Poetry Not By You (Unless you're published + good)

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derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

Read Borges' poetry. Those were the first poems that ever truly grabbed me.

# ? Dec 26, 2022 06:48

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 22:56

Teach: Mar 28, 2008; Pillbug

The best modern compilation I've found (and I've tried a few) is Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley. It's genuinely excellent, with 500 poems from the last century and this - is that modern enough for you?

Treat it like all poetry compilations (IMHO) - if a poem doesn't speak to you, vote 1, move on - there will be another one soon that speaks to you.

(Oddly enough, avoid the sequel Being Alive (and I know that the titles are the wrong way around - staying/being) - I found it disappointing. Clearly, all the good poems were used in the first volume.)

# ? Dec 26, 2022 10:35

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Cool I'll check it out!

# ? Dec 26, 2022 15:35

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

I would like to be patriotic and recommend some Danish poetry, specifically the poetry of Inger Christensen, widely considered one of the greatest Danish poets but mostly unknown outside of Europe. Christensen was a pioneer of the Danish movement of Systemic Poetry, in which entire poetry books are organized according to mathematical and/or linguistic patterns. Never is this more apparent than in her book-length poem Alphabet, in which the length of the stanzas follow the Fibonacci sequence while their topics are determined by the eponymous alphabet. Below, the first nine stanzas, translated by Susanna Nied (corresponding roughly to the free Kindle sample, so that should be okay).

Alphabet posted:

1
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

2
bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

3
cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,
citrus trees; cicadas exist;
cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

4
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death

5
early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion and angels exist;
widows and elk exist; every
detail exists; memory, memory�s light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar
exist, and the future, the future

6
fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching
backs, with their black-feathered crests and their
bright-feathered tails they exist; in colonies
they exist, in the so-called Old World;
fish, too, exist, and ospreys, ptarmigans,
falcons, sweetgrass, and the fleeces of sheep;
fig trees and the products of fission exist;
errors exist, instrumental, systemic,
random; remote control exists, and birds;
and fruit trees exist, fruit there in the orchard where
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist
in countries whose warmth will call forth the exact
colour of apricots in the flesh

7
given limits exist, streets, oblivion
and grass and gourds and goats and gorse,
eagerness exists, given limits
branches exist, wind lifting them exists,
and the lone drawing made by the branches
of the tree called an oak tree exists,
of the tree called an ash tree, a birch tree,
a cedar tree, the drawing repeated
in the gravel garden path; weeping
exists as well, fireweed and mugwort,
hostages, greylag geese, greylags and their young;
and guns exist, an enigmatic back yard;
overgrown, sere, gemmed just with red currants,
guns exist; in the midst of the lit-up
chemical ghetto guns exist
with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision
guns and wailing women, full as
greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists;
the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract,
bathed in a whitewashed, godforsaken light,
this poisonous, white, crumbling poem

8
whisperings exist, whisperings exist
harvest, history, and Halley�s
comet exist; hosts exist, hordes
high commanders, hollows, and within the hollows
half-shadows, within the half-shadows occasional
hares, occasional hanging leaves shading the hollow where
bracken exists, and blackberries, blackberries
occasional hares hidden under the leaves
and gardens exist, horticulture, the elder tree�s
pale flowers, still as a seething hymn;
the half-moon exists, half-silk, and the whole
heliocentric haze that has dreamed
these devoted brains, their luck, and human skin
human skin and houses exist, with Hades
rehousing the horse and the dog and the shadows
of glory, hope; and the river of vengeance;
hail under stoneskies exists, the hydrangeas�
white, bright-shining, blue or greenish
fogs of sleep, occasionally pink, a few
sterile patches exist, and beneath
the angled Armageddon of the arching heavens, poison,
the poison helicopter�s humming harps above the henbane,
shepherd�s purse, and flax, henbane, shepherd�s purse
and flax; this last, hermetic writing,
written otherwise only by children; and wheat,
wheat in wheatfields exists, the head-spinning
horizontal knowledge of wheatfields, half-lives,
famine, and honey; and deepest in the heart,
otherwise as ever only deepest in the heart,
the roots of the hazel, the hazel that stands
on the hillslope of the heart, tough and hardy,
an accumulated weekday of Angelic orders;
high-speed, hyacinthic in its decay, life,
on earth as it is in heaven

