Kindle will understand.

When I have succeeded, the link will be here.

Creating new things - 2

2010-12-11T11:44:00.000Z

From David Henschel's Heres and Nows

The workshed

Please come - do tread upon my road.
Let pass,
Lay on its side the deadly glass
Here mark time running in my blood.
Your understanding may explain
And so release this joylike pain
We to time’s s top may do each other good.

This workshed is the place. Come in.
For this time’s being rout
All thoughts of what you’d be about;
I’ll lend my spirit’s eyes till yours begin
To be awake. I only want to show
The poetry of things which by hands grow
Out of the dead wood new life win.

Oh, no - it is not nothing I have done
As yet not much, but trust:
I only stay you since there must
Between us pass the sense of things begun
Of shapes and uses in the fingers bred
New living lovely - as though saws and chisels bled
Into the wood, making creation one.

Creating new things

2010-12-03T15:16:00.000Z

The next poem I shall post here from Heres and Nows is called The workshed.

I shall post the whole next week. If you like it, use the link top right of this page to order a copy of the book from Amazon, maybe for a present for a friend. Or put it on your own Amazon wish list.

The poem begins,
Please come – do tread upon my road.
Let pass,
Lay on its side the deadly glass
Here mark time running in my blood.

The deadly glass I take to be the hourglass marking our mechanical time.

It's an invitation to follow the poet David into his workshop. He made other things there, too – clay sculptures, paintings, wood carvings.

A workshed is a place where you go to be yourself, to think and make whatever you want. If we don't have a real shed we can still make one within – the sanctuary from where the comings and goings of the world do not affect us. Montaigne said one should always have a room where no-one else goes.

To be asked to follow into the workshed is therefore an invitation of the closest friendship, something not ordinarily risked.

Compare these lines from another of David's poems, A piece of the maine?:

Go to another man and show him –
"This I've just written, tell me what you think."
He'll say "Oh yes, how nice" and take the scrip
To use the eyes and hide the doubtful lip.

Later in The workshed is this line:
This workshed is the place. Come in.

and this:
...I only want to show
The poetry of things which by hands grow
Out of the dead wood new life win.

More next week.

Perpetual motion

2010-11-22T18:03:00.000Z

So, here is this month's poem, as promised. Things that we think move are still, if we can catch the stillness. Things that we think are still, move.
... a ballet girl frou-frou'd remain[s] in a brush stroke
Perpetually mobile

Bowl of white hyacinths

I swear that hyacinth dances, and I’m not alas drunk.

I’ve been sitting and watching that bowl’s green lances
Curving and swaying, the curled white heads prancing
Like foam in the breeze from the top of a wave.

You will say – they are still.
Does that stop them from moving?
Don’t you know how

The wind in the corn in a painting can ripple
And shadow with sunlight swing under the trees
Or a ballet girl frou-frou’d remain in a brush stroke
Perpetually mobile?
I say they are dancing, their stillness illusion

– That, drunken or sober, remains my conclusion.

Seeing flowers move - 2

2010-11-15T20:04:00.000Z

Gallileo said, 'It still moves.'

from

Bowl of white hyacinths

I swear that hyacinth dances, and I'm not alas drunk.

More later.

Seeing flowers move

2010-11-04T12:09:00.001Z

In Ancient Greece just before the time of Socrates lived philosophers who were seers, not just intellectuals.

Heraclitus said that everything moves. Parmenides said that nothing moves. My guess is that they would have agreed with each other.

Heraclitus, fragment 41 (from Heraclitus, Fragments (Penguin Classics)): The river where you set your foot just now is gone – those waters giving way to this, now this.

Parmenides: One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete, immovable and without end.

So, for ordinary mind things move perpetually. Change is the only thing that is reliably the same. Yet seen from another viewpoint the choreography of all this ballet is written and immovable.

The next poem of David's that I shall publish here later this month will be Bowl of white hyacinths.

It's a fun poem, about how things that seem still to ordinary mind, nevertheless dance.

Copyright notice

2010-11-04T11:23:00.000Z

David Henschel's 'Heres and Nows'

Please note that all the material published here is copyright, and subject to copyright law.

A modest proportion of the material here may be reproduced for the purpose of review or comment ('fair use') provided either a link back to this site is given or the title and author are named.

If you are in doubt about whether your use of this material will contravene copyright, I welcome enquiries. I am generally happy to have more people know about David's poetry.

