PYF Poem

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Benya Krik: Apr 11, 2007; "With the help of God we shall punish all grocers!"

Vladimir Nabokov posted:

We have been married forty years. At least
Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
By our two heads. Four hundred thousand times
The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimes
Has marked our common hour. How many more
Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?

I love you when you're standing on the lawn
Peering at something in a tree: "It's gone
It was so small. It might come back" (all this
Voiced in a whisper softer than a kiss).
I love you when you call me to admire
A jet's pink trail above the sunset fire.
I love you when you're humming as you pack
A suitcase or the farcical car sack
With round-trip zipper. And I love you most
When with a pensive nod you greet her ghost
And hold her first toy on your palm, or look
At a postcard from her, found in a book.

This is an excerpt from Pale Fire, which in its entirety is almost too good for human beings. :allears:

But since it is technically a novel...

Wallace Stevens posted:

The Emperor of Ice Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

There are a lot of great poems, but this one perfectly showcases all of the things that make me :psyboom:

.This page has some great explications from a number of terrific literary critics, in case anybody feels like 'spergin 'bout Stevens. :dance:

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Benya Krik: Apr 11, 2007; "With the help of God we shall punish all grocers!"

My favorite thing is when fancy-as-hell poets take time to act like 12 year old boys. When metaphysical poet John Donne wasn't writing holy sonnets or scandalous elegies about his mistress, he managed to get in an :iceburn:

in the form of an epigram on manliness. Behold, the classiest way to call somebody a :pedo:

quote:

Thou call'st me effeminate, for I love women's joys;
I call not thee manly, though thou follow boys.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 08:16

Benya Krik: Apr 11, 2007; "With the help of God we shall punish all grocers!"

ScumLord69 posted:

Plums!

quote:

1.
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next
summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2.
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do no know what I am doing.

3.
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4.
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Kenneth Koch, "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" (1962)

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 05:52

Benya Krik: Apr 11, 2007; "With the help of God we shall punish all grocers!"

Michael Dickman posted:

My Autopsy

I�ll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the
small and glowing loaves of bread

I�ll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night

The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese
poems

You eat the forks,
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables

What do you love?

I love the way our teeth stay long after we�re gone, hanging on
despite worms or fire

I love our stomachs
turning over
the earth

There is a way
if we want
to stay, to leave

Both

My lungs are made out of smoke ash sunlight air
particles of skin

The invisible floating universe of kisses, rising up in a sequinned
helix of dust and cinnamon

Breathe in

Breathe out

I smoke
unfiltered Shepheard�s Hotel cigarettes
from a green box, with a dog on the cover, I smoke them
here, and I�ll smoke them

There

There is a way
if we want
out of drowning

I�m having
a Gimlet, a Caruso, a
Fallen Angel

A Manhattan, a Rattlesnake, a Rusty Nail, a Stinger, an Angel
Face, a Corpse Reviver

What are you having?

I�m buying
I�m buying for the house
I�m standing the round

Wake me
from the dash of lemon juice,
the half measure of orange juice, apricot brandy,
and the two fingers of gin
that make up paradise

There is a way
if we want
to untie ourselves

The shining organs that bind us can help us through the new dark

There are lots of stories about intestines

People have been forced to hold them, alive and shocked awake

The doctors removed M�s smaller one and replaced it, the new
bright plastic curled around the older brother

Birds drag them out of the dead and abandoned

Some people climb them into Heaven

Others believe we live in one
God�s intestine!

A conveyor belt of stars and saints

We tie and we loosen

Minor
and forgettable
miracles

I think this was the last poem I enjoyed reading The New Yorker. Quirkily enough, the poet's identical twin is also a poet. :hfive:

I am torn between :allears:

dreamysighing :allears:

and an overwhelming impulse to give them both wedgies/stuff them into a locker.

Benya Krik has a new favorite as of 02:58 on Dec 13, 2013

# ¿ Dec 13, 2013 02:56

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