{"id":21660,"date":"2022-07-29T09:25:19","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T13:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=21660"},"modified":"2022-08-30T18:44:32","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T22:44:32","slug":"episode-619-fishy-poetryjohn-morton-gets-a-great-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=21660","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 619 \u201cFISHY POETRY!\u201d\u2026JOHN MORTON GETS A GREAT IDEA"},"content":{"rendered":"
EPISODE 619    \u201cFISHY POETRY!\u201d\u2026JOHN MORTON GETS A GREAT IDEA<\/p>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
July  27, 2022<\/div>\n

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Note: These are not John Morton\u2019s exact words but they are close.<\/div>\n

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“Anne! I just got  great idea\u2026FISHY POETRY!\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJohn must you always be daft\u2026spouting nonsense.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNot so crazy.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cOut with it then\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s have Al and Marjorie over for a fish dinner and poetry reading.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDo they like fish.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cI checked\u2026they are omnivorous.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJohn, I think you just want to show off your cooking skills\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cMussels, salmon, lobster and clams\u201d<\/div>\n

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\u201cHow does poetry fit into this dinner?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWe will ask them to bring two short poems that they must<\/div>\n
read to us after dinner\u2026.short poems, really short.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhy short?<\/div>\n
\u201cBecause they also must explain why those two short poems were chosen\u2026<\/div>\n
and that will take more time than the readings.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat about us? \u201c<\/div>\n
\u201cWe will do the same.\u201d<\/div>\n

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Well. the event was a grand success.  John put on an apron and chefs hat\u2026boiled<\/div>\n
up the muscles and fried the fish, stuffed the lobster, put one big clam on each plate.<\/div>\n
While we all talked with the echoes of our words trailing through the grand old<\/div>\n
mansion like house in west Toronto.  The place was vaguely familiar.<\/div>\n

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\u201cJohn, my dentist lived near here when I was a kid.  I named him Dr. Murder<\/div>\n
which was a very unkind thing to do.  Kids do those things.  His real name<\/div>\n
was Dr. Murta and he was a nice old man who even cancelled his appointments<\/div>\n
and asked me to show slides of my adventures as a miner in Ireland.  How many<\/div>\n
doctors would do that?  I think this was his house back then.\u201d<\/div>\n
(truth be told Dr. Murder\u2019s place was two doors north)<\/div>\n

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Conversation rolled off our tongues like water off a lobsters foot.  Anne  is the<\/div>\n
daughter of military parents.   Has seen much of the known world.  John is an<\/div>\n
historian who taught st my old high school, Humberside Colleiate.  There<\/div>\n
was no place for lulls in the conversation.  We all walked on common ground.<\/div>\n
Our grandson, Jack, had just joined the regular army and we were flying <\/div>\n
to Edmonton to celebrate his success as a Private.  Anne understood that<\/div>\n
while many Canadians would not.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u201cTime for poetry!\u201d announced John.  And so the evening changed<\/div>\n
direction.  With each poem came a new directions.  Some poems were<\/div>\n
serious, some political, some naively charming, some close to doggerel.<\/div>\n
All read or spouted from memory.<\/div>\n

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We were all educated in days when rote memory was common. So some<\/div>\n
poems were engraved firmly in the twists and turns of our brains.<\/div>\n

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Marjorie read and sang and illustrated \u201cThe Fox that Went a Hunting\u201d. a child\u2019s storybook semi poem that she loved<\/div>\n
reading to our boys when they were small.   Touching.  We both spent some time practising our<\/div>\n
poetry selections.   As did John and Anne and  pair of Irish friends whose choices brought my days<\/div>\n
miining in Ireland into clear focus   The Irish have never been short of words.<\/div>\n

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My choice<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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\u201cIf you keep your nose to the grindstone rough<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
and hold it down there long enough<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
In time you\u2019ll say there\u2019s no such thing<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
As babbling brooks and birds that sing.\u201d<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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Edna Jacques<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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Why chosen?<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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My grandmother had serious Parkinson\u2019s disease that made her body shake<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
but she never felt sorry for herself and remained an optimist in all she ever<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
did.  When I was a young man I worked in remote places all around the world<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
and always got letters from Grandma Freeman written with a very shaky hand<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 Writing was very difficult for her but she did it all the same.
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The Freemans were poor eking out a slim living on a 25 acre stone clad farm.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
They kept  a side of beef hanging in the dirt floor cellar which they called the dairy.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
I always slathered these slices of cold beef with Worcestershire sauce to kill both<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
appearance and taste.  Grandma always said \u201cAlan loves Worcestrer sauce\u201d<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
which was true.  She may have known the real reason.  I loved her and granddad<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
and made an effort to visit as often as possible even by bicycle or by thumb.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
She cut out the poems of Edna Jacques from the Toronto Star and included these<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
gems in her notes to me in godforsaken places.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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My second choice was the old chestnut poem Daffodils by William Wordsworth.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
Everyone helped me along because everyone there knew the poem by heart<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
as we were all of that age when rote memory was common.  My reason for<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
choosing Daffodils was not what might be expected.  That poem was the only<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
thing my father remembered from his Grade 8 education.  He only servived<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
a few months in hight school before he was sent home to get his father.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
Dad did not go home.  He continued west to Saskatchewan from Fergus, Ontario<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
and joined the working class of the 1920\u2019s as a tire builder.  He loved life and<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
horse racing.  Why was he thrown out of school?   There was a good reason which<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
I put down to adolescent exuberance which, when I taught high school, was<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
easy to forgive. I  Never sent a kid home nor did I ever send a student to<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
the office because he or she told me to Fuck Off.  Instead I thought of Dad.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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The reason dad was sent home to get his father??  I will not tell you unless you invite me to a poetry reading as<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
did Anne and John Morton.   <\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u201cI wandered lonely as a cloud<\/div>\n
that floats on high over vales and hills<\/div>\n

When all at once I saw a crowd<\/p><\/div>\n

A host of golden daffodils.\u201d<\/div>\n
  (Wordsworth 1802)<\/div>\n

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alan skeoch<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
July 15, 2022<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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William Wordsworth, Daffodils 1802<\/font><\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE 619    \u201cFISHY POETRY!\u201d\u2026JOHN MORTON GETS A GREAT IDEA alan skeoch July  27, 2022 Note: These are not John Morton\u2019s exact words but they are close. “Anne! I just got  great idea\u2026FISHY POETRY!\u201d \u201cJohn must you always be daft\u2026spouting nonsense.\u201d \u201cNot so crazy.\u201d \u201cOut with it then\u201d \u201cLet\u2019s have Al and Marjorie over for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}