David Selzer

‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’

By David Selzer May 27, 2021 In Poetry 4 Armenians, Atlantic Slave Trade

Our present government, unfairly perhaps,

is often caricatured as self-serving,

racist and incompetent – and yet,

with a rather modest investment

of taxpayers’ money, has published

a report which may revolutionise

our study of history, showing

not just the costs but the benefits

to victims of great crimes: ‘There is a new

story about the Caribbean

experience which speaks to the slave period

not only being about profit

and suffering but how culturally

African people transformed themselves

into a re-modelled African/Britain.’

FROM THE TERRACE

By David Selzer May 27, 2021 In Poetry 2 Constable, death

Begun the year of Waterloo, finished

in that of Peterloo, built on rents

and sugar, this – according to Pevsner –

‘modest’ Palladian mansion sits

on a slope, a belvedere. Mature trees

overhang the erstwhile stable block,

now a spa. The hotel is a venue

for weddings – featured in ‘Bride of the Year’ –

and funerary teas, like today’s in sun.

From the terrace, and over the ha-ha,

sheep graze in broad fields hedged with hawthorn,

APHORISMS AND INDEMNITY: AN IDEA OF AMERICA

By David Selzer May 27, 2021 In Poetry 1 'Adagia', California

For Clive Watkins

‘The maker’s rage to order words…’

THE IDEA OF ORDER AT KEY WEST, Wallace Stevens

There, as we drove past the Heritage Centre

that once was a medieval church, on the steps,

among the shoppers and the trippers,

there on a provincial, English street

was a busker with a blue guitar.

And I thought of the poem by Wallace Stevens,

who did not drive, and walked to work each day –

THE TRICKSTER

By David Selzer May 27, 2021 In Poetry 1 Covid 19 pandemic lockdown, Crow

Whether the same crow as last year has returned

or this is a different crow with the same habits

is as much a metaphysical issue

as a zoological one – whichever

is the case the sequence of events

in the Great Lockdown is being repeated.

Early morning the crow flies in, and places

a piece of bread in the bird bath – where blackbirds

have bathed, and robins sipped; flies off; returns

in hours, and snacks on the marinated bread;

flies off;

INCONSEQUENTIAL

By David Selzer May 27, 2021 In Poetry 0 Afghanistan, British troops: immunity from prosecution

A long section of the grassy bank beside

the ornamental lake is roped-off –

a pair of Canada Geese is nesting,

the first in the history of the Park

with its long-serving Coots and Mallards.

We sit on a bench and contemplate the geese –

almost as big as Mute Swans; adept

colonisers, considered still, after

three hundred years, non-native; this chance pair

perhaps blown off course between raucous lagoons.

We are distracted by raised voices

from the opposite bank –

OTHER PEOPLE’S FLOWERS: Three Poems by Alan Horne

By David Selzer May 27, 2021 In Other People's Flowers 5 Alan Horne, hawkweed

I read once – perhaps it was a quotation from José Saramago – that the writer’s life is the detritus left behind by the work. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it sounds better than any autobiographical introduction I can think up. I worked years ago in a steelworks, have a very longstanding interest in psychoanalysis and – perhaps it’s a reaction to all those clinics – now spend a lot of time outside. Here are three short poems which bear on these matters. Thanks to David for the chance to put them before you. At age 14 I found that we had a new English teacher called Mr Selzer,

‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’

FROM THE TERRACE

APHORISMS AND INDEMNITY: AN IDEA OF AMERICA

THE TRICKSTER

INCONSEQUENTIAL

OTHER PEOPLE’S FLOWERS: Three Poems by Alan Horne

David Selzer

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OTHER PEOPLE'S FLOWERS: Three Poems by Alan Horne

OTHER PEOPLE'S FLOWERS: Three Poems by Alan Horne

OTHER PEOPLE'S FLOWERS: Three Poems by Alan Horne

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