June by Alex Dimitrov [2018]
This poem encapsulates so much of what I love about the Summer, that feeling of falling in love with the city (in my case London) all over again. “There will never be more of summer than there is now”, a particularly true sentiment, especially here where it doesn’t tend to last longer than two weeks and you blink and you’ve missed it.
There will never be more of summer
than there is now. Walking alone
through Union Square I am carrying flowers
and the first rosé to a party where I’m expected.
It’s Sunday and the trains run on time
but today death feels so far, it’s impossible
to go underground. I would like to say
something to everyone I see (an entire
city) but I’m unsure what it is yet.
Each time I leave my apartment
there’s at least one person crying,
reading, or shouting after a stranger
anywhere along my commute.
It’s possible to be happy alone,
I say out loud and to no one
so it’s obvious, and now here
in the middle of this poem.
Rarely have I felt more charmed
than on Ninth Street, watching a woman
stop in the middle of the sidewalk
to pull up her hair like it’s
an emergency—and it is.
People do know they’re alive.
They hardly know what to do with themselves.
I almost want to invite her with me
but I’ve passed and yes it’d be crazy
like trying to be a poet, trying to be anyone here.
How do you continue to love New York,
my friend who left for California asks me.
It’s awful in the summer and winter,
and spring and fall last maybe two weeks.
This is true. It’s all true, of course,
like my preference for difficult men
which I had until recently
because at last, for one summer
the only difficulty I’m willing to imagine
is walking through this first humid day
with my hands full, not at all peaceful
but entirely possible and real.
When in French: Love in a Second Language
by Laura Collins
I picked this up in the travel section of the Foyles on Charing Cross Road and I really enjoyed it. It’s about Lauren’s experience of learning French, as someone who has been attempting to learn Italian this year, there was so much I could relate to in regards to the frustrations of learning a second language. I also liked the love story element; Lauren was in her thirties when she made the big move from New York to London and fell in love with a Frenchmen. After her marriage she moved to Geneva for her husband’s work and she describes how achingly dull the city is so vividly that I almost want to visit Geneva just to see if it’s as boring as she describes. I also really liked how the book delved into the history of linguistics and how the language we speak influences who are.
Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792]
The Tortoise and the Hare
by Elizabeth Jenkins
I read this Virago Modern Classic after finding it in an Oxfam book shop in Hampstead for a couple of pounds. It was a rainy afternoon, so I took refuge in a local coffee shop and started reading immediately. I absolutely gobbled this book up; it was like watching a car crash in slow motion, knowing the inevitability of what was going to happen but also being unable to look away. The book is about a couple, Imogen, the beautiful and doting wife, Evelyn her much older but equally handsome husband and their neighbour… Blanche Silcox. Now, Blanche, well, the state of her, I could just imagine her so clearly, mouth like a cat’s arse from years of chain smoking, bit of middle age spread going on and dressed up like a dog’s dinner. To begin with Imogen doesn’t see Blanche as a threat, even though it’s very clear she has a bit of a crush on Evelyn. I mean of course Blanche fancies Evelyn but Evelyn would never, or would he?
Train to Dublin by Louis MacNiece [1935]
Only an Excerpt because it’s a long one but on the train out of London recently to visit a friend, I was reminded of this poem
Our half-thought thoughts divide in sifted wisps
Against the basic facts repatterned without pause,
I can no more gather my mind up in my fist
Than the shadow of the smoke of this train upon the grass –
This is the way that animals’ lives pass.
The train’s rhythm never relents, the telephone posts
Go striding backwards like the legs of time to where
In a Georgian house you turn at the carpet’s edge
Turning a sentence while, outside my window here,
The smoke makes broken queries in the air.
The train keeps moving and the rain holds off,
I count the buttons on the seat, I hear a shell
Held hollow to the ear, the mere
Reiteration of integers, the bell
That tolls and tolls, the monotony of fear.
At times we are doctrinaire, at times we are frivolous,
Plastering over the cracks, a gesture making good,
But the strength of us does not come out of us.
It is we, I think, are the idols and it is God
Has set us up as men who are painted wood,
And the trains carry us about. But not consistently so,
For during a tiny portion of our lives we are not in trains
