"I composed ... a song — which I had never sung till then, with an idea, and words, and rhymes — because my heart was with me and in my mouth.” ( S Y Agnon, 'With My Heart')
Even as Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales was advising the world how to deliver Hamlet’s best known lines, I was reading an anthology of bee poems.
The compilation** is certainly fit for a prince who’s ultra keen about conservation and who would be thrilled to learn that all book sales are to fund entomological research at the University of Minnesota, USA.
It’s a lovely if whimsical volume – a thoroughly engaging read - whose philosophy is aired early on, first by environmentalist, Bill McKibben and then journalist and poet, James P Lenfestey, who edited the collection.
McKibben, in his foreword, suggests that the swift and immense numbers of bee deaths in recent years is a “kind of early warning system” that conveys bad news about how new chemicals, new weather and new patterns of habitation are adversely affecting the earth; putting society out of balance.
His view has been unknowingly echoed by Israeli Rabbi Natan Slifkin, director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History in Beit Shemesh, who writes in his blog, Rationalist Judaism:
“Bees in many countries are currently suffering from colony collapse disorder. The reasons for this are not well understood. It has been attributed to parasites, disease, pesticides, cellphone radiation, and a host of other problems. Some suggest that it’s due to the bees having allergies – they always have hives (ba-da-bum!). But it is generally thought that, whatever is causing colony collapse disorder, the reasons why bees are especially susceptible is that domesticated bees today do not have sufficient genetic diversity to cope with these threats. In order for bees to successfully cope with problems, they need genetic diversity – which means that bees must not be perfect, uniform, carbon copies of each other. This used to always be the case – despite the ostensible appearance of perfect uniformity, there is genetic variation in bee colonies. But domestic bees today are all descended from a very limited starter group. There is therefore very little genetic diversity, which renders them especially vulnerable to problems. It’s the artificial farming of bees that put them through a genetic bottleneck and made them too uniform.”
So I’m curious why there is no direct reference to any biblical bee stories like Samson’s riddle (Judges 14: 8) or acknowledgement that the great woman warrior-judge Deborah’s name actually means ‘bee’.
Instead it is left to Josephine Dickinson in B to ponder “when did you eat honey from the carcass of a lion?”
But the collection is named after a line from a verse by a yet more celebrated woman poet named ‘Dickinson’ - American ‘Emily Dickinson who wrote:
Part Two: Nature
XCVII
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.
But I close instead with a personal favourite by the Polish-Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam:
The Necklace
Take, from my palms, for joy, for ease, A little honey, a little sun, That we may obey Persephone’s bees.
You can’t untie a boat unmoored. Fur-shod shadows can’t be heard, Nor terror, in this life, mastered.
Love, what’s left for us, and of us, is this Living remnant, loving revenant, brief kiss Like a bee flying completed dying hiveless.
To find in the forest’s heart a home, Night’s never-ending hum, Thriving on meadowsweet, mint, and time.
Take, for all that is good, for all that is gone, That it may lie rough and real against your collarbone, This string of bees, that once turned honey into sun.
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Since emigrating to Israel, I have become re-acquainted with teenagers while serving as a volunteer English language mentor to local bagrut (matriculation) school students. I never cease to be astounded by how well they speak English, largely – they insist! - from watching English language television and movies.
Now I’ve enjoyed an entertaining hour or so reading a selection of poetry by equally articulate US teenagers** in an anthology compiled by Stephanie H Meyer and her husband, John.
As a mere Brit I had not previously heard of the Meyers’ work and so was fascinated to discover that paradoxically, Teen Inkis more than 25 years old, during which period the Meyers and their colleagues have published the work of more than 55,000 teens.Leave This Song Behind is their first all-verse anthology.
Just as I received my copy,I saw an interview with the British teacher and poet, Angela Topping explaining how she encourages her students to love, not fear poetry.
“Poetry”,she says,“is brilliant for reluctant readers because a poem is a complete text and gives an instant hit. I don’t approve of cheap laugh type poetry for children though. I think they deserve the best and they should have choice by being given excellent anthologies. I loved William Blake, Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon and Milton when I was 8. Reading and hearing good poems is a sensuous thrill and even babies enjoy patterns inlanguage.”
The collection, with a foreword by Todd(‘The Wave’) Strasser, includes about one hundredof the poems that have been published in the magazine during the past five years. Believe me, far from being scared off poetry, the young contributors are most auspiciously adept at what they do.
