The Poetry Thread

Some Japanese poetry for the morning:

As for the hibiscus
by the roadside,
my horse ate it.
-Basho

Napped half the day -
no one
punished me.
-Issa

oh, aim & pepek, like cozen, I've developed a crush, I think... ;) What lovely, delicious posts!

Two of my favorite haiku authors, aim... Here's another (female) I enjoy too:

The memories of long love
gather like drifting snow,
poignant as the mandarin ducks
who float side by side in sleep.

MURASAKI SHIKIBU

Archel suggested an ILB anthology... I've not been able to shake that thought all week. If y'all would like, I'd be delighted to gather these together and send them as a Word/WP document...

:D Why not?

All gone, the snow: grass throngs back to the fields,
and trees grow out new hair;
earth follows her changes, and subsiding streams
jostle within their banks.

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 add
to day's small sum?
Whatever you spend in pleasures now, you won't
leave in your heir's moist grip.

--excerpt from IV. 7 Ode by Horace. tran. Rosanna Warren

Abandoned unborn by my begetters
I was still dead a few spring days ago:
no beat in the breast, no breath in me.

A kinswoman covered me in the clothes she wore,
no kind but kind indeed. I was coddled & swaddled
as 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 bounds
further afield. She had fewer dear
sons and daughters because she did so.

[Riddle No. 9 from the Exeter Book, translated from the Anglo-Saxon by Michael Alexander.]

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,.
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here forevermore

Among Our Great Cermonies

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 atoms
begin falling toward you,yet something intensifies
where you are. The different light
shed 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.)

I love this! (Two of my sons are attorneys, and a third will be. Attorneys are OK. One loves to SMELL books--my first contact with ILB) Early one morning, when I was little, maybe 7 years old, I crawled into bed with my mother and we memorized this together from a poet called Saadi (I think):

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
and of thy slender store
two loaves alone to thee are left--
sell one, and with the dole
buy 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.

Stop spawning lawyers! (kidding) Yours reminds me of this beauty, posted not so long ago:

The memories of long love
gather like drifting snow,
poignant as the mandarin ducks
who float side by side in sleep.

may I add that "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary" with the tap tap tapping had particular significance today when the Jehovah's Witnesses came tap,tap, tapping on my door. I was barely dressed...and I was on the phone ...but they are always very polite. AND as I told them I wasn't in the mood for a chat, they asked about the pinky finger!
They were both pretty darned handsome as well - I'm sure they were equally impressed with my braless tank top and long johns as couture. And hairy armpits.

:D! I have long since stopped spawning. One more (poem). Just one for a Sunday morning and I'll stop: From Nancy Willard's Among Angels.

PRAYER

Angel of lost spectacles
and hen's teeth

angel of snow's breath
and the insomnia

of cats, angel
of snapshots fading

to infinity,
don't drop me--

shoeless,
wingless.

Defender of Burrows,
carry me--

carry me
in your pocket of light.

Good enough, pepek, if you and I are the only ones to want such an ILB Anthology for our personal use - I'm fine with it. I'll use May 31 as the cut off for posts here and gather them up and email them to you. *ahem* And anyone else interested can let me know ;)

Since I have a outre fascination with the story of the "Frog Prince"...

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 kitchen
for 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 mud
climbing the stairs to our bedroom
as if a child in a wet bathing suit ran
up them in the dark.

Last night I said, "Face it, you’re bored.
How many times can you live over
with the same excitment
that moment when the princess leans
into the well, her face a petal
falling to the surface of the water
as 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 moment
of 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 her
I am thinking of the green skin
shoved like wet pants behind the Directoire desk?
Or tell her I am mortgaged to the hilt
of my sword, to the leek-green tip of my soul?
Someday I will drag her by her hair
to 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 her
than in a fence or a gate.

"What are you thinking of?" she whispers.
I am staring into the garden.
I am watching the moon
wind its trail of golden slime around the oak,
over the stone basin of the fountain.
How can I tell her
I am thinking that transformations are not forever?

This sounds a lot like Anne Sexton.... don't you think? Egad, I have developed such an ADDICTION to this! It calls out to me when I watch TV, when I fix lunch, when I am in the shower! When I read to a grandchild! I can hear its voice calling over the voice of Garrison Keillor in A Prarie Home Companion! ...log on, log on, log on....

By the way, I really love this last poem.

(My band has a song based on the frog prince, not that we've released it yet or anything.)

"Aleksander Wat's Tie"

That tie, knitted, with a thick knot
that matched perfectly a dark-colored shirt
and 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 steps
from 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 recorder
who, it seems, was destined to bear witness.

