Literary Notes

At age twenty I had made it to Earls Court. The rented room was seedily solid having been for decades filled with wine and cheap sunlight. Until then I had not read a thing apart from: ‘The Ship’ by C.S. Forester and ‘Arms and the Man’, by G. B. Shaw both part of a school curriculum. I liked Shaw for his wit and intelligence No one told me then that he was, in fact, a fascist of the worst kind, I thought he was an erudite old Irishman like my uncle Sean. A pink girl with huge eye-glasses, moved in. She was studying Geoffrey Chaucer in the original middle-english. I hadn't a clue. I bought a book of poems by D.H. Lawrence. I forget why, but I liked his name and my uncle Sean often talked about his poetry. Turns out Lawrence had written a pile of books also, but back then I was just into his poems. I read ‘Grapes’, and I read ‘Figs’. I read ‘Medlars and Sorb-Apples’, I read ‘Peach’, I read ‘Cypresses’. Back then I don't think I had ever seen a cypress, a ‘medlar’ or a ‘sorb apple.’ I read: Snake, Baby Tortoise, Turkey-Cock, Kangaroo and many others. A few years later I found out that the poets that were considered to be good poets, and the critics who were thought to be good critics didn't think much of his poems. I tried reading the poems of the good poets, but after a while I felt nauseous. Then I discovered Dylan Thomas. The pink girl did not understand his poetry, neither did I much, but I ate up his words like a starving man. Turns out Dylan Thomas was a drunk and a mean bastard, just like my uncle Sean.