Prospero bettered

2010-10-27T13:05:00.001+01:00

We talked about what lives on.

David Henschel's poem Prospero bettered quoted a line, I believe from Shakespeare, every third thought was my grave.

I think the correct line is every third thought shall be my grave, from The Tempest. In searching the internet for the source I came across the strange claim that Shakespeare's contemporary, the playwright Christopher Marlowe, had a fake burial in St Nicholas's Church, Deptford, with the implication that he didn't after all die in a pub brawl.

I mention this apparently irrelevant claim because, coincidentally this morning, before coming across this curious claim, I was in conversation with my sister and for some reason the song Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones... came up. I told my sister something she didn't previously know, that the words of the song are derived from Ezekiel chapter 37 in the Old Testament. I went on to say that there is a rather crude carving depicting all the skeletons coming together set into the wall inside St Nicholas's Church, Deptford.

(The carving is attributed to Grinling Gibbons, but if that is true then I imagine he was six years old at the time and was trying out his first pen-knife, because it certainly didn't look like the work of Gibbons to me.)

I also mentioned associatively that Marlowe was supposed to have been buried somewhere in the churchyard but the grave is unmarked (I looked).

So there we are. Did Marlowe die or did he live on? What of us dies and what lives on? Or as the Bible says, can these bones live? (Ezekiel 37:3)

Prospero bettered

Father and son walked by
holding hands
the elder balding, face lined, yet
showing in the boy's clear face
spring hair and summer-coming feet
as once he was.

At first I smiled at this; then
saddened by time's evidence my
'third thought was my grave.'

But who would languish there –
the fourth was like the first and surer
for the sense of what lives on
despite the single death: perhaps
to better Prospero every fourth thought
should be brave.

Confirming worth
came sun with shadow patterning
the present path.

Temporary hiatus

2010-10-25T09:18:00.000+01:00

My computer is in for repair. There may be a slight gap in posts. I hope to resume within the next week.

Converting the book for Kindle

2010-10-13T21:21:00.001+01:00

My main aim in publishing Heres and Nows is that David Henschel's poetry should persist in the world.

What is good should live on, and this theme recurs a number of times in the poems themselves.

To this end, I am working on making Heres and Nows available in an inexpensive edition for e-readers like Kindle, Sony Reader and iPad.

I have to start somewhere, so I am starting with the Amazon Kindle machine.

On uploading the electronic pdf file via the Amazon web site I found that all my beautiful formatting had gone and the poems were jammed together with their lines concatenated. The thing was an unreadable mess.

What I thought would be the work of a few minutes is going to take me many weeks of work, tinkering about with html tags, replacing accented characters with their ASCII-codes, and creating links (because Kindle books don't have page numbers). It's lucky I have some web knowledge or this would be a non-starter!

When it's ready, you'll read about it first here.

The poet in you

2010-10-11T10:57:00.000+01:00

The poet within was the other theme that emerged from the book launch of Heres and Nows.

Extracts from Each waking one of us:

I only know I rediscovered how
each waking one of us is poet
and may utter hope
as confidently as the Pope.
[...]
And you - whoever recognise
a kind of beauty, any place
in anything where eye or ear discerned
and touched with them in turn
your spirit with the laughing wand
have also waked, and passed beyond.

What lives on

2010-10-07T15:05:00.001+01:00

The theme of what lives on emerged several times.

I hadn't planned it that way, but that's how it was.

Of course, at the book launch of Heres and Nows three poems were in memory of David Henschel, and it was natural that the question of persistence should arise there. But the question arose in some of David's poems too, in a way that I hadn't thought about when choosing them.

John Torrance, in his poem Dimensions of remembrance, asked,

Who knows the rules? If not
pegged down by place to a date,
can 'when' be large as time,
wandering early and late,
could you be with us even now?

and said:

your voice all letters, poems, now.

David's own poem Prospero bettered asks and perhaps answers the same question more indirectly. He watches a father and son walking by, contrasting the boy's clear face with the father's lined one, referring to time's evidence.

At first I smiled at this; then
saddened by time's evidence my
'third thought was my grave.'

But he has a fourth thought. More on this topic next week.

Later this month I shall post the whole of Prospero bettered.

Beer and poetry

2010-10-05T10:06:00.001+01:00

Lovibonds provided a very special ambience for the book launch.

Here we were, people who love poetry, together with people who love and make beer.