I conclude with another paradox: the first poem in the collection isClotheslineby Ariel Miller who explains that he wrote the piece about “other people’s lives during a year when two friends and I challenged ourselves to write a poem every day.” Now, that’s writerly commitment!
Clothesline
She liked to sit in the backyard
And watch the neighbor's laundry
Swing on the clothesline, crisp pale
Blue button-downs of the husband
Wrinkling in the half-wind, Summer
Sighing across the silky surface of
The twisting sundress, first one way,
Then the other, like soft hips
Swinging, one way, then the
Other, and when they were just
Washed and still wet they would
Flap and flick beads into the grass
That would flash fast down like
Little silver raindrops, one way,
Then the other.
** If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poemsis to be published by the University of Minnesota Press on May 30 2016 @ $24.95 (£17.25; ₪94.00 approx.).
** Leave This Song Behindis published by HCIBooks.com @ $12.95 (£8.90; ₪48.60 approx.).
I have just spent a fruitless half-hour searching for an English translation of any poetry by the Israeli writer, Benny Ziffer.
But it’s as well that I’ve drawn a blank because if his poetry is anything like his journalism, this blog would be swiftly boycotted by any and all decent-minded writers between Metulla, northern Israel and Manchester, U.K.
Ziffer, who holds twin Turkish-Israeli nationality, is the long-time literary editor of the left-wing Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. He has caused universal outrage by appearing both to condone and actively encourage paedophilia in the name of art.
According to Haaretz’s political polar opposite,Israel Hayom, 90 poets have so far vowed to boycott this year’s Metulla Poetry Festival while Ziffer remains as its artistic director. This follows a column in which he allegedly stated that “artists must be allowed ‘base and primal’ experiences -- including sleeping with young fans”.
Indeed, this current week is proving to be quite shameful for Israeli artistic endeavour. Israel Hayom was also among many news outlets to report that a performance artist named Ariel Bronz ‘created a storm’ at Sunday’s Haaretz Cultural Conference by inserting an Israeli flag into his rectum while on stage! Bronz was later questioned under caution on suspicion of breaking Israel’s Flag Law but was later released on bail.
The year was 1988 and a 14-year-old London school girl named Kate Moss was on her first fashion shoot. Photographer Owen Scarbiena advised: 'Pretend you're bored waiting at the bus stop." The rest became international fashion history and the early pictures snapped by Scarbiena are now on display at the Zebra One Art and Photography Gallery, London.
Har Gamal, just outside Karmiel, Lower Galilee is a hill with a twin-humped camel-shaped top, formed by centuries of wind and rain erosion.
Although popular with abseiling (‘rappelling’) enthusiasts, the area is unspoilt, boasts orchards of ancient olive trees and affords a wonderful view towards Haifa Bay.
Madison Smartt Bell is an American novelist best known for his stories about the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint Louverture, a leader of the Haitian independence movement during the French Revolution.
During an interview with the literary website, Byliner, Bell discusses his major influences and the relation between words and music in his work.
He is also a banjo player and acknowledges that as a native of Nashville,Tennessee “a lot of people write more for the eye, but I definitely write for the ear. Sound defines my choice of words and the way I construct a sentence and paragraph, all that.
“The musicality of prose has always been extremely important to me. Then again, the physicality of playing an instrument is really nice. You can sit there and do it without any conscious thought and let your mind just drift around, which can be productive in other areas”.
I thought about such things earlier this evening while watching - and listening - to an Israeli guitarist play through his engaging repertoire at the Karmiel Conservatory. By day, ‘Hetzi’ drives for Egged, the national bus company but tonight he took us on a musical journey with stops including Andrew Lloyd Webber’sDon’t Cry for Me Argentina,Smile (Though Your Heart is Breaking) whose lyrics are by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, Oscar Hammerstein’sEdelweissfromThe Sound of Musicand as an encore the plaintive theme tune fromSchindler’s Listby John Williams. Hetzi’s audience may have been small. But we were smitten!
In memory of the civilian hostages murdered at Entebbe, July 1976.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Operation Entebbe, the counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission conducted by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976.
It is has been increasingly argued in recent years that the memory of Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, elder brother of the current Israeli Prime Minister, who was kiled by a Ugandan sniper while leading the raid, has been magnified and mythologised at the expense of both his colleagues and the four civilians who were also killed or died as a result of the operation.
