PPB: July / Robert F. Skillings

[George J. Dance]

Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
July, by Robert F. Skillings

A very pleasant mouth is this
To be in a country town.
The sunlight doth the foliage kiss
[...]
https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/07/july-robert-f-skillings.html

[W-Dockery]

"Pleasant mouth"?

A typo or a Edmund Spenser style spelling?

[George J. Dance]

On 2022-07-31 2:13 p.m., W-Dockery wrote:
> George J. Dance wrote:
>>
>> Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
>> July, by Robert F. Skillings
>

>> A very pleasant mo[n]th is this

>>      To be in a country town.
>> The sunlight doth the foliage kiss
>> [...]
>> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/07/july-robert-f-skillings.html
>
>
> "Pleasant mouth"?
>
> A typo or a Edmund Spenser style spelling?

Heh! I'd say it's a typo, though it is an interesting image, when
combined with "kiss" in L3. So I've changed it to "month" on the blog,
and changed it everywhere it's promoted on the web.

Sadly, while it's probably a typo, it's on all the online copies I've
seen -- I've looked at 3, and had to make decide which one to use (as
they vary in whether or not they indent the lines). Yet all of them have
"mouth". And I think I understand why. I must have read the poem 6
times, and each time I read "month" -- and I expect that everyone else
who put it on their site did the same.

The other problem was that there's no authoritative source for the text
online, just websites that appear to have simply c&p'd each other. I
suspect that it's from one of the two anthologies Skillings's son says
he had poems published in, but I haven't been able to find either. If it
was typed in from a print book, that could explain the appearance of the
"mouth."

Thanks for bringing that to my attention here. There is a silver lining,
when I or a reader catches an error like that: unlike the run of the
mill poetry site, it gets corrected. So I'd say, provisionally, that
unlike those other sites, PPB is a place to find a correct version of
the poem.

[W-Dockery]

Again, it does seem to be a typo, and should be corrected, until further information surfaces.

[George J. Dance]

By luck, I was able to find the original publication. It's in this book,
on this page (bottom left-hand corner).

https://archive.org/details/localnationalpoe00herr/page/746/mode/2up

It looks like a vanity press, and the type is small, but it can be blown
up online, and it definitely says 'month'.

That also led me to the source of the typo. It was made by the OCR
scanner in the "Full Text" version of the poem, which just as definitely
says 'mouth'.

https://archive.org/stream/localnationalpoe00herr/localnationalpoe00herr_djvu.txt

(You'll have to scroll down to the page. The easiest way is to Ctrl+F
for "Skillings" - it takes just 2 clicks.)

[W.Dockery]

George J. Dance wrote:
>
> Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
> July, by Robert F. Skillings

> A very pleasant month is this

> To be in a country town.
> The sunlight doth the foliage kiss
> [...]
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/07/july-robert-f-skillings.html

Good to see this poem finally corrected for the archives.

🙂

[George J. Dance]

On 2022-08-01 5:42 p.m., Will Dockery wrote:
> "Re: We found the origin of the Robert F. Stillings "July" poem." -Nancy Gene
>
> Okay, so, was Robert F. Stillings a friend of John Dunne?
>

By coincidence, yesterday I was working on a wiki article for a poet
named Seán Dunne.

I wonder if he was related to John.

[W.Dockery]

I don't care who you are, that's funny.

🙂

[General-Zod]

Same one..?

Sean Dunne at The Brogue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0hCOl3ycgc

[George J. Dance]

No. Sean Dunne the poet died in 1995.

Thanks for posting that, though. I thought the "thesaurus" joke was
hilarious, though I could see a lot of people not getting it. Maybe he
should have closed it with a more obvious line, like "I'm at a loss for
words."

[Zod]

Indeed I found him quite amusing...

[W.Dockery]

Zod wrote:

> George J. Dance wrote:

>> On 2022-08-03 6:22 p.m., General-Zod wrote:
>>> George J. Dance wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2022-08-01 5:42 p.m., Will Dockery wrote:
>>>>> "Re: We found the origin of the Robert F. Stillings "July" poem."
>>>>> -Nancy Gene
>>>>>
>>>>> Okay, so, was Robert F. Stillings a friend of John Dunne?
>>>>>
>>>
>>>> By coincidence, yesterday I was working on a wiki article for a poet
>>>> named Seán Dunne.
>>>
>>>> I wonder if he was related to John.
>>>
>>> Same one..?
>>>
>>> Sean Dunne at The Brogue
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0hCOl3ycgc

>> No. Sean Dunne the poet died in 1995.

I'm not familiar with him, but will check him out.

[Rocky Stoneberg]

Will Dockery wrote:

> Zod wrote:

>> George J. Dance wrote:

>>> On 2022-08-03 6:22 p.m., General-Zod wrote:
>>>> George J. Dance wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2022-08-01 5:42 p.m., Will Dockery wrote:
>>>>>> "Re: We found the origin of the Robert F. Stillings "July" poem."
>>>>>> -Nancy Gene
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Okay, so, was Robert F. Stillings a friend of John Dunne?
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> By coincidence, yesterday I was working on a wiki article for a poet
>>>>> named Seán Dunne.
>>>>
>>>>> I wonder if he was related to John.
>>>>
>>>> Same one..?
>>>>
>>>> Sean Dunne at The Brogue
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0hCOl3ycgc

>>> No. Sean Dunne the poet died in 1995.

> I'm not familiar with him, but will check him out.

As shall I...

[W.Dockery]

Well put.

[W.Dockery]

George J. Dance wrote:
>
> Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
> July, by Robert F. Skillings

> A very pleasant month is this

> To be in a country town.
> The sunlight doth the foliage kiss
> [...]
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/07/july-robert-f-skillings.html

Again, a good read.

[General-Zod]

George J. Dance wrote:
>
> Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
> July, by Robert F. Skillings

> A very pleasant month is this

> To be in a country town.
> The sunlight doth the foliage kiss
> [...]
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/07/july-robert-f-skillings.html

Always a great fave for so many reasons... ha ha....

[W.Dockery]

I know, right?

🙂