From time to time (and I mean maybe once a year) I might write a poem for some reason. I haven't done it with any regularity in YEARS, but before Xmas we had lots of problems at work with the library lift, adn i wrote some poems about this. Now James, the library's resident mad poet type chap, wants me to come and read some of them at some poetry thing! I am, frankly, scared by the idea, as I only ever do them as a joke. What should I do?
Here is a lift limerick...
At the library the lift had no equal - Its misadventures had more than one sequel.It shuddered and jerked,And occasionally worked;It took books but it wouldn’t take people!
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 28 January 2003 16:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the libraryNot a department was stirring, not even the bindery;The trolleys were stacked by the lift with great care,In hopes that vacation soon would be there;
The AV staff were nestled all snug in their beds,With visions of Schwarzenegger lodged in their heads;With Leesha in her office, and Martin his cap,Acquisitions had just settled down for a nap,
When out on the bridge there arose such a clatter,Oscar sprang from his lodge to see what was the matter.Away to the window I flew like a flash,But there are none in AV so my head I did bash.
The moon on the minimal dirty brown snowGave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,When, what to our wondering eyes should appear,But a shadowy figure, with the stench of reindeer,
With a lackadaisical gait, and a beard plain to see,We thought for a moment it must be big AP.But reindeer fast as fines on TR did accrue,And he whistled, and shouted, and pointed, so rude;
"Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN!I have many books out, and all are quite late!I need to return them or Christmas must wait!"
To their posts of a sudden the ID staff took flight,So they could help old St Nick with his pre-Christmas plight,And Erin and Katy and Hannah and LizGathered armfuls of books from the sleigh of St Nick.
And then, in a twinkling, his books were returned,and as it was Christmas his fines they were spurned(But don’t get your hopes up, we’re not normally kind,It’s just that he promised to leave mince pies behind).
We sighed disappointed as St Nick had to leaveTo give presents to all of the kids who believe.Relieved of his books and his overdue finesHe bid us farewell with a glint in his eyes.
As he sprang to his sleigh, and his team they took flight,I did hear him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,“Forget books for six days, for they shall not be missed,It’s Christmas time now, so go and get pissed!”
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 28 January 2003 16:07 (twenty-one years ago) link
And I think you should read them aloud, if you're so inclined - it's an honor to be asked, and you should be proud of these :)
― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 05:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
fuck poetry contests imo
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 4 November 2010 04:05 (thirteen years ago) link
except the ilx poetry contest, the absolute highlight of my writing year
Could you be more specific about the ones we ought to fuck? I would like to do my part.
― Aimless, Thursday, 4 November 2010 04:10 (thirteen years ago) link
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, November 4, 2010 12:05 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark
fixed thatforyou
― dayo, Thursday, 4 November 2010 04:22 (thirteen years ago) link
Nice One Dayo
― That is the stench of tyranny (VegemiteGrrrl), Thursday, 4 November 2010 04:28 (thirteen years ago) link
thinkin baout pantaoums tbh
― tangelo amour (elmo argonaut), Thursday, 4 November 2010 13:38 (thirteen years ago) link
"If I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers."
I thought that was just lovely. Here: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4052/the-art-of-poetry-no-16-john-berryman#.VAYDCmkhh8c.facebook
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:24 (nine years ago) link
the ilx poetry contest, the absolute highlight of my writing year
yeah. I should probably try to make this happen sometime soon. the slumbering poets of ilx should rise again and make glad the hearts of the world.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:35 (nine years ago) link
I'd also caution young poets from reading Berryman.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:48 (nine years ago) link
lol
why? i adore his stuff.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:49 (nine years ago) link
to me those Dream Songs are so confessional that they're inscrutable; their otherwise admirable compression is constriction.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:50 (nine years ago) link
it's been about fifteen years though
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:51 (nine years ago) link
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:51 (nine years ago) link
"i haven't read this shit in 15 years, pretty sure it sucks"
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:52 (nine years ago) link
also enjoyed learning from that interview that merwin was a student of berryman's, i'd had no idea.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:52 (nine years ago) link
those paris review interview s are a goddamn goldmine
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:53 (nine years ago) link
those Dream Songs are so confessional that they're inscrutable; their otherwise admirable compression is constriction.― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 2, 2014 6:50 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 2, 2014 6:50 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i mean i think with the kind of passing biographical familiarity you can get from a good foreword they're not all that inscrutable. and in adding the sonnets to the pile, i think there's a lot of his work worth getting to know.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:54 (nine years ago) link
you can also just read the shit and not worry about "what it all means, man*"
*pot
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:55 (nine years ago) link
now I think parts of the Anne Bradstreet poem are damn impressive. As far as that generation goes Merrill and Hecht and Bishop are still my favorites.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:57 (nine years ago) link
see i don't really go in for the bradstreet for some reason, it doesn't have the stagger i love so much about the dream songs and even the sonnets--feels very dry to me, idk.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 18:59 (nine years ago) link
i haven't read much merrill! i keep meaning to. michael robbins wrote a long review of some new selected or collected merrill that piqued my interest. i do love hecht and bishop though. lowell i can't seem to get--talk about needing a biography at hand to figure out what he's talking about!
