Poetry Megathread: so much depends upon a little forums thread glazed with

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Rabbit Hill: Mar 11, 2009; God knows what lives in me in place of me.; Grimey Drawer

Realtalk: my favorite Bukowski poem

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 17:58

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 19:36

Rabbit Hill: Mar 11, 2009; God knows what lives in me in place of me.; Grimey Drawer

I'll confess, I don't like Auden. And I'll confess further: it was reading "The Platonic Blow," the anonymous bad gay erotica written in narrative verse widely attributed to Auden, that was the final nail in the "Auden is no good" coffin for me. So I too would be interested in someone pro-Auden explaining why he's so well-regarded.

One of my favorite poets, W.S. Merwin, had Auden as a mentor and greatly respected him, so I'm sure the problem is with me and not him.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 20:04

Rabbit Hill: Mar 11, 2009; God knows what lives in me in place of me.; Grimey Drawer

My favorite Merwin period is serendipitously covered in the collection, The Second Four Books of Poems: 1960-1972. Everything before that was formal, everything after that has been....uh.....not as good. :downs:

Seriously though, for my tastes, it was either too abstract or too direct. IMO he was at his peak in the 1960s. Even his more "word salad" poems -- a style I usually find insufferable -- really work for me.

Here's an example. God, I love this poem.

quote:

When You Go Away

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

Here's another one of my favorites (you can find more of his work online here)

Rabbit Hill fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Mar 25, 2015

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 20:56

Rabbit Hill: Mar 11, 2009; God knows what lives in me in place of me.; Grimey Drawer

CestMoi posted:

Is Shelley translating Oedipus Tyrannos as Swellfoot the Tyrant the ugliest poetical decision ever made??? Discuss.

Shelley deserved a solid asskicking.. "I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!" I mean, how could he even stand to face himself in the mirror each day knowing he had written those lines, wirh those exclamation marks? Truly shameful.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 05:02

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