― pete s, Wednesday, 31 December 2003 06:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
― pete s, Wednesday, 31 December 2003 06:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
OctoberEdward Thomas
― pete s, Friday, 2 January 2004 00:33 (twenty-one years ago) link
Philip Larkin "Faith Healing"
― jed (jed_e_3), Friday, 2 January 2004 00:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
― cozen¡ (Cozen), Friday, 2 January 2004 02:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
We went there for the dance: a ritualof touch and distance, webs of courtesyand guesswork; shiftsfrom sunlight into shade;and when the patients came downstairsto join us, smiling, utterly polite,in new-pressed clothes, like cousins twice-removed,they had the look of people glimpsed in mirrors,subtle as ghosts, yet real, with the vaguegood-humour of the lost.
[...]
'The Asylum Dance', John Burnside.
― cozen¡ (Cozen), Friday, 2 January 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago) link
a curse against elegies - anne sexton
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 2 January 2004 05:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
At the Fishhouses - Elizabeth Bishop
― bnw (bnw), Friday, 2 January 2004 06:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
Don JuanByron
― pete s, Friday, 2 January 2004 14:53 (twenty-one years ago) link
Misery and Splendor - Robert Hass
― byronnw (bnw), Sunday, 4 January 2004 08:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,An ague hath my ham.Freezeth river, turneth liver,Damn you sing: Goddamm.Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,So 'gainst the winter's balm.Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,Sing Goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
Ancient MusicEzra Pound
― pete s, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 00:51 (twenty-one years ago) link
― pete s, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 00:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 01:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 04:38 (twenty-one years ago) link
---Mark Levine, "Work Song"
M.
― Matthew K (mtk), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
i love larkin so much.
and elliot not so much.
and john burnside a whole whack more.
and don paterson the most.
in fact, i'm going to break the 10 line rule too ('cos i think it is a stupid, if sensible, rule):
'Addenda' by Don Paterson
(i)
1 The Gellyburn is six feet under; 2 they sunk a pipe between its banks, 3 tricked it in and turfed it over. 4 We heard it rush from stank to stank, 5 Ardler Wood to the Caird Estate.
6 Scott said when you crossed the river 7 you saw sparks; if you ran at it 8 something snagged on the line of water.
(ii)
1 It was Scott who found the one loose knot 2 from the thousand dead eyes in the fence, 3 and inside, the tiny silver lochan 4 with lilies, green rushes, and four swans. 5 A true artist, he set his pitch:
6 uncorking the little show for tuppence 7 he'd count a minute on his watch 8 while a boy set his eye to the light.
(iii)
1 One week he was early, and turned up 2 at the Foot Clinic in Kemback Street 3 to see a little girl parade 4 before the Indian doctor, stripped 5 down to just her underthings.
6 Now he dreams about her every night 7 working through his stretches: The Mermaid; 8 The Swan; The Tightrope-Walker; Wings.
(iv)
1 They leave the party, arm in arm 2 to a smore so thick, her voice comes 3 to him as if from a small room; 4 their footprints in the creaking snow 5 the love-pact they affirm and reaffirm.
6 Open for fags, the blazing kiosk 7 crowns old Jock in asterisks. 8 He is a saint, and Scott tells him so.
(sorry)
― david. (Cozen), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 21:07 (twenty-one years ago) link
go to the front of the class!
― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 21:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― david. (Cozen), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 21:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
("The Snow Man" - Wallace Stevens)
― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 7 January 2004 02:45 (twenty-one years ago) link
("He Held Radical Light" [1st stanza] - A. R. Ammons)
― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 7 January 2004 02:48 (twenty-one years ago) link
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,Not one is dissatisfied....not one is demented with the mania of owning things,Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
("Leaves of Grass" - Walt Whitman)
― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 7 January 2004 03:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
Early germwarfare. The deadhurled this way look like wheelsin the sky. Look: there goesLarry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall,and Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies,and the Hatter twins, both at once, soarover the parapet, little Tommy's elbow bentas if in a salute,and his sister, Mathilde, she follows him,arms outstretched, through the air,just as she didon earth.
Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City - Thomas Lux
― bnw (bnw), Wednesday, 7 January 2004 05:39 (twenty-one years ago) link
It exhales softly,Especially now, approaching springtime,When tendrils of green are plaited
Across the humus, desperately frailIn their passage againstThe dark, unredeemed parcels of earth.
A Chosen LightJohn Montague
― pete s, Friday, 9 January 2004 11:24 (twenty-one years ago) link
The WindhoverGerard Manley Hopkins
― (sallying), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
"Not so," said a man. "The voice of God whispers in the heart So softly That the soul pauses, Making no noise, And strives for these melodies, Distant, sighing, like faintest breath, And all the being is still to hear."
( Stephen Crane )
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 12 January 2004 17:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 12 January 2004 20:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
The Merman
For Nico
The ripples on your wall: fake sea-lights the soft sunlight makes.
You sleep under water. Learn to love the counterfeit
and in the mess of shalts and shoulds and musts find what you want.
Don't forget: I once stood loving what was not here.
J. T. Barbarese
― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 14 February 2004 00:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
Egg
And when the lodger, on the second day,asks her if she knows the word cock
she looks ahead and simply starts walking,steadying the word like an egg.
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 19:48 (twenty years ago) link
Paula wants to marry mebut I gave her the cold shoulder:she's way too old. I'd have givenit a thought if she were older.
Martial (trans. William Matthews)
― Donald, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:31 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:06 (twenty years ago) link
'steadying'!
'like an egg'!
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:42 (twenty years ago) link
Fine.
But stop driving it aroundin a van. Stop bitingyour nails and sweating,and for God's sake stopsaying not to be afraid.
Just get it over with.
—Ron Koertge
Come on poetrylovers step up with some more lines
― donald, Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:48 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:03 (twenty years ago) link
also: what about: i. oswald's 'dart' ii. stevens' 'harmonium' and iii. molloy's 'hare soup'? anyone?
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:31 (twenty years ago) link
excerpt of 'Essay On The Personal'Stephen Dunn
― bnw (bnw), Friday, 19 March 2004 00:28 (twenty years ago) link
1 What innocence? Whose guilt? What eyes? Whose breast? 2 Crumpled orphan, nembutal bed, 3 white hearse, Los Angeles, 4 OiMaggio! Los Angeles! Miller! Los Angeles! America! 5 That Death should seem the only protector--- 6 That all arms should have faded, and the great cameras and lights 7 become an inquisition and a torment--- 8 That the many acquaintances, the autograph-hunters, the 9 inflexible directors, the drive-in admirers should become 10 a blur of incomprehension and pain--- 11 That lonely Uncertainty should limp up, grinning, with 12 bewildering barbiturates, and watch her undress and lie 13 down and in her anguish 14 call for him! call for him to strengthen her with what could 15 only dissolve her! A method 16 of dying, we are shaken, we see it. Strasberg! 17 Los Angeles! Olivier! Los Angeles! Others die 18 and yet by this death we are a little shaken, we feel it, 19 America. 20 Let no one say communication is a cantword. 21 They had to lift her hand from the bedside telephone. 22 But what she had not been able to say 23 Perhaps she had said. 'All I had was my life. 24 I have no regrets, because if I made 25 any mistakes, I was responsible. 26 There is now---and there is the future. 27 What has happened is behind. So 28 it follows you around? So what?'---This 29 to a friend, ten days before. 30 And so she was responsible. 31 And if she was not responsible, not wholly responsible, Los Angeles? 32 Los Angeles? Will it follow you around? Will the slow 33 white hearse of the child of America follow you around?
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 19 March 2004 00:33 (twenty years ago) link
No room has ever been as silent as the roomWhere hundreds of violins are hung in unison.
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 19 March 2004 01:08 (twenty years ago) link
from "The Wasteland", T.S. Eliot
― weather1ngda1eson (Brian), Friday, 19 March 2004 10:44 (twenty years ago) link
Coming
On longer evenings,Light, chill and yellow,Bathes the sereneForeheads of houses.A thrush sings,Laurel-surroundedIn the deep bare garden,Its fresh-peeled voiceAstonishing the brickwork.It will be spring soon,It will be spring soon --And I, whose childhoodIs a forgotten boredom,Feel like a childWho comes on a sceneOf adult reconciling,And can understand nothingBut the unusual laughter,And starts to be happy.
― donald, Friday, 19 March 2004 14:08 (twenty years ago) link
― Maria D., Friday, 19 March 2004 14:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 19 March 2004 14:56 (twenty years ago) link
-Anna Akhmatovafrom "Requiem" (1957)
― marisa (marisa), Friday, 19 March 2004 15:40 (twenty years ago) link
Italy stands the other side, While, like a guard between,The solemn Alps,The siren Alps, Forever intervene!
[Emily Dickinson]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 20 March 2004 00:58 (twenty years ago) link
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true,But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 20 March 2004 07:56 (twenty years ago) link
She hated bleak and wintry things alone. All that was warm and quick, she loved too well-A light, a flame, a heart against her own; It is forever bitter cold, in Hell.
Vl. The Actress
Her name, cut clear upon this marble cross, Shines, as it shone when she was still on earth;While tenderly the mild, agreeable moss Obscures the figures of her date of birth.
from "Tombstones in the Starlight" by Dorothy Parker
― weather1ngda1eson (Brian), Saturday, 20 March 2004 10:05 (twenty years ago) link
The still explosions on the rocks,the lichens, growby spreading gray, concentric shocks.They have arrangedto meet the rings around the moon, althoughwithin our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attendas long on us,you've been, dear friend,precipitate and pragmatical:and look what happens. For Time isnothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hairin bright formationare flocking where,so straight, so soon?--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,battered and shiny like the moon.
[Elizabeth Bishop. I shamelessly nicked the last verse of this for a song of mine a few years ago. I will be paying you royalties in eternity, Liz.]
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Saturday, 20 March 2004 11:34 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 20 March 2004 11:46 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 20 March 2004 12:00 (twenty years ago) link
I am in love with the LION poetry database.
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 20 March 2004 14:40 (twenty years ago) link
― donald, Saturday, 20 March 2004 18:30 (twenty years ago) link
bnw quoted an excerpt of hass' 'misery and splendor' upthread and provided a link to a realplayer file of hass reading the poem.
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 20 March 2004 19:17 (twenty years ago) link
Hass, Robert:Churchyard [from Human Wishes (1989), Ecco Press]
[1] Somerset Maugham said a professional was someone who could do his best work when he didn't particularly feel like it. There was a picture of him in the paper, a face lined deeply and morally like Auden's, an old embittered tortoise, the corners of the mouth turned down resolutely to express the idea that everything in life is small change. And what he said when he died: I'm all through, the clever young men don't write essays about me. In the fleshly world, the red tulip in the garden sunlight is almost touched by shadow and begins to close up. Someone asked me yesterday: are deer monogamous? I thought of something I had read. When deer in the British Isles were forced to live in the open because of heavy foresting, it stunted them. The red deer who lived in the Scottish highlands a thousand years ago were a third larger than the present animal. This morning, walking into the village to pick up the car, I thought of a roof where I have slept in the summer in New York, pigeons in the early morning sailing up Fifth Avenue and silence in which you imagine the empty canyons the light hasn't reached yet. I was standing on the high street in Shelford, outside the fussy little teashop, and I thought a poem with the quick, lice-ridden pigeons in it might end: this is a dawn song in Manhattan. I hurried home to write it and, as I passed the churchyard, school was letting out. Luke was walking toward me smiling. He thought I had come to meet him. That was when I remembered the car, when he was walking toward me through the spring flowers and the eighteenth-century gravestones, his arms full of school drawings he hoped not to drop in the mud.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Saturday, 20 March 2004 23:04 (twenty years ago) link
Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious StoryvillesOthers may license, grouping around their chairsSporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced
Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,While scholars manques nod around unnoticedWrapped up in personnels like old plaids.
On me your voice falls as they say love should,Like an enormous yes.
I mean, the ending's the payload, and that, but the tigers are the bit I really love, 'cos when Larkin lets the piss and misery go and starts throwin' around the Big Transcendental Culture-packed Signifieds he is hotter than gosh. Which might also explain why I like this so much, from a German laydee called Sarah Kirsch, and bought unopened for two pounds:
This unforgettable greenA faded glowVeils the earth I walkThrough the marshes my soft throatJuts out into another life.
On the river the Brontes are floatingWith hats like iron potsOn the bank someone has mowed the grass someonePrimes the pump in theCrumbling house.
(I realise this is everythat awful abt modern poetry, but even so...)
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Sunday, 21 March 2004 03:52 (twenty years ago) link
Just before she flew off like a swanto her wealthy parents' summer home,Bruce's college girlfriend asked himto improve his expertise at oral sex,and offered him some technical advice:
Use nothing but his tonguetipto flick the light switch in his roomon and off a hundred times a dayuntil he grew fluent at the nuancesof force and latitude.
Imagine him at practice every evening,more inspired than he ever was at algebra,beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,the quadratic equation of her climaxyield to the logicof his simple math.
Maybe he unscrewedthe bulb from his apartment ceilingso that passersby would not believea giant firefly was pulsingits electric abdomen in 13 B.
Maybe, as he stoodtwo inches from the wall,in darkness, fogging the old plasterwith his breath, he visualized the futureas a mansion standing on the shorethat he was rowing towith his tongue's exhausted oar.
Self Improvement - Tony Hoagland
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 21 March 2004 06:23 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Sunday, 21 March 2004 11:52 (twenty years ago) link
I dreamed I called you on the telephoneto say: Be kinder to yourselfbut you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this waytrying to save you from yourself
I have always wondered about the leftoverenergy, water rushing down a hilllong after the rains have stopped
or the fire you want to go to bed frombut cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-downthe red coals more extreme, more curiousin their flashing and dyingthan you wish they weresitting there long after midnight.
― aimurchie, Sunday, 21 March 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 21 March 2004 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 21 March 2004 15:11 (twenty years ago) link
From:
anyone lived in a pretty how town...E.E. Cummings
...someones married their everyoneslaughed their cryings and did their dance(sleep wake hope and then)theysaid their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon(and only the snow can begin to explainhow children are apt to forget to rememberwith up so floating many bells down)...
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 21 March 2004 16:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 21 March 2004 16:57 (twenty years ago) link
here is a short excerpt from the last page of the "Winter" section.
A prayer that asks
where in the hour's dark moil is mercy?
Ain't no ladders tumbling down from heavenfor what heaven we had we made. An embassy
of ashes & dust. Where was safety? Home?
Lynda Hull
― aimurchie, Sunday, 21 March 2004 19:11 (twenty years ago) link
with a solid rope
Will God hear?
Will he take me all the way?
Like water in goblets of unbaked clay
I drip out slowly,
and dry.
My soul whirs. Dizzy. Let me
discover my home.
- Lal Ded
― cheeesoo (cheeesoo), Sunday, 21 March 2004 20:45 (twenty years ago) link
[Jacob Polley - who is sickeningly young, talented and good looking, and also reading at the South Bank in London tonight.)
