Sympathetic Sybil is Write Out Loud's own Agony Aunt, send your problem to sybil@writeoutloud.net

 

Dear SS,

Here’s my unusual problem. A fantastic poet has started writing love poems about me and I don’t know what to do. I’m flattered, of course, and they are very good poems but he hasn’t said anything to me and I wonder what it all means. Can you help?

Dreamboat Dora

Well dear,

You have certainly come to the right person to advise on this question. If you’ve been reading this column you’ll already know that I’ve been the muse for many a famous artist and yet a lover to far fewer (oh yeah? Ed).

I remember, for instance, a young Johnnie B (Betjemin? Ed) writing the ‘Lance Corporal’s Love song’, yes, damn you, it did later become ‘The Subaltern’s love song’.  But mine was the original and began with the following verse and then ran for several thousand pages – he was so carried away with me:

Miss Sybil my love, Miss Sybil my love
Furnish'd and burnish'd by God up above
What pathetic singles we played after tea,
not in the tournament just you and me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a vulture, the grace of a boy,
With sexiest carelessness, gaily you drub,
I am weak from your loveliness, Sybil my love.

Unfortunately poor John wasn’t my cup of tea and how dare he say I had the grace of a boy? – It tells one something about his peccadilloes doesn’t it dear?

Then there was TS (Elliot? ED), the bank manager’s poet, who was far too straight for a libertine like me, even though I was wooed fulsomely in the definitive rendition of his most famous poem:

‘And the women come and go talking of Michelangelo,

Whilst I sit and have nibble pining for my goddess Sybil.’

I thought it a rather charming though undoubtedly, like all his work, a little bourgeois & twee. Yet it was simply spiteful for that pompous oaf Pound to insist it be removed from the published version – it was jealousy, pure and simple.

However, what is little known or recorded (perhaps this column is slowly rectifying this) is my impact on the 20^th century through popular culture. Quite frankly without me the ‘Swinging Sixties’ simply wouldn’t have happened.

It all began in the late fifties when I was on a poetry tour in the states with Dylan Thomas and I came across a young singer called Robert Zimmerframe or something.

I say ‘came across’, he was actually one of those stage door Jonnies out to corrupt innocent poetesses like me.

Like a lot of young men of that period he was influence by Dylan Thomas but who inevitably then became enormously enamoured with me.

Naturally, I ignored his advances but I did offer him some advice, ”Bobbie,” I remember saying, “you smell like a hillbilly, sing like a goat and are as enthralling as a bucket of wallpaper paste and yet, I like you and think you may have something…”

I suggested he change his name, start writing his own songs and took him to New York with me.

“The answer’s here” I said, “Where?” he asked, “Oh I don’t know dear, probably blowing in the wind”.

Later he wrote a song to thank me for all my help, he called  it, “You belong to me” – you wish Bob! 

“Sybil’s everything I need, she’s an artist she don’t look back…” were the opening lines - take a listen to it and discover what it really means to be loved by a great artiste – though nothing happened between us, honestly.

It was through Bob that I was introduced to John & Paul. Like Bob they soon came to view me as a muse who would change their life and music forever.

“Sybil loves me yeah, yeah, yeah!” they yelled in unison.

Though it was the rather shy and awkward George who really caught my attention and with whom, much later I had a relationship which caused all the scandal when daft Eric (Clapton? Ed) threw his cap at me with the wonderful ‘Sybil’ , which though not exactly Shakespeare, had some raw appeal:

Sybil, you've got me on my knees.
Sybil, I'm begging, darling please.
Sybil, darling won't you ease my worried mind
and not leave me behind, oh dearest please

Of course I ignored him as I’d already become the muse, confidante and char lady of yet another 60s drunken poet, Jim Doors, as I called him.

“Come on Sybil Light my fire!” was his peon to me as far as I can remember though it was such a hedonistic, drug fuelled time not only can’t I remember but I’m not even certain I was there.

Do you see what I mean dear?

Enjoy loving and being loved and valued. Wallow in it and take the pleasure whilst you can, because lord knows it’s over soon enough. And here one sits sedated and restrained recalling and relishing those glory, glory years.

So dear, don’t be a shrinking violet, seize the moment and then like me, you could also be…

The Muse that changed the world!