― 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
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 (two 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 (two 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 (two years ago) link