The Poetry Thread

I am going to read Don Paterson's sonnets anthology, myself. I have it, here.

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, 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.

A golden mean point in a sonnet is an interesting idea. I'm trying to imagine how that works.

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.

Here's a topping 14-line one though:

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

- RS Thomas

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 :)

Please come and post here instead!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wordshare/

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?

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 drank
thi speshlz
that wurrin
thi frij

n thit
yiwurr probbli
hodn back
furthi pahrti

awright
they wur great
thaht stroang
thaht cawld

---Tom Leonard

I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed 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.)

Brazil? He twirled a button,
Without a glance my way:
"But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show to-day?"

...
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into 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 do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver

--

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"]

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?

Robert Frost - Directive

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

(Tennyson - Ulysses)

(from 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning)

"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.

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

Meanwhile
let us cast one shadow
in air or water

our mouths wide as saucers
our tongues at work in their tunnels
our shut eyes unimportant as freckles.

Let us turn to, until
the giant flashlight
comes down on us

and we are rammed home on the corkscrew gig
one at a time
and 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....)