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 22 March 2004 12:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 22 March 2004 12:42 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 22 March 2004 15:57 (twenty years ago) link
Withdrawing from the present,wandering a past that is alivein books only.In lovewith women, outlastedby their smiles; the richnessof their apparel putsthe poor in perspective.The brush dipped in bloodand the knife in arthave preserved their value.Smouldering times: sackedcities,incinerable hearts
and the fledgling Godtipped out of his highnest into the virgin's lapby the incorrigible cuckoo. R.S Thomas
― aimurchie (aimurchie), Monday, 22 March 2004 16:12 (twenty years ago) link
Transformations
Portion of this yewIs a man my grandsire knew,Bosomed here at its foot:This branch may be his wife,A ruddy human lifeNow turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be madeOf her who often prayed,Last century, for repose;And the fair girl long agoWhom I often tried to knowMay be entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,But as nerves and veins aboundIn the growths of upper air,An they feel the sun and rain,And the energy againThat made them what they were!
― donald, Monday, 22 March 2004 16:37 (twenty years ago) link
E E Cummings again:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Monday, 22 March 2004 21:06 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 02:46 (twenty years ago) link
My favourite Larkin poem (only 12 lines so it's not too much of a cheat):
Water
If I were called inTo construct a religionI should make use of water.
Going to churchWould entail a fordingTo dry, different clothes;
My litany would employImages of sousing,A furious devout drench,
And I should raise in the eastA glass of waterWhere any-angled lightWould congregate endlessly.
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 10:55 (twenty years ago) link
[...]They were beautifuland, if I never ate one,it was because I knew it might be missedor because I knew it would not be replacedand because you do not eatthat which rips your heart with joy.[...]
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 11:22 (twenty years ago) link
When I walkI part the airand alwaysthe air moves into fill the spaceswhere my body's been.
We all have reasonsfor moving.I moveto keep things whole.
Mark Strand - "Keeping Things Whole"
― bnw (bnw), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 00:35 (twenty years ago) link
"Tower of Light"~Pablo Neruda
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 19:11 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 19:20 (twenty years ago) link
The ice-cream van waits, outside the school,for the pupil's recovered memory of unanswerednotes to question his hunger when, for dancing's sake,he'll giggle across the playground for cones and sherbet.A joy-rider on the front page ("only FIVE years"),he thinks through P.E.'s politics of dodge-ball,magic tricks, Louise Alison, and girlswhen a woman's voice breaks the cabin's dark, half humanhalf nothing-at-all, travelling from somewherebehind something, unnamed. Its edges talk of his dad, who has long moved on, hungover and drinking,from report cards to bills, his criminal record and cataloguesof memory - drawn, with the drunk's anaesthetic ardour,by hurting his wife and child. Trouser's at half-mast he'll actthe fool dropped on his attention-span as a child and ignorethis seriousness, again giggling and swearing, as he orders.
But if we should cut here, stopto stalk left across Scotland,our imagination animating alongMaginot Lines of dissolutionto the ruined hamletof Wester Sallochynone of this is going onbut the poetry. Oh dear
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 23:02 (twenty years ago) link
Educated in the Humanities,they headed for the City, their beliefsimplicit in the eyes and arteriesof each, and their sincerity displayedin notes, in smiles, in sheavesof decimal etcetera. [...]
- Glyn Maxwell (The High Achievers)
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 25 March 2004 09:23 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 26 March 2004 19:26 (twenty years ago) link
the burnside poem was characteristically brilliant, obv., to round off my 'editor's note' above.
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 26 March 2004 19:34 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 26 March 2004 20:50 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Friday, 26 March 2004 22:21 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 27 March 2004 05:38 (twenty years ago) link
"You can't go home again." Thomas Wolfe"That's shit." Bill Holm
Who sed that?Did somebody say thator was it in one of them darn books you read?
It doesn't matterif it's a pile of crapI go home ever daydon't matter where I amI'm the prodigal son coming backI don't even need a Greyhound busI can go to my town right nowright here talking to youbecause thisis everywhereI've ever been
--David Lee MY TOWN
Poetry is home to me. I am more comfortable here than anywhere. It's everywhere I've ever been. I don't even need a Greyhound bus.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 27 March 2004 07:32 (twenty years ago) link
for all you formalists and uninformalists
I met a traveler from an antique land,Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (Ozymandias)
― donald, Sunday, 28 March 2004 03:47 (twenty years ago) link
― donald, Sunday, 28 March 2004 03:57 (twenty years ago) link
Joan Larkin (my former teacher) - "Sonnet Positive"
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 28 March 2004 04:25 (twenty years ago) link
What? That's poetry, that is!
― SRH (Skrik), Sunday, 28 March 2004 13:50 (twenty years ago) link
I would contribute to a sonnet thread if you start one I expect david... I haven't read 101 Sonnets though so there's a chance I have 101 fewer things to say than those who have :)
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 29 March 2004 08:42 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 29 March 2004 09:18 (twenty years ago) link
(for Anna)
She brought me a box of magnetic words,and now the kitchen has become a poemthat writes itself, unpredictably, at night.Under our fingers sudden meanings form,these phrases stick like burrs.We are all accidental poets,wild and free rawsculpt ing.The room is loaded, layeredwith chance collisions,broken language.
These days we feed off words.We can't make a sandwichwithout makinga point.Breakfast produces gloomy sentiments,a morning smearcigarette pain.Lunchtimes become journeyswhich begin, and end, at the fridge doorin an unfinished sentence,break out of
When the house is emptyI find messages with the frozen foodlike cries for help. Who wrote i like him dead this morning?she suffered ?Graffiti artists of white goods,we are all anonymous.Like children we scatter words;random and ominous,they cling.Who wrote we don't make senseas if it made sense?
Soon the box runs out; we all get bored.The fridge buzzes, inscrutably,and I go hungryfor magnetic words.
[by Rachel Playforth]
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 29 March 2004 09:39 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 29 March 2004 11:13 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 29 March 2004 12:09 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 29 March 2004 12:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 29 March 2004 12:18 (twenty years ago) link
here's a little something poem I wrote mainly just as a formal exercise in trying out rhyme and syllable strength, I'm not sure I like it either, a little too mean but why not - it doesn't even have a name:
You inhale and hold,weighing the smoke,a thought knuckles inand then I choke:
"It's you, it's not me;sorry to say -now pack up your bag,go on your way."
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 29 March 2004 13:10 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 29 March 2004 13:13 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 29 March 2004 13:16 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:01 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:03 (twenty years ago) link
It is interesting the way rhyme pushes you towards thinking that the poem is 'about' the rhymed words, when in this case I want it to be about 'a thought knuckles in' which I think is a great line.
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 29 March 2004 14:24 (twenty years ago) link
As usual, the Nipper is partly to blame.
― the pinefox, Monday, 29 March 2004 14:45 (twenty years ago) link
who are you reading, the pinefox? and why did you have to be wheeled back round?
I picked up robin robertson's second collection today ('slow air'; I was poised so close to buying 'the pleasure of the text' and jacob polley's first; mmm money money) after reading his first earlier in the week and being underwhelmed in proportion to the praise in its jacket quotes ('its honesty, insight and sheer lyrical power'; 'the best new poet in britain.') too much fluff not enough oomph for me to be honest (except a few stand-out poems like 'the flaying of marsyas' which is... phenomenal.) but this new one is a bit special so far, if extremely maudlin in its lyricism, here's a sample:
"Art Lesson"
She stood at hisburnt windowsuntil she saw herselfanswered in their dark,the way glass getsblacked at nightin a lighted room.She went home,pulled the curtains;drew a red bath.
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 29 March 2004 18:05 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 00:54 (twenty years ago) link
What I have been reading: Larkin and Muldoon.
I have been half-thinking of trying to write a poem about You (Cozen!). But do I really know how to write poems? I half-wish that I could have a lesson from Archel.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 30 March 2004 15:26 (twenty years ago) link
Actually I might have to give a workshop for a bunch of e2e kids soon and I have no idea what to do :/
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 15:49 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 16:14 (twenty years ago) link
My pains at last some respite shall afford,Whilst I behold the battles you maintain,When fleets of glasses sail about the board,From whose broadsides volleys of wit shall rain."
The Disable Debauchee~John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 18:52 (twenty years ago) link
Raglan Road - Patrick KavanaghOn Raglan Road on an Autumn day I met her first and knewThat her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue,I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day
On Grafton street in November we tripped lightly along the ledgeOf the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passions pledgeThe Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -O I loved too much and by such by such is hapiness thrown away
I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's knownTo the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stoneAnd word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to sayWith her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking nowAway from me so hurriedly my reason must allowThat I had wooed not as I should a creature made of claywhen the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day
or the classic:
Stony Grey SoilO stony grey soil of Monaghanthe laugh from my love you thieved;you took the gay child o fmy passion and gave me your clod-conceived.
you clogged the feet of my boyhoodand I believed that my stumblehad the poise and stride of Apolloand his voice my thick-tongued mumble
you flung a ditch on my visiono fbeauty, love and truthO stony grey soil of Monaghanyou burgled my bank of youth!
― Mark Lennox, Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:12 (twenty years ago) link
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 14:18 (twenty years ago) link
this is the garden:colours come and go
this is the garden:colours come and go, frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing strong silent greens silently lingering, absolute lights like baths of golden snow. This is the garden:pursed lips do blow upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing (of harps celestial to the quivering string) invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled, in other lands where other songs be sung; yet stand They here enraptured,as among the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
― Camellia, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 14:44 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 15:33 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 1 April 2004 05:14 (twenty years ago) link
Whatever the difference is, it all began the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again, possessed him, till it would not fall or waver; and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin but his own smile, or one I'd rediscovered. Dear son, I was mezzo del cammin and the true path was as lost to me as ever when you cut in front and lit it as you ran. See how the true gift never leaves the giver: returned and redelivered, it rolled on until the smile poured through us like a river.How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men! I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 1 April 2004 09:45 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 1 April 2004 22:55 (twenty years ago) link
Was that written AFTER we talked about the pome that is not by D Paterson?
― the pinefox, Friday, 2 April 2004 14:00 (twenty years ago) link
Ye white antarctic birds of upper 57th street,you gallery of white antarctic birds, you streetwith white antarctic birds and cabs and whiteantarctic birds you street, ye and you thestreet and birds I walk upon the galleries ofstreets and birds and longings, you the birdsantarctic of the conversations and the bankmachines, you the atm of longing, the longingfor the atm machines, you the lover of thebanks and me and birds and others too andcabs, and you the cabs and you the subtlelonging birds and me, and you theconversations yet antarctic, and soup andteeming white antarctic birds and you thebooks and phones and atms the bankmachines antarctic, and you the banks andcabs, and him the one I love, and those wholove me not, and all antarctic longings, and allthe birds and cabs and also on the streetantarctic of this longing. -- Lisa Jarnot
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 2 April 2004 20:37 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie (aimurchie), Sunday, 4 April 2004 02:43 (twenty years ago) link
This is by Stephen Crane.
― Ingolfur Gislason (kreator), Monday, 5 April 2004 15:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 02:20 (twenty years ago) link
I was thinkin' about posting 'Thirteen' here, but I ws worried ppl might consider it all sycophantic and stuff! I actually sent Archel's page to two friends of mine who are big into the idea of being poetesses only the other week...
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 02:31 (twenty years ago) link
That birthdaywould not slip past like all the others.She felt her eyes wideningas it stuck in her throat,that sickly pink-white icing.She blew out the candlesand started wishing.Her flesh dripped off like wax.
(Rachel Playforth)
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 02:33 (twenty years ago) link
James Wright - "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 04:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 08:31 (twenty years ago) link
We cannot know his legendary headwith eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torsois still suffused with brilliance from inside,like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwisethe curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor coulda smile run through the placid hips and thighsto that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defacedbeneath the translucent cascade of the shouldersand would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,burst like a star: for here there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life.
Rainer Maria Rilke
― donald, Thursday, 8 April 2004 00:55 (twenty years ago) link
I think I still need to read them more slowly.
The whole meaning of the one about the horse has not reached me, yet.
But it will!
― the pinefox, Thursday, 8 April 2004 08:31 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Thursday, 8 April 2004 12:37 (twenty years ago) link
I have been reading sean o'brien's essays on contemporary british poetry the deregulated muse and can report that it is very good.
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 8 April 2004 13:06 (twenty years ago) link
Do you like the poem, 'The Park By The Railway'?
― the bluefox, Thursday, 8 April 2004 13:46 (twenty years ago) link
he says a few things I don't agree with in his essays and his aesthetic is more politically guided than my own; he doesn't manage to reach and talk about a few of my favourite poets in any depth but he has managed to open my eyes to a few people I had once glancingly dismissed (hughes [I read the birthday letters and got upset in the same way as I did with the lock-and-key cartography of pale fire]; and even, miraculously, motion.)
I have his collection ghost train (??) out at the moment, but it's resting in glasgow. I'm not sure I've read the poem you mention.
I have also taken out, in your honour, muldoon's why brownlee left.
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 8 April 2004 16:32 (twenty years ago) link
Between going and staying the day wavers, in love with its own transparency. The circular afternoon is now a bay where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive, all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass, rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats the same unchanging syllable of blood.
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 8 April 2004 17:00 (twenty years ago) link
the atrium of the heart beckons with pendulous lipsany seaman would point his submarine inside: sirens singan eye flutters. strewn with carrion: the cliffs
pilot: could I go deep into the plasma of the seapull myself from the wreckage. red tide, white squidrefractile bodies caught in this prismatic stream
surely salvation bilges. suffers our immersionas a macrocyte absorbs a viral fret. into this deepthe whorl of shell and wave flash brilliant consecration
how the anvil beats within the limpet ear. we drift[...]
D. A. Powell - [the atrium of the heart beckons with pendulous lips]
― bnw (bnw), Friday, 9 April 2004 14:20 (twenty years ago) link
The Volkswagen parked in the gap,But gently ticking over.You wonder if it's loversAnd not men hurrying backAcross two fields and a river.
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 9 April 2004 18:25 (twenty years ago) link
― ...in bed. (Chris Piuma), Saturday, 10 April 2004 02:37 (twenty years ago) link
― the finefox, Saturday, 10 April 2004 08:01 (twenty years ago) link
last night I found an old issue of Poetry Review what was designed by Jerry the Nipper, who was also writin' in it. And it also contained reviews of Sean O'Brien's anthology The Firebox, along with the Armitage / Crawford collection, AND Ian Sansom on The Deregulated Muse!
Meanwhile, I read something like 90pp of SO'B's pomes earlier in the day so for once I knew a little of what I was talking about, I mean, reading about.
I am not wholly sold on his... subtlety? intelligence?
But I guess what's thrown me most is the wee sketch of bristling him next to Sansom's review.
Should I blame the Nipper?
― the pomefox, Saturday, 10 April 2004 08:04 (twenty years ago) link
Most of it is real; crap.
― Ally C (Ally C), Saturday, 10 April 2004 11:44 (twenty years ago) link
And grave by grave we civilize the ground.
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 April 2004 11:53 (twenty years ago) link
― the spellfox, Saturday, 10 April 2004 12:26 (twenty years ago) link
(is there any nipper writing in them?)
JtN: you were otm re: 'Skid'. my copy arrived this morning; I'm enthralled.
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 April 2004 16:11 (twenty years ago) link
If the Nipper was in, the country, he could tell us, naturally, or artificially.
