Does anyone know/can find a link to a poem by Keith Douglas called 'Words'?
'preciated,
bonzal

Here's one by Edward Thomas, titled "Words"


http://as3.lib.byu.edu/~english/WWI/poets/Thomas.html

Not exactly the right war, but.

Hmm, not quite the one - it's just that I'm s'posed to write a report about it and I've lost the poem...
Not easy to Google, this one, is it?

Nice poem though

Might try googling WW2 poets. I'm assuming dying at age 24 in 1944 means he was killed in the war.

All I could find was Cairo Jag, Vergissmeinnicht and Villanelle something or other.

Ooh... *dives back into cyberspace*

here's a bio & analysis of "Vergissmeinnicht," which is not your poem but:

http://nte.univ-lyon2.fr/~goethals/poetprop/poetprop_exile.html

How about Edward Thomas?

http://as3.lib.byu.edu/~english/WWI/poets/Thomas.html

Edward Thomas

I can scratch the chopped liver from the grocery list? I'll just bring myself home?

Oh dear, I'm so sorry... I was in the throes of the thrill of the hunt and totally mantled you. Tell you what: let's open a deli.

Yup, right poet there (the Keith Douglas one) but no luck so far... maybe I'll ask the school librarian tomorrow or try and nick it off a friend.

Two perfectly good poems, both entitled "Words," help explain why one may not copyright a title.

Bonz,

please let us know!

Re: Wrods [sic]
huh?

See http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=113313

I cross-threaded, assuming that everyone has as much time as I do to peruse every thread !

ooh, how frustrating, his manuscripts are in the imperial war museum document archive but as yet only a summary is accessible on line. he does show up on several war poet websites ( although the second world war seems to be overshadowed by WWO and the like) but it is not the right poem, in fact there is tons on another poem of his vers... something or other. just thought bonza, you are at school in London, why don't you go to the bbc schools page, it has loads of information on every bit of the syllabus and you can send questions like this in to the SOS online teacher who will be pleased to help.

Phew! S'alright - managed to get it off a friend today.
Thanks for the all help anyway everyone!
For anyone who's curious, here's the poem, online at last:

Words

Words are my instruments but not my servants,
by the white pillars of a prince I lie in wait
for them. In what the hour or the minute invents,
in a web formally meshed or inchoate,
these fritillaries are come upon, trapped:
hot-coloured or the cold scarabs a thousand years
old, found in cerements and unwrapped.
The catch and the ways of catching are diverse.
For instance, this stooping man, the bones of whose face are
like the hollow birds' bones, is a trap for words.
And the pockmarked house bleached by the glare
whose insides war has dried out like gourds
attracts words. There are those who capture them
in hundreds, keep them prisoners in black
bottles, release them at exercise and clap them back.
But I keep words only a breath of a time
turning in the lightest of cages - uncover
and let them go! Sometimes they escape for ever.

Keith Douglas

capture them
in hundreds, keep them prisoners in black
bottles
What an image! I'll bet WW will love this poem. I'm glad you found it, and thanks for posting it.
I had to look up fritillaries and cerements. What are "the white pillars of a prince"?
Is cerements a portmanteau word? (Ceremonial garments.)

I really love the word fritillaries - not a patch on butterfly, huh! Yep, cerements - kinda like graveclothes or something similar, and I think the "white pillars..." are supposed to be just that - apparently he was sent to... someplace during the war (Africa or the East or something?) and, well, that was where he wrote it (perhaps it's describing some kind of temple?) - incidentally we were given very few pieces of advice for writing about this, and one of them was not to read anything into that line, just take it literally.

Is cerements a portmanteau word? (Ceremonial garments.)

i think cerements comes from cerecloths, cered cloth meaning waxed cloth ( for wrapping the dead in), it's a pretty old word and not a portmanteau ( reckon, not sure and really should be proofreading not awadding so i'm not going to back this one up)

Glad you finally got your hands on it, bonz, and thank you for letting us know!

>I really love the word fritillaries - not a patch on butterfly

I think that you are probably right about the word fritillaries. I would have assumed these:
http://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/Fritillaria1.html but they would not be released in the same way.

Words are my instruments but not my servants,
by the white pillars of a prince I lie in wait
for them. In what the hour or the minute invents,
in a web formally meshed or inchoate,

An early prediction of the world wide web perhaps?

I wonder how much Douglas knew about Edward Thomas.

Is there some specific reason you ask, Anna? I'll copy the other poem for quick ref.:
Words

Out of us all
That makes rhymes,
Will you choose
Sometimes --
As the winds use
A crack in a wall
Or a drain.
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through --
Choose me,
You English words?

I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn
Or as an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnett rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew, --
As our hills are, old, --
Worn new
Again and again,
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.

Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings, --
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire,
And the villages there, --
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb
Or stand perchance
In ecstacy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Without having done any compare/contrast analysis, Jackie, I was just wondering if maybe Douglas was influenced by Thomas. Both died in world wars.

>I think that you are probably right about the word fritillaries. I would have assumed these:
http://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/Fritillaria1.html but they would not be released in the same way.

Oh, I was told they were a type of butterfly... maybe there's some kinda link, or more than one meaning, perhaps?

They are butterflies too:
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabambc/construct-group-page.asp?gr=Heliconiinae

I wonder which came first? Perhaps the flowers look like butterflies. Some do have very distinctive markings.

In reply to:

---

I was just wondering if maybe Douglas was influenced by Thomas. Both died in world wars.

---

Somehow, I'm reminded of my mother saying, "And if they jumped off Beachy Head, would you do it too?

Note for non UK residents. Beachy Head is a high cliff on the S. coast of England, popular with suicides.


Bingley

[aside]my cousin fell off Beachy Head last month. no deathwish, she wuz just sat on the bench and the whole cliff face came down. amazingly, she survived, but she has broken her back.[/aside]

It seems probable that Douglas was influenced by your man there. In my opinion, the Great War poets were and are a massive influence on the way we (we meaning English folk) think about war. They were part of the propaganda explosion of the early twentieth century and so had a very visible, or easily identifiable impact, not just on poets but on our whole society. I'm not qualified to give you anything more than my opinion but it is worth reading up on, it's fascinating. Chomsky has waxed lyrical about this subject in about a million books, and, of course, everyone should read Edward de Bernays 'Propaganda'.

> I'm not qualified to give you anything more than my opinion but it is worth reading up on, it's fascinating.

Perhaps a potted history would be in order?

That reminds me of a great book I read a while back - the first in the Regeneration series by Pat Barker; asides from being very much about the study of shell-shock and related mental afflictions, it includes quite a facinating insight into the life of Siegfried Sassoon and the way in which he used his poetry to show his anti-war sentiments. (And influence Wilfred Owen, who apparently hadn't really considered writing war poetry before meeting him.)