-Charles Bukowski
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 17:37 (nineteen years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 20:15 (nineteen 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 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:31 (nineteen years ago) link
If no, then I'm not sure I understand the question.
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:35 (nineteen 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 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 05:03 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 17:22 (nineteen years ago) link
That sentence sounds not wholly grammatical, yet still sufficiently suggestive.
― the bluefox, Tuesday, 2 November 2004 17:44 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 23:48 (nineteen 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 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 7 November 2004 18:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 7 November 2004 19:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 7 November 2004 19:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 7 November 2004 19:56 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
--- Thomas Hood
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 10:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:04 (nineteen 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 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
(Excuse the repitition, I am providing a public service.)
― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 23 December 2004 12:04 (nineteen 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 (nineteen 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 (nineteen years ago) link
Happy baby!
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 January 2005 19:14 (nineteen 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 (eighteen years ago) link
― c7n (Cozen), Saturday, 29 October 2005 11:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 03:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 03:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― Matt (Matt), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 11:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 13:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 18:06 (eighteen 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 (two years ago) link