firehazard wrote:Nah, it's a good idea for a thread, Smerker. Though of course a lot of it is covered on the truly wondrous http://www.poguetry.com site.

I quite agree about it being a great idea for a thread here. And about the other bit too.

firehazard wrote:But one thing that doesn't get a mention there...
Listening to "London Girl" as I am right now, I'm always struck by the way that:
"And if you cut me
Don't you think I feel?
Is this body made of clay?
Is this heart made of steel?"
...

EXCELLENT observation. Never thought of it like that, but it feels 100% warm.

Smerker wrote:Haha, another thread of mine died on it's arse.

Nah, it's a good idea for a thread, Smerker. Though of course a lot of it is covered on the truly wondrous http://www.poguetry.com site.

But one thing that doesn't get a mention there...
Listening to "London Girl" as I am right now, I'm always struck by the way that:
"And if you cut me
Don't you think I feel?
Is this body made of clay?
Is this heart made of steel?"

echoes Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice:
"Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Smerker wrote:Haha, another thread of mine died on it's arse.

Well, some of them fall into Heaven, some of them fall into...


Nice idea for a thread, and an interesting read. Go on...

Haha, another thread of mine died on it's arse.

I doubt anyone was as knocked that I realsied Fearnley's Drunken Boat came mostly from a Rimbaud poem. The whole thing's very similar, but here are a few lines that are almost dead on.

"If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May."

And, I was re-reading the Pickering Manuscript by William Blake and in the poem 'William Bond' are the lines;

"And an Angel of Providence at his feet,
And an Angel of Providence at his head,
And in the midst a black, black cloud,
And in the midst the sick man on his bed."

Any other decent ones?
Pretty much the opening verse to Sickbed, innit?

Of course, we all know the Brendan Behan influences throughout the early stuff. The Poguetry page is a great way to waste an afternoon. 'Compliments pass when the quality meet' comes directly from Borstal Boy. Behan reused it in Confessions, actually, when the deaf couple argue in taps on the bar.