It is always a pleasure to meet people who put attention into their craft, and Jason and David of Lovibonds made us feel very welcome.

The people who turned up for the poetry loved the beer - Lovibonds certainly seemed to be making a lot of sales - and I think that the people who came for the beer loved the poetry. Everyone was very attentive.

Afterwards a young couple who hadn't known the poetry event was on made a point of coming up to me to thank me. The young woman said "I haven't heard poetry before but I really enjoyed it."

It is my belief that good poetry properly read is a kind of magic. I think it reaches the parts even beer cannot reach.

Lovibonds have posted some photographs of the event on their Facebook page, here. Some of the photos are of a different event the previous day. This is me in this photo. It's a bit weird because it looks as though I am scratching my left ear, until you notice that both my hands are holding the book.

A happy event

2010-10-03T21:34:00.000+01:00

The launch of David Henschel's Heres and Nows at Lovibond's Brewery in Henley-on-Thames was a lovely occasion.

A varied selection of David's poems from the book were read by myself (Martin Dace), Norah Henschel, and John Torrance, as well as some poems of our own (also in the book) remembering David.

Good though they are on the page, David's poems were made to be read out loud, and the event breathed them into life.

I realised how many of the poems encourage us to find and be the poet within - not necessarily that we shall all write, but that we can all live poetic lives. There was a recurring theme of what in us passes and what lives on, too.

It's late and I'm tired. I'll write more tomorrow.

Here once again is the Amazon link to David Henschel's Heres and Nows. (RRP £6.50).

Book launch event this Saturday 2nd October!

2010-09-27T10:43:00.005+01:00

At this point I have abandoned the idea of tickets - too complicated - just turn up!

Lovibonds

4.30-6pm
Saturday 2nd October,
Lovibonds Brewery, Market Place,
Henley-on-Thames
RG9 2AA
(entrance off the car park).

Beer, poetry and good company in lovely Henley-on-Thames.

Here is the Amazon link to David Henschel's Heres and Nows. A limited number of copies will be for sale on the day at the special launch price of £5 (RRP £6.50).

And you – whoever recognise
a kind of beauty, any place
in anything where eye or ear discerned
and touched with them in turn
your spirit with the laughing wand
have also waked, and passed beyond.

- from Each waking one of us, David Henschel

The beauty of accomplishment

2010-09-20T16:54:00.000+01:00

As promised, here is the whole poem Old age.

As I wrote earlier this month, the beauty of accomplishment is the summation of the nobility, persistence and good humour with which we have met the ordinary challenges that come our way today.

If we are impatient and ill-tempered now, can we expect tranquillity later? I suspect not. I think the stillness that is to come must be won now. That is what we would wish to retain when everything else is lost or forgotten.

Old age

How often old age
Achieves the beauty of accomplishment.
In lines of clear enigma
Time’s translation writes down what was said
By tongues of passion, or of pain, or peace
In languages of longing, loving, learning,
Learning forgetting,
Forgetting
What was once done.

That it is done
Is so simple an idea to live with
It gives the face – time’s page, like paper –
Transparency
And one may look through the eyes
Into stillness.

(Here is the Amazon link to David Henschel's Heres and Nows.)

A new frontier

2010-09-14T11:16:00.000+01:00

On Friday I shall be going to Henley to look at the venue for the launch of Heres and Nows. I feel sure it will be excellent.

Meanwhile I am still struggling to get the Search Inside function on Amazon to work. It seems I have to set up a new account with Amazon.com, as my Amazon.co.uk password does not work. Nevertheless by following this blog you can get a good idea of the 111 pages of thought-provoking poetry you can buy for a mere £6.50.

Here is another fragment. Why panic and pain? Only, in my interpretation, because to accept the wonder of an opening reality we have to give up so much that is old.

From

Panic and pain

Of course lifelong I had been finding
thoughts, or they found me.
But suddenly
it seemed I crossed a frontier to a land
as rich as spring with newnesses and
no more frontiers.

Book launch event - venue confirmed

2010-09-11T22:12:00.005+01:00

Photo adapted from Steven Depolo

We have a venue for the publication launch party for Heres and Nows.

The date: Saturday 2nd October, in the middle of Henley Literary Festival.
The location: the tasting room at Lovibonds Brewery in the heart of beautiful Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
The time: 4.30-6pm (time to be confirmed).

This event will suit poetry lovers and lovers of fine beer alike.