I think that JtN provided some of the best moments in the guid magazine, but I am [fill in word: you decide].
― the spellfox, Saturday, 10 April 2004 16:58 (twenty years ago) link
Summer 1998, vol 88, #2: JtN on Farley: pp.88-89
Winter 1998, vol 88, #4: JtN on Pessoa: pp.13-14.
The second piece (there) quotes Paterson and Rimbaud, and mentions FO'B and a tad obliquely JJ's tenners.
The first piece (above) mentions the Dandy Warhols, Thomas Pynchon and... Don Paterson.
How long can you hold out?
― the pomefox, Saturday, 10 April 2004 17:05 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 April 2004 18:19 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 April 2004 18:22 (twenty years ago) link
Odd... premonition of Ewing.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 10 April 2004 22:30 (twenty years ago) link
(from Bob Perelman's "Chronic Meanings".)
― ...in bed. (Chris Piuma), Sunday, 11 April 2004 09:03 (twenty years ago) link
― the pomefox, Sunday, 11 April 2004 09:54 (twenty years ago) link
I have been re-reading things. Some of it is perhaps not crap.
― Ally C (Ally C), Sunday, 11 April 2004 10:31 (twenty years ago) link
― the bellefox, Sunday, 11 April 2004 13:39 (twenty years ago) link
― Ally C (Ally C), Monday, 12 April 2004 09:45 (twenty years ago) link
My Little Utopia
Why the high, wrought-iron fenceWith sharp spikesAnd four padlocks and a chainOver the heavy gate?
I drop by in late afternoon.Make sure it's locked,And peek through the barsAt the rows of sunny flowers.
The tree-lined winding pathAlready streaked with shadowMasking a couple kissingAs they mosey away from me.
Charles Simic
― donald, Monday, 12 April 2004 12:12 (twenty years ago) link
From Sean O'Brien, 'The Park By The Railway'
(this one might be quite good, I think)
― the pomefox, Tuesday, 13 April 2004 07:58 (twenty years ago) link
― Ally C (Ally C), Tuesday, 13 April 2004 11:53 (twenty years ago) link
It's all good.
― the pomefox, Wednesday, 14 April 2004 17:37 (twenty years ago) link
the first lines of Portrait of Tragedy - Joseph brodsky
― aimurchie (aimurchie), Friday, 16 April 2004 04:24 (twenty years ago) link
third stanza Portrait of Tragedy - Joseph Brodsky
― aimurchie (aimurchie), Friday, 16 April 2004 04:34 (twenty years ago) link
He picked you for your hair to play this role: a look had reached Bootle from Altamont that year. You wouldn’t say you sold your soul but learned your line inside a beating tent
(From 'Keith Chegwin as Fleance' - Paul Farley)
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 16 April 2004 12:04 (twenty years ago) link
(From 'Whang Editorial Policy' by Mark Halliday. Full text here: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/review/pr88-4/halliday.htm)
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 16 April 2004 12:07 (twenty years ago) link
But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,I was that lonely.
(from 'The Geranium' By Theodore Roethke)
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 16 April 2004 13:20 (twenty years ago) link
(the end of 'Frost At Midnight' by ST Coleridge obv. I have always loved that last line quite unreasonably much.)
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 16 April 2004 13:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 16 April 2004 13:47 (twenty years ago) link
― Ally C (Ally C), Friday, 16 April 2004 15:42 (twenty years ago) link
For a solid month I tried to think of something new to say about riversI called the newspaper to find outhow many horses were left on earth,and numbly watched mosquitos swarmover a pile of high-heeled shoeswhile my colleagues hunted in the corners.
At least I was not in the line of workthat had me spending most of my dayavoiding God. My desk held painfullycomplicated sufaces filled with shadow cassettes, black bear theory and drinking water.
There was the sadness in a name like Jesse Winchesterand the wind howlingon the answering machine when I returned homefrom daydreaming in a margarita shop.
All the blessings and counter-blessingsthat move my mind like FM wavesfrom a butter churn, and granted me the sightof parallel collies standing on a hilltop
And the rain falling on the United Stateswhile it wonders'What is the United States?'
I used to sing a song that went'No more Springs, no more Summers, no more Falls'I believed I was nearing the morning whennettles would pour from the shower head.When I would be ripped out of the world for re-castingof blues and plastic.
I believed that I would finally break where I had been bent,that I would lose the game inside the gameBut that has not happened,And now I don't expect it ever will.
(David Berman)
― Ally C (Ally C), Friday, 16 April 2004 16:05 (twenty years ago) link
But I love it so.
― Ally C (Ally C), Friday, 16 April 2004 16:06 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 16 April 2004 16:39 (twenty years ago) link
The Pope's Penis
It hangs deep in his robes, a delicateclapper at the center of a bell.It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a halo of silver seaweed, the hairswaying in the dark and the heat - and at night,while his eyes sleep, it stands up in praise of God.
----- Sharon Olds
Finally: “Asked what distinguished him, as a poet, from an ordinary man, Wallace Stevens replied, Inability to see much point to the life of an ordinary man.”
― Ingolfur Gislason (kreator), Sunday, 18 April 2004 22:05 (twenty years ago) link
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 18 April 2004 22:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 19 April 2004 08:23 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 19 April 2004 19:43 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 19 April 2004 20:04 (twenty years ago) link
― Ingolfur Gislason (kreator), Monday, 19 April 2004 20:28 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie (aimurchie), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 01:34 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 02:06 (twenty years ago) link
--After An Argument Over Global Warming
You feign sleep and face the wall because you believe in ice shelves cleaving under the weight of their water.
Your birthmark melts down in the dark.The lack of pigment sapped into a lack of light.
We stood in the kitchen with the faucet running.You at the sink washing the same plate over and over, mepropped up on the counter top. I spoke of the shoreline
creeping upward in inches over centuries.The gradual spread of seashoreand drift of continents.
You saw the bayou sucked into the Gulf. Desert droughts blooming in the countryside.Monsoons washing out the soil.
And when I said "Beauty is slow," you dropped the plate like a shard of ice and bolted into the bedroom.The faucet running.
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 03:08 (twenty years ago) link
... Then one hot day when fields were rankWith cowdung in the grass the angry frogsInvaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedgesTo a coarse croaking that I had not heardBefore. The air was thick with a bass chorus.Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cockedOn sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some satPoised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kingsWere gathered there for vengeance and I knewThat if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
Death of a Naturalist - Seamus Heaney(i used this as a freaky trigger focus group response but i don't think it ever ran.)
― bnw (bnw), Thursday, 22 April 2004 17:11 (twenty years ago) link
last stanza of "Lost in Translation" by James Merrill
Lost, is it, buried? One more missing piece?
But nothing's lost. Or else: all is translationAnd every bit of us is lost in it(Or found-I wander through the ruin of SNow and then, wondering at the peacefulness)And in that loss a self effacing tree,Color of context, imperceptiblyRustling with its angel, turns the wasteTo shade and fiber, milk and memory.
― aimurchie (aimurchie), Saturday, 24 April 2004 23:40 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Sunday, 25 April 2004 12:19 (twenty years ago) link
Early in spring the weather hasn't changed.The concert-room is peppishness unhinged.
Tonight the lady pianist who playscon fuoco hardly hears her own applause.
*
A Mr Macaroni stops his Fordtwo streets away and lets the engine flood,
the radio just loud enough to hear,one crate of pippin-apples, one of beer.
She makes her music, loosening her hands.The moment holds. But if the evening ends,
Matthew Welton
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 25 April 2004 12:34 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Sunday, 25 April 2004 12:35 (twenty years ago) link
For another bone in the stock,mug of water in the soup,more of the plate,more fresh air baked into the cake:for a better look at the breadthrough the butter, at the kneethrough the trouser leg;for a longer washing line,for the bar of grimeto be raised a little higher up the side of the shared brown bath;for a wider photograph,extra drawer –another face,but it’s full of yours.
Jacob Polley
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 25 April 2004 12:36 (twenty years ago) link
i thank You God for most this amazingday:for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky;and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birthday of life and love and wings:and of the gaygreat happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeingbreathing any-lifted from the noof all nothing-human merely beingdoubt unimaginably You?
(now the ears of my ears awake andnow the eyes of my eyes are opened)
-E. E. Cummings
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 25 April 2004 12:37 (twenty years ago) link
1 put dogs on the list 2 of difficult things to lose. Those dogs ditched 3 on the North York Moors or the Sussex Downs 4 or hurled like bags of sand from rented cars 5 have followed their noses to market towns 6 and bounced like balls into their owners' arms. 7 I heard one story of a dog that swam 8 to the English coast from the Isle of Man, 9 and a dog that carried eggs and bacon 10 and a morning paper from the village 11 surfaced umpteen leagues and two years later, 12 bacon eaten but the eggs unbroken, 13 newsprint dry as tinder, to the letter. 14 A dog might wander the width of the map 15 to bury its head in its owner's lap, 16 crawl the last mile to dab a bleeding paw 17 against its own front door. To die at home, 18 a dog might walk its four legs to the bone. 19 You can take off the tag and the collar 20 but a dog wears one coat and one colour. 21 A dog got rid of---that's a dog for life. 22 No dog howls like a dog kicked out at night. 23 Try looking a dog like that in the eye.
Simon Armitage
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 25 April 2004 12:39 (twenty years ago) link
1 The rain. Rain that will not end. 2 The daily errands. Daily bread. 3 No letting up. No pause 4 as I steer blindly, circling 5 the great city. City of tears and blood. 6 I woke this morning to the ringing phone. 7 To the last days of the twentieth century. 8 Hello. Hello. But the line was dead. 9 The phone in my hand heavy. 10 My mind whirling. Numb. Taken
Elizabeth Spires
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 25 April 2004 15:15 (twenty years ago) link
― the pomefox, Monday, 26 April 2004 14:28 (twenty years ago) link
Next, anybody gets an orange from a hat, takes it, & keeps it;then anybody goes underwhile doing something under the conditions of competition& ends by putting in languages other than English.
--Jackson Mac Low, "19th Dance - Going Under - 1 March 1964"
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 26 April 2004 17:45 (twenty years ago) link
with His old detachment, and the old warningsstill have power to scare me: Hybris comes toan ugly finish, Irreverenceis a greater oaf than Superstition.
Our apparatniks will continue makingthe usual squalid mess called History:all we can pray for is that artists,chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.
[Auden - "Moon Landing']
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 26 April 2004 19:05 (twenty years ago) link
-- Ted Berrigan, from "Train Ride"
(I hope the formatting worked out OK...)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 26 April 2004 20:42 (twenty years ago) link
It snows, obscuring the lamp until, in a Great Plains blizzard, I find myself in a self-constructed Eskimo igloo waiting with the family lantern in the yard, for father to come up the path from work, lift me and take me inside the house to the warm flickering wicks before a harsh electric glare had replaced them. I remember sitting in the snowhouse waiting....
Father, mother take me back even though life was harsh in the small kitchen. Who would have dreamedthe universe so large?
...
Can there not be miniature time? Some place where one stays forever at the kitchen table, on the same page of one's book, with one's parents looking on, an old photograph perhaps but that would have faded. We would not truly be there....
I do not recognize this alien grown up body. I will not recognize it ever. I am there, there, in the yellow light in the kitchen, reading on the stained oilcloth We are all there. I did not grow up....
I have rushed like a moth through time toward the light in the kitchen.I am safe now. I never grew up.I am no longer lost in the mist on the mountain.
(Loren Eiseley, The Innocent Assassins)
No relation.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Monday, 26 April 2004 23:04 (twenty years ago) link
A tree trunk is something "pressed together" and sois money, weighed. Both produce softly graded shadowsby repeated small touches (resembling freckles), oruse "for" to become appendages capable of passing implementsthrough substances with circular movements.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 17:07 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 17:38 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Wednesday, 28 April 2004 18:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 29 April 2004 00:06 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 30 April 2004 03:40 (twenty years ago) link
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughsAbout the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,...Time let me hail and climbGolden in the heydays of his eyes...
...In the sun that is young once only,Time let me play and beGolden in the mercy of his means...
And nothing cared I...that time allows...so few and such morning songsBefore the children green and goldenFollow him out of grace...
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,Time held me green and dyingThough I sang in my chains like the sea.
(Fern Hill, of course. Which I think is the greatest poem in the English language.)
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 30 April 2004 03:53 (twenty years ago) link
sun youngtime playgolden mercy means
cared time allowsmorning songschildren green goldenfollow grace
young easy mercy meanstime held green dyingsang chains sea
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 30 April 2004 04:05 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 30 April 2004 04:13 (twenty years ago) link
alien blizzard body book child come dreamed electric eskimo faded family father father father find five flickering glare great grew grow grown harsh harsh house igloo kitchen kitchen kitchen kitchen lamp lantern large letters life lift light light little looking lost miniature mist moth mother mother mountain mouthing myself myself obscuring oilcloth oilcloth old page parents path peering photograph place plains primer reading reading recognize recognize remember replaced rushed safe same self-constructed sitting small snowhouse snows stained stays table table take take time time time truly universe waiting waiting warm wicks window work yard yellow
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 30 April 2004 04:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 30 April 2004 04:22 (twenty years ago) link
time; little window; oilcloth table; mother; father; child; primer; letters;lamp; Great Plains blizzard; self-constructed Eskimo igloo; family lantern; yard; path; work; house; warm flickering wicks; harsh electric glare; snowhouse;father; mother; life (harsh) ; small kitchen; universe (large);miniature time; place; kitchen table; same page; book; old photograph (faded);alien grown up body; yellow light; kitchen; stained oilcloth;moth; time; light; kitchen; [I (safe, no longer lost)]; mist; mountain
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:01 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Friday, 30 April 2004 10:10 (twenty years ago) link
(''For a Diva' by Geoffrey O'Brien, whose brilliant book about pop I am relishing at the moment.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 30 April 2004 10:33 (twenty years ago) link
The Flea, John Donne
― Cathryn (Cathryn), Friday, 30 April 2004 11:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:54 (twenty years ago) link
- William Wordsworth, 'There was a boy...'
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:58 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:05 (twenty years ago) link
To cross the borderBetween the sunflowerAnd the moonflowerBetween the alphabetOf handwrittenAnd printed events.
To be friend of all atomsWhich form the lightThat sings with the atomsFor the atoms that dieTo enter into all the days of one's lifeNo matter whether they fall on one side or the otherOf the word'Earth'.
This passportIs written in my bonesOn my skull, femur, phalanges and spineAll arranged in a wayTo make clearMy right to be human.
Marin Sorescu
― bnw (bnw), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:15 (twenty years ago) link
(from Errata 5uite by Joan Retallack)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 30 April 2004 17:38 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 30 April 2004 19:13 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 30 April 2004 19:15 (twenty years ago) link
Then I understood--if it had beenhalf a generation later you would have been lovers, you would have marriedand it seems to me I might be dead by now, dead long since, not married, or marriedbadly, never had children or written anywords. I'd have died on West 12th Street, that time, making a bomb--badly--they would haveidentified me by my little finger, mymother sitting at the precinct, holdingmy cocked pinky.
To My Husband
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 30 April 2004 19:28 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 30 April 2004 19:32 (twenty years ago) link
I think I love you, all.