9
ice ages exist, ice ages exist,
ice of polar seas, kingfishers� ice;
cicadas exist, chicory, chromium
and chrome yellow irises, or blue; oxygen
especially; ice floes of polar seas also exist,
and polar bears, stamped like furs with their
identification numbers, condemned to their lives;
the kingfisher�s miniplunge into blue-frozen
March streams exists, if streams exist;
if oxygen in streams exists, especially
oxygen, especially where cicadas�
i-sounds exist, especially where
the chicory sky, like bluing dissolving in
water, exists, the chrome yellow sun, especially
oxygen, indeed it will exist, indeed
we will exist, the oxygen we inhale will exist,
lacewings, lantanas will exist, the lake�s
innermost depths like a sky; a cove ringed
with rushes, an ibis will exist,
the motions of mind blown into the clouds
like eddies of oxygen deep in the Styx
and deep in the landscapes of wisdom, ice-light,
ice and identical light, and deep
in the ice-light nothing, lifelike, intense
as your gaze in the rain; this incessant,
life-stylising drizzle, in which like a gesture
fourteen crystal forms exist, seven
systems of crystals, your gaze as in mine,
and Icarus, Icarus helpless;
Icarus wrapped in the melting wax
wings exists, Icarus pale as a corpse
in street clothes, Icarus deepest down where
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
the dreamers, their hair with detached
tufts of cancer, the skin of the dolls tacked together
with pins, the dryrot of riddles; and smiles,
Icarus-children white as lambs
in greylight, indeed they will exist, in-
deed we will exist, with oxygen on its crucifix,
as rime we will exist, as wind,
as the iris of the rainbow in the iceplant�s gleaming
growths, the dry tundra grasses, as small beings
we will exist, small as pollen bits in peat,
as virus bits in bones, as water-thyme perhaps,
perhaps as white clover, as vetch, wild chamomile,
banished to a re-lost paradise; but the darkness
is white, say the children, the paradise-darkness is white,
but not white the same way that coffins
are white, if coffins exist, and not white
the same way that milk is white, if milk exists;
white, it is white, say the children,
the darkness is white, but not
white like the white that existed
when fruit trees existed, their blossoms so white,
this darkness is whiter; eyes melt

# ? Dec 26, 2022 15:52

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

read a poem by thomas bernhard

# ? Dec 28, 2022 20:04

wode: Dec 8, 2015

Some favorites which I think are of a theme - for you, Lawman, and thread.

She's probably thought simple and saccharine by the educated and y'all, but I'm simple too and could get by by her alone:

Emily Dickinson posted:

A modest lot, a fame petite,
��A brief campaign of sting and sweet
��Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor's business is the shore,
��A soldier's � balls. Who asketh more
Must seek the neighboring life!

Emily Dickinson posted:

�Hope� is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I�ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Lisel Mueller posted:

In November

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.

thread posted:

...British poetical patriarchs...

Tennyson posted:

...Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in 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.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 08:37

Bandiet: Dec 31, 2015

I think Dickinson must be one of the least simple, least saccharine poets there ever was.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 17:15

wode: Dec 8, 2015

That's good to hear! I'm insecure about liking her

Emily Dickinson posted:

The butterfly's assumption-gown,
In chrysoprase apartments hung,
��This afternoon put on.

How condescending to descend,
And be of buttercups the friend
��In a New England town!

# ? Jan 5, 2023 18:55

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

wode posted:

That's good to hear! I'm insecure about liking her

She's one of those where you think she' neat at first, then you read her more and start thinking she's trite, then you read her more and realize she's far better than you'd been willing to accept.