I need to know numbers as space is limited. If you would like to come, please contact me using the email address at the foot of the right-hand column of this blog, when you will receive a virtual ticket.

Please also click the 'follow' icon opposite to be kept up-to-date with postings and poems on this blog.

Old age and the beauty of accomplishment

2010-09-07T12:25:00.001+01:00

We are what we have become.

Obvious, of course, tautological.

Yet if we could remember this, we should perhaps become better than we are. We shall become the result of what we do and are now. Then, when old age comes, we shall have something - made of the nobility, persistence and good humour with which we have met the ordinary challenges that come our way today.

David's poem Old age is optimistic in this respect. The poem begins:

How often old age
Achieves the beauty of accomplishment

and ends:

And one may look through the eyes
Into stillness.

I would suggest that it is how a person is at the end that measures the achievement of his or her life. And to find the stillness then, we have to be capable of finding the stillness now.

That at any rate is my opinion. I shall let the poem speak for itself when I publish the whole poem on this blog later this month.

Meanwhile check back each week for new updates.

David Henschel's Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life. is available on Amazon and at the Bell Bookshop, Henley-on-Thames.

What fear stops us speaking?

2010-08-31T09:26:00.001+01:00

Extract from 'Street passing'

Why did you look at me like that
Dark girl I passed in the wet street?
Was it the faintest of mockery
Returning my glance, or barely perceptible
Wrinkle of friendliness I saw
Never now discoverable?

While we often speak when silence would be better, sometimes we don't speak when we should.

In Street passing the writer passes a girl in the street. Some communication of faces occurs which is ambiguous and not followed up. What fear of what might happen stops us speaking when speaking would bring clarity?

Things linger in the mind that could so easily have been turned into day-lit certainty, one way or the other, and we might then move on. One wants to be the poet but change the script, yet we've been there and not done exactly the same thing.

The poem's setting is a wet street, which seems somehow appropriate.

And if we didn't have these painful uncertainties, maybe there would be fewer beautiful poems.

David Henschel's Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life. is now available on Amazon.

Bell Bookshop, Henley-on-Thames

2010-08-25T18:38:00.001+01:00

The Bell Bookshop, 52 Bell Street, Henley-on-Thames RG9 2BL has copies of Heres and Nows for sale. This shop is indeed, as another reviewer has said, like a mini-Waterstones, in that it has a wide selection of really interesting books that you might not think about looking for on the internet.

In my youth in Henley I bought most of my books there. I still have the Penguin Ovid - Metamorphoses priced at 7/6 (seven shillings and sixpence, equivalent to thirty-seven and a half new pence in new money) and Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy at a mere six shillings, as well as P. D. Ouspensky - Tertium Organum in hardback at a rather more substantial four pounds.

Personally I prefer the bookshop experience, so if you live near Henley-on-Thames, pop in. If you don't, here is the Amazon link to Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life.

Becoming a publisher

2010-08-24T10:04:00.004+01:00

Title page

There are probably many people who have a book inside them, and a few seriously want to publish their work to the world. But if you are not a famous name or remarkably young and good-looking then your chances of getting a publisher are slim. This does not mean that your book is no good - those who read it will be the judge of that.

However, this is the internet age when anyone can publish a video on U-tube or make a blog. Then the public, not the publisher, decides what they want to see and read. With the new technology it can be the same with books, too. You decide what you want to publish, and a print-on-demand (POD) computer will print and bind a book every time someone orders one. No piles of unsold books in the garage (assuming you have a garage).

Books, however, are still a little tricky. You can use Lulu or Amazon Createspace but Lulu and Createspace take a fair slice of whatever revenues you get (albeit less than a traditional publisher). There are also some limitations regarding formats and distribution, which also differ between the these two providers. I wanted complete control of the book creation process.

When I came across David Henschel's poems and formed the idea to publish them, I realised that the only way I would get the book to look the way I wanted and to be distributed as widely as possible was to go direct to Lightning Source, who print for Lulu and many others.

However, Lightning Source does not design the book for you. There are plenty of help files, but all the layout, cover and industry-compatible file creation are the responsibility of the person who submits the book (in this case, me). Thus I embarked on a steep learning curve to becoming a publisher. More on this in future posts.

My grandfather worked in the book design department of Rich and Cowan and (I think) Jonathan Cape, so maybe it's in my blood that I enjoy the whole process of book creation, down to deciding the margins and typeface.

