Photo: D.H. Lawrence and Frieda, Mexico

"The English Are So Nice" by D.H. Lawrence

The English are so nice so awfully nice they are the nicest people in the world.
And what's more, they're very nice about being nice about your being nice as well!If you're not nice they soon make you feel it.
Americans and French and Germans and so on they're all very well but they're not really nice, you know.They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?
That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously. We must be nice to them, of course, of course, naturally. But it doesn't really matter what you say to them, they don't really understand you can just say anything to them: be nice, you know, just nice but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn't understand, just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice, not too nice of course, they take advantage but nice enough, just nice enough to let them feel they're not quite as nice as they might be.

I love this poem. I was flipping through the Norton Anthology and came upon this jaunty little poem by Lawrence. He is of course making fun of the English and their oh so nice ways. Lawrence thinks the English are pretentious snobs who believe their form of nice is so much nicer than the niceness of the Americans, French, and Germans. Lawrence thinks the English consider the Americans, Germans, and French to be crude, ignorant and insensitive. Lawrence says be nice to these people, but only nice enough to let them know we think they are buffoons.
s hamilton

We are reading Auden's poetry and I like it very much. I enjoy poetry about life and growing old and death. Eliot and Auden seem to touch on these topics frequently and profoundly making me stop and think about what I already know...that it is all about the cycle of life , the cycle of the universe, that we have so little control. I can look back on the times and events of my life and see it all, all this decay and rebirth...it just doesn't seem to get any easier however, or maybe I am yet not old enough to live with it all in peace. Maybe..... s hamilton

The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
with weight and urgency
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

The first of the World Trade Center towers to collapse comes down.

William Carlos Williams

I chose this poem for my blog tonight - just hours away from the 5 year anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers - so that we might not forget, and so that another nightmare such as this will never visit our dreams again - The poem needs no further interpretation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14571441/

I just read Thomas Hardy's "Nobody Comes" and find the poem very haunting. You can just see this person standing by his or her gate just watching as a car goes by and not one stops in front of the house. The poem is about loneliness, of course, but maybe it is also about living in a rural area with miles and miles between houses and contact with neighbors, or maybe its about becoming old and being left behind by those who are far too busy to come visit. I don't know really; I just know the poem makes you sit and think about this person standing alone by the gate - in the dark night. s hamilton