It takes a lot of skill to make it look that easy.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 19:17

Lobster Henry: Jul 10, 2012; studious as a butterfly in a parking lot

Hell yeah, let�s post Dickinson poems

quote:

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

quote:

Before I got my eye put out �
I liked as well to see
As other creatures, that have eyes �
And know no other way �

But were it told to me, Today,
That I might have the Sky
For mine, I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me �

The Meadows � mine �
The Mountains � mine �
All Forests � Stintless stars �
As much of noon, as I could take �
Between my finite eyes �

The Motions of the Dipping Birds �
The Morning�s Amber Road �
For mine � to look at when I liked,
The news would strike me dead �

So safer � guess � with just my soul
Opon the window pane
Where other creatures put their eyes �
Incautious � of the Sun �

quote:

What Soft � Cherubic Creatures �
These Gentlewomen are �
One would as soon assault a Plush �
Or violate a Star �

Such Dimity Convictions �
A Horror so refined
Of freckled Human Nature �
Of Deity � ashamed �

It's such a common � Glory �
A Fisherman's � Degree �
Redemption � Brittle Lady �
Be so � ashamed of Thee �

# ? Jan 14, 2023 22:28

Teach: Mar 28, 2008; Pillbug

I have come to terms with the fact that I will never properly enjoy poetry from earlier than the 20th century.

Here are three from the collection I posted earlier this page - hopefully there'll be something new for readers, something you've not come across before.

(Normally I'd spam the thread with Louis MacNiece and Philip Larkin.)

Look at this - not a rhyme in there.

# ? Jan 15, 2023 16:26

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

I've always liked "Wild Nights," one of Dickinson's hornier poems:

quote:

Wild Nights � Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile � the winds �
To a heart in port �
Done with the compass �
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden �
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor � Tonight �
In thee!

# ? Jan 15, 2023 16:55

wode: Dec 8, 2015

Selachian posted:

one of Dickinson's hornier poems

I feel unwell when asked to regard boat moorage as a metaphor for sex. This is probably my problem. But - she never saw the sea.

Emily Dickinson posted:

As by the dead we love to sit,
Become so wondrous dear,
As for the lost we grapple,
Though all the rest are here, �

In broken mathematics
We estimate our prize,
Vast, in its fading ratio,
To our penurious eyes!

Teach posted:

Look at this - not a rhyme in there.

These were novel to me. Eden Rock has hidden a few almost rhymes, yeah? I like it. The death-stalking Estonian not as much. For you a passage I saved - Kay Ryan yelling at Walt "Big! Lots!" Whitman:

# ? Jan 19, 2023 08:54

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

Another thread just introduced me to Ern Malley, and I read his work with great interest. If you are not familiar with the great Australian poet, please read these poems with an open mind before you learn his tragic backstory:

Ern Malley posted:

D�rer: Innsbruck, 1495

I had often, cowled in the slumberous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back,
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters �
Not knowing then that D�rer perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men�s dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
the black swan of trespass on alien waters.

Sweet William

I have avoided your wide English eyes:
But now I am whirled in their vortex.
My blood becomes a Damaged Man
Most like your Albion;
And I must go with stone feet
Down the staircase of flesh
To where in a shuddering embrace
My toppling opposites commit
The obscene, the unforgivable rape.

One moment of daylight let me have
Like a white arm thrust
Out of the dark and self-denying wave
And in the one moment I
Shall irremediably attest
How (though with sobs, and torn cries bleeding)
My white swan of quietness lies
Sanctified on my black swan�s breast.

Boult to Marina

Only a part of me shall triumph in this
(I am not Pericles)
Though I have your silken eyes to kiss
And maiden-knees
Part of me remains, wench, Boult-upright
The rest of me drops off into the night.

What would you have me do? Go to the wars?
There�s damned deceit
In these wounds, thrusts, shell-holes, of the cause
And I�m no cheat.
So blowing this lily as trumpet with my lips
I assert my original glory in the dark eclipse.

Sainted and schismatic would you be?
Four frowning bedposts
Will be the cliffs of your wind-thrummelled sea
Lady of these coasts,
Blown lily, surplice and stole of Mytilene,
You shall rest snug to-night and know what I mean.

Petit Testament

In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.
Begin here:

In the year 1943
I resigned to the living all collateral images
Reserving to myself a man�s
Inalienable right to be sad
At his own funeral.
(Here the peacock blinks the eyes
of his multipennate tail.)
In the same year
I said to my love (who is living)
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian Tree
Not having learnt in our green age to forget
The sins that flow between the hands and feet
(Here the Tree weep gum tears
Which are also real: I tell you
These things are real)
So I forced a parting
Scrubbing my few dingy words to brightness.

