Sunday, 30 July 2017

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese

In every alliance there is a horse and there is a rider.

Bismarck, quoted in Nagy Talavera, The Green Shirts and the Others





Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

G.K. Chesterton




Giving someone your full attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil


Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer—and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are in siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for this is only to suffer one another.


Hilaire Belloc

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous30 July 2017 at 16:28

    Let us not forget A Parable by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
    The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there,
    And warmly debated the matter;
    The Orthodox said that it came from the air,
    And the Heretics said from the platter.
    They argued it long and they argued it strong,
    And I hear they are arguing now;
    But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese,
    Not one of them thought of a cow.

    J.K.

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  2. Political Refugee from the Global Village30 July 2017 at 19:54

    Virgil mentions cheese in the Georgics but very briefly. https://books.google.ro/books?id=fRnGDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=cheese+virgil+georgics&source=bl&ots=EL5Sk-r0U8&sig=NHxbLfodG-g1iEqU1or4_zk4m3A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjczJbfu7HVAhXG5xoKHRyyDXoQ6AEIKTAB#v=onepage&q=cheese%20virgil%20georgics&f=false

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  3. Anonymous31 July 2017 at 12:19

    Poetry rarely seems to lend itself to everyday objects, like cheese (although there is presently a vogue for poems about things like handkerchieves). Sam Johnson had a friend called James Grainger, a sugar planter, who faced himself as poet, and wrote an earnest poem about diseases of sugar cane (including "bugs of uncommon shape"), which was read out to The Club (in Grainger's absence) to great hilarity.

    Derek Turner

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  4. Aussie6 August 2017 at 07:15

    Don't insult me, if you please.
    To think that I would write on CHEESE!
    On Brie! Me! The mighty Pam!
    Yarg? Arrgh!
    Don't give Edam.

    (From Pam Ayres, the British poet, on Twitter)

    ReplyDelete