A little bit of Paradis

Abstract thoughts collide,
and cut the silence,
like skeletons scraping
with boney fingers.
The twilight glides like velvet
as the mists drift in,
while the city of dreams
lurks in the far distance.

The daffodils I picked
laid haphazardly
upon the gravestone
as if to ease your death.
It’s surface scarred
with years of neglect.
There will come a time
when everything changes -

then -
then I will forgive you.

Paradis

Category: Poetry by Paradis
Tags: Paradis

Somewhere in a city in late September,
he takes a walk down by the river,
kicking the first fallen leaves of Autumn.
He leans on a rusted old railing, overlooking the water,
watching the ripples as they float ever wider.
He wonders of the woman he had given his heart to,
wishes she were here to share this sight.

Elsewhere a woman sips tea on a sidewalk.
Seated at a table overlooking a river,
she buttons her coat to keep out the chill
from the breeze that’s blowing off of the water.
She watches the ripples as they float ever wider,
and thinks of the man she has given her heart to,
she smiles and wishes he could share in this sight.

Paradis

Category: Poetry by Paradis
Tags: Paradis

Sunflowers

Posted By Paradis on February 3, 2010

Endless fields of sunflowers,
Ten thousand spurious smiles.
The bastard yellow rays of deception…
‘Oh the tangled Webs we weave’

Paradis

Category: Poetry by Paradis
Tags: Paradis

Haiku by Paradis

Posted By Paradis on February 3, 2010

Silent intruders
poke into corners
shadows

Paradis

Category: Haiku by Paradis, Poetry by Paradis
Tags: Haiku by Paradis

Haiku by Paradis

Posted By Paradis on February 3, 2010

As dusk gathers,
the light from the open door -
eerie in the fog

Paradis

Category: Haiku by Paradis, Poetry by Paradis
Tags: Haiku by Paradis

William Wordsworth

Posted By Paradis on November 28, 2009

William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father, John, was a lawyer, and he encouraged his 5 children to pursue learning. When Wordsworth’s mother Anne died in 1778, young William was sent to attend grammar school away from home, five years later he lost his father too.

The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life. With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine.

Wordsworth’s financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic ‘Lucy’ poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life. Wordsworth’s happy home life turned to tragedy when two of his four children died within a year.

In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843) as England’s poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.

Dorothy Wordsworth

English prose writer, the younger sister of poet William Wordsworth, famous for her diaries and ‘recollections’. Several of Dorothy Wordsworth’s own poems or notes in her journal were included in various editions of her brother’s poetical works. She published nothing during her lifetime, and spent the last twenty five years struggling against physical and mental illness.

Category: Biographies
Tags: Biographies, Wordsworth

I am a Rock

Posted By Paradis on November 28, 2009

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

Simon & Garfunkel

Category: Famous Songs
Tags: Songs

Haiku by Paradis

Posted By Paradis on November 25, 2009

Looking at Haiku is like looking at a painting on a wall.

You focus on the painting, and see nothing else around you, just lost in that moment. We are all too often, caught up in our own little world, we neglect to see the obvious, the simple, the plain things around us. As poets, we are tasked with bringing those simplistic things to the fore.

If you read a book, the author will have created the world in which you will explore and see, in Haiku however, the poet points a finger to where your journey begins, and you must find the way yourself, making your own discoveries.

Only the reader will know when he or she is too tired to continue. Only the reader can listen to the spaces between the words. Only the reader can hear those purposeful silences, left in just the right places.

Alabaster walls
unseen – until
I hang a Van Gogh

Paradis

Category: Haiku by Paradis, Poetry by Paradis
Tags: Haiku by Paradis, Paradis

A few plot notes from some of Dickens’ books

Posted By Paradis on November 25, 2009

Just a few plot notes on some of Dickens’ books:

David Copperfield

Dickens always considered David Copperfield his best work, and his favourite.
David Copperfield concerns the growing-up of a boy, who, orphaned at an early age, experiences considerable hardship. He is ill-treated by his stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, then forced to work under appalling conditions in a London warehouse. This is a marked contrast to his idyllic early childhood, before the re-marriage and death of his gentle mother.

David’s life improves greatly when he runs away from his job to seek out his Aunt, Betsey Trotwood. She sends him to school and arranges for him to board with kindly lawyer, Mr. Wickfield, whose daughter, Agnes, proves to be a good friend to David. Once his education is completed, David is articled in law and meets Dora, whom he loves passionately and marries.

The main action of the plot concerns Mr. Wickfield’s clerk, Uriah Heep, who is both ambitious and malicious. Heep secretly plots his employer’s riun. Once his wicked schemes are exposed, it only remains for David, now an accomplished writer, to find true fulfilment. When Dora dies, David turns to Agnes for comfort. She has quietly loved him all along and, by the end of the book, David has matured enough to return her love.

