Sometimes

[Michael]

Back from a delightful and indulgent sailing trip, I had just sat down
at my computer contemplating getting back to the poem of the week
( more recently the poem of the month ) group when I received a poem
from our member Marshall Ganz, Sometimes, by Sheenagh Pugh. Being
unfamiliar with this Welsh poet and novelist I went to her website
where she has written that if you want to reprint her work to email
her unless you want to reprint Sometimes in which case please click on
a link "and save us all the email." So I did. While I quite enjoyed
her poem , I think I may enjoy her comments on it even more. You can
tell she is a very wry, talented, serious and unpredictable poet who
is quite bemused? critical? abashed? at what has become of one of her
poems. So here is the poem and then what follows is her comments to
anyone who wants to reprint it.
All the best
Michael

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

—Sheenagh Pugh

[from Good Poems, as heard on The Writer’s Almanac,
selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor (New York: Viking, 2002)
p. 215;
originally in Selected Poems (Dufour Editions, 1990).]


The dreaded Sometimes

I once had this on my site, though I had long ago got sick of it. But
I still got a lot of email asking for information about it so I
thought it might save time, especially now it's turned up as a GCSE
"unseen poem"! There is also a bit about it on the FAQs for specific
poems page, answering the questions "why isn't the language inclusive"
and "why don't you like the poem".

But I have now decided to remove the text, though I will keep this
information to save email enquiries.

Policy on reproduction of "Sometimes"

* it's OK to put it on personal blogs
* if you're a student, you can use it for coursework
* if you're an exam board, you cannot use it as an exam question
* if you want it for a non-charitable poetry anthology, the
answer's no
* I will allow it to be read for charitable purposes (NB NOT
medical ones which fund research on animals, and I won't change my
mind on that for anyone, so please don't ask). But I would still
refuse permission for actual reproduction, unless it was a charity I
felt very strongly about.
* if you're an "inclusive language" fanatic who wants to replace
"man" with "human being" and ruin the scansion, don't you dare!!! See
below...
* and if you do quote or reproduce it, I would rather you left my
name off. I really do hate it that much. The comedian Arthur Smith,
who's been using it in a charitable/memorial context for some time,
respects my feelings on this by never mentioning my name, and I very
much appreciate that.

I'm doing this because the poem simply doesn't represent the kind of
poet I want to be. I know many people do like it but it exists on many
other sites so I am not depriving them of anything, and I'd rather
they didn't email asking me to change my mind about it, because I
can't.

I wrote it back in the eighties and it appeared in my Selected Poems,
which has recently been reprinted by Seren, whom you can contact at
this address. It was then included in Poems on the Underground and has
since appeared on the trams of Helsinki and the Metro in St Petersburg
(there's a good Russian translation on Vitali Ashkinazi's web site.
Actually I prefer Vitali's version to the original and one day I might
translate it back).

It featured in a BBC Radio 4 programme called The Secret Life of
Poems. It has been used by several charities and political
organisations, including Charter 88 (for refugees); it has been read
during the Irish peace negotiations and in the South African
parliament, has been set to music by several people and quoted in
other books (most lately appearing in the autobiography of the man in
the white suit, Martin Bell).

Despite all this, it wasn't necessarily political, nor is it about
depression, though a lot of clinically depressed people think it is.
It isn't even basically very optimistic. It was originally written
about a sportsman who had a drug problem and it expressed the hope
that he might eventually get over it - because things do go right
sometimes, but not very often... But it isn't anywhere near skilful or
subtle enough and I would cheerfully disown it, if people didn't now
and then write to me saying it had helped them. By the way, you might
also care to know that I originally wrote "the sun will sometimes melt
a field of snow" (the sportsman's drug of choice was cocaine). But I
mistyped "sorrow" for "snow" and then decided I liked that better. I
believe in letting the keyboard join in the creative process now and
then.

Also some people have asked "why the odd spelling of "muscatel" as
"muscadel"? Because the line doesn't refer to muscatel grapes; it
refers to grape hyacinths, little purple spring flowers which I've
always known as "muscadel".

Oh and while we're at it, a small rant... I am sick of seeing versions
of this on people's sites which are wrong not because of faulty memory
but because they've been deliberately "adapted" for added political
correctness or to simplify the vocabulary or grammar. I've seen "man"
blithely changed to "woman" by people who apparently don't notice that
this screws up the scansion (which to any writer is far more important
than being PC). If you don't like it the way it is, then write your
own, but don't "adapt" mine and then leave my name on it, because I
can scan and I don't want people thinking otherwise! As you may know,
I like fan fiction, but all honest fanfic writers include a disclaimer
stressing that this is them, not the original.