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 30 April 2004 20:23 (twenty years ago) link
― A Nairn (moretap), Saturday, 1 May 2004 00:20 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Saturday, 1 May 2004 03:01 (twenty years ago) link
Sticks-in-a-drowse drop over sugary loam,Their intricate stem-fur dries;But still the delicate slip keeps coaxing up water;The small cells bulge.
One nub of growthNudges a sand-crumb loose,Pokes through a musty sheathIts pale tendrilous horn.
Theodore Roethke
― aimurchie, Saturday, 1 May 2004 03:13 (twenty years ago) link
I love Roethke even more than Sharon Olds. Yes.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 1 May 2004 04:47 (twenty years ago) link
As for the hibiscusby the roadside,my horse ate it.-Basho
Napped half the day -no onepunished me.-Issa
― aimurchie, Saturday, 1 May 2004 11:31 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Saturday, 1 May 2004 12:11 (twenty years ago) link
The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.
MURASAKI SHIKIBU
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Saturday, 1 May 2004 12:17 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Saturday, 1 May 2004 12:20 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 1 May 2004 16:01 (twenty years ago) link
The three graces and the greenwood nymphs,naked, dare to dance.You won't live always, warn the year and the hour,seizing the honeyed day. ...
Who knows how many tomorrows the gods will addto day's small sum?Whatever you spend in pleasures now, you won'tleave in your heir's moist grip.
--excerpt from IV. 7 Ode by Horace. tran. Rosanna Warren
― donald, Saturday, 1 May 2004 16:13 (twenty years ago) link
A kinswoman covered me in the clothes she wore,no kind but kind indeed. I was coddled & swaddledas close as I had been a baby of her own,until, as had been shaped, so shielded, though no kin,the unguessed guest grew great with life.
She fended for me, fostered me, she fed me up,till I was of a size to set my boundsfurther afield. She had fewer dearsons and daughters because she did so.
[Riddle No. 9 from the Exeter Book, translated from the Anglo-Saxon by Michael Alexander.]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 1 May 2004 16:33 (twenty years ago) link
― Nelly Mc Causland (Geborwyn), Saturday, 1 May 2004 18:43 (twenty years ago) link
A serious love touches the universe,the two and one of it contributing to the sum of what's real.Not that planets or even hydrogen atomsbegin falling toward you,yet something intensifieswhere you are. The different lightshed by double stars. No consensus why they form,or how they'll dim or dazzle, perishing.
Laura Fargas ( do I love this poem? I think so. She's an attorney. I forgive her.)
― aimurchie, Saturday, 1 May 2004 20:00 (twenty years ago) link
If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,and of thy slender storetwo loaves alone to thee are left--sell one, and with the dolebuy hyacinths to feed thy soul
...one of the best memories I have of her. For some reason, Among Our Great Ceremonies reminded me of this.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 1 May 2004 20:19 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Saturday, 1 May 2004 22:56 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Sunday, 2 May 2004 01:39 (twenty years ago) link
PRAYER
Angel of lost spectaclesand hen's teeth
angel of snow's breathand the insomnia
of cats, angelof snapshots fading
to infinity,don't drop me--
shoeless,wingless.
Defender of Burrows,carry me--
carry mein your pocket of light.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Sunday, 2 May 2004 02:36 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 2 May 2004 12:53 (twenty years ago) link
From the Journals of the Frog Prince-Susan Mitchell ©1983
In March I dreamed of mud,sheets of mud over the ballroom chairs and table,rainbow slicks of mud under the throne.In April I saw mud of clouds and mud of sun.Now in May I find excuses to linger in the kitchenfor wafts of silt and ale,cinnamon and river bottom,tender scallion and sour underlog.
At night I cannot sleep.I am listening for the dribble of mudclimbing the stairs to our bedroomas if a child in a wet bathing suit ranup them in the dark.
Last night I said, "Face it, you’re bored.How many times can you live overwith the same excitmentthat moment when the princess leansinto the well, her face a petalfalling to the surface of the wateras you rise like a bubble to her lips,the golden ball bursting from your mouth?"Remember how she hurled you against the wall,your body cracking open,skin shriveling to the bone,the green pod of your heart splitting in two,and her face imprinted with every momentof your transformation?
I no longer tremble.
Night after night I lie beside her."Why is your forehead so cool and damp?" she asks.Her breasts are soft and dry as flour.The hand that brushes my head is feverish.At her touch I long for wet leaves,the slap of water against rocks.
"What are you thinking of?" she asks.How can I tell herI am thinking of the green skinshoved like wet pants behind the Directoire desk?Or tell her I am mortgaged to the hiltof my sword, to the leek-green tip of my soul?Someday I will drag her by her hairto the river--and what? Drown her?Show her the green flame of my self rising at her feet?But there’s no more violence in herthan in a fence or a gate.
"What are you thinking of?" she whispers.I am staring into the garden.I am watching the moonwind its trail of golden slime around the oak,over the stone basin of the fountain.How can I tell herI am thinking that transformations are not forever?
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 2 May 2004 17:09 (twenty years ago) link
By the way, I really love this last poem.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Sunday, 2 May 2004 19:23 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 2 May 2004 19:25 (twenty years ago) link
That tie, knitted, with a thick knotthat matched perfectly a dark-colored shirtand a tweed jacket, ravished me.
This was a really elegant fellow,with his short-sropped black mustache.
We were introduced on Mazowiecka Street, a few stepsfrom Ziemianska restaurant and Mortkowicz's bookstore(the only place in Warsaw that carried my Three Winters,Published in an edition of 300 copies).
Whoever believes in Providence must see an Eye:A rider from the Pamir Mountains gallops, all in rose and purple.Then Benvenue Street in Berkeley and Wat on the couch.His astonishment as he tries to grasp his fate.And I, a young provincial with a tape recorderwho, it seems, was destined to bear witness.
It is true we lived togetherthrough that horrible New Year's Supper of 1950.
Poor Wat,he suffered enough in Kazakhstan and Tajikstan.
A beautiful tie was of no avail,nor the street of phantoms, Mazowiecka, in Warsaw.
-Czeslaw Milosz
― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 3 May 2004 16:56 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Monday, 3 May 2004 17:06 (twenty years ago) link
Tattoo
The mark on my arm makes it perfectly clearthat I was once a prince among frogs.My father made it perfectly clearthat someday, I would rule the swamp.
If you ask me, you can't make cheap enough whiskey.If you ask me, you can't make it cheap enough.If you ask me, you can't make cheap enough whiskey.If you ask me, you can't make it cheap enough.
This tattoo no longer reminds me of methough my shoes are still covered in muck.And there are flies, more of them every daythough none of them will be eaten up.
Cause without them, who else would be listening?And without them who else would be near me?Without them who else would be listening?And without them who else would kiss me?
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 3 May 2004 17:43 (twenty years ago) link
Ah, this thread has nearly warmed through my cold little wage slave heart this morning.
And YES I would like an anthology please :)
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 4 May 2004 08:33 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 17:00 (twenty years ago) link
should I go back for those three stragglers at £3, £2, and £3 apiece?
also, I found a copy of don paterson's 'the landing light' (in the hardback edn. no less) in fopp union street for £5. just a few weeks after I shelled out £9 for the paper back. grr &c.
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 17:02 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 18:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 18:48 (twenty years ago) link
re:'garbage' - I've never seen, nor will ever see, any a. r. ammons on general sale (i.e. without having to special request it) in any british bookshops plus it was chopped down to only £2. I couldn't resist.
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 22:10 (twenty years ago) link
:) :)
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 6 May 2004 09:19 (twenty years ago) link
Leaving the house,the house will beleft completely,from cellar toattic my absenceentire.
Do I enter the worldthe same,my presence feltfrom cloudto ditch?
Only in departure whole. Arrivalis always partial.
― j c (j c), Thursday, 6 May 2004 11:26 (twenty years ago) link
The Back Seat Of My Mother's Car
We left before I had timeto comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touchedhands in that vacuous half-dark. I wantedto stem the burning waters running over me like tinyrivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching outfor the slit in the window where the sky streamed in,cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers graspingthe dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass;I was calling to you - Daddy! - as we screeched away intothe distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.You were mouthing something I still remember, the noiseless words,piercing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunsetpouring itself out against the sky. The ensuing silencewas the one clear thing I could decipher -the roar of the engine drowning your voice,with the cool slick glass between us.
With the cool slick glass between us,the roar of the engine drowning, your voicewas the one clear thing I could decipher -pouring itself out against the sky, the ensuing silencepiercing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset.You were mouthing something: I still remember the noiseless words,the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.I was calling to you, Daddy, as we screeched away intothe dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass,cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers graspingfor the slit in the window where the sky streamed inrivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching outto stem the burning waters running over me like tinyhands in that vacuous half-dark. I wantedto comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched.We left before I had time.
- Julia Copus
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 6 May 2004 11:35 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Thursday, 6 May 2004 12:15 (twenty years ago) link
Poet Sylvia Plath is pregnant.Sylvia's pregnant with her poem.Pregnancy is only nine letters.Syllable, a metaphor for month?Sylvia's nine pregnant syllables!Pregnant: creative and inventive.Poet and her poem, both pregnant.Pregnant means filled and charged with meaning.Sylvia is a pregnant poem.
[Harryette Mullen]
(Congrats, Archel!)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 6 May 2004 15:04 (twenty years ago) link
I think about that late TSE these days and reckon: I am no longer sure that TSE and EP are good models for a poet.
I don't claim that they would care either way, or reckon that their being models was the most important thing about them.
― the bluefox, Thursday, 6 May 2004 15:06 (twenty years ago) link
― the finefox, Thursday, 6 May 2004 15:07 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 6 May 2004 15:24 (twenty years ago) link
Oddly, this just reminded me of the open mic horror last night: the first 'act' was a man clutching a book of Goons scripts, which he proceeded to read from, DOING ALL THE VOICES. For about TEN MINUTES.
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 6 May 2004 15:30 (twenty years ago) link
― the pomefox, Thursday, 6 May 2004 15:33 (twenty years ago) link
I've not read much eliot, to be honest, and have read so little pound as to be able to say I haven't read pound at all.
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 6 May 2004 16:33 (twenty years ago) link
[Ezra Pound, a fragment of a very late Canto that was never finished]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 7 May 2004 06:49 (twenty years ago) link
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,For a few thousand battered books.
[Ezra Pound, the last section of "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley", about WWI]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 7 May 2004 06:55 (twenty years ago) link
I have read the 'Four Quartets' now. Wow. I think you were onto something when you said his poetry is a worldweary sigh. But what a sigh!
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 7 May 2004 13:11 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Friday, 7 May 2004 14:06 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 7 May 2004 15:18 (twenty years ago) link
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.
--Ezra Pound
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 7 May 2004 23:43 (twenty years ago) link
There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;...
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase....
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 7 May 2004 23:52 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Sunday, 9 May 2004 16:40 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 9 May 2004 16:54 (twenty years ago) link
In the back of a garbage truck parked on a side street, five garbage collectors gobble a chocolate cake, the gift of a lady each would like to squeeze a lot.
Sprawled in the gutter a black dog licks his dick like there is no tomorrow, and no tomorrow either for the five men eating with grubby fingers, smearing
the hand-cut slabs of thick black cake onto cheeks, chins, noses and sometimes their mouths. That frosting dribbles sweetness like a cut wrist drips blood
and they suck it from their fingernails and gulp down the last crumbs. How disgusting! squawks a passing matron to her friend. Had they fathomed the fullness
of the world's filth they would never have trusted their pristine garbage to these galoots. One puffs out his cheeks to make a poot-poot noise like a fart,
and the matrons scuttle off to eat sweet creams and read their lady poems. What a dreadful world! The immortal verse of Keats versus a dog's red dick on the concrete.
Such contradictions make us rich. The black dog whacks his tail against the sidewalk. These garbage guys are his heroes and the dog reckons that if he's polite
all five will let him lick their fingers clean. The hot sun baking his belly, his fleas idle for a change, the prospect of sweet things in his mouth. Why, if he
could talk, he'd make a speech against the intellect, art and math. What's so precious about what's not there? Into the trash with Einstein and his furious sums!
Stephen Dobyns
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 9 May 2004 16:56 (twenty years ago) link
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 9 May 2004 17:11 (twenty years ago) link
A woman travels to Brazil for plastic surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty and has the usual desire to stay pretty. Once she is healed she takes her new face out on the streets of Rio. A young man with a gun wants her money. Bang, she's dead. The body is shipped back to New York, but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son is sent for. He is told that his mother is one of these ten different women. Each has been shot. Such is modern life. He studies them all but can't find her. With her new face, she has become a stranger. Maybe it's this one, maybe it's that one. He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him? He presses their hands to his cheek. Which ones consoled him? He even tries climbing into their laps to see which feels more familiar but the coroner stops him. Well, says the coroner, which is your mother? They all are, says the young man, let me take them as a package. The coroner hesitates, then agrees. Actually it solves a lot of problems. The young man has the ten women shipped home, then cremates them all together. You've seen how some people have a little urn on the mantle? This man has a huge silver garbage can. In the spring, he drags the garbage can out to the garden and begins working the teeth, the ash, the bits of bone into the soil. Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes. They grow straight from seed, so fast and big that the young man is amazed. He takes the first ten into the kitchen. In their roundness, he sees his mother's breasts. In their smoothness, he finds the consoling touch of her hands. Mother, mother, he cries, and flings himself on the tomatoes. Forget about the knife, the fork, the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 9 May 2004 17:23 (twenty years ago) link
from Louise Gluck's "October"
Snow had fallen. I remembermusic from an open window.
Come to me, said the world.This is not to sayit spoke in exact setencesbut that I perceived beauty in this manner.
Sunrise. A film of moistureon each living thing. Pools of cold lightformed in the gutters.
I stoodat the doorway,ridiculous as it now seems.
What others found in art,I found in nature. What others foundin human love, I found in nature.Very simple. But there was no voice there.
Winter was over. In the thawed dirt,bits of green were showing.
Come to me, said the world. I was standingin my woolcoat at a kind of bright portal--I can finally saylong ago; it give me considerable pleasure. Beauty
the healer, the teacher--
death cannot harm memore than you have harmed me,my beloved life.
― Donald, Sunday, 9 May 2004 17:56 (twenty years ago) link
{James Schuyler 'Faure's Second Piano Quartet': in honour of the new Mark Ford-edited New York school anthology}
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Sunday, 9 May 2004 21:23 (twenty years ago) link
in a dusty shop you pause in, or a baryou never tried, and a smell will do as well; then you're
suddenly very far from what you know.You found it as a child, when the next field to you
was the world's end, a breeze of being gone.Now it begins to give, a single nerve, low down:
it sags, as if it felt the gravityat long last.[...]
The Nerve - Glynn Maxwell
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 9 May 2004 22:50 (twenty years ago) link
IZUMI SHIKIBU
(Now if I could only find a haiku about writing haiku... then my artist friend could paint that on my body instead of just ideograms...)
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Monday, 10 May 2004 12:52 (twenty years ago) link
First: Five syllables.Second: Seven syllables.Third: Five syllables.
