Poetry for funerals by Angela Lansbury

A religious funeral service has sections of the bible mixed with readings and hymns, if music is allowed, but a secular or humanist or long religious service can include one, two or three poems. Poems can provide a break from the emotion of talking about the deceased. The poet may express your feelings more succinctly, give words when you have run out of things to say and suitable stories to say, suggest happy thoughts, or give images of happy times, metaphors of survival renewal and life going on.

Elephants March On
by Angela Lansbury

Big, strong elephants mourn their dead,
Small dogs or cats will whine or pause
Puzzled that they see something strange,
When small things or great friends have changed

They want to help, and know the cause

Then you admit some creature's dead
Doesn't lift hand, or leg, or turn a head
What's left to be done's now all up to you
To work, cook, clean and re-make the bed.

For a day, week, or year, you may feel alone
Miss the voice that used to answer the phone
And that's why we're all here to help
To tell each other, you're not alone

We are sorry to lose that link in our chain
A link just like us, which made us strong
A link which taught, helped us get along
Which would want their chain to grow strong again

Like the elephants, dog and cat move on
Silent at first, but don't complain
A year from now, I promise you
You'll shrug at the rain, smile again

Strangers say sorry somebody's died
Some like to think that there's a soul
That stays to help, guide, through life's turns
Lessons, memories, make us whole

(So turn to your friends, pause a while
Nod, shake hands, hug, what helps you best
Our loved one's now at peace and at rest
Happy we'll march on strong and smile.
-version 1 ends-

Grammatically best is an adjective so the line ending best should be most.
Strong is an adjective, and if we want the word strong to describe the action rather than the person we must change it to strongly.
You may prefer version 1 if grammar doesn't bother you. 
If the grammatical error intrudes, version 2 rewritten ends differently:) 

So turn to your friends, pause a while
Nod, shake hands, hug, what helps you most
Our loved one's a peaceful wave on the coast
Wave goodbye, march on strongly, smile.
-version 2 ends-
RIP Pearl
copyright Angela Lansbury 2015

My Fan Club

I started a fan club on Facebook. I'd seen other people open fan clubs for their pop music bands so I started one for my poetry. I called it Fan Club For Angela Lansbury Author and it was just for poems which I sent out daily the first week and after that I thought people would be overwhelmed to I sent them out about once every three days. One of my fans said he expected a poem a day.

This week Dec 19 my fan club has vanished. I am hoping this is just a glitch and it will reappear. Otherwise I'll have to start another one called something like fans of Hazel Nutter Comic Poet.

Join Angela Lansbury Author Facebook Fan Club For A Personal Poem

Yes, that's right. For a limited time only, if you join my Angela Lansbury Author Facebook Fan Club and you ask me, I'll write a personal poem for you and about you - or any other subject you choose.

I write comic poetry.

I have three comic poetry books on Lulu.com 

You can buy them from Lulu as paperback books or the budget version is the download version. You can also browse the cover and first few pages and read my comic comments.

Seriously Funny poems has my first poems and illustrations. My best performance poem was Oh No Susanna, a parody of the song Oh Susanna. It includes the line, 'I'll go to Piccadilly with my bus pass on my knee.'  the book contains my villanelles. 

At the end for me, and other parents and teachers, there's a handy list of famous poets and poems, such as: Edward Lear, The Lion and Albert, and songs.

Poetry Workshop Workbook is not only amusing, it also gives you the patterns for writing your own sonnets, villanelles, limericks, acrostics, terza rimas, not in that order but sensibly arranged as an A to Z of poem forms. The book starts with quotations about poetry. It contains my new poetry form, the Hi-coo. Poet's Dictionary is at the back. It's handy if you want a quick guide to the English form of sonnet and the Italian version. 

My favourite limerick is the one about the Secretary, ending, 

You realise I'm essential

When I'm hiding in the loo.

For songwriters I wrote Grandmother's Clock,  a parody of My Grandfather's  Clock. My sonnet, imitating Rupert Brooke's the Soldier, is The Taxpayer.

My latest poetry book is Writing Poetry For Fun With Angela. It tells you how to write poems for anniversaries, birthday cards, Xmas cards and even funerals. My two favourite poems to read aloud from this book are: Wedding Disasters; To My Ex Boyfriend (about gatecrashing his wedding - there's a twist end revealing something about the narrator's relationship with the bride.) The book ends with the poem We've Finished.

Whilst I have your attention, I also have restaurant reviews on Trusted Places. And a video on You tube including me reciting my short poem on Milton Keynes - type in Angela Lansbury author.

Happy reading and writing!

Was Keats Jewish?