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:00 (nine years ago) link
almost wrote my thesis on Merrill.
I'm with you on Lowell; I prefer his tortured, more formal, forbidding earlier verse. I used to teach "For the Union Dead" and "Near the Ocean" often, usually to good effect.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:02 (nine years ago) link
you can also just read the shit and not worry about "what it all means, man*"*pot― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, September 2, 2014 6:55 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, September 2, 2014 6:55 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
and yeah this is part of what i like about the dream songs too--even when they're opaque without knowing what they're probably 'about' i think their surfaces gleam v nicely
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:02 (nine years ago) link
James Merrill: Days of 1964
Houses, an embassy, the hospital.Our neighborhood sun-cured if trembling stillIn pools of the night’s rain . . .Across the street that led to the center of townA steep hill kept one company part wayOr could be climbed in twenty minutesFor some literally breathtaking views,Framed by umbrella pines, of city and sea.Underfoot, cyclamen, autumn crocus grewSpangled as with fine sweat among the relicsOf good times had by all. If not Olympus,An out-of-earshot, year-round hillside revel.
I brought home flowers from my climbs.Kyria Kleo who cleans for usPut them in water, sighing Virgin, Virgin.Her legs hurt. She wore brown, was fat, past fifty,And looked like a Palmyra matronCopied in lard and horsehair. How she lovedYou, me, loved us all, the bird, the cat!I think now she was love. She sighed and glistenedAll day with it, or pain, or both.(We did not notably communicate.)She lived nearby with her pious motherAnd wastrel son. She called me her real son.
I paid her generously, I dare say.Love makes one generous. Look at us. We’d knownEach other so briefly that instead of sleepingWe lay whole nights, open, in the lamplight,And gazed, or traded stories.
One hour comes back—you gasping in my armsWith love, or laughter, or both,I having just remembered and told youWhat I’d looked up to see on my way downtown at noon:
poor old Kleo, her aching legs,Trudging into the pines. I called.Called three times before she turned.Above a tight, skyblue sweater, her faceWas painted. Yes. Her face was paintedClown-white, white of the moon by daylight,Lidded with pearl, mouth a poinsettia leaf.Eat me, pay me—the erotic maskWorn the world over by illusionTo weddings of itself and simple need.
Startled mute, we had stared—was love illusion?—And gone our ways. Next, I was crossing a squareIn which a moveable outdoor market’sVegetables, chickens, pottery kept materializingThrough a dream-press of hagglers each at heartLeery lest he be taken, plucked,The bird, the flower of that November mildness,Self lost up soft clay paths, or found, foothold,Where the bud throbs awakeThe better to be nipped, self on its knees in mud—Here I stopped cold, for both our sakes;
And calmer on my way home bought us fruit.
Forgive me if you read this. (And may Kyria Kleo,Should someone ever put it into GreekAnd read it aloud to her, forgive me, too.)I had gone so long without loving,I hardly knew what I was thinking.
Where I hid my face, your touch, quick, merciful,Blindfolded me. A god breathed from my lips.If that was illusion I wanted it to last long;To dwell, for its daily pittance, with us there,Cleaning and watering, sighing with love or pain.I hoped it would climb when it needed to the heightsEven of degradation as I for oneSeemed, those days, to be always climbing
Into a world of wildFlowers, feasting, tears— or was I falling, legsBuckling, heights, depths,Into a pool of each night’s rain?But you were everywhere beside me, masked,As who was not, in laughter, pain, and love.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:03 (nine years ago) link
thx bros
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:03 (nine years ago) link
this is part of what i like about the dream songs too--even when they're opaque without knowing what they're probably 'about' i think their surfaces gleam v nicely
that's how I feel about early Lowell – all that "The Lord survives the rainbow of His will" twaddle which appeals to me on a purely syntactic and prosodic level.
see that is just so boring to me
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:04 (nine years ago) link
^boring
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn,and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored.Peoples bore me,literature bores me, especially great literature, Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a doghas taken itself & its tail considerably awayinto mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind: me, wag.
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:06 (nine years ago) link
my baseball poetry blog http://terriblebaseballpoems.tumblr.com/
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:07 (nine years ago) link
James Merrill: A Renewal
Having used every subterfugeTo shake you, lies, fatigue, or even that of passion,Now I see no way but a clean break.I add that I am willing to bear the guilt.
You nod assent. Autumn turns windy, huge,A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.We sit, watching. When I next speakLove buries itself in me, up to the hilt.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:12 (nine years ago) link
there is a bizarre corner of youtube where you find something called "henrycore" where some weirdo has matched berryman reading dream songs with various eminem beats and its awful and weird
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:13 (nine years ago) link
pfft, swordplay
― famous instagram God (waterface), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:13 (nine years ago) link
xpost
gosh i like that 'a renewal'
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:14 (nine years ago) link
check out Divine Comedies, Hoos, although his last volume A Scattering of Salts is as strong as his other work. I love the guy. As much as I admire Auden, in some ways he surpassed him in play, charm, and unfussy wisdom.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:16 (nine years ago) link
interesting! i do like auden a lot, i'll take that comparison under advisement
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 2 September 2014 19:17 (nine years ago) link