For 'Here's and Nows' I shall be using the 'look inside' facility on Amazon, and you can judge if I have done a good job. Or of course you could just order a copy of Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life..

- Martin

So far so good

2010-08-20T12:04:00.000+01:00

Interesting day in Henley yesterday in which I made some useful contacts. An event is looking possible but there are some hurdles to be overcome. Meanwhile here is another poem from the book. I said I would put up a whole poem a month from David Henschel's Heres and Nows but it seems opportune to be a little ahead of schedule today.

This poem is David's response to seeing the extraordinary modernist cathedral at Ronchamps (see picture at right).

Corbusier:
Notre Dame du Haut

Has said only and exactly
What he wanted
Poem in concrete and glass.
May my words so.

Tricorne, concave, pyramidal
Shape to hold
Like a hand
And launch
Space
Breathtaking falcon;
To catch and cut and colour
Light
Shape shadow.

Solid in flight
Yet rooted and horizoned
Man’s, yet
God belonging:
Embracing, accepting, dismissing
A single universal gesture
Arm, palm, wings
One benison
High hill to hills, pilgrims, skies
And sun saluting.
One message

Choose

Book launch

2010-08-18T13:40:00.000+01:00

David Henschel in 1985

Getting a book in print is one thing, letting people know it exists is another.

Heres and Nows author David Henschel lived and taught in beautiful Henley-on-Thames, and so it is logical to have the official book launch there. It turns out that the publication date is right in the middle of the Henley-on-Thames literary festival. This I didn't know until Googling this morning.

Tomorrow I shall go to Henley to see what can be done. Needless to say followers of this blog will be invited to whatever lovely event can be arranged, so please click on the Follow link opposite right now.

More tomorrow.

Heres and Nows official publication date

2010-08-18T08:04:00.001+01:00

Heres and Nows has the official publication date of 1 October 2010.

Peace is in awakening

2010-08-16T11:34:00.004+01:00

The extract at the end of this post is superficially about physical sleep and necessary rest. We sleep to rest and get peace from the day's turmoil.

Yet even in dreams the chaos of our tumbling thoughts disturbs us. Dreams caricature the random thoughts we have while supposedly awake.

Heraclitus, speaking about two and a half thousand years ago, said:
They no more see how they behave broad waking than remember clearly what they did asleep.

This is our state, and much of the time there is little we can do about it. But, David's poem reminds us, we can at least listen and be glad, until we truly awaken.

Am I over-interpreting? Maybe. But I think the swords are the efforts we make to listen, replacing with the real sounds outside the ghostly sounds in our heads. William Blake wrote: I shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand... .

And the songs?

From David Henschel’s Quantock Hills:

Listen, be glad, but
turn and sleep again
until the swords and songs both say
'now peace is in awakening.'

The blackbird - the whole poem

2010-08-09T14:24:00.004+01:00

As promised, a whole poem once a month:

The blackbird

I have remembered suddenly
A young morning when we met
And hand in hand upon the window sat
In the dew air before the sun was up
To hear a cool-throat blackbird sing.

Dawn no more than a grey scarf
Hung about the neck of night.
Light grew quietly, pearl
Between the breasts of morning.
The garden a green gown silver
Seeded with mist
Lay for the day to rise and wear
The lawn’s level velvet.
The world was cool as running water.

Dew like candles beaded all branches.
Save in our hearts where the bubble of joy
Burst in showers of silver
Only the light moved
And only the blackbird
Set it to music.

Always check the proofs!

2010-08-06T14:42:00.000+01:00

I am very excited because the new proof copy of Heres and Nows has come back from the printer, and the book looks lovely.

For those who are interested in the trials and tribulations of a first-time publisher, it was necessary to get a second proof (at some expense) because of numerous errors in the first proof. Not the least of the errors was the omission of an entire poem, and there were many typographical mistakes (all mine).

If any of my readers is contemplating publishing a book, print out the whole thing from your computer and read it properly, and give it to others to read as well.

Anyway, with the help of two excellent proof readers who gave their time unstintingly, all is now as it should be.

I am especially happy to have got the photograph of David Henschel a little lighter in tone, which is a huge improvement.

Next stop is the Amazon listing. Watch this space.

To be kept up-to-date...

2010-08-03T11:15:00.002+01:00

Please click on the Follow button on the top right of this page.

You can also be kept informed of new posts and updates about the book on the Narrow Gate Press Facebook page. Click 'like' at the top of the Narrow Gate Facebook page to be added as a friend.