Here's the latest. Keats supposedly died of consumption overseas. Now the church has discovered that his supposed body is four inches taller and matches the description of his friend's servant who had consumption.

Sounds like Katz, hiding the fact that he was Jewish, got tired of the pretence so he could marry his Jewish girlfriend and go back to being Jewish. So he pretended he'd died, and the servant's grave was given his name.

Keats - really a Jewish poet?

Now for the best story for poetry lovers. Wordsworth's immortal poem Daffodils, goes:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
Then all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils ...

It doesn't sound the same if you say A host of yellow daffodils. A bit prosaic. Brighter colours. But no, golden daffodils is better.

The original version had yellow daffodils. Who changed it? The Wordsworths' visitor, a Mr Katz. He was married to a Jewish Miss Gold and in business with her brother. Dorothy Wordsworth said Mr K would not eat meat.

Now we wait to hear from the cemetery whether they will allow an exhumation and whether Mr Katz, same dates at Mr Keats, was the same height too.

POETRY STYLE & SUBJECT BEING POSITIVE

POETRY STYLE

I just opened the blog of a poet. He had some good metaphors. Although lots of his poems read like lists rather than poems. I write comic poems and songs. I am always looking at my lists of ideas. When you read them out at a poetry reading, despite the repetition, they still sound like lists.

If you had not been told they were poems, you would have thought they were shopping lists, wish lists, written first thing in the morning or last thing at night or when maudlin, drunk or high. No order. No control. Not memorable. What else does a poem need?

I am good at creating rhymes and rhying couplets. I struggle to get good rhythms. I can count syllables.

I prefer poems which have a proper rhythm, either on the odd beats or the even beats.
The rhythm carries you forward, sweeps you along until the long sentence reaches a resting point, a sudden end. Or a wistful dying phrase, or a neat, clever, satisfying conclusion.

The rambling list is not a person in control. Clever repetition can have an insistent effect. I look at a poem and wonder about the author. What would this person be like to meet? Disorganized and obsessive?

I can't say that to or even about another poetry writer. How rude it would sound. It would make the other person unhappy. It would make me sound unfeeling. So no, I do not comment on them. I merely comment on myself and how I have tried to turn my life around.

Some of the greatest success stories are people who have come through tragedy or difficulty smiling, hopeful, determined to reach happiness.

What image are you conveying of yourself? A commentator asked the poet if it was just a subject of if the writer really was suicidal? The poet was right to answer the query by saying he used to be suicidal. Not any more.

Who wants a boyfriend or girlfriend who is suicidal? As a taxi driver in Washington DC once said to me when he stopped my tale of woe - "Lady, I've got problems of my own."

Of course one cannot write only upbeat poetry. One has to deal with serious issues.

Two solutions I have found to the problem of self-image. One is the traditional solution of describing yourself as 'my friend'. (You know the joke. Doctor ... my friend ... The joke or story ends with the revelation that the person with the problem is really the speaker.)

So, of course 'I' am never pregnant, handicapped, in ill health, short of money or having spouse or boyfriend problems in real life. That just attracts other losers who sympathise. My 'friend' has the problem.

The modern techniqe of positive thinking used by hospital doctors is to talk about the pain or problem the patient had previously, in the past, and how well they will be in future, as if they are getting better all the time.

I read a lot of relationship advice newsletters. They say that if you describe yourself as unlucky in love you will stay that way. The first step to finding love is having a positive image.

SUBJECT
So, what do I think I would do with a poem on suicide? I would be unlikely to write one. Why depress yourself and possibly the reader? No such subject for me. Unless I felt it might help a pupil or teenager.

There are jokes and funny films on the subject of suicide. Jokes? Yes, Dorothy Parker wrote a comic poem about considering all the unpleasant ways of committing suicide, ending 'you might as well live'.

The end result was that you could laugh at the subject, laugh at yourself, laugh with her. Your image of her was not of a woman likely to commit suicide but a fun friend who had a dry wit.

That is my aim. To appear to be a fun, witty person. Not an unsympathetic person, but someone who will cheer you up when you are temporarily down, and make you happy.

Tips for would-be writers

Publishing stories.

Give the reader something to picture as well as something left to imagine themselves.

A story is a story, not a quiz.

Imagine the illustrator reading your opening paragraph.

It starts: He walked in and saw her.

What are the illustrator and reader supposed to imagine?

A sixty-year-old man and 20 year old girl? Eighteen-year-old boy and forty year old woman?

If I imagine the former I don’t want to be told in paragraph four that the people in the room are the latter.

Man with goatee beard? Bald? Teenager? Small and plump.

Angry? Or soothing?

Skinny, scared girl? Or huge, voluptuous proud woman?

