[Philip Quinlan]

I bought a book the other day (as usual in a charity shop because I like the prices and the serendipitous finds) called "Laurie Lee - A Many-Coated Man". Basically a series of reminiscences and such by his friends (including John Mortimer).

Among other delights it contains the following, almost eponymous, Laurie Lee poem (and, of course, he always thought of himself as a poet first and foremost). I think this is dark and lovely:

My Many-Coated Man

Under the scarlet-licking leaves,
through bloody thought and bubbly shade,
the padded, spicy tiger moves
a sheath of swords, a hooded blade.

The turtle on the naked sand
peels to the air his pewter snout
and rubs the sky with slotted shell –
the heart's dismay turned inside out.

The rank red fox goes forth at night
to bite the gosling's downy throat,
then digs his grave with panic claws
to share oblivion with the stoat.

The mottled moth, pinned to a tree,
woos with his wings the bark's disease
and strikes a fungoid, fevered pose
to live forgotten and at ease.

Like these, my many-coated man
shields his hot hunger from the wind,
and, hooded by a smile, commits
his private murder in the mind.



Lee's poetry is hard to come by (at least the full oeuvre) and some editions fetch silly money, as I found out when I googled.

But I must have more of this.

Philip

[Janice D. Soderling]

I have read and re-read several times the four L.L. books I own: A Rose for Winter, Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, I Can't Stay Long. There are episodes and phrases in them that sometimes rise up in my mind for no discernible reason. I am ashamed to tell you, Philip, that I didn't know he wrote poetry. But of course, anyone who writes the poetical prose of these books is a poet. How could I have been so stooopid?

Thanks for elucidating me.

[Holly Martins]

For many years 'Cider with Rosie' was a set book in British schools and sold zillions of copies, but although Lee's verse is somewhat variable in quality, it's well worth exploring.

[Ann Drysdale]

One of my sons studied Cider with Rosie at school and one day the English master came into the class to find a giggling group at the back of the room. Having restored order, he asked what it was that they had all found so funny. One of my son's friends replied - "Please, Sir - Bobby's got a mother like that". And the lovely man rang me up to tell me, knowing how pleased I'd be.

Here's another Laurie Lee poem:

Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

[Steve Bucknell]

I like this poem by Laurie Lee, found in The Oxford Book Of Short Poems 1987, edited by P.J.Kavanagh and James Michie. It is as relevant and shocking now as it was then:

Invasion Summer.

This evening, the heather,
the unsecretive cuckoo
and butterflies in their disorder,
not a word of war as we lie
our mouths in a hot nest
and the flowers advancing.

Does a hill defend itself,
does a river run to earth
to hide its quaint neutrality?
A boy is shot with England in his brain,
but she lies brazen yet beneath the sun,
she has no honour and she has no fear.

[Janice D. Soderling]

One of my son's friends replied - "Please, Sir - Bobby's got a mother like that".

I have always believed myself to be an incarnation of the mother.

Ann, we must meet for lunch one day soon.