[Janice D. Soderling]

Didn't mean to be sacrilegious, Gail, it is indeed a lovely line and a touching poem.

[Rory Waterman]

The North, sort of. They quote Tennyson: 'Dark and true and tender is the North'.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I always thought it was called "the North" because it is based in Yorkshire. I used to subscribe and I see that the copies I have each has a different quote. One has

"Bracing myself as the earth rolls / I lean against the North"

http://www.poetrycircle.com/index.php?topic=5939.0;all

and

It isn't just grass that's growing / But flowers supposedly rare inland in the North" - Stanley Cook, "An East End"

I can't find a reference to that poem, but I did find one to Stanley Cook

http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/ma...rd.asp?id=2315

So I guess, Rory, that their clever gimmick is to quote, on the title page, a bit of some poem where the north is mentioned, and capitalizing it, just in case some one doesn't get the connexion. Which is admirable and elucidating.

It is a fine magazine and worth re-reading these many years later. So I will take these two copies downstairs for tomorrow's breakfast cuppa. Thanks for mentioning it.

There is also a print journal called "If", (If Poetry Journal) and I assumed for obvious reasons, that it was a UK publication, but investigating now, I think it is US-based.

http://ifpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/...rint%20journal

It's a big ol' poetry world out there.

[Rory Waterman]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

I always thought it was called "the North" because it is based in Yorkshire. I used to subscribe and I see that the copies I have each has a different quote.

Well-- frankly, yes. I admit it's tenuous to the point of untruth. I had and have nothing better, mind.

[FOsen]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

. . . two excellent and profound poems . . . one titled "The Night Life of a Postiche", the other, "The Early Death of a Toupee".

Aren't both of those poems by W.S. Merkin?

[Janice D. Soderling]

Here are two more named from poems.

Pool which cites

A pool shines
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.
-- Wallace Stevens

And Bellowing Ark

which takes its name from Dylan Thomas' Prologue

Look: I build my bellowing ark to the best
of my love as the flood begins...,

–Dylan Thomas,
Author’s Prologue to Collected Poems

[John Whitworth]

This is a little off topic, but I once wrote a detective novel and called it 'Dishonoured Shroud' which I thought was a cracking title. When you look more closely you find there are plenty more:

The Bloody Wood
Someone Indistinct
The Sacred Heart
The Stormy Moon
Murderous Paws
The Shrunken Seas
The Lady in the Cape
A Golden Grin
Death and the Raven
Liquid Siftings

Well, they're not all detective stories and the last could well be a book of poems, but you see what I mean. Actually it's my favourite Eliot poem.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Not off-topic at all. An expansion.

I love it when I recognize the source of a title. (Makes me feel smarter than I am.)

The Winter of Our Discontent - Steinbeck
The Little Foxes - Lillian Hellman
For Our Vines Have Tender Grapes - George Victor Martin (and the movie)

[John Whitworth]

I've forgotten who wrote 'Her Privates We' about being in the army. For our US friends a Private (Private Soldier) is our equivalent of a G.I.

[Janice D. Soderling]

The Bloody Wood
Someone Indistinct
The Sacred Heart
The Stormy Moon
Murderous Paws
The Shrunken Seas
The Lady in the Cape
A Golden Grin
Death and the Raven
Liquid Siftings

I never realized Eliot was so surrealist!

Actually these would all make good names for literary magazines. Maybe not "Sacred Heart", I think that is copyrighted by some organization already.

Actually John, the US military also has the rank of private.

BTW what happened to your detective story? I am thinking Sherlock Holmes as written by P.G. Wodehouse, a thriller as funny and as structured as your verse.

The funny detective story is waiting to be written, John. It would make you a fortune.

Close to what I am thinking is Johnathon Coe's What a Carve Up, which I loved, but you probably didn't (wouldn't) as the blurb says it is "This furious and hilarious novel remains the most powerful fictional indictment of the Thatcher years yet written."

Now I really am off-topic. Begging your pardon.

Editing in. Thinking about it a little more I guess that Alexander Mccall Smith's Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series is close to what I was thinking about. Only not as funny.