It is true we lived together
through 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

Casuistry, so does Peter Gabriel... Got lyrics you can post?

Against my better judgment (lyrics are meant to be heard and not read), here they are:

Tattoo

The mark on my arm makes it perfectly clear
that I was once a prince among frogs.
My father made it perfectly clear
that 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 me
though my shoes are still covered in muck.
And there are flies, more of them every day
though 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?

I really like those lyrics Chris!

Ah, this thread has nearly warmed through my cold little wage slave heart this morning.

And YES I would like an anthology please :)

I picked up a. r. ammons' 'garbage today' (I heard byron's 'ammons!!!' as my eyes drifted over the spine in the bookshop) along with seamus heaney's 'beowulf'. I turned down a clutch of 'poetry book society recommended' bloodaxe and carcanet collections and left on the shelf alice oswald's 'dart', simon armitage's 'zoom', and t.s. eliot's 'four quartets'. O to have more money &c.

sp: 'garbage'.

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.

garbage can be a battle to get through. I recommend The Really Short Poems of AR Ammons or Brink Road as starting points for those averse to long poems, like me.

I never got far in "Garbage" but "Tape for the Turn of the Year" was great. The short poems are pretty nice too. £3 seems like a lot for "Four Quartets" since I'm pretty sure you could find it online easily.

re: eliot - ahh, I like it in my hands though.

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.

No appropriate thread to post this on - but my author copies of 'Three Voices' just arrived on my desk! Which is exciting! The cover is unexpectedly pink and green, but it works. Post-free copies available soon from The Frogmore Press or, I guess, me, at £3.95.

:) :)

The Answer by Bill Knott

Leaving the house,
the house will be
left completely,
from cellar to
attic my absence
entire.

Do I enter the world
the same,
my presence felt
from cloud
to ditch?

Only in departure whole.
Arrival
is always partial.

Apologies, this is breaking the rules but as you'll see it wouldn't really work except in its entirety:

The Back Seat Of My Mother's Car

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass;
I was calling to you - Daddy! - as we screeched away into
the 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 sunset
pouring itself out against the sky. The ensuing silence
was 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 voice
was the one clear thing I could decipher -
pouring itself out against the sky, the ensuing silence
piercing 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 into
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched.
We left before I had time.

- Julia Copus

That was one of the most restrained Knott poems I've ever read. It sounds a lot like that Mark Strand poem I think I already posted "Keeping Things Whole."

Nine Syllables Label Sylvia

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!)

Cozen, you are so well-read that sometimes I am really surprised at what you have not read -- Four Quartets, for instance.

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.

PS, Cozen, I have been reading Muldoon again - Why Brownlee left - we should maybe have a whole thread on Muldoon some time?

You should start a thread about whether EP and TSE are good models for a poet, and if not them then who?

Nobody?

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.

I'm not sure how much I like muldoon. an armitage thread could be interesting; I've started reading him. I picked up o'brien's latest ('downriver') today: hmmm.

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.

M'amour, m'amour
          what do I love and
             where are you?
That I lost my center
           fighting the world.
The dreams clash
           and are shattered --
and that I tried to make a paradiso
                   terrestre

[Ezra Pound, a fragment of a very late Canto that was never finished]

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them
For an old bitch gone in the teeth
For a botched civilization,

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]

Thank you, Chris.

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!

Casuistry - great lyrics, really, mind if they go into the ILB Anthology I'll be gathering up?

Since it's for internal use only, so to speak, sure. I realized I got the words wrong, though! The last lines of the stanza should end "near me / listening / near me / kiss me", instead of what's there. Oops.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

--Ezra Pound

And from TS Eliot:

There will be time, there will be time
To 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....

I just went through the whole thread again. Geez there's some wonderful stuff here! Thanks, everybody!

favourites?

Santiago: Five Men in the Street: Number Two

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

Introduction to Poetry

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.

Tomatoes

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.

Stephen Dobyns

Good mother's day poem, scott

from Louise Gluck's "October"

Snow had fallen. I remember
music from an open window.

Come to me, said the world.
This is not to say
it spoke in exact setences
but that I perceived beauty in this manner.

Sunrise. A film of moisture
on each living thing. Pools of cold light
formed in the gutters.

I stood
at the doorway,
ridiculous as it now seems.

What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in 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 standing
in my woolcoat at a kind of bright portal--
I can finally say
long ago; it give me considerable pleasure. Beauty

the healer, the teacher--

death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.