{"id":1069,"date":"2010-08-24T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2010-08-24T20:16:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T08:16:38","slug":"tuesday-poem-i-am-a-tyger-by-michael-harlow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/08\/24\/tuesday-poem-i-am-a-tyger-by-michael-harlow\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “I am a Tyger” by Michael Harlow"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘I am a Tyger’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite 10 years
\nof ‘talking cure’, twice
\nweekly, such intimate
\nconversation between strangers,
\nhe remains quite convinced
\nthat he is still, you know,
\na tyger<\/p>\n

As a child no taller
\nthan a table leg, he always
\nsuspected he was a cat
\nIt was the last of the litter,
\nChatterwot, the family favourite,
\nwho taught him, age 11,
\nto speak ‘cat’<\/p>\n

And he did. Not dog
\nor stag or unicorn, he knows
\nhimself to be a tyger, ‘burning
\nbright’, in a body made strange
\nAnd of course he believes
\nhe was adopted \u2013 his true parents
\nyou see, were tygers, too.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Michael Harlow
\nfrom Cassandra’s Daughter<\/em><\/strong> (Auckland University Press) 2005<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>

Michael Harlow<\/p><\/div>\n

From Michael:<\/strong>
\nMost immediately the poem grew out of note in a medical journal, so there are one or two ‘found’ items of language there, translated imaginatively. From early on I’ve been fascinated by the imaginative role animals play in our collective psychic life — and that’s universal. \u00a0In all manner of ways we identify with the animal world psychically, that is imaginatively alive in all of us. The ways in which we do this, and why, tell us a great deal about how we survive even ourselves. The extraordinary power of the \u00a0imaginative reality ‘I am a Tyger’ that can overwhelm another and actual reality. The spelling of ‘Tyger’ is meant to be a kind of underlying resonance to Blake’s poem.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>

The Tram Conductor's Blue Cap<\/p><\/div>\n

About Michael:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Harlow was born in the United States but arrived in New Zealand in 1968. In the 1980s, Harlow was an editor of the Caxton Press poetry series and poetry editor of Landfall<\/em>. His poetry is distinctly European with a whimsical, questioning sensibility. His collaboration as librettist with the New Zealand composer Kit Powell is extensive. A practising Jungian psychotherapist, Harlow was awarded the 1986 Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship and was the 2009 Burns Fellow at the University of Otago.\u00a0 Michael’s most recent collection, The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap,<\/strong><\/em> (Auckland University Press), 2009, is a finalist for the 2<\/strong>010 NZ Post Book Award for Poetry<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

To see the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Blog<\/strong>\u2014and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world\u2014either click here <\/a>or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘I am a Tyger’ Despite 10 years of ‘talking cure’, twice weekly, such intimate conversation between strangers, he remains quite convinced that he is still, you know, a tyger As a child no taller than a table leg, he always suspected he was a cat It was the last of the litter, Chatterwot, the family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}