Where I have lived
The bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach
Inhabits the crack and the careful spider
Spins his aphorisms in the comer.
I have heard them shout in the streets
The chiliasms of the Socialist Reich
And in the magazines I have read
The Popular Front-to-Back.
But where I have lived
Spain weeps in the gutters of Footscray
Guernica is the ticking of the clock
The nightmare has become real, not as belief
But in the scrub-typhus of Mubo.

It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man�s-language appropriate
Only to No-Man�s-Land.
Set this down too:
I have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,
Known all the clefts in which the foot may stick,
Stumbled often, stammered,
But in time the fading voice grows wise
And seizing the co-ordinates of all existence
Traces the inevitable graph
And in conclusion:
There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge
As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinite. Beyond is anything.

Ern Malley was a hoax, created by two conservative Australian poets in an attempt to mock modernist poetry by publishing deliberately terrible poetry. The poems were hailed as masterpieces upon initial publication, and the editor was humiliated when the hoax was revealed.

However, lots of people still maintain that at least some of these poems are genuinely good, and that the hoaxers had merely shown that allowing oneself to cut loose and be spontaneous leads to more interesting poetry.

What do you think?

SimonChris fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jan 20, 2023

# ? Jan 20, 2023 20:35

Teach: Mar 28, 2008; Pillbug

SimonChris posted:

What do you think?

The first one is quite good, I think, the second one is bad, but neither would cause me to raise an eyebrow if they were compiled in a low-volume collection of modern poetry.

wode posted:

For you a passage I saved - Kay Ryan yelling at Walt "Big! Lots!" Whitman:

I really like that bit of writing, thank you. It helps that it aligns with my thoughts on Whitman!

I'm not averse to rhymes - this is one of my favourite poems, and the structure of this is... *chefskiss* The internal rhymes are effortless.

It's �Sunlight on the Garden�
by Louis Macneice

quote:

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

# ? Jan 21, 2023 11:25

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

Just one more Ern Malley poem. The Lenin quote at the start is inspired:

Ern Malley posted:

Colloquy with John Keats

�And the Lord destroyeth the imagination of all them
that had not the truth with them.� (Odes of Solomon 24.8.)

I have been bitter with you, my brother,
Remembering that saying of Lenin when the shadow
Was already on his face: �The emotions are not skilled workers.�
Yet we are as the double almond concealed in one shell.
I have mistrusted your apodictic strength
Saying always: Yet why did you not finish Hyperion?
But now I have learned not to curtail
What was in you the valency of speech
The bond of molecular utterance.

I have arranged the interstellar zodiac
With flowers on the Goat�s horn, and curious
Markings on the back of the Crab. I have lain
With the Lion, not with the Virgin, and become
He that discovers meanings.

Now in your honour Keats, I spin
The loaded Zodiac with my left hand
As the man at the fair revolves
His coloured deceitful board. Together
We lean over that whirl of
Beasts flowers images and men
Until it stops . . . Look! my number is up!
Like you I sought at first for Beauty
And then, in disgust, returned
As did you to the locus of sensation
And not till then did my voice build crenellated towers
Of an enteric substance in the air.
Then first I learned to speak clear; then through my turrets
Pealed that Great Bourdon which men have ignored.

Coda

We have lived as ectoplasm
The hand that would clutch
Our substance finds that his rude touch
Runs through him a frightful spasm
And hurls him back against the opposite wall.

Collected works: http://jacketmagazine.com/17/ern-poems.html

# ? Jan 22, 2023 09:20

Lobster Henry: Jul 10, 2012; studious as a butterfly in a parking lot

I like Whitman a lot but that Kay Ryan extract is a great bit of writing, very funny.

Here�s one from my boy John Ashbery. He writes nonsense verse essentially, you just roll with the vibes like half-thoughts drifting through the mind.

quote:

Ignorance of the Law is no Excuse

We were warned about spiders, and the occasional famine.
We drove downtown to see our neighbors. None of them were home.
We nestled in yards the municipality had created,
reminisced about other, different places�
but were they? Hadn't we known it all before?