("Haiku" by Ron Padgett.)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 10 May 2004 22:17 (twenty years ago) link
denis johnson - you
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 10 May 2004 22:46 (twenty years ago) link
-- Casuistry (chri...), May 10th, 2004* * * * Darlin', not only do you warrant special mention in my blog for this, but I'll be sure to credit you when the photo of my fleshy calligraphy project is posted (and I'll send you the link!)
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Tuesday, 11 May 2004 13:19 (twenty years ago) link
Today's poem comes from Robert Grenier, who is one of my favorites, although I think perhaps his poems work better if you read, like, thirty of them rather than just one. But here's one:
IT'S NOT SO MUCH THAT SHE'S TAKING A LONG TIME
it's probably more that she has to stand in a long line
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 18:29 (twenty years ago) link
On a day like any other day, like "yesterday or centuries before," in a town with the one remembered street, shaded by the buckeye and the sycamore-- the street long and true as a theorem, the day like yesterday or the day before, the street you walked down centuries before-- the story the same as the others flooding in from the cardinal points is turning to take a good look at you. Every creature, intelligent or not, has disappeared-- the humans, phosphorescent, the duplicating pets, the guppies and spaniels, the Woolworth's turtle that cost forty-nine cents (with the soiled price tag half-peeled on its shell)-- but, from the look of things, it only just happened. The wheels of the upside-down tricycle are spinning. The swings are empty but swinging. And the shadow is still there, and there is the object that made it, riding the proximate atmosphere, oblong and illustrious above the dispeopled bedroom community, venting the memories of those it took[...]
The Disappearances - Vijay Seshadri
― bnw (bnw), Thursday, 13 May 2004 02:10 (twenty years ago) link
― the pomefox, Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:05 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Friday, 14 May 2004 10:18 (twenty years ago) link
1 You blame me that I do not write 2 with the accent of the age: 3 the eunuch voice of scholarship, 4 or the reformer's rage 5 (blurred by a fag-end in the twisted lip). 6 You blame me that I do not call 7 truculent nations to unite. 8 I answer that my poems all 9 are woven out of love's loose ends; 10 for myself and for my friends.
11 You blame me that I do not face 12 the banner-headline fact 13 of rape and death in bungalows, 14 cities and workmen sacked. 15 Tomorrow's time enough to rant of those, 16 when the whirlpool sucks us in. 17 Turn away from the bitter farce, 18 or have you now forgotten 19 that cloud, star, leaf, and water's dance 20 are facts of life, and worth your glance?
21 You blame me that I do not look 22 at cities, swivelled, from 23 the eye of the crazy gunman, or 24 the man who drops the bomb. 25 Twenty years watching from an ivory tower 26 taller than your chimney-stack, 27 I have seen fields beyond the smoke: 28 and think it better that I make 29 in the sloganed wall the people pass, 30 a window---not a looking-glass.
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 14 May 2004 13:40 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Friday, 14 May 2004 15:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 15 May 2004 09:59 (twenty years ago) link
(TSE, of course. Some poetry to celebrate my birthday! Among some talk --and time for-- you and me.!)
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 15 May 2004 18:04 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 15 May 2004 18:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 15 May 2004 18:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 15 May 2004 18:59 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 15 May 2004 20:12 (twenty years ago) link
"The Truth About Horace."
It is very aggravatingTo hear the solemn pratingOf the fossils who are stating That old Horace was a prude;When we know that with the ladiesHe was always raising HadesAnd with many an escapade his Best productions are imbued.
There's really not much harm in aLarge number of his carminaBut these people find alarm in a Few records of his acts;So they'd squelch the muse caloric,And to students sophomoricThey'd present as metaphoric What old Horace meant for facts.
We have always thought 'em lazy;Now we adjudge 'em crazy!Why, Horace was a daisy That was very much alive!And the wisest of us know himAs his Lydia verses show him,--Go, read that virile poem,-- It is No. 25.
He was a very owl, sir,And starting out to prowl, sir,You bet he made Rome howl, sir, Until he filled his date;With a massic-laden dittyAnd a classic maiden prettyHe painted up the city, And Maecenas paid the freight!
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Sunday, 16 May 2004 13:26 (twenty years ago) link
The pedigree of HoneyDoes not concern the Bee,Nor lineage of EcstasyDelay the ButterflyOn spangle journeys to the peakOf some perceiveless thing—The right of way to TripoliA more essential thing.
--
The Pedigree of HoneyDoes not concern the Bee—A Clover, any time, to him,Is Aristocracy—
~Emily Dickinson
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 16 May 2004 13:35 (twenty years ago) link
[...]Here I am, floating through the skywith my head on wrongso that my hair tickles my neckand my chin sticks up,and the lovers kissing in the gardenlook comical, their feet strainingto touch the ground.It's been a long time since someonekissed me in the garden.My mouth's up too high.[...]
Rene Wenger - "After Chagall"
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 17 May 2004 01:42 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 17 May 2004 05:03 (twenty years ago) link
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Monday, 17 May 2004 13:12 (twenty years ago) link
The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not wantTo be always stressing either its flux or its permanence, I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorusBut to keep my eye only on the nearer futureAnd after that let the sea flow over us.
Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle, Join hands and make believe that joinedHands will keep away the wolves of waterWho howl along our coast. And be it assumedThat no one hears them among the talk and laughter.
['Wolves' - Louis Macneice]
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 17 May 2004 13:58 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 17 May 2004 14:31 (twenty years ago) link
1 For three days and three nights, he has listened 2 to the pounding of a terrible jug band 3 now reduced to a wheezy concertina 4 and the disinterested thump of a tea-chest bass. 5 It seems safe to look: wires trail on the pillowcase, 6 a drip swings overhead; then the clear tent 7 becomes his father's clapped-out Morris Minor, 8 rattling towards home. The windscreen presents 9 the unshattered myth of a Scottish spring; 10 with discreet complicity, the road 11 swerves to avoid the solitary cloud. 12 On an easy slope, his father lets the engine 13 cough into silence. Everything is still. 14 He frees the brake: the car surges uphill.
- Don Paterson
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 17 May 2004 17:56 (twenty years ago) link
- Federico Garcia Lorca
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 17 May 2004 18:06 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 17 May 2004 18:56 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 17 May 2004 18:57 (twenty years ago) link
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen-icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request: I'll get a blessin wi' the lave, An' never miss't!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! It's silly wa's the win's are strewin! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin, Baith snell an' keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast, An' weary Winter comin fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee monie a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald. To thole the Winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But Och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!
― aimurchie, Tuesday, 18 May 2004 03:55 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 07:13 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Tuesday, 18 May 2004 10:06 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 10:07 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Tuesday, 18 May 2004 11:01 (twenty years ago) link
― Scott & Anya (thoia), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 13:37 (twenty years ago) link
― Scott & Anya (thoia), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 13:38 (twenty years ago) link
(translated by K. Kalocsay)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 17:22 (twenty years ago) link
what language is that translated to/from, chris?
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 17:34 (twenty years ago) link
you sweetly laughing, when all mysenses have been torn from me: for, Lesbia,as soon as I see you I've nothing left[...]
but my tongue is choked, my limbs shiver aflame, my ears echo with their own ringing, my eyesshroud in night.
Leisure, Catullus, is bad for you:at leisure you luxuriate and lust too much.before now, leisure has ruined kingsand great cities.
Catullus 51, translated by me (with much (poetic) licence. pls to forgive).
Casuistry, is that in Esperanto, or?
― cis (cis), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 17:45 (twenty years ago) link
It's translated from English, but now I'm going to get all coy.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 19:03 (twenty years ago) link
in shoeless corridors, the lights burn. how isolated, like a fort, it is -the headed paper, made for writing home(if home existed) letters of exile: now night comes on. waves fold behind villages.
philip larkin - friday night in the royal station hotel
― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:02 (twenty years ago) link
― cis (cis), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 22:09 (twenty years ago) link
(from Ghost of a Pear by Ayala Kingsley)
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 21 May 2004 08:51 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Friday, 21 May 2004 12:28 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 21 May 2004 13:10 (twenty years ago) link
Tell themI was a persimmon eaterwho liked haiku
--Masaoka Shiki, the fourth "great master" of haiku (the other three are Basho, Buson, and Issa)
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Saturday, 22 May 2004 00:07 (twenty years ago) link
Amatory Epigram(to Aristotle or Ignatius Loyola)
I'd have to be drunk to fuck around with youAnd sober to liveTherefore I am dying
[Bernadette Mayer]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 22 May 2004 05:27 (twenty years ago) link
I drank at every vine.The last was like the first.I came upon no wineAs wonderful as thirst.
I gnawed at every root.I ate of every plant.I came upon no fruitSo wonderful as want.
Feed the grape and beanTo the vintner and monger;I will lie down leanWith my thirst and my hunger.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Saturday, 22 May 2004 12:08 (twenty years ago) link
"Air For Mercury" - Brenda Hillman
― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 22 May 2004 15:13 (twenty years ago) link
Once when our blacktop citywas still a topsoil townwe carried to Formicopolisa cantaloupe rind to shareand stooped to plop it downin their populous Times Squareat the subway of the ants
and saw that hemisphereblacken and rise and dancewith antmen out of handwild for their melon toddiesjust like our world next yearno place to step or standexcept on bodies.
Virginia Hamilton Adair
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Saturday, 22 May 2004 15:23 (twenty years ago) link
My book was closed,I read no more,Watching the fire danceOn the floor.
I have left my book,I have left my room,For I heard you singingThrough the gloom.
Singing and singingA merry air,Lean out of the window,Goldenhair.-James Joyce, Chamber Music
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 22 May 2004 15:53 (twenty years ago) link
In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,the dancers go round, they go round andaround, the squeal and the blare and thetweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddlestipping their bellies, (round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound)their hips and their bellies off balanceto turn them. Kicking and rolling aboutthe Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, thoseshanks must be sound to bear up under suchrollicking measures, prance as they dancein Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.
--William Carlos Mofo Williams
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Sunday, 23 May 2004 12:35 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 23 May 2004 13:24 (twenty years ago) link
When the day comes, as the day surely must,when it is asked of you, and you refuseto take that lover's wound again, that cupof emptiness that is our one completion,
I'd say go here, maybe, to our unsunginnermost isle: Kilda's antithesis,yet still with it own tiny stubborn anthem,its yellow milkwort and its stunted kye.
Leaving the motherland by a two-car raft,the littlest of the fleet, you cross the minchto find yourself, if anything, now deeperin her arms than ever - sharing her breath,
watching the red vans sliding silentlybetween her hills. In such intimate exile,who'd believe the burn behind the housethe straitened ocean written on the map?
Here, beside the fordable Atlantic,reborn into a secret candidacy,the fontanelles reopen one by onein the palms, then the breastbone and the brow,
aching at the shearwater's wail, the rowanthat falls beyond all seasons. One morningyou hover on the threshold, knowing for certainthe first touch of the light will finish you.
- Don Paterson.
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 24 May 2004 18:20 (twenty years ago) link
Today's poem, by Aram Saroyan:
priit
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 24 May 2004 23:00 (twenty years ago) link
I tell with severity, I think what I feel.Words are ideas.The purling river passes, and not its sound,Which is ours, not the river's.So I wanted my verse: mine and not-mine,To be read by me.
--Ricardo Reis
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 00:04 (twenty years ago) link
[Paul Muldoon, 'The Avenue']
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 07:02 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 10:43 (twenty years ago) link
12. Have you broken the following TenCommandments? Answer each just yes or no.
24. With a view to bioengineering suggest atleast six names for new animals...
36. Describe the onset of your first period. ORAvoid this subject entirely.
- Robert Crawford
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 10:45 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 19:42 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 22:51 (twenty years ago) link
One strokes the leg of a chairUntil the chair movesAnd gives him a sweet sign with its leg
Another kisses a keyholeKisses it O how he kisses itUntil the keyhole returns his kiss
A third stands asideStares at the other twoShakes shakes his head
Until it falls off
--Vasko Popa
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 00:04 (twenty years ago) link
I was browsing the poem in the bookshop and it's tremendously funny / hurtful (which is rare for Crawford - he usually writes opaque, 'interesting' poems, or not very good ones.)
If I find it anywhere online (I doubt it), I'll post up the link.
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 09:54 (twenty years ago) link
Or does it? Is nature exactly aligned with grief?Is the window, washed in rain, an echo of sadness and despair?I should mourn the hands that built it, long gone,and the faces that have pressed against it,and then ask, and then compare.
Breath leaves its imprint, the sure symbol of bloodbeing pumped, a soft and malleable canvas bornfrom the first and last action ourbodies will ever perform.I could use my finger to write this onto the glass:Save me, I am here, God is coming.And then breathe once moreand watch it all disappear.
Something has been lost, I knowthat much. I would like to feel a shiver of response at least.A wind through orange and purple and countless leaves orfor everything to fall down at once.I would like to know how to rustle, how to bend,how to sway. How to grow crooked and survive.How to give and die as if it werethe most natural thing.
A riot of color is fragmented in cracked wood.The slow descent of rain frompurged clouds sounding upon foggedglass and my own breath upon it,like everyone before.
I would like to know that I did it,that I completed the task,that I did say I love you one last time.That breath can be on breathLong after the last is taken.
Now the window is to my left.The storm has progressedand rumbling comes over the roof and in.One real second resuscitates the view.Breathing at all is a small matteras this illumination occurs. An instantwhen all seems both right and wrongwith the world.
― aimurchie, Friday, 28 May 2004 01:06 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Friday, 28 May 2004 15:43 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 May 2004 05:31 (twenty years ago) link
I know the Nipper's Muldoon pome quite well. I suppose I am not keen on it really because it reminds me of Muldoon's sexually-fuelled arrogance.
But it makes me think that it may be time for me to start my long-delayed Muldoon thread.
― the pomefox, Saturday, 29 May 2004 12:57 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Sunday, 30 May 2004 16:38 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 30 May 2004 17:55 (twenty years ago) link
"At a bit of a loss...my good friend and budding geniusjoined the Hare krishna following.I hope he finds god and all thatbecause I don't expect to ever find him again. Swallowed upby the machine of religion,his orb controlled by diet.They say his last words were:"I don't know, these people are real nice..." Goodbye, Eric.I'm sorry we weren't as nice as rice."
LMcMamara
― aimurchie, Monday, 31 May 2004 02:03 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Monday, 31 May 2004 02:12 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 31 May 2004 10:50 (twenty years ago) link
I see a butterfly go byAnd for the first time in the universe I noticeThat butterflies do not have color or movement,Even as flowers do not have scent or color.Color is what has color in the butterfly's wings,Movement is what moves in the butterfly's movement,Scent is what has scent in the flower's scent.The butterfly is just a butterflyAnd the flower just a flower.
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Monday, 31 May 2004 17:14 (twenty years ago) link
Duino Elegies - R.M. Rilke, trans by John Waterfield
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 31 May 2004 19:29 (twenty years ago) link
Acre of graves, I lay down my gasping rosesAnd lilies pale as ice as one who knowsNothing is certain, nothing; unless it isMy own small place and people, agony and sacrifice.
--Leslie Norris, THE DEAD (after the Welsh of Gwenallt, 1899-1969)
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Monday, 31 May 2004 23:19 (twenty years ago) link
A READING IN SEATTLE
....In the evening I thoughtOf Dylan, how he had readin Seattle. "The little slob,"My friend said, marvelling,"He read Eliot so beautifully,Jesus, I cried." I did not answer.In the city now the bars areEmpty of his storiesAnd only the downtown IndiansAre drunk as his memory.
