Poetry

[Ophelia]

I thought this poem was a fitting start for a poetry thread

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a colour slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
And feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

[MissyO]

Honestly, not the world's biggest fan of poetry.... Although some I don't mind. One that sticks out for me is this one by Dylan Thomas (I love my overly masculine, alcoholic writers, don't I?)


Song by Dylan Thomas


Love me, not as the dreaming nurses
My falling lungs, nor as the cypress
In his age the lass's clay.
Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, not as the girls of heaven
Their airy lovers, nor the mermaiden
Her salty lovers in the sea.
Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, not as the ruffling pigeon
The tops of trees, nor as the legion
Of the gulls the lip of the waves.
Love me and lift your mask.

Love me, as loves the mole his darkness
And the timid dear the tigress:
Hate and fear be your two loves.
Love me and lift your mask.




Yes Beefheart the Buffoon, I know you think its crap, but I adore this poem, so you can go get stuffed :P

My Eyes So Soft

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly

let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

as few human or even divine ingredients can

Something missing in my heart tonight

has made my eyes so soft

my voice so tender

my need of god

absolutely clear.

--Hafiz

[Dark Dude]

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.\


turst me, you dont wanna know what Bob Dylan knows.

[SilverSpoon]

Go to YouTube and search for "Special Poetry Slam." You won't be disappointed.

[Ophelia]

William Butler Yeats THE SECOND COMING
William Butler Yeats. Irish. 1865-1939
This well -known poem was written at the end of Yeats' life, and just before the start of the World War Two. It has never lost its mysterious power.


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


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?

[Captain Beefheart]

In a Station at the Metro - Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.


Pound cheated, of course. In reading his poem without considering his explanation, you have no idea at all what it is he felt as he got off the Metro. At best he felt something. In his own way, all he's done is write "Ezra wuz here.". So through the use of descriptive language on how utterly inarticulate he found himself when trying to capture a specific connection he made in the privacy of his own head. I imagine this was a best effort at writing a poem that simultaneously documented his own feeling and tried to evoke the same feeling in the reader, the feeling itself having been simpler than the language he first tried to use to describe it.

[Cat]

One of my favourite American poems:

The Young Housewife by William Carlos Williams

At ten A.M. the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

[Ophelia]

^I've never heard that one before. Love it!

[Plastic Flute]

Oh I wish
I wish
I wish I was a fish.
Incredible Mr Limpet

[Ophelia]

Anne Sexton WORDS

Anne Sexton. 1928-1974. American.
Anne Sexton is one of my favourite poets. She struggled with the big questions. She won the Pulitzer prize. Like Sylvia Plath, she committed suicide.

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

[MissyO]

^ Love that poem! Thanks for hooking me up, Op.

[Keri]

Originally Posted by Ophelia

Anne Sexton WORDS

Anne Sexton. 1928-1974. American.
Anne Sexton is one of my favourite poets. She struggled with the big questions. She won the Pulitzer prize. Like Sylvia Plath, she committed suicide.

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

/sigh... that is just... beautiful. Thank you for sharing Ophelia

[Ophelia]

^Your Welcome.

Phoenix, I have mixed emotions about that video/poem. I feel like the armed forces are not supposed to be warm and fuzzy, you are a trained soldier - in warfare in a situation of life and death there is no time to be reluctant, and as horrible as it is, you probably don't want to spend too much time thinking about how you've killed someone, I'm sure that would wreck your psyche-better just to see it as a job. Why did she join the ROTC anyway? Free college money? well...nothing is free babe.

I have mixed emotions about that video/poem.

You should, rightfully so.

Why did she join the ROTC anyway? Free college money?

Perhaps. That's the reason I wanted to join. I'm not sure if they still do this, but even in Junior High they had JROTC recruiters for the older kids. Same for seniors graduating from HS (ROTC) and Marines. It's glorified to make you think it's about "Honour, discipline, a great career-move" and they wave these words at your face (as if they were waving real dollar bills) that you can earn money for college.

This is why she says:
"That was the day that I stopped ignoring
That our practice targets were shaped like humans
The words: chest, head, heart, brain, or life, were never used"

What's interesting about this piece is that although she has reservations against military actions, she also has reservations against those supposed "protesters" who think it's trendy to be a radical.

"I am no flower child
I do not wear glasses down on the bridge of my nose
I do not brag my unshaven hair or hold illusions about the wisdom of the East
I do not wave my fingers in a V to bid peace upon greeting or
think that the revolution alone will be enough to save us"

I feel like the armed forces are not supposed to be warm and fuzzy, you are a trained soldier - in warfare in a situation of life and death there is no time to be reluctant

Of course. The "opposition" will not be warm and fuzzy, so why should we? If we lay down are guns, and the others don't, we're f*cked.

That's why:

"Never, nowhere, anywhere: this is why no war."

Either we ALL lay down our weapons, including us, or no one does. And no one will. Even if everyone but the U.S. draws down, no reason why everyone should if we still have the arsenals. Humans by instinct are predators. The more technology evolves, the more deadly humans become. That's the legacy and the future we leave to our children. Makes me doubt whether I should have any at all.

[Moshe..]

This is a very simple & easy music poem written by an american guy. It's all about snow! But it's so musical.



Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.



Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.



This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.


http://www.christmas-time.com/ct-sno...longfellow.htm

[Ophelia]

Adrienne Rich


November 1968





Stripped
you're beginning to float free
up through the smoke of bushfires
and incinerators
the unleafed branches won't hold you
nor the radar aerials
You're what the autumn knew would happen
after the last collapse
of primary colour
once the last absolutes were torn to pieces
you could begin


How you broke open, what sheathed you
until this moment
I know nothing about it
my ignorance of you amazes me
now that I watch you
starting to give yourself
away to the wind

[Moshe..]

This is a very couth poem. I remember this kind of conversation when too young and overimaginative - letting household objects speak to you.


http://gnufans.org/~ilse/lit/plath.htm

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

[Ophelia]

^that is COOL.