In vineyards where the bee's hymn drowns the monotony,
we slept for peace, joining in the great run.
He came up to me.
It was all as it had been,
except for the weight of the present,
that scuttled the pact we had made with heaven.
In truth there was no cause for rejoicing,
nor need to turn around, either.
We were lost just by standing,
listening to the hum of wires overhead.

We mourned that meritocracy which, wildly vibrant,
had kept food on the table and milk in the glass.
In skid-row, slapdash style
we walked back to the original rock crystal he had become,
all concern, all fears for us.
We went down gently
to the bottom-most step. There you can grieve and breathe,
rinse your possessions in the chilly spring.
Only beware the bears and wolves that frequent it
and the shadow that comes when you expect dawn.

# ? Jan 24, 2023 13:41

Bandiet: Dec 31, 2015

While Dickinson poems are on this page, maybe someone can identify one for me. I believe it described a battlefield and a soldier dying. At the time I read it, I thought it rivalled Homer. Since then I've scoured the index of the Complete Poems, but I could never find it again. I don't remember any specific words.

# ? Jan 24, 2023 16:46

Lobster Henry: Jul 10, 2012; studious as a butterfly in a parking lot

My Dickinson knowledge is woefully patchy. I guess it�s probably it�s not this one that starts:

quote:

It feels a shame to be Alive�
When Men so brave�are dead�
One envies the Distinguished Dust�
Permitted�such a Head�

Continued here, there�s a cool image of �battle�s horrid bowl� near the end: https://www.clarabartonmuseum.org/dickinson/

Not helpful to you, but while poking about I found this one I didn�t know and really like, stanza 3 in particular:

quote:

That after Horror- that 'twas us-
That passed the mouldering Pier-
Just as the Granite Crumb let go-
Our Savior, by a Hair-

A second more, had dropped too deep
For Fisherman to plumb-
The very profile of the Thought
Puts Recollection numb-

The possibility- to pass
Without a Moment's Bell-
Into Conjecture's presence -
Is like a Face of Steel-

That suddenly looks into our's
With a metallic grin-
The Cordiality of Death-
Who drills his Welcome in-

# ? Jan 24, 2023 19:30

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Maybe this one?

Success is counted sweetest (112) posted:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear

# ? Jan 25, 2023 02:16

Bandiet: Dec 31, 2015

No, thank you but these are quite widely circulated ones, and I only encountered mine when going through the Complete Poems. I will just have to go through them again � which won�t be much of a chore.

# ? Jan 25, 2023 12:33

Lobster Henry: Jul 10, 2012; studious as a butterfly in a parking lot

Let�s have a bit of Whitman why not. This is from Song of Myself. It�s old but it doesn�t rhyme!!

quote:

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams pass'd over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended trembling from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with the pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

I love Song of Myself. It�s a very long poem but it�s broken up into sections like the above which are usually self contained brilliant lyric poems in their own right.

# ? Jan 26, 2023 16:11

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

I guess I should probably read it then.

# ? Jan 27, 2023 00:21

Lobster Henry: Jul 10, 2012; studious as a butterfly in a parking lot

Teach posted:

I'm not averse to rhymes - this is one of my favourite poems, and the structure of this is... *chefskiss* The internal rhymes are effortless.

It's �Sunlight on the Garden�
by Louis Macneice

BTW I�ve also always liked this one a lot, the last stanza in particular. I wonder if there�s a word for that form, where the first word rhymes with the end of the previous line? I�m not sure I�ve ever seen it elsewhere.

Please do spam the thread with Macneice and Larkin! Larkin is gloomy and nasty as a person but he kind of rules

# ? Feb 4, 2023 19:27

Teach: Mar 28, 2008; Pillbug

Lobster Henry posted:

BTW I�ve also always liked this one a lot, the last stanza in particular. I wonder if there�s a word for that form, where the first word rhymes with the end of the previous line? I�m not sure I�ve ever seen it elsewhere.

Please do spam the thread with Macneice and Larkin! Larkin is gloomy and nasty as a person but he kind of rules

Thank you. That MacNiece was a favourite of my late wife. I used the term "Internal rhyme", but I'm sure there's a better one that a perfunctory googling didn't find.

The most famous MacNiece is possibly Meeting Place.

quote:

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream�s music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise�
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body�s peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.

