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Showing posts from October, 2020

The Barn Owl, Samuel and his pot, and me

The Barn Owl   I thought of the barn as mine.  But as she lives there it belongs to her   I’ve been reading Samuel Menashe’s poetry. His most famous poem is even shorter.    A pot poured out Fulfills its spout.   The distinguished academic Christopher Ricks spends several pages poring (sorry) over this wonderful poem, pointing out all sorts of poetic techniques in play, and indeed the more carefully and the more often one reads it, the more there is to find – that pot just keeps on pouring. For example, it’s not the pot – it’s a pot, which is worth thinking about. Similarly, the American spelling of fulfills has something extra to say about a full vessel; not to mention the alliterations, sound play, rhyme, internal symmetry (each line of four syllables perfectly balanced, as you’d expect from a pouring pot) and the sharing of contents (that pot’s ‘ot’ moving into the ‘o-t’ of out and thence finding its way into, or should I say out of, ‘spout’ – having