The blackbird

2010-08-03T09:55:00.007+01:00

Lines from The blackbird:

I have remembered suddenly
A young morning when we met
And hand in hand upon the window sat
In the dew air before the sun was up
To hear a cool-throat blackbird sing.

From the foreword, and Sun in the morning kitchen

2010-07-27T10:49:00.028+01:00

Our lives are made up mostly of ordinary things:

Sun in the morning kitchen
Rings the day’s bell clear and lively
Sings with the frying sizzle
The tap’s swish
The kettle’s hiss and bubble.

...and the poet, like a still-life painter, may bring us to what was already there.

(Extracted from the editor's foreword, lines from Sun in the morning kitchen.)

Cover for Heres and Nows

2010-07-20T15:23:00.005+01:00

There was a problem displaying the image of the front cover of the book as it caused some of my text to be obscured. Here is the cover image again, I hope problem-free this time. I am doing the final edits to correct errors spotted in the proof copy. Available on Amazon soon.

From All strangers who smile

2010-07-20T12:06:00.007+01:00

Extract from a poem from Heres and Nows by David Henschel. No commentary necessary.

I know nothing more
Surely of the present
Than a stranger’s
Unexpected smile.

The past stays in
Future attends
Corner and antechamber
Of the mind

But the smile
From nowhere out of nothing
Flies like that sparrow from dark to dark

New poetry from Narrow Gate Press

2010-07-13T16:42:00.007+01:00

From Narrow Gate Press comes the first publication of poems by the late David Henschel.

Heres and Nows - poems from a life will be available from Amazon very soon. The link will be posted on this blog.

Meanwhile I shall publish here one poem or a significant extract once a month, and commentary on significant lines or thoughts arising from the book once a week. Please ask permission before reproducing these poems (other than brief extracts for review) as they are subject to copyright. My contact email is at the foot of the right hand column of this page.

Here is the title poem:

Here and Now

Enjoy, oh do enjoy
The hereness and the nowness of it.
Whatever is beyond, behind
Be, if you must, aware of
But not too much – no more than serves
To measure by, to savour by
To live by grace within
The here and now.

It is the clumsy man we too much are
That cannot delicately hold the time
Within his juggling mind
And commandeer the chasing heart
Softly to send the blood like fingers
To touch and know the living hour
And store it richly by.

One day we die.
They say we scan
In the last living moments all our span.
We’d wish, I think, to go to Death
Or God
Like guests with gifts
Remembered and collected from our store
Of heres and nows
And say:
This trust of life’s fulfilled,
This gift’s returned, with more I found:
I was not poor.

Narrow Gate Press

What quest or rest?

Burning Heart Press

Treasured Chests

Clocks go back

Here and Now

Here and Now

Easter sun

Easter sun

Panic and pain

Panic and pain

Ideas

Ideas

iLiterati

Poems on the iPhone, iPad, iPod

Kindle edition of Heres and Nows ready!

Link with Blue Logic

Thoughts welcome

Thought water

Heres and Nows - price increase

Thinking, swimming and flying

Thought water

One publisher's struggle with Amazon 'Search Inside'

Kindle edition coming soon!

Heres and Nows price held until 26 February

Come peaceful – a commentary

Come peaceful

Special offer

Come peaceful

Making an e-book

Creating new things - 2

The workshed

Creating new things

Perpetual motion

Bowl of white hyacinths

Seeing flowers move - 2

Bowl of white hyacinths

Seeing flowers move

Copyright notice

David Henschel's 'Heres and Nows'

Prospero bettered

Prospero bettered

Temporary hiatus

Converting the book for Kindle

The poet in you

What lives on

Beer and poetry

A happy event

Book launch event this Saturday 2nd October!

The beauty of accomplishment

Old age

A new frontier

Panic and pain

Book launch event - venue confirmed

Old age and the beauty of accomplishment

What fear stops us speaking?

Extract from 'Street passing'

Bell Bookshop, Henley-on-Thames

Becoming a publisher

So far so good

Corbusier:Notre Dame du Haut

Book launch

Heres and Nows official publication date

Peace is in awakening

The blackbird - the whole poem

The blackbird

Always check the proofs!

To be kept up-to-date...

The blackbird

From the foreword, and Sun in the morning kitchen

Cover for Heres and Nows

From All strangers who smile

New poetry from Narrow Gate Press

Corbusier:
Notre Dame du Haut