I read in a hall fullOf friends, students, seriousListeners. The great dead had Had spoken there, Auden,Roethke, Watkins, many others.There was room for a plump ghost.I thought I heard his voiceEverywhere, after twenty yearsOf famous death. The party over,I walked home, saw on peaksThe coldest snow, white as bone.
--Leslie Norris (again)
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Monday, 31 May 2004 23:31 (twenty years ago) link
(from a song)
Perhaps I was born kneeling,born coughing on the long winter,born expecting the kiss of mercy,born with a passion for quicknessand yet, as things progressed,I learned early about the stockadeor taken out, the fume of the enema.By two or three I learned not to kneel,not to expect, to plant my fires undergroundwhere none but the dolls, perfect and awful,could be whispered to or laid down to die.
Now that I have written many words,and let out so many loves, for so many,and been altogether what I always was—a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,I find the effort useless.Do I not look in the mirror,these days,and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?Do I not feel the hunger so acutelythat I would rather die than lookinto its face?I kneel once more,in case mercy should comein the nick of time.
* * *
Also, a note to let anyone who's interested know that I'm now working on this thread's "anthology" through May 31st. If you're wanting a copy for personal use, send me a note.
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 15:38 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 19:13 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 02:41 (twenty years ago) link
from "voices" - antonio porchia
― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 16:39 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 3 June 2004 13:28 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Thursday, 3 June 2004 18:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 4 June 2004 17:24 (twenty years ago) link
Cozen: we had a good crack at TSE on ILE. I will revive it, for you.
I had serious intentions of starting the Muldoon thread to go seriously at Muldoon. But other things came along, I drifted from Muldoon more quickly than I expected to. But we should still have the thread - when we are ready.
― the pomefox, Sunday, 6 June 2004 14:04 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 6 June 2004 14:27 (twenty years ago) link
(My copy cost £3! Only a couple of months after it came out!)
― the pomefox, Sunday, 6 June 2004 15:17 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Sunday, 6 June 2004 15:49 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 6 June 2004 16:06 (twenty years ago) link
In going from room to room in the dark,I reached out blindly to save my face,But neglected, however lightly, to laceMy fingers and close my arms in an arc.A slim door got in past my guard,And hit me a blow in the head so hardI had my native simile jarred.So people and things don't pair any moreWith what they used to pair with before.
Robert Frost - The Door in the Dark
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 7 June 2004 20:00 (twenty years ago) link
from the ballad of the lonely masturbator - anne sexton
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 7 June 2004 20:39 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 7 June 2004 20:47 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 7 June 2004 20:58 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 7 June 2004 21:08 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 7 June 2004 21:10 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 7 June 2004 22:56 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 7 June 2004 23:31 (twenty years ago) link
God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.As roses, up from ground.Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,now a cliff covered with vines,now a horse being saddled.It hides within these,till one day it cracks them open.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 03:12 (twenty years ago) link
O poplar, you are greatamong the hill-stones,while I perish on the pathamong the crevices of the rocks.
-H.D.
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 15:24 (twenty years ago) link
Who's this moving alive over the moor?
An old man seeking and finding a difficulty.
Has he remembered his compass his spare socksdoes he fully intend going in over his knees off the military track from Okehampton?
keeping his course through the swamp spacesand pulling the distance around his shoulders
the source of the Dart - Cranmere Pool on Dartmoor,seven miles from the nearest road and if it rains, if it thunders suddenlywhere will he shelter looking roundand all that lies to hand is his own bones?
- Alice Oswald.
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 19:04 (twenty years ago) link
[Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves]
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 08:26 (twenty years ago) link
under her dark veil - anna akhmatova
― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 15:28 (twenty years ago) link
I think his family is so ancient, His heart must still be over on the right, Though I have searched for it before In full swing until it shrank to nothing, Merging with my name, that comes From nowhere, and is ownerless, Like all we can see of the stars.
Now, like them, I lie with my back To him, his chance neighbour, Watching the entrance to the house, But not the house. The long autumn Has scattered its poisonous seeds, So I will have no October child.
- Medbh McGuckian
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 15:41 (twenty years ago) link
This book saved my life.This book takes place on one of the two small tagalong moons of Mars.This book requests its author's absolution, centuries after his death.This book required two of the sultan's largest royal elephants to bear it; this other book fit in a gourd.This book reveals The Secret Name of God, and so its author is on a death list.This is the book I lifted high over my head, intending to smash a roach in my girlfriend's bedroom; instead, my back unsprung, and I toppled painfully into her bed, where I stayed motionless for eight days.This is a "book." That is, an audio cassette. This other "book" is a screen and a microchip. This other "book," the sky.In chapter three of this book, a woman tries explaining her husband's tragically humiliating death to their daughter: reading it is like walking through a wall of setting cement.This book taught me everything about sex.This book is plagiarized.This book is transparent; this book is a codex in Aztec; this book, written by a prisoner, in dung; the wind is turning the leaves of this book: a hill-top olive as thick as a Russian novel.This book is a vivisected frog, and ova its text.[...]
Library -- Albert Goldbarth
― bnw (bnw), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 16:33 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 17:28 (twenty years ago) link
What is D'Agata? Is that a lit mag?
― bnw (bnw), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 17:58 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 18:14 (twenty years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 19:04 (twenty years ago) link
Reasons run out and we are ready to play backgammon once again. Come on, I say. I know when I am being watched. Even in the washroom here's a window left unlatched and various small monsters have nipped softly in to take up key positions amongst sunny patches on the walls. Look at the little angels. Chits of demons. Fools and spies. Look at the conclusive way in which their detail lies. One touch would be catastrophe or a whisper to the wise.
- R. F. Langley
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 10 June 2004 10:53 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 10 June 2004 10:54 (twenty years ago) link
Btw cozen, you asked somewhere else about getting hold of my book. The website for ordering it is broken, but if you send me your address I will post you a free copy - you can send me something of your choice in return if you like :)
rp30@sussex.ac.uk
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 10 June 2004 11:16 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Thursday, 10 June 2004 15:40 (twenty years ago) link
...Between melting and freezingThe soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smellOr smell of living thing. This is the spring timeBut not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerowIs blanched for an hour with transitory blossomOf snow, a bloom more suddenThan that of summer, neither budding nor fading,Not in the scheme of generation.Where is the summer, the unimaginableZero summer?...- from Little Gidding
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 11 June 2004 11:48 (twenty years ago) link
So I had another reading tonight. I read the first 20 minutes of my 4-hour piece as part of this experimental dance/music/poetry deal. So here's the cool part: there were all these kids unexpectedly in the audience. About 7 of them, 8-12 years old. And, it turns out, they really enjoyed my piece. They were all very polite and came up to me to tell me how much they liked it and they said some smart things about the piece (and the other pieces as well). It was great!
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 13 June 2004 05:44 (twenty years ago) link
CJD I was plundered by a pirateCJF Describe the pirateCJN She is armedCJP How is she armed?CJS She has long gunsCJW I have no long gunsBLD I am a complete wreck
[Hannah Weiner, from her book "Code Poems", "from the International Code of Signals for the Use of All Nations"]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 08:24 (twenty years ago) link
Btw congrats on the reading and the response :)
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 08:44 (twenty years ago) link
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did treadThe night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
-- GK Chesterton
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 11:39 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 12:25 (twenty years ago) link
from city winter - frank o'hara
― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 16:33 (twenty years ago) link
I brought Selected O'Hara to Dublin!
― the finefox, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 20:04 (twenty years ago) link
the snow drifts lowand yet neglects to cover me, and idance just ahead to keep my heart in sight.how like a queen, to seek with jealous eyethe face that flees you, hidden city, whiteswan. there's no art to free me, blinded so.
― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 21:42 (twenty years ago) link
i want my feet to be bare,i want my face to be shaven, and my heart -you can't plan on the heart, butthe better part of it, my poetry, is open.
― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 21:47 (twenty years ago) link
― aimurchie, Wednesday, 16 June 2004 01:05 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 17 June 2004 18:40 (twenty years ago) link
:)
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 17 June 2004 19:23 (twenty years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 17 June 2004 23:28 (twenty years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 17 June 2004 23:30 (twenty years ago) link
cozen: yay!
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 18 June 2004 07:30 (twenty years ago) link
You canSINGhere
'Notice in Hell'
HALT'COMMIT ADULTERY
- Edwin Morgan
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 19 June 2004 09:42 (twenty years ago) link
Or maybe think so; the eloquence of meltis however upon me, the path become astream, and I lay that downtrusting the ice to withstand the heat;
- J. H. Prynne (for mark s)
― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 20 June 2004 13:48 (twenty years ago) link
that's an amazing phrase.
― lauren (laurenp), Sunday, 20 June 2004 17:53 (twenty years ago) link
Maybe yes, maybe no; the pattiness of meltis however upon me, the cheese drippingin a stream, and I scream thatno lettuce is cold enough to salve;
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 21 June 2004 21:13 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 07:06 (twenty years ago) link
Forget the clatter of ballistics,The monologue of falling stones,The sharp vectorsAnd the stiff numbered grids.
It's so much more a thing of pliancy, persuasion,Where space might cup itself around a planetLike your palm around a stone,
Where you, yourself the planet,Caught up in some geodesic dream,Might wake to feel it enfold your weightAnd know there is, in fact, no falling.
It is this, and the existence of limits.
- Rebecca Elson
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 07:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 05:08 (twenty years ago) link
We stitched and sutured Ill-fated futures, Amassed the past in archaic computers Come join the ranks in our data banks, It's a life without thanks
Remember that night I drank and you cried? And on your bed all night's where we lied I stayed awake, you fell asleep On tear soaked sheets
And we're so new and young like science Full of ideas and naive defiance We'll lose it all with each passing fall As our wake up call
We'll stare straight up and wonder why the Sky is blue; it reflects the sea We'll all be sayin' "Science explained Our lives again"
And we're always sayin' Science explained Our lives again That's the science of the seasons
We'll travel countries and sit beneath palm trees And feel the heat in a warm pastel breeze Let's take a trip; let's go to Spain By all night train
Or across the sea in Ocean Liners To opium dens in Asia Minor We'll spend our days wasting our pay on Wasting away
We'll stare straight up and wonder why the Sky is blue; it reflects the sea We'll all be sayin' "science explained Our lives again"
And we're always sayin' Science explained Our lives again That's the science of the seasons.
- M. A. Hart (mp3 here.)
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 07:50 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 07:56 (twenty years ago) link
'Museé des Beaux Arts'
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure, the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
- W. H. Auden
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 08:01 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:36 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:38 (twenty years ago) link
Under her brow the snowy wing-case delivers truly the surpriseof days which slide under sunlight past loose glass in the door into the reflection of honour spreadthrough the incomplete, the trusted. So darkly the stain skips as a liveryof your pause like an apple pip, the baltic loved one who sleeps.[...]
I mean, wow.
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 24 June 2004 02:38 (twenty years ago) link
Just as good, and half as long!
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 24 June 2004 05:15 (twenty years ago) link
As white is sheAnd to my touch as choice and briefly satisfactoryAs whitebeam leaves that the wind whips aloft,That tell to the eye their texture soft:Sweet message sentTo fingertips, and sweetness quickly spent.
Where she goesSliding curtains of the rain on rods of sun her ways enclose,River-whirling gulls her gay sky recieves,Road, their hostile posters furled,Bless with arching eaves;She my love by London gentled as by space the spinning world.
- Anne Ridler, Young Man's Song
― cis (cis), Thursday, 24 June 2004 09:15 (twenty years ago) link
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 24 June 2004 18:44 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 24 June 2004 21:09 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 24 June 2004 21:19 (twenty years ago) link
Now, not that there's anything wrong with the poem for using those words -- they do slide into one another nicely, and it's well crafted enough and it doesn't seem to be trying to hit you over the head with some obvious meaning -- but where the poem gets interesting (for me) is where it leaves the obviously poetic words behind and finds poetry someplace I haven't seen before, such as the phrase "an apple pip". "Pip" and "slide" are both great onomatopoetic [sp?] words, but "slide" has been in a jillion poems and "pip" hasn't.
And "baltic" is such a nice change after "apple pip" -- /b/ being so similar to /p/, the /aw/ and /i/ in "baltic" so similar to the /a/ and /i/ in "apple pip", with the "tic" really lauching you off into new sonic territory -- but then it just goes back to more obviously poetic terms again.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 24 June 2004 21:31 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 24 June 2004 21:36 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 25 June 2004 16:03 (twenty years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Friday, 25 June 2004 19:30 (twenty years ago) link
Well, the index doesn't list any but it does have an entry for "sled":
Glass was the Street -- in tinsel PerilTree and Traveller stood --Filled was the Air with merry ventureHearty with Boys the Road --
Shot the lithe Sleds like shod vibrationsEmphasized and goneIt is the Past's supreme italicMakes this present mean --
[1498, c. 1880.]
[Hm, it came out a sort of Christmas-in-July offering.]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 June 2004 20:23 (twenty years ago) link
I was, as they later confirmed, a very sick boy. The star performer at the meeting-house, my eyes rolled back to show the whites, my arms outstretched in catatonic supplication while I gibbered impeccably in the gorgeous tongues of the aerial orders. On Tuesday nights, before I hit the Mission, I'd nurse my little secret: Blind Annie Spall, the dead evangelist I'd found still dying in creditable squalor above the fishmonger's in Rankine Street. The room was ripe with gurry and old sweat; from her socket in the greasy mattress, Annie belted through hoarse chorus after chorus while I prayed loudly, absently enlarging the crater that I'd gouged in the soft plaster. Her eyes had been put out before the war, just in time to never see the daughter with the hare-lip and the kilt of dirty dishtowels who ran the brothel from the upstairs flat and who'd chap to let me know my time was up, then lead me down the dark hall, its zoo-smell, her slippers peeling off the sticky lino. At the door, I'd shush her quiet, pressing my bus-fare earnestly into her hand.
Four years later. Picture me: drenched in patchouli, strafed with hash-burns, casually arranged on Susie's bed. Smouldering frangipani; Dali's The Persistence of Memory; pink silk loosely knotted round the lamp to soften the light; a sheaf of Penguin Classics, their spines all carefully broken in the middle; a John Martyn album mumbling through the speakers. One hand was jacked up her skirt, the other trailing over the cool wall behind the headboard where I found the hole in the plaster again. The room stopped like a lift; Sue went on talking. It was a nightmare, Don. We had to gut the place.
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 26 June 2004 21:58 (twenty years ago) link
I think this is definitely a 'working class poem' despite his protestations, to the contrary, that he's written only one of those ('an elliptical stylus'). again, this, like that, challenges the reader's (or writer's) impulse towards indentification and is actually more emetic than angering, I think. the first 7 lines of the second stanza are quite flat I think, clichéd almost ('strafed', 'mumbling', the careful breaking), perhaps it's intent made apparent. you can almost feel the rhythm of the poem stop, with its lift, as if your body, your thoughts have ceased to progress but yet your eyes, drawn in by the poem, on rails now, your eyes read on and, on surface, take in what the rest of you doesn't take in. that shift into italics, a shift into another person's voice heard rather than spoken. god, what a poem.
what does it mean? thread?