But if you have time, look for Snow - it's short and uses language in... just new ways. Wonderful.

I could start a thread about Larkin (I won't - it'll become a mire of "separating the art from the artist" grumblings), and there are some excellent anthologies of his. Get the Faber Collected if you can - I forget the name of the other anthology, but it makes the baffling decision not to group the poems by Larkin's own order in his four published collections, but chronologically by date of writing. Baffling.

He published (like I said) four anthologies during his life -

1. The North Ship. Not juvenalia, quite, but... a poet developing, finding his own voice, throwing off his influences.
2. The Less Deceived. He's getting there. Some good funny stuff (Toads) and At Grass, which I love. So good.
3. The Whitsun Weddings. Here we loving go, one of those albums that feel like a greatest hits. The title poem is... perfect. An Arundel Tomb is perfect, too - "...what will survive of us is love." (And I know I've selectively quoted that. Don't @ me.) It's a short collection. Buy it.
4. High Windows. Annus Mirrablilis, This Be The Verse. The Explosion.

No wait, here's The Explosion -

quote:

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead.
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins
Fathers brothers nicknames laughter
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun
Scarfed as in a heat-haze dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face--

plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed--
Gold as on a coin or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them

One showing the eggs unbroken.

And there's one acknowledged great that was written after High Windows - Aubade. You're welcome. It's possibly his best single poem.

I'm a Larkin nerd - AMA.

OK, more soon so that I don't spam the thread to death.

# ? Mar 6, 2023 21:06

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

These are all mine, but they are published and if they aren't good enough, I guess the mods can probe me or something?

Revolver Literary posted:

MUSKELIDS

A ferret swims through yellow grass,
hunting the wolverine.
Mustelids dueling with muskets.
Gunsmoke drifts above the field.

Up close,
sharp teeth would penetrate the ferret,
like a blade passing through fog.
The wolverine victorious in bloody mist.

At a distance,
bullets fly through dense grass.
No blood slakes the soil.
Neither animal an experienced marksman,
knowing only tooth and claw.

The ferret,
grateful for the impasse,
enjoys the kick of the gunpowder,
inhales the smoke,
caressed by blades of grass.

MILK, EGGS, AND SUGAR; SO TRUE, SO SWEET

The world is everything that hits my face.
A custard pie of contingencies,
Stinging my eyes,
Staining my skin,
Tickling my lips.
Milk moist in my ears.

I wipe but more follow.
My legs fight against
The viscosity of whipped cream.
The light ahead
Refracted by eggs and sugar into
The sweet rainbow of bewilderment.

TENEBROUS PILGRIMAGE

Riding the shadow past Einstein,
outrunning the light of realization,
reason, knowledge, and pain.
Attain the moon from the Earth
in a single moment of elation.

The Earth, a glittering globe above.
The light of humanity mere pinpricks
on inky continents.
The shadow pours
into the craters, revealing
silvern regolith.

TEXTILE FOUNDATION

Ancient caverns burrowing
Beneath the carpet.
Snakes between forests of fibers
Feel the echo of the caves,
As they slither above.

Will something awaken,
Drawn by the movement,
To devour the softness supporting our feet?
Will we fall, then?

Into endless, repeating tunnels.
Looking for a route
Leading somewhere, anywhere,
Across cold, solidified sediment.

TABLEAUX

As the Philosopher says:
"Phenomena are but tableaux
by the actors of the mind".
Each image a star or starlet
demonstrating the world.
Silent they pose in
thought and memory,
interpreting the truth but
blocking the view.

I push through them across
the stage, hands grasping at
my clothes,
brushing my arms.
Warm skin against skin.
I am lost in the crowd.
I can no longer move.
Each path blocked by
a pitiless visage.
A black-and-white hand
grasps mine.

Pulls me through.

"Come," says the ancient actor
in suit and fedora.
The crowd thins, moves aside, dissipates.
We are alone in a quiet spotlight
on a dark stage.
Smoke drifts from the edge of his mouth,
glittering.
"This is where it ends."
"Is it enough?"

I walk past him beyond
the edge of the stage.
Falling, hoping to land
on solid ground.

I have more published poetry, but I personally prefer the surreal stuff, and I don't want to spam the thread.

