- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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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 –
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Jan 14, 2023 22:28
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May 16, 2024 18:09
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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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.
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Jan 24, 2023 13:41
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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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-
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Jan 24, 2023 19:30
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
-
studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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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.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:11
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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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
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Feb 4, 2023 19:27
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
-
studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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Anyway, here is my latest poem and the first to be published in a print magazine. I think that fulfills the thread title requirements  .
Woo! Congrats!
In memory of wb yeats by auden
I’ve always loved this poem a whole lot.
Here’s one I read today that intrigues me. I like it when poetry evades straightforwardly likeable and positive emotions like “I love you” or “the light in the trees is very pretty”. The continuing vitality and zest for life of the speaker of this poem seems selfish, almost obscene. But he defends himself nobly and ends movingly, and makes me think that we all do the same thing really: move on with our lives despite loss.
quote:
Hymn to Priapus
DH Lawrence
My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.
I dance at the Christmas party
Under the mistletoe
Along with a ripe, slack country lass
Jostling to and fro.
The big, soft country lass,
Like a loose sheaf of wheat
Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor
At my feet.
The warm, soft country lass,
Sweet as an armful of wheat
At threshing-time broken, was broken
For me, and ah, it was sweet!
Now I am going home
Fulfilled and alone,
I see the great Orion standing
Looking down.
He’s the star of my first beloved
Love-making.
The witness of all that bitter-sweet
Heart-aching.
Now he sees this as well,
This last commission.
Nor do I get any look
Of admonition.
He can add the reckoning up
I suppose, between now and then,
Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult
Ways of men.
He has done as I have done
No doubt:
Remembered and forgotten
Turn and about.
My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.
She fares in the stark immortal
Fields of death;
I in these goodly, frozen
Fields beneath.
Something in me remembers
And will not forget.
The stream of my life in the darkness
Deathward set!
And something in me has forgotten,
Has ceased to care.
Desire comes up, and contentment
Is debonair.
I, who am worn and careful,
How much do I care?
How is it I grin then, and chuckle
Over despair?
Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient
Grief makes us free
To be faithless and faithful together
As we have to be.
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Dec 13, 2023 21:32
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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Remorse for Any Death
Jorge Luis Borges (trans. WS Merwin)
Free of memory and hope,
unlimited, abstract, almost future,
the dead body is not somebody: It is death.
Like the God of the mystics,
whom they insist has no attributes,
the dead person is no one everywhere,
is nothing but the loss and absence of the world.
We rob it of everything,
we do not leave it one color, one syllable:
Here is the yard which its eyes no longer take up,
there is the sidewalk where it waylaid its hope.
It might even be thinking
what we are thinking.
We have divided among us, like thieves,
the treasure of nights and days.
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Dec 18, 2023 16:30
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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Just committed this one to memory. I saw someone once explain it as being in the tradition of poems like Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, which I think illuminates it very nicely.
quote:Late Hymn From The Myrrh-Mountain
Wallace Stevens
Unsnack your snood, madanna, for the stars
Are shining on all brows of Neversink.
Already the green bird of summer has flown
Away. The night-flies acknowledge these planets,
Predestined to this night, this noise and the place
Of summer. Tomorrow will look like today,
Will appear like it. But it will be an appearance,
A shape left behind, with like wings spreading out,
Brightly empowered with like colors, swarmingly,
But not quite molten, not quite the fluid thing,
A little changed by tips of artifice, changed
By the glints of sound from the grass. These are not
The early constellations, from which came the first
Illustrious intimations--uncertain love,
The knowledge of being, sense without sense of time.
Take the diamonds from your hair and lay them down.
The deer-grass is thin. The timothy is brown.
The shadow of an external world comes near.
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Dec 26, 2023 17:27
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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Would love to hear any thoughts on the Empson and Berryman, both of which I’m having trouble getting a purchase on.
Berryman’s like that for me. Some of it I tune into right away and it’s brilliant. And the rest I’m like “huh?”
Empson I only know the super famous stuff.
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Jan 10, 2024 17:56
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May 16, 2024 18:09
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- Lobster Henry
- Jul 10, 2012
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studious as a butterfly in a parking lot
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It can’t be denied that these are bangin’ lines:
Belle thro' the graves in a blast of sun
to the kirk moves the youngest witch.
Watch.
Thanks for the thoughts on the rest!
Here’s another Berryman that I really like:
quote:A Strut for Roethke
Westward, hit a low note, for a roarer lost
across the Sound but north from Bremerton,
hit a way down note.
And never cadenza again of flowers, or cost.
Him who could really do that cleared his throat
and staggered on.
The bluebells, pool-shallows, saluted his over-needs,
while the clouds growled, heh-heh, & snapped & crashed.
No stunt he’ll ever unflinch once more will fail:
(O lucky fellow, eh Bones?)—drifted off upstairs,
downstairs, somewheres.
No more daily, trying to hit the head on the nail:
thirstless: without a think in his head:
back from wherever, with it said.
Hit a long high note, for a lover found
needing a lower into friendlier ground
to bug among worms no more
around our jungles where us blurt ‘What for?’
Weeds, too, he favoured as most men don’t favour men.
The Garden Master’s gone.
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Jan 11, 2024 00:35
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Jan 14, 2023 22:28