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 26 June 2004 22:05 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 26 June 2004 22:08 (twenty years ago) link
Cozen, you should! I don't know what yours means either, but I'd love to hear what people thought, it's pretty extraordinary.
― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 26 June 2004 23:44 (twenty years ago) link
I wish I had written that. *sigh*
From Cardigan Bay (by Leslie Norris)
For those who live hereAfter our daylight, ICould wish us to lookOut of the darknessWe have become, teachingThem happiness, a true love.
What more could we (or anyone) wish for on a Sunday morning than happiness, a true love?
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Sunday, 27 June 2004 16:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 June 2004 23:38 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 28 June 2004 08:44 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 28 June 2004 09:10 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 28 June 2004 09:27 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 28 June 2004 09:35 (twenty years ago) link
I am going to read Don Paterson's sonnets anthology, myself. I have it, here.
― the pomefox, Monday, 28 June 2004 12:55 (twenty years ago) link
And Edwin Morgan's take on Cage is great, the pure form of that pleasing squareness of sonnets than DP talks about in the intro.
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 28 June 2004 13:21 (twenty years ago) link
Archel, I have written a few sonnets where I have tried to make the break between A and B be at the golden mean point in the sonnet -- towards the end of the 9th line.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 28 June 2004 17:53 (twenty years ago) link
A golden mean point in a sonnet is an interesting idea. I'm trying to imagine how that works.
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:03 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:05 (twenty years ago) link
The proportion of a sonnet's 14 lines that divides it up along the golden mean is approximately 8.75:5.25. So three-quarters of the way through eighth line, you can introduce the second part. Most sonnets are divided 8:6, which is fairly close, and allows for your traditional ABBACDDCEFFEFE type rhyme scheme.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 28 June 2004 20:07 (twenty years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 28 June 2004 21:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 06:10 (twenty years ago) link
Here's a topping 14-line one though:
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break throughto illuminate a small fieldfor a while, and gone my wayand forgotten it. But that was the pearlof great price, the one field that hadthe treasure in it. I realize nowthat I must give all that I haveto possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering afteran imagined past. It is the turningaside like Moses to the miracleof the lit bush, to a brightnessthat seemed as transitory as your youthonce, but is the eternity that awaits you.
- RS Thomas
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 11:42 (twenty years ago) link
I have added a batch of new stuff to the webzine/ongoing collection of writing that I edit, and I think some of it's rather good:http://www.buzzwords.ndo.co.uk
And if any writing ILBers want to contribute, that would be nice :)
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 1 July 2004 08:06 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 1 July 2004 20:48 (twenty years ago) link
Please come and post here instead!http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wordshare/
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 2 July 2004 09:23 (twenty years ago) link
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 2 July 2004 10:50 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Saturday, 17 July 2004 18:17 (twenty years ago) link
I have read and written a fair bit of poetry lately. Not having Ilx obviously agrees with me.
Jist ti Let Yi No
(from the American of Carlos Williams)
ahv drankthi speshlzthat wurrinthi frij
n thityiwurr probblihodn backfurthi pahrti
awrightthey wur greatthaht stroangthaht cawld
---Tom Leonard
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 19 July 2004 11:46 (twenty years ago) link
I do not want to be reflective any moreEnvying and despising unreflective thingsFinding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwritingAnd young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sandFlushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore. [...]
(when I say for PF I mean because he mentioned Macneice, not because the particular poem is somehow relevant to him. Though it may be. It is to me.)
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 11:29 (twenty years ago) link
Brazil? He twirled a button,Without a glance my way:"But, madam, is there nothing elseThat we can show to-day?"
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 14:15 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 23 July 2004 15:58 (twenty years ago) link
...I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 24 July 2004 14:07 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 24 July 2004 19:29 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 25 July 2004 15:32 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 31 July 2004 15:40 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 31 July 2004 16:03 (twenty years ago) link
If You Had Two Husbands
If you had two husbands.If you had two husbands.Well, not exactly.If you had two husbands would you be willing to take everything and be satisfied to live in a large house with love and a view and plenty of flowers and friends at table and the young ones and cousins who said nothing.This is what happened.
She expressed everything.She is worthy of signing a will.And mentioning what she wished.She was brought up by her mother or her father. She had meaning and she was careful in reading. She read marvelously. She moved.She was pleased. She was thirty-four. She was flavored by reason of much memory and recollection.
[Michael Coffey, from "Sweet Suite: Gertrude Stein"]
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 31 July 2004 18:49 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 31 July 2004 19:40 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 1 August 2004 03:14 (twenty years ago) link
I am not certain about that pome - what MacNeice is saying; whether he is being more original and searching than he looks.
Cozen, when are we going to discuss Don Paterson?
― the pomefox, Sunday, 1 August 2004 10:56 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 1 August 2004 16:56 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 1 August 2004 18:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 1 August 2004 21:44 (twenty years ago) link
Robert Frost - Directive
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 2 August 2004 03:15 (twenty years ago) link
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'We are not now that strength which in the old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;One equal-temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
(Tennyson - Ulysses)
― Mog, Monday, 2 August 2004 12:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 2 August 2004 12:38 (twenty years ago) link
(from 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning)
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 12:45 (twenty years ago) link
"O my pretty pink frock,I sha'n't be able to wear it!Why is he dying just now? I hardly can bear it!
"He might have contrived to live on;But they say there's no hope whatever:And must I shut myself up, And go out never?
"O my pretty pink frock,Puff-sleeved and accordion-pleated!He might have passed in July, And not so cheated!"
-T.H.
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:48 (twenty years ago) link
We're foot-slog-slog-slog-sloggin' over Africa -Foot-foot-foot-foot-sloggin' over Africa -(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!)There's no discharge in the war!
Seven-six-eleven-five-nine-an'-twenty mile to-day -Four-eleven-seventeen-thirty-two the day before -(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!)There's no discharge in the war!
Don't-don't-don't-don't-look at what's in front of you.(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again)Men-men-men-men-men go mad with watchin' em,An' there's no discharge in the war!
Try-try-try-try-to think o' something different -Oh-my-God-keep-me from goin' lunatic!(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!)There's no discharge in the war![...]
-Rudyard Kipling
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:50 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 5 August 2004 01:11 (twenty years ago) link
Meanwhilelet us cast one shadowin air or water
our mouths wide as saucersour tongues at work in their tunnelsour shut eyes unimportant as freckles.
Let us turn to, untilthe giant flashlightcomes down on us
and we are rammed home on the corkscrew gigone at a timeand lugged off belly to belly.
TURNING TO, Maxine Kumin
(Whatever your particular political persuasions may be, watch out for those giant flashlights, corkscrew gigs, and keep your shut eyes open....)
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 5 August 2004 14:42 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 5 August 2004 20:19 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 5 August 2004 23:14 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 6 August 2004 08:02 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 6 August 2004 08:29 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 11:05 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:36 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:56 (twenty years ago) link
I worked for a woman, She wasn't mean--But she had a twelve-roomHouse to clean.
Had to get breakfast, Dinner, and Supper, too--Then take care of her children When I got through.
Wash, iron, and scrub, Walk the dog around--It was too much, Nearly broke me down.
I said, Madam, Can it beYou trying to make aPack-horse out of me?
She opened her mouth. She cried, Oh, no! You know, Alberta, I love you so!
I said, Madam, That may be true--But I'll be dogged If I love you!
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Friday, 6 August 2004 17:37 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 19:39 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 6 August 2004 21:11 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 22:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 7 August 2004 00:28 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 7 August 2004 03:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 7 August 2004 20:13 (twenty years ago) link
Prince Rupert's Drop
It's brilliant. It's a tear you can stand a car on, the hard eye of a chandelier ready to break down and cry like a baby, a rare birth, cooled before its time. It's an ear of glass accidentally sown in the coldest of water, that sheer drop, rock solid except for the tailor neck which will snap like sugar, kick like a mortar under the surefire touch of your fingernail.
It's the pearl in a will-o'-the-wisp, the lantern asleep in the ice, the light of St Elmo's fire in your eyes. It's the roulette burst of a necklace, the snap of bones in an icicle's finger, the snip of your pliers at the neck of my heart, the fingertip working the spot which says 'you are here' until you are suddenly not.
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 09:35 (twenty years ago) link
I wrote them down.
I looked up at the sunand I looked down.
The words formed a sunin their own fragile sky.
I wrote it down.
I was blinded twiceback into sight.
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:45 (twenty years ago) link
Yes, I write verse now and then, But blunt and flaccid is my pen,No longer talked of by young men As rather clever.
In the last quarter are my eyes,You see it by their form and size;Is it not time then to be wise? Or now or never.
-- Walter Landor
I hope y'all are out there writing wonderful stuff, since you're not here. Now or never?
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I takeA moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.I leave this at your ear for when you wake.
- WS Graham
― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 13:21 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 18:16 (twenty years ago) link
-joyce
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 18:40 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 21:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 2 September 2004 07:10 (twenty years ago) link
Brown from the sun's mid-afternoon caress,And where not brown, white as a bridal dress,And where not white, pink as an opened plum.
And where not pink, darkly mysterious,And when observed, openly furious,And then obscured, while the red blushes come.
--William Dickey
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 2 September 2004 18:25 (twenty years ago) link
...And down the other air and the blue altered skyStreamed again a wonder of summerWith applesPears and red currantsAnd I saw in the turning so clearly a child'sForgotten mornings when he walked with his motherThrough the parables Of sunlightAnd the legends of green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancyThat his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.These were the woods the river and seaWhere a boyIn the listeningSummertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joyTo the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.And the mysterySang aliveStill in the water and singingbirds.
...POEM IN OCTOBER--Dylan Thomas
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 2 September 2004 18:32 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:02 (twenty years ago) link
(...)So we must be careful, those of us who were born with the wrong number of fingers or the giftof loving; we must do our best to behavelike normal members of society and not make nuisancesof ourselves; otherwise it could go hard with us. It is better to bite back your tears, swallow your laughter,and learn to fake the mildly self-depreciating titterfavoured by the bourgeoisiethan to be left entirely alone, as you will be,if your disconformity embarrassesyour neighbours; I wish I didn't keep forgetting that.
- Alden Nowlan, from "He Attempts to Love His Neighbours"
― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:23 (twenty years ago) link
― equinox, Thursday, 9 September 2004 13:15 (twenty years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 9 September 2004 13:26 (twenty years ago) link
― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 9 September 2004 13:36 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 9 September 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago) link
I return to the house. From a window, a woman shouts for the boy to come in.
I feel sorry for her like the fool that I am, like the man I will never be.
-Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 9 September 2004 20:02 (twenty years ago) link
-To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 11 September 2004 12:34 (twenty years ago) link
I have poems to be writin' after my camping trip (head is full of sheep mainly) but in the meantime:
We, too, had known golden hoursWhen body and soul were in tune,Had danced with our true lovesBy the light of a full moon,And sat with the wise and goodAs tongues grew witty and gayOver some noble dishOut of Escoffier;Had felt the intrusive gloryWhich tears reserve apart,And would in the old grand mannerHave sung from a resonant heart.
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 13 September 2004 11:46 (twenty years ago) link
{The first lines of a new Mark Halliday poem.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:10 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:41 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 13 September 2004 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
-Evan Jones
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 15:53 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 09:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 18:29 (twenty years ago) link
Are you happy? It's the onlyway to be, kid.Yes, be happy, it's a good niceway to be.But not happy-happy, kid, don'tbe too doubled-up doggone happy.It's the doubled-up doggone happy-happy people... bust hard... theydo bust hard... when they bust.Be happy, kid, go to it, but not toodoggone happy.
-Carl Sandburg
― j c (j c), Sunday, 19 September 2004 20:39 (twenty years ago) link
I want to get out of the train and go backTo see what they were beside the track.
I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt--
Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth--Not lupine living on sand and drouth.
Was something brushed across my mindThat no one on earth will ever find?
Heaven gives its glimpses only to thoseNot in position to look too close.
-Robert Frost
― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 7 October 2004 11:00 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 9 October 2004 21:37 (twenty years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:56 (twenty years ago) link
Westren wind when wilt thou blowThe small rain down can rainChrist that my love were in my armsAnd I in my bed again
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 11 October 2004 20:33 (twenty years ago) link
Work from the original towardthe beautiful,unless the latter comes firstin which casereverse your efforts to finda model worthy of suchinane desire.
Even the mouth's beingdivided into two lips isnot enough to make wordsequal themselves.
Eavesdroppers fearthe hermit's soliloquy.
Wake up, wound, the knife said.
--Bill Knott
― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 23 October 2004 04:39 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Monday, 25 October 2004 17:46 (twenty years ago) link
― j c (j c), Monday, 25 October 2004 22:22 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 06:50 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 09:47 (twenty years ago) link
It was taken some time ago.At first it seems to bea smearedprint: blurred lines and grey flecksblended with the paper;
then, as you scanit, you see in the left-hand cornera thing that is like a branch: part of a tree(balsam or spruce) emergingand, to the right, halfway upwhat ought to be a gentleslope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was takenthe day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centerof the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say whereprecisely, or to sayhow large or small I am:the effect of wateron light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,eventuallyyou will be able to see me.)
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 11:51 (twenty years ago) link
xpost
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 11:53 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 13:46 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 13:47 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 13:50 (twenty years ago) link
-Charles Bukowski
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 16:52 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 17:37 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 20:15 (twenty years ago) link
Now the heart sings with all its thousand voices To hear this city of cells, my body, sing. The tree through the stiff clay at long last forces Its thin strong roots and taps the secret spring.
And the sweet waters without intermission Climb to the tips of its green tenement; The breasts have borne the grace of their possession, The lips have felt the pressure of content.
Here I come home: in this expected country They know my name and speak it with delight. I am the dream and you my gates of entry, The means by which I waken into light.
--- AD Hope
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 1 November 2004 14:04 (twenty years ago) link
Winter Love
Let us have winter loving that the heartMay be in peace and ready to partakeOf the slow pleasure spring would wish to hurryOr that in summer harshly would awake,And let us fall apart, O gladly weary,The white skin shaken like a white snowflake.
-Elizabeth Jennings
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 1 November 2004 14:07 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:23 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:31 (twenty years ago) link
If no, then I'm not sure I understand the question.
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:35 (twenty years ago) link
(interesting tidbit/bragging: I talked to Dorraine Laux a bit about that article when I met her.)
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 1 November 2004 18:08 (twenty years ago) link
Public Address (excerpt)
[...]The screen goes blank, all that was
etched there in light--a flashbulb'sthumbprint in the back of the skull.Sometimes we only die, sometimeschampagne corks fly from our wounds.
The coldest day of the year and stillthere's flowering. The lovers' bodies,once long grass, strike and strike each other.How else control fire but to make your own? A dye
must be squeezed from the poisonous berries,the sand melted translucent. each workan evasion, secret, clue, the subject alwaysmissing just as the dream is never
inside the sleeper but rises above likea sweet scum above boiling milk, the bodylike a dead body but warm, inviting,arousable. Who has not looked down the throat
of an orchid into color that can't be seenlike the cosmic black humming behindnoon blue? We want only to be admitted.We want only to be left out.