Anyway, I need to get back into Larkin. If you watched Devs, they quote half of Aubade in the beginning.

SimonChris fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Apr 1, 2024

# ? Mar 9, 2023 11:44

samcarsten: Sep 13, 2022; by vyelkin

does dr suess count as poetry

# ? Mar 9, 2023 22:54

Teach: Mar 28, 2008; Pillbug

Of course, in the same way that baby food counts as food.

# ? Mar 9, 2023 23:41

samcarsten: Sep 13, 2022; by vyelkin

Teach posted:

Of course, in the same way that baby food counts as food.

well, my other favorite poetry is WWI trench poetry, like Wilfred Owen and Sigfried Sassoon.

# ? Mar 10, 2023 01:51

Teach: Mar 28, 2008; Pillbug

Well, you're at .500 there. In the same way that Cobain>Corgan, Owen>Sassoon - he (Owen) had the courage of his convictions and had the decency to actually die in the war. (A week before the end, too - lol owned.)

WW1 always feels like a phase that Sassoon was going through, whereas Owen meant it, and I think his poetry is clearer, and better.

What do we (as a thread) think about outdated terms that are now considered slurs? I recently discovered that the author of one of my favourite poems (This is What I Wanted to Sign Off With) also wrote He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the *********

Sorry. The poet, Alden Nowlan, died in 1983, so you can get mad at him if you like. The poem is... very good.

https://deklynmorris.tripod.com/id55.html

# ? Mar 11, 2023 23:49

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

Today I would like to talk about Morten Nielsen. Nielsen was a young, Danish resistance fighter who wrote his poetry while fighting Nazis in the streets of Copenhagen. His poem "Moment" has been added to the Danish literary canon:

Morten Nielsen posted:

Moment

Wild roses in day-long rain!
And the train has stopped,
with panes streaming
with dazzling rain-gleam
and the bushes� wild light
in the wet and green.

Happily great and straightforward life will be �
Drop that strikes drop,
Rain upon rain.
The seconds open up
for a long memory:
Paths on the moors, girls� voices and the sea.

I taste them on my tongue
the vanished summers...
Cool, rainful happiness, a kiss of years �

We travel in the war�s restless, distant summer
Suddenly it is still...
Wild roses in day-long rain,
Panes streaming
with dazzling rain-gleam
and the bushes� wild light
in the wet and green.

Sadly, Nielsen was killed in 1944 at the young age of 22, shot by a famous fellow resistance fighter known as "The Citron" (portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen in the movie "Flame & Citron"). The Citron claimed that the shooting was an accident but was shortly afterwards arrested and shot by the nazis, so the full story was never revealed.

Morten Nielsen posted:

Death

Death I encountered when I was a boy.
But only as a stillness in one dear to me.
Never as something around me, a coldness, a shadow
no one can name by name or get to leave.

Never as the coldness of some strange thing
As depth on depth in stiffened muscle band.
As if I fell and fell in a coldness without space
from holding a stranger�s cold hand in my hand.

Now I know it once more, here and everywhere.
It stands in the silent light above the forest floors.
It moves like a dizzy distance in the summer sky
above the sleeper�s mouth it lies like moans.

It waits, always just to the side of things,
a shadow, invisible, along veins and stones and trees.
It makes it richer with the new seconds
and more evil. And it is always close to me.

But we conduct no conversations with each other,
neither at dawn nor when the stars form fleets.
We just know both of us that the other is there.
No more is necessary. One day we�ll surely meet.

Speaking of Danish occupation poetry, I can't not mention Piet Hein's famous Consolation Grook:

Piet Hein posted:

Consolation Grook

Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.

Piet Hein was a Danish polymath who wrote a large amount of short rhyming poems that he called "Grooks", which usually contained hidden meanings and ironies. The Grooks became so succesful in Scandinavia that many of them have effectively turned into proverbs. Consolation Grook was his first published poem.

The Consolation Grook may seem like a simple aphorism, but it was published in 1940, at the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, and the intended meaning was that losing our country was like losing the first glove, but giving up the fight would be like throwing away the other. The Nazi censors didn't get the meaning, and the poem was published without issue and subsequently spray-painted on walls around the country, as a reminder to keep up the fight.

SimonChris fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Mar 13, 2023

# ? Mar 12, 2023 15:24

Beefeater1980: Sep 12, 2008; My God, it's full of Horatios!

Poem by Gu Cheng, a poet of the �Obscure� school in the 80s and 90s (I�ve also seen it translated as �misty� which is literally correct but slightly misses the meaning). Apart from his poetry, he is famous for retiring to New Zealand, going nuts when living in a polycule with his wife and another woman, attacking his wife with an axe and then killing himself; she also died as a result of her injuries. The third lady wasn�t hurt. Interestingly Wikipedia doesn�t mention the third lady (IIRC she was called baobei/baby) at all.

Gu Cheng (顾城) posted:

Near and Far

你，｜一会儿看我，｜一会儿看云。｜｜我觉得，｜你看我时很远，｜你看云时很近

You,
Sometimes look at me;
Sometimes at the clouds.
I feel,
When you look at me you�re very far;
When you look at the clouds you�re very near.

I�ve always felt it described a really bad date.

# ? Mar 19, 2023 16:10

barkingclam: Jun 20, 2007

Can anyone recommend some novels-in-verse? I recently finished The Call Out by Cat Fitzpatrick and I enjoyed its Pushkin-style verse structure. I jumped right to Vikram Seth�s The Golden Gate which is pretty good too, but I�d like to explore more in this style. Thanks in advance!

# ? Mar 20, 2023 15:03

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

omeros by derek walcott is most likely one of the best things you will ever read

# ? Mar 20, 2023 16:08

Bandiet: Dec 31, 2015

barkingclam posted:

Can anyone recommend some novels-in-verse? I recently finished The Call Out by Cat Fitzpatrick and I enjoyed its Pushkin-style verse structure. I jumped right to Vikram Seth�s The Golden Gate which is pretty good too, but I�d like to explore more in this style. Thanks in advance!

The Ring and the Book

# ? Mar 20, 2023 17:54

Tree Goat: May 24, 2009; argania spinosa

eugene onegin

# ? Mar 20, 2023 22:52

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

Beefeater1980 posted:

Poem by Gu Cheng, a poet of the �Obscure� school in the 80s and 90s (I�ve also seen it translated as �misty� which is literally correct but slightly misses the meaning). Apart from his poetry, he is famous for retiring to New Zealand, going nuts when living in a polycule with his wife and another woman, attacking his wife with an axe and then killing himself; she also died as a result of her injuries. The third lady wasn�t hurt. Interestingly Wikipedia doesn�t mention the third lady (IIRC she was called baobei/baby) at all.

I�ve always felt it described a really bad date.

this guy has a novel that was translated into english that i want to read, but for some reason it was published by a german publisher who seem to mainly print textbooks so it's completely unfindable anywhere, except possibly from some of the new zealand universities that have copies in their libraries.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 05:50

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

Prema Arasu posted:

peeling a banana

crunch!

bones

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:19

SimonChris: Apr 24, 2008; The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.; Grimey Drawer

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4030264

There is a good thread about Chinese poetry in the new casual book forum.

# ? May 11, 2023 09:36

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 22:56

Bandiet: Dec 31, 2015

Bandiet posted:

While Dickinson poems are on this page, maybe someone can identify one for me. I believe it described a battlefield and a soldier dying. At the time I read it, I thought it rivalled Homer. Since then I've scoured the index of the Complete Poems, but I could never find it again. I don't remember any specific words.

I'm thrilled to announce that I have found this poem again.

(639)

My Portion is Defeat � today �
A paler luck than Victory �
Less Paeans � fewer Bells �
The Drums don't follow Me � with tunes �
Defeat � a somewhat slower � means �
More Arduous than Balls �

'Tis populous with Bone and stain �
And Men too straight to stoop again �,
And Piles of solid Moan �
And Chips of Blank � in Boyish Eyes �
And scraps of Prayer �
And Death's surprise,
Stamped visible � in Stone �

There's somewhat prouder, over there �
The Trumpets tell it to the Air �
How different Victory
To Him who has it � and the One
Who to have had it, would have been
Contenteder � to die �

# ? May 17, 2023 23:26

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Poetry Not By You (Unless you're published + good)

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