Margaret Griffiths [ grasshopper ]
 

Hello,

This sad news just came in from Neil Prentice late yesterday:
My condolences to her family and friends. The late Margaret (Eratospherean, grasshopper,) had been a member here since the end of August, 2002, and was a pretty active member. She will be missed.

...Alex

What a terrible loss. It's hard to find words to describe her talent, and she was generous and candid with critique. An awful loss. I'm sad for us and for everyone who was close to her.

Wow.

Maz gone, I can't wrap my head around it. Is there an obituary anywhere? I'd like to read it.

And her poems! Is someone taking care of them? She was terrible about submitting, so if you didn't know her from the poetry boards you might not realize how exceptionally talented she was.

Witty as hell, too. If she were here, she'd know just what to say. Damn.

Dear, dear Maz. I loved and respected her. How sad to know that her clear and beautiful and funny mind is no longer with us.

How lucky we were to know her!

I illustrated one of her poems and as I did so I came to properly understand the depth of her talent.
http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/2006_10/poemlady.html
She was so spare with her words because she knew what they were worth.

A Meditation of the Meaning of Existence by Margaret Griffiths

I.
Y?

I think she lost many of her poems when a disk she had them on went unreadable. That's a tragedy. She was the best. I'll search my own archives for her work, but I do have this:


The Pismire Oration

Kreck, kreck, the Plumeys have been down pick pick
again. The valley-balls, the lupes, the liplap danglers
are all mussled and distrayed. Who was scooting
on the oakmost roam, and did not give the larum
to beware us? We could all have been mordered
in our buds, culled in curls and couchings.

O my simlings, gather round in heedance.
First we must brush and bellish, make bloomheads
clean and sparkish, then we can cusp and susp
and I will tale you tellings of long days ago,
stores of queens and trells and hellent warfor.

Ho, hard there, fattyfiller, with your seggy bodments,
do not munge upon these leaves. Peel off
and mandicate elsewhere. This pliant plot,
this green clingdom, this is our heapsake,
our hill-land, our gem set in a sylvan lea.

Rejuice, my simlings, simsters. We'll browse avids
on the fallage, surp meet mead nectar soon.
All life is ground and gladly — part from Plumeys.
May Magog smart the flockers from the highs.


Maz


http://www.the-chimaera.com/gryphon/...re-oration.mp3

I'll try to improve the sound quality and repost the mp3.

Very sad news. I always wanted to read more of her work and get to know her better. Here's one of her poems from a sonnet bake-off.


Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud

The smell of mud and brine. I'm six, awash
with grey and beached by winter scenery,
pinched by the Peckham girl who calls me posh,
and boys who pull live crabs apart to see
me cry. And I am lost in that grim place
again, coat buttoned up as tight as grief.
Sea scours my nostrils, strict winds sand my face,
the clouds pile steel on steel with no relief.

Sent there to convalesce--my turnkeys, Sisters
of Rome, stone-faced as Colosseum arches--
I served a month in Stalag Kent, nursed blisters
in beetle shoes on two-by-two mute marches.
I close the jar, but nose and throat retain
an after-tang, the salt of swallowed pain.

Here is another poem by Maz from the same issue of "Folly".

http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/20...greeneyed.html

And from another issue of "Folly"
http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/20...erblossom.html
And from another issue one about Philip Larkin
http://www.ramblingrose.com/folly/20...ip_larkin.html

Here are two from "Noted on the Gazebo":

Calling the Roll

Shedding a Little Light on Light

http://www.shitcreekreview.com/issue1/throwaway.html

http://www.shitcreekreview.com/issue1/holes.html