Dean Young
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 04:39 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 05:03 (twenty years ago) link
When I've got my editor hat on, nothing sets the alarm bells off so quickly as randomly placed line breaks, put in just because the 'poet' is dimly convinced that poetry has line breaks.
(Then again, with some of the dodgy things that email can do to formatting, it's often anyone's guess where the line breaks are intended to be, if anywhere.)
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 10:00 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 17:22 (twenty years ago) link
That sentence sounds not wholly grammatical, yet still sufficiently suggestive.
― the bluefox, Tuesday, 2 November 2004 17:44 (twenty years ago) link
I think what I'm talking about are those "prose w/ line breaks" pieces that seem to use breaks in such a way that disregard them as being a pause or an emphasis on the line's effect as an independent part of a larger whole.
I'd agee that ultra-conventional breaks are probably nothing to pat yourself on the back for either. They're worth experimenting with.
― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 18:54 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 23:48 (twenty years ago) link
CLAIRE BATEMANMONOGRAPH
It would later be said of our erathat even the boring parts were interesting,& vice versa.
Without the least trace of irony,officials christened space shuttlesafter doomed & sunkencities of yore.
Nearly all of usconstructed dashboard altarsupon which we lavishedparticular & minute devotionsas we cruised past scenesthat seemed to represent disaster’s aftermathbut almost always resolvedinto simple sequences of yard sales—derelict undergarments & mattressesexposed on sullenly tilting lawns—each just another item on the ever-growinglist of events not to be takenpersonally.
For their arcane significance,we pondered signs such as these: IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D BE HOME RIGHT NOW!
&
GOD SEES EVERYTHING, EVEN YOU READING THIS SIGN!
Though the varieties of available lip-gloss shades& the total number of famous people in historywere exponentially increasingso that it became ever more difficultto distinguish plum from maroonor the living from the dead,it still took approximatelythe same six yearsfor a single exhaled breathto become evenly mixed with the atmosphere.
For none of us was it ever clearwhether that rumbling sound we kept hearingwas static or heartfelt applause.
Everyone was professionally lonely,yet we ceased not our shining.
Many aspired to but did not actually achievethe office of Notary Public.
This was not considered a tragedy.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Saturday, 6 November 2004 20:46 (twenty years ago) link
Seen
In your field of vision, there is a place where no image is fixed,where injury carved its cave of nothing,gathered blackness around a splinter's wooden slip.One eye, you say, scans the world.The other examines the self's invisible wanting.In that equation, I believe myself to bethe point connecting one destination to another,somewhere you paused to draw lines to the next warm station.I emit no light, no heatbut gather, in cupped hands, what fell to the groundwhen limbs were shaken by your grasping wind.
Mark Wunderlich
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 7 November 2004 16:43 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 7 November 2004 18:00 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 7 November 2004 19:04 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 7 November 2004 19:05 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 7 November 2004 19:56 (twenty years ago) link
From too much hope of living,From hope and fear set free,We thank with brief thanksgivingWhatever gods may beThat no life lives for ever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.
-- A. C. Swinburne
― sceefy, Tuesday, 9 November 2004 22:26 (twenty years ago) link
--- Thomas Hood
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 10:15 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:04 (twenty years ago) link
I laugh at his poems, As he laughs at mine. They read like The words of a blind man Describing the sun.
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 20 November 2004 22:25 (twenty years ago) link
I wanted to add Sean O'Brien to it, last night, but I don't know how to make the lines all go together.
― the pomefox, Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:10 (twenty years ago) link
(Excuse the repitition, I am providing a public service.)
― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 23 December 2004 12:04 (twenty years ago) link
For that thundery corridor
Painting its Forth into Scotland and back,
For the drizzly grind of the coal-train
Or even the Metro, that amateur transport,
Sparking and chattering every verse-end.
from Sean O'Brien, 'The Eavesdroppers'
― the pomefox, Thursday, 23 December 2004 13:53 (twenty years ago) link
...Where darkness isOnce there was a mirrorAnd I therein was King....
Where is everyone?
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 29 January 2005 17:29 (twenty years ago) link
Happy baby!
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 January 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago) link
They are buffeted by this wind and that,never really knowing where they are going.
They think they have no choice over their destiny,but we know the path and we follow it without question.
Remember, there is sacrifice involved in any kind of life,even those that choose the safe way must sacrifice the thrill.
The point is if you know what you want,you must be prepared to sacrifice everything to get it.
Those that realise this are the fortunate ones.
- Thomas Schumacher ‘The Fortunate Ones’
― c7n (Cozen), Saturday, 29 October 2005 11:11 (nineteen years ago) link
― c7n (Cozen), Saturday, 29 October 2005 11:12 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 03:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 03:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― Matt (Matt), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 11:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 13:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 18:06 (nineteen years ago) link
"she my love by london gentled as by space the spinning world"
i read this poem this morning and thought: how startling, how beautiful, and then I discovered that the only google result for it is... me, on this thread.
― lords of hyrule (c sharp major), Sunday, 21 March 2010 10:08 (fourteen years ago) link
Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetryby Howard Nemerov
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzleThat while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisibleFrom silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
― INSUFFICIENT FUN (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 23 March 2010 20:31 (fourteen years ago) link
While out today I bought a book of poems from a charity store because it was a book of Kenneth Rexroth translations out of the Chinese, and Rexroth has previously torn my brain to giddy shreds
I had heard Rexroth was a polyglot and a skilled translator, but I did not know I'd be reduced to tears on the train home
His first 35 translations are of Tu Fu's work, an 8th-century poet whom he claims is alongside Catullus and Baudelaire as the greatest non-epic and non-dramatic poet in history
One of the poems, just one, was too long for a single page. I did not know this and upon the end of the page thought the poem done - it had reached a moment of such wisdom that I shudderingly re-read the tract and felt something settle over me
There turned out to be nine more lines.
TO WEI PA, A RETIRED SCHOLAR
― acoleuthic, Friday, 17 September 2010 20:16 (fourteen years ago) link
We drink ten toasts rapidly from The rhinoceros horn cups.Ten cups, and still we are not drunk.We still love each other asWe did when we were schoolboys.Tomorrow morning mountain peaksWill come between us, and with themThe endless, obliviousBusiness of the world.
Tu Fu
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfoldWhat while we, while we slumbered. O then, weary then why When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care, Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonderA care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.— Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, yes yonder, yonder, Yonder.
- GMH
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 25 July 2014 21:54 (ten years ago) link
Simon Armitage writes a poem on the occasion of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Patriarchs – An Elegy
The weather in the window this morningis snow, unseasonal singular flakes,a slow winter’s final shiver. On such an occasionto presume to eulogise one man is to pipe upfor a whole generation – that crew whose survivalwas always the stuff of minor miracle,who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at seawith flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes.
Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plansacross billiard tables and vehicle bonnets,regrouped at breakfast. What their secrets werewas everyone’s guess and nobody’s business.Great-grandfathers from birth, in time they becameboth inner core and outer casein a family heirloom of nesting dolls.Like evidence of early man their boot-prints standin the hardened earth of rose-beds and borders.
They were sons of a zodiac out of syncwith the solar year, but turned their mindsto the day’s big science and heavy questions.To study their hands at rest was to picture mapsshowing hachured valleys and indigo streams, schemesof old campaigns and reconnaissance missions.Last of the great avuncular magiciansthey kept their best tricks for the grand finale:Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.
The major oaks in the wood start tuning upand skies to come will deliver their tributes.But for now, a cold April’s closing momentsparachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoonsnow is recast as seed heads and thistledown.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 17 April 2021 10:53 (three years ago) link
I think there's a rather uncertain mix of the specific and the general here. If this is for the Duke, then why is it so general and generational? But if it's so general, why include the line about 'a zodiac out of sync', apparently specifically referring to his Greek origins and not applicable to other patriarchs?
This:
On such an occasionto presume to eulogise one man is to pipe upfor a whole generation
-- seems to pick up the tone of parts of the FOUR QUARTETS, and of Auden who was contemporary with them. I'm unsure that 'pipe up' fits well here, even though Armitage is probably trying to imply a hint of a bagpiper playing in tribute.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 17 April 2021 10:56 (three years ago) link
Trash poem for a trash human
― it's like edging for your mind (the table is the table), Thursday, 22 April 2021 01:06 (three years ago) link
instead of trying to eulogize Philip, he wisely chose to skate away immediately into generalities about WWII. for me the poem never really rises above the imagery of wartime propaganda films or lends vitality to the people or events it purports to capture. ceremonial poems are hard.
― sharpening the contraindications (Aimless), Thursday, 22 April 2021 02:01 (three years ago) link
I don't actually think so! I think it's hard to write a ceremonial poem about a person who was a malevolent racist with a noted passion for younger women.
It's simply tiresome how these old British hack poets refuse to deal with actual history, instead writing again and again about "the genius" of a generation and the trauma of the bombing of London. Give me a break.
I've read and witnessed any number of poems written for ceremonial occasions that were excellent. Hell, I read one by a student the other day that was written for a funeral of a cat that was more interesting than this crap.
― it's like edging for your mind (the table is the table), Thursday, 22 April 2021 12:07 (three years ago) link
I am sure it was an excellent cat and an even better public figurehead
― imago, Thursday, 22 April 2021 12:12 (three years ago) link
Amber Sparks@ambernoelle·17hHi Covid here I have eaten the years that were in the iceboxand which you were probably saving for other shitForgive me they were delicious so sweet and so full of days
― dow, Saturday, 18 December 2021 20:26 (three years ago) link
The last John Ashbery poem.
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/08/climate-correction-john-ashbery-final-poem/?fbclid=IwAR3fNZESezGzE53zhJyAME6ZNqrdjdJHEcQQ662a9D5IoBvVGfXPKbNyOPs
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 19 December 2021 14:42 (three years ago) link
Good interview here with Louise Gluck, where she talks a bit about Ashbery:
SH: How did you know (your book) was done? The book is quite short, but that brevity feels important to the effect of it.LG: Well, for a long time it wasn’t; it was just skimpy and a little mannered. But during this period, I finally came to understand the poetry of John Ashbery, whose work had eluded me the whole of my life, though I was moved by him as a person. He was a radiant presence, kind of angelic, but the poems just exhausted me. They seemed interminable—in fact, some of them still do—but those that don’t were like nothing I’d ever read. What changed him for me was Karin Roffman’s book [The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life]. It made Ashbery available to me, but it was also in itself remarkable. Did I tell you the story about reading the book and writing her a letter?SH: No, I just remember talking to you when you were in the middle of reading it, I think a few years ago. It sounded like it fixed something for you at the time.LG: It did. So I wrote her a letter of ardent appreciation. And then I thought, “I have to write Ashbery.” But when you’re writing to someone you revere, you want to commend yourself to the person; your ego gets involved. Also, I couldn’t say, you know, “I never liked your work, but now I really see how extraordinary it is, though I certainly came to it a little late.” In any case, the letter was hard to write. It was the beginning of the semester at Yale; it was my first night in New Haven for that year. And I thought, “I absolutely have to write this letter. I have to do it. I have to do it this week. As soon as I get home, I have to.” And then I had an e-mail in the very early morning from Frank (Bidart), who said Ashbery had died. And I never wrote my letter. I mean, I’m sure he had other things on his mind. But I would have liked… I would have liked to put some flowers at his feet. I think his work showed me something. But the book I was trying to write came in the most tortured little drips—I thought of it as rusty water coming out of the tap. And then Covid happened, and I thought, “Well, that’s it for writing,” you know.
LG: Well, for a long time it wasn’t; it was just skimpy and a little mannered. But during this period, I finally came to understand the poetry of John Ashbery, whose work had eluded me the whole of my life, though I was moved by him as a person. He was a radiant presence, kind of angelic, but the poems just exhausted me. They seemed interminable—in fact, some of them still do—but those that don’t were like nothing I’d ever read. What changed him for me was Karin Roffman’s book [The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life]. It made Ashbery available to me, but it was also in itself remarkable. Did I tell you the story about reading the book and writing her a letter?
SH: No, I just remember talking to you when you were in the middle of reading it, I think a few years ago. It sounded like it fixed something for you at the time.
LG: It did. So I wrote her a letter of ardent appreciation. And then I thought, “I have to write Ashbery.” But when you’re writing to someone you revere, you want to commend yourself to the person; your ego gets involved. Also, I couldn’t say, you know, “I never liked your work, but now I really see how extraordinary it is, though I certainly came to it a little late.” In any case, the letter was hard to write. It was the beginning of the semester at Yale; it was my first night in New Haven for that year. And I thought, “I absolutely have to write this letter. I have to do it. I have to do it this week. As soon as I get home, I have to.” And then I had an e-mail in the very early morning from Frank (Bidart), who said Ashbery had died. And I never wrote my letter. I mean, I’m sure he had other things on his mind. But I would have liked… I would have liked to put some flowers at his feet. I think his work showed me something. But the book I was trying to write came in the most tortured little drips—I thought of it as rusty water coming out of the tap. And then Covid happened, and I thought, “Well, that’s it for writing,” you know.
― deep luminous trombone (Eazy), Wednesday, 19 January 2022 01:47 (three years ago) link
Gluck is quite literally one of the worst poets alive.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Wednesday, 19 January 2022 14:38 (three years ago) link
I'm looking for good poetry about fascism. Any recommendations?
― Heez, Wednesday, 29 January 2025 21:11 (three weeks ago) link
― sarahell, Wednesday, 29 January 2025 21:21 (three weeks ago) link
Well she’s dead now, so.
I meant her poems.
Poetry about fascism doesn’t tend ti be ‘about’ fascism in the way you might want it to be, but:
Brecht is good.Sarajevo Blues by Semezdin MehmedinovicIn the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy by Daniel Borzutsky
a lot of this also depends on what you consider to be fascism. I would consider many Palestinian writers to be writing under and about fascism, but…
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 30 January 2025 12:39 (three weeks ago) link
thank you table. i don't know what i'm actually looking for here but that seems like a good start
― Heez, Thursday, 30 January 2025 13:28 (three weeks ago) link
Borzutsky also a translator, his translation of Raúl Zurita’s ‘Country of Planks’ is great. (Zurita’s book is about living and dying under Pinochet, so… relevant!)
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 30 January 2025 13:35 (three weeks ago) link
THESEUSO mankind so deluded! so pointlessly deluded!why investigate, study, devise ten thousand technologiesyet you do not know this one thing and cannot grasp it:how to teach a mindless man to think.
HIPPOLYTOSThat would be quite a geniuswho could make fools think.but this is no time for philosophy, father,i fear your sorrows make your tongue go wild.
THESEUSPHUE!what human beings need is some clear indexof who is a friend and who is not-a diagnostic of soul-and every man should have two voices,one righteous and the other however it happens to be,so that the righteous voice could refute the unrighteousand we would not be duped.
HIPPOLYTOSHas someone slandered me to you?But I've committed no crime!your words fill me with dread,slipping, strange words.
THESEUSPHEU! the human mind! to what lengths will it not go?where will its reckless impudence end?
― Heez, Sunday, 2 February 2025 19:59 (three weeks ago) link
that's from Anne Carson's translation of Hippolytos
― Heez, Sunday, 2 February 2025 20:01 (three weeks ago) link