A Christmas Carol

Scrooge sits in his counting house ignoring the sounds of Christmas Eve. His nephew Fred invites him to Christmas dinner, but Scrooge rudely refuses. Christmas is humbug, he declares. He even begrudges giving his clerk, Bob Cratchet, the day off.

Back at home Scrooge sits by a meagre fire. The ghost of Scrooge’s long-dead partner, Marley, appears to warn him of the dreadful life after death. Three spirits will visit, says Marley, and offer Scrooge a chance to avoid eternal wandering. Marley departs and the first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, arrives. Scrooge is transported back to his youth, when he enjoyed Christmas to the full. Scrooge’s old heart begins to soften.

Scrooge then meets to Ghost of Christmas Present who takes him to the Cratchits, who are celebrating despite their poverty, then onto his nephew Fred, who is making merry, and then to festivities across the globe. Now comes Scrooge’s third visitor: Christmas Yet To Come. It shows Scrooge his unlamented end, his death a blessing to his debtors.

Scrooge awakes on Christmas morning and, having fully repented of his past life, he rushes to make amends: he sends the Cratchits a turkey, goes to Fred’s party and next day raises Bob Cratchit’s salary.

Great Expectations

Pip, an orphan, is being brought up by his sister and her husband, Joe, a blacksmith. They live on the Kent marches. with prison ships nearby. One night Pip meets Magwitch, an escaped convict, who coerces him into bringing him food and a file. The next day, soldiers come in search of Magwitch, find him fighting with another escapee and recapture them both.

Soon after a strange recluse, Miss Havisham, invites Pip to play with her young ward, Estella. Pip falls in love with Estella who scorns him. When a lawyer, Jaggers, tells Pip that he has “great expectations” as a secret benefactor is to pay for him to become a gentleman, Pip thinks the benefactor is Miss Havisham. He goes off to London ignoring Joe and the maid Biddy who have both been devoted to him.

Many years later when Pip is a man of 23, Magwitch suddenly appears again. As a convict in Australia he made his fortune, and risks his life in returning to see Pip. Magwitch reveals that it is he who is the provider of Pip’s wealth, in gratitude for Pip’s help on the marshes so many years before. Pip tries to organise Magwitch’s escape, but in vain, and Magwitch dies in prison. Pip learns that Estella is Magwitch’s daughter and that the second convict on the marshes was Compeyson, the man who deserted Miss Havisham so long ago.

Joe marries Biddy and Pip goes abroad. Later he meets Estella whose life is in ruins. Pip and Estella are both wiser, but their future, together or apart, is left a mystery.

Oliver Twist

Orphaned at birth, Oliver must endure the cruelties of workhouse life before being apprenticed to an undertaker. Here, he is treated little better than a slave and so runs away to the city, where he is adopted by the evil Fagin and his family of pickpockets.

Oliver is soon arrested, although innocent, and is taken in by kind Mr. Brownlow, only to recaptured by Nancy, the lover of housebreaker Bill Sikes. When Oliver assists Sikes in a robbery, he is shot in the arm. Again he is rescued from the streets – this time by the compassionate Rose and Mrs. Maylie.

Despite living in the country, Oliver is hunted down by Fagin and a tall, gaunt stranger called Monks, who later turns out to be Oliver’s half-brother. But Nancy betrays their plotting and is murdered by Sikes.

The net then closes in on Sikes and Fagin. The rest of the book unravels the mystery of Oliver’s birth: he is found to be related to his benefactor, Mr. Brownlow. No longer a pauper and an orphan, Oliver lives happily ever after.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The unfinished novel Dickens was working on when he died The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the fifteenth novel of Charles Dickens. Dickens was only halfway finished with the book when he died leaving it to become the biggest mystery ever.

Possible Endings
There is much speculation about how The Mystery of Edwin Drood was to have ended. Dickens didn’t leave any notes so no one will ever really know what he intended.

One of the most popular beliefs is that John Jasper, Edwin’s uncle, is the murderer. Jasper lead the double life of a choirmaster and opium addict. He was also in love with Rosa Bud, the woman his nephew was to marry.
Conversations Dickens had before he died support this theory. Dickens good friend, John Forester, said Dickens told him that Jasper had indeed murdered Drood. Dickens’s son, Charley, also stated that his father told him Drood really was dead.

Some people speculate that Edwin Drood, like John Harmon in Our Mutual Friend, wasn’t really dead. The fact that Edwin’s body was never found adds weight to this theory.

Paradis

Category: Books to Read
Tags: Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Dickens, Edwin Drood, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist