Robin Hood and Jacques Derrida - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Robin Hood and Jacques Derrida

 

As the first stars came out above the leaves

Of Merry Sherwood, the lads in peaceful repose

Put away their after-supper mending of gear

And idled over their ale of October brewing

 

Then Robin Hood spoke to Allan-a-Dale:

 

Don’t sing to us of Neo-Post-Colonial White Supremacist Patriarchal People-of-Color Matriarchal LGBTQTY Non-Binary Feminist Chomskian Existentialist (existentialist – how quaint) Hegelian Post-Structuralist Logocentric Sausurian Psychoanalytical Post-Modern Marxist Jungian New Critical Cognitive Scientific Neo-Anarchic Canon-Repudiationist Neo-Informalist Catarrhic De-Constructionism.

 

Sing to us

                                                       a story.

Robin Hood, Whitman Publishing, 1950s - Photograph

The Purpose of Civilization - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poetricdrivel.blogspot.com

The Purpose of Civilization

The apogee of civilization
Is a small boy sitting under a tree
On a summer day reading wonderful stories
About the adventures of Robin Hood

The small boy may well go to university
Fight in the wars, and someday have a boy
Of his own sitting under a summer tree
Reading those stories about Robin Hood

And we must always remember that the point
Of civilization is that small boys
Are free to sit under trees and read stories
About the adventures of Robin Hood

In youth, in books, and in the summer wood -
Finding there the true, the beautiful, the good

Robin Hood's Favorite (or Favourite) Saint - 15 July is Saint Swithin's Day

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray
On this your high-summer rain-making day

Of your blest kindness send us soft, sweet showers
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours

To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out

And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:

We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow

Count out some plantful seeds for poor men’s needs
And tell God’s Mysteries daily on our beads

Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham - Still Frenemies after all These Years - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham –

Still Frenemies after all These Years

The latest Robin Hood film is reported to be a financial failure, and there is no surprise in that. Simply to see the screen shot used in advertising, a vague figure huddled in an impossibly large hood and a quilted coat that would be too fey for a junior high cheerleader, is to be warned off.

The last good screen Robin Hood was the fox in the Disney cartoon (1973). After that, the various films dump onto the viewer a series of pouty, sullen, hoody Robin Hoods who look like sniveling taggers who have just discovered that their spray paint has run out. The modern versions are dimly lit, muddy, dark, brooding, and, worst of all, preachy. Howard Pyle (https://www.biography.com/people/howard-pyle-9449021) cobbled together from the old stories the most famous book about Robin Hood, and the best films all borrow from Pyle. The worst films ignore Pyle, and are as Miz-Grundy-screechy as the remake of Murphy Brown.

Robin Hood is, first of all, meant to be fun. A writer or producer who ignores that exhibits disdain for his audience. There are good arguments for Robin Hood being either a historical man or possibly a combination of real outlaws. The earliest tales and ballads present an often naughty, almost Chaucerian bad boy, and one who loses fights as often as his wins them. Pyle’s Robin Hood is a much better man, with a much better sense of justice, but still he is great fun.

Douglas Fairbanks’ 1922 silent turn as Robin Hood is a wonder film, and you get to participate by reading the dialogue for yourself. The piano is optional.

The most famous Robin Hood is that Tasmanian devil himself, Errol Flynn, in the beautifully lit and staged 1938 version. The ultimate Snidely Whiplash, Basil Rathbone, a hero of the First World War (https://sistercelluloid.com/2015/11/05/world-war-i/)is the snideliest, whiplashiest Sheriff of Nottingham ever, and beautiful Olivia de Havilland the most elegant Marian. Even the scene where Marian is trying to conceal a letter from the Sheriff is brilliant in its table-top choreography.

Richard Todd, who fought at the Pegasus Bridge in 1944 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/5460628/D-Day-I-was-the-first-man-out-of-the-plane-over-Normandy.html) starred in a very good Disney live-action film in 1952.

For your ‘umble scrivener, the best Robin Hood of all is Richard Greene (Royal Armoured Corps, Second World War). His television series was filmed in England (which looks like England, not California) from 1955-1959, brilliantly produced by Hannah Weinstein (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0918438/). M. Weinstein’s 142 half-hour shows are rattling good fun indeed, as any Robin Hood film should be, but she also develops characters and situations with a now rare sense of justice and historical sensitivity. Her half-hour plays are ethical without ever lapsing into screeching and preaching.

Weinstein also allows her Robin Hood sometimes to find himself in comical situations as in the old tales, but still G-rated.

The Robin Hood stories are great fun, and the movie versions will again be joyful when the producers stop misusing Robin and his merrie men as loudspeakers for hectoring audiences about how wrong they are about everything.

And, hey, producers, turn on the lights – the sun does shine in England.

As that archer, swordsman, hero, lover, and righter of wrongs might say, quoting from Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, “I’m STILL big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

-30-

Robin Hood's Favorite Saint - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray,
On this your high-summer rain-making day –
Of your blest kindness send us sweet, soft showers,
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours,

To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out;
And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:

We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow,
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow,
Count out some plantful seeds for poor folks’ needs,
And daily tell God’s Mysteries on our beads.


(The 15th of August is Saint Swithin's Day.)

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray,

On this your high summer rain-making day –
Of your blest kindness send us sweet, soft showers,
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours,
To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out;
And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:
We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow,
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow,
Count out some plantful seeds for poor folks’ needs,
And daily tell God’s Mysteries on our beads.

At the Sign of the Blue Boar

Mack Hall, HSG


At the Sign of the Blue Boar

Under the oak tree, long ago,
We lived with merry Robin Hood,
Who taught us how to bend the bow
And live aright in green Sherwood

Now let us now part the leaves again,
And find that merry life, and bold.
We’ll roam again as we did then --
How came it that we all grew old?

Let us stroll to the Blue Boar Inn,
Quaff a mug of October ale
Nigh unto Sherwood and the fen,
And, laughing, tell a jolly tale

Old Gaffer Swanthold might rest there
Easing his bones in the summer sun
Chatting sweet Joan whose auburn hair
Reminds him of his youthful fun.

Stout of sinew and bold of heart,
Home from the wars i’the Holy Land,
A gallant knight now takes his part,
A hero and a brave, strong man:

Sir Richard o’ the Lea, a knight
A warrior’s heart, but mortgaged land,
Always first in a desperate fight
Poor, but we know no better man

O Alan-a-Dale, tune your lute
And sing how Midge the Miller’s son
Bullied by men (of ill repute),
With Robin’s aid fought them, and won.

O sing of good Saint Swithin whose
Feast day predicts the summer’s moods,
Forty days as the Saint doth choose,
Smiling on England’s grain-fat roods

Maid Marian, she’s just a girl
So lightly dancing through the wood
But she can outshoot any churl
And she is sweet on Robin Hood

Will Scarlet, too, and Little John
Scathelock and Stutely, still
Ambushing fat bishops anon,
Not far from old Hanacker Mill

And we were with them there along
The London Road from Nottingham
Whistling a happy, wordless song,
For nothing rhymes with “Nottingham.”

Sing of Sherwood’s high-leaping deer
Falling to arrows swift and sure
Around the campfire, such good cheer
Venison and ale – the poor man’s cure

Far off in London, Henry, King,
And his Eleanor of Aquitaine
Too oft ignore their far-off shires
And their people’s sheriff-ridden pain

But with us always, happy Tuck
Ever hungry but never mean,
A Friar of faith, of joy, of pluck,
A child of blessed Mary, Queen

Telling his beads, sharpening his sword
Saying Masses for Robin’s band
Seated first at the groaning board
Oft poaching on the bishop’s land

O, merry robbers once we were
In green and sunny barefoot youth
“Stand and deliver, noble sir!
Your purse is too heavy, in God’s truth.”

Under the oak tree, long ago,
We lived with merry Robin Hood,
Who taught us how to bend the bow
And live aright in green Sherwood