Characters
1 Develop characters and situations so readers can visualise types of people and environment.

Readers
2 Amount of developing depends on readers you are aiming at.

Message
Supposing you are describing the fun to be had from a certain activity, whether skiing, sewing or bungee jumping.
Are you putting over a message that anybody – everybody - can experience this? Or that one specific type of person should?

Hero and Heroine
It might be based on yourself – the middle class women, or working class or upper class woman, who never thought she would enjoy it. You know who you are and see yourself as the main character in the scene. But the reader doesn’t know you.

If you are an elderly writer like Barbara Cartland with your picture on the cover, in paragraph one you have to tell the reader whether you are imagining yourself as you appear now as a wealthy woman of elderly looks with fancy clothes including pink ribbons or as you were in your slender youth, or as a fictional character of different age and clothing style such as jeans.

If the former, any woman, change the types of characters in each story, or give the man a series of girlfriends, all different. Different classes, different walks of life.

Publishers
For speed or to show you can finish a book self-publish through lulu on line printers.

Publishers want to know if you can finish 10 stories

Write ten stories and approach a publisher.
Publishers want you to write to a brief and to time.

Test yourself. Can you sit down every morning for two hours and write to a theme, eg stories on revenge, stories set in London, stories about secretary, stories about a supermarket?

Be prepared to promise a publisher more.

On a theme.

Or lulu.com self publisher.

Theme
Have a theme. You may already have an obsession eg about weddings or graveyards or bicycles or chains.

Within that you may have an emotion, a positive emotion such as love, or revenge, or both – ups and downs.

Titles
A title focuses your writing and helps the reader identify the theme. Think of contrasts. The Prince and The Pauper. Remember two - Pride and Prejudice. Or the rule of three.

Numbers
Why stop at three? Four or five. Four weddings and a funeral. A hundred and one dalmations.

The ups and downs of love in a graveyard.

If you have only a few stories, publish as birthday present, or as a bedtime story book to read to her.

SONGWRITING AND 'SIXTEEN' - ONE WORD MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Maybe the turning point of my life was a couple of weekends ago when I met the son of Robert Sherman the songwriter. I mentioned that I was an author named Angela Lansbury and an aspiring songwriter and the son said, ‘My father wrote the songs for a film in which the actress of that name starred.’

Robert Sherman is also a painter and I looked at his website, http://www.robertshermanart.com/

Robert Sherman and his brother Richard had a father who was a songwriter and Robert was writing songs as a child and had written a musical by the time he was in his teens.

His songs included numerous award winning hits, including those from Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and numerous tunes for Disney including the theme park classic It’s A Small World. Plus, one of my favourites – ‘Sixteen’!

Sixteen is ‘my song’, an ongoing joke with a good friend of mine who introduced me to Karaoke, William Brougham, who I met through Toastmasters International in London (he’s now in Australia – a radio newsreader with a second career as an actor making appearances on shows such as Home & Away).

William always says he will sing Sixteen for me. I am no longer sixteen.

I wrote to William:

You know a song is perfect when you change one word and it's ruined.

'You're sixty, you're beautiful and you're mine,' just doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?

Later I added a postscript to my email:

I looked at what I wrote again and my comment on the whole being greater than the some of the parts was true.

When you try to re-write Shakespeare to show you understand it in an O level comprehension your version never matches the rhythm and drama of the original.

'To be or not to be; that is the question,' is often quoted.

'To live or not to live, that's the decision which I must make,' is just not as memorable.

Humour aside. Firstly, the obvious joke in the change to the song is the meaning of the words sixteen and sixty.

A sixteen-year-old is generally considered more beautiful than a sixty-year-old.

Unless a song about a sixty year old is written as a tribute, an anniversary song. But the jumpy pop song music would not fit; the original song has to be sung by a sixteen-year-old boy, or eighteen-year-old, or somebody young-sounding, otherwise it suggests cradle-snatching and sounds like he's a predator.

If the sixty-year-old woman is 'his', the song has to be sung by a sixty-year-old man, or an eighty-year-old man (who might be thrilled to have a lively sixty-year-old woman.

For an older singer you would need a slower, more nostalgic Fifties style song sung as a duet sung by an ageing Frank Sinatra, or a big band tune.)

But the metre is changed too.
Sixteen has emphasis on the second syllable, whilst sixty has emphasis on the first.

Maybe that doesn't matter.

Also sixteen was age of consent so it adds sexual allure and desire on the part of the singer, adding an edge of anticipation and desire, plus triumph, to the word 'mine'.If I could find the email of the composer I'd write and ask him to create a new song for his former fans from the Sixties who are no longer sixteen. The contact number on the site is for the art sales in California. He's now living in London.