Re: poetry thread

[Guest]

[Constance]

Ed and Moony, thanks for the Keats. Much enjoyed!

But I don't know about the swooning gleaner being an old, beleagurer laborer...

[Guest]

The poem was written at a time of national debate around fair wages for labour as bread prices spiralled; Keats's mentor, Leigh Hunt, had railed against the practice of financial and leasehold consolidation. With this background in mind, the suggestion that Keats was looking at actual fields, rather than writing about an imagined idyll of autumnal perfection, also sheds new light on the labourer in the poem, "sitting careless on a granary floor", or "on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep".

"Suddenly the scenes of idleness in the poem seem to look more interesting," said Marggraf Turley. "It's not a charming scene of a sleeping labourer, but a worn-out labourer who can't afford to buy the corn he is harvesting."

...is this the part you mean, Constance?

[eddie]

But I don't know about the swooning gleaner being an old, beleagurer laborer...

How true this is I don't know, but somewhere down the decades someone once told me that the reason Picasso had a "Blue" period was that he was broke- and blue was the cheapest paint you could buy.

Of course, you could argue that what matters is what he DID with the colour blue...

[Guest]

low tide

I wish we’d stopped somewhere civilised.

We live on a ridge.
West runs a coastline whose ribbon
of sharp shell-grit sand gives way
to black mud and mangroves.
East, rubber vines dot a wasteland of saltpans,
white-streaked and cracked from the sun.

Just south is a town
where some people huddle
in caravan parks, and some camp
in water tanks or cars under trees
on the side of the road.
It looks like it changed hands
in a card game, this mottled collage
of canvas and timber and corrugated tin,
perched as it is on one side of a river.
It looks like it wants to fall in.

Under the sun in seventy-three: large pub,
small school and a rust shuttered store
selling food, pumping petrol,
and handing out mail.
Capriciously open a few hours a day
to shift-workers from the prawn factory,
deckies for the goldrush at sea.

I wish we’d stopped somewhere civilised.

[Guest]

High tide'

She bounced over the dusty
corrugated track
in the rusty old truck
till she came to a stop
in a sand drift.

Goat-heads spiked
her bare feet
as she swung
the door open
and hit the ground running
towards the shore.

High tide High tide

like a mantra
ran through her mind
as she raced to the shore.

[Guest]

I applaud
‘You are raving Artaud, you are mad’

Hear the madmen chant
il momo ― but
as the brows of some begin to knit,
the smiles of others lights their eyes.

I applaud you Artaud,
unfurler of passion, hurling extremes,
your excremental nightmares unleashing
piqued dreams.

In your eyes
stars swirled by Vincent,
in your ears
Vaslav's whispered ‘dance us in’

another madman chanting,
a holy fool commanding,
the fevered vision’s cataclysm for you

and like Nijinky burning
you danced the turning century
scorched by the fever you
fell foul of at four.

What crawled beneath our surface
and made us so afraid of you,
whose fever made us shiver?

Now another century turns,
no Vincent or Nijinsky or Artaud ―
so none to dance us in,
and none to laud.

[Constance]

The poem was written at a time of national debate around fair wages for labour as bread prices spiralled; Keats's mentor, Leigh Hunt, had railed against the practice of financial and leasehold consolidation. With this background in mind, the suggestion that Keats was looking at actual fields, rather than writing about an imagined idyll of autumnal perfection, also sheds new light on the labourer in the poem, "sitting careless on a granary floor", or "on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep".

"Suddenly the scenes of idleness in the poem seem to look more interesting," said Marggraf Turley. "It's not a charming scene of a sleeping labourer, but a worn-out labourer who can't afford to buy the corn he is harvesting."

...is this the part you mean, Constance?

Moony, I just thought that a Marxist interpretation of "To Autumn" seems a little far-fetched.

[eddie]

Today (Thursday 3 May) is Local/Mayoral Election polling day in the UK.

Here's a poem I came across when I was checking out the polling action. It's evidently written by a disillusioned Lib-Dem supporter who is much aggrieved that the leader of his (ex) party Nick Clegg has ushered the Tories under PM David Caneron into power:

RupertBH
3 May 2012 9:57AM


Couldnt think of much to say so here is a little tribute to the Lib Dems who kindly stole my vote in 2010 and never never again.

DE CAMERON

Sexy Tory handmaidens
Shirley, Lynn and Browne
Offering up the NHS
And shining David's crown.

Sexy Tory handmaidens
Danny, Nick and Vince
Bowing at the alter,
of Cameron the Prince.

Sexy Tory handmaidens
Lester, Tim, and Huhne
Feasting on the homeless,
And howling at the moon.

Sexy Tory handmaidens
Campbell, Bruce, and Moore
singing halleluilia,
and stamping on the poor

Ex Tory handmaidens
Lost in 015
Taken us to places
We wished we'd never been.

[Guest]

On
by Bob Kaufman

On yardbird corners of embryonic hopes, drowned in a heroin tear.
On yardbird corners of parkerflights to sound filled pockets in space.
On neuro-corners of striped brains & desperate electro-surgeons.
On alcohol corners of pointless discussion & historical hangovers.
On television corners of cornflakes & rockwells impotent America.
On university corners of tailored intellect & greek letter openers.
On military corners of megathon deaths & universal anesthesia.
On religious corners of theological limericks and
On radio corners of century-long records & static events.
On advertising corners of filter-tipped ice-cream & instant instants
On teen-age corners of comic book seduction and corrupted guitars,
On political corners of wamted candidates & ritual lies.
On motion picture corners of lassie & other symbols.
On intellectual corners of conversational therapy & analyzed fear.
On newspaper corners of sexy headlines & scholarly comics.
On love divided corners of die now pay later mortuaries.
On philosophical corners of semantic desperadoes & idea-mongers.
On middle class corners of private school puberty & anatomical revolts
On ultra-real corners of love on abandoned roller-coasters
On lonely poet corners of low lying leaves & moist prophet eyes.

[Guest]

For Bartleby The Scrivener
by Billy Collins

"Every time we get a big gale around here
some people just refuse to batten down."

we estimate that

ice skating into a sixty
mile an hour wind, fully exerting
the legs and swinging arms

you will be pushed backward
an inch every twenty minutes.

in a few days, depending on
the size of the lake,
the backs of your skates
will touch land.

you will then fall on your ass
and be blown into the forest.

if you gather enough speed
by flapping your arms
and keeping your skates pointed

you will catch up to other
flying people who refused to batten down.
you will exchange knowing waves
as you ride the great wind north.

[Guest]

Forgetfulness
by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

[blue moon]

The Stolen Child
by W. B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

[blue moon]

A Dream Within A Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[blue moon]

Great lyrics so I tracked them down, then posted Gary Wright singing Dreamweaver, and Paul Simon singing The Only Child. Couldn't find Townshend singing Body Language so was about to post another of his songs.
The computer dropped out for 2 attempts at posting so have given up that mission.

[blue moon]

Nina Corwin

SPEAKING OF TONGUES

i.
A man with Alzheimer’s says he left
his pants on in the other room. He means
the lights. They need to be turned off.
His son dissects the message
and after cleaning the old man up,
they walk together to the day care center.

ii.
The finely vintaged connoisseur swirls
his Cabernet in a crystal glass. Sips carefully,
distributing so every tastebud
gets a say, then spits out
adjectives like impudent, toasty and
mature despite its youth.

iii.
Consider the downstate pharmacist
who parses Pidgin English
when he travels overseas. Enunciating
loudly to make himself understood.
Back home he speaks in tongues
before a god with no ears.

iv.
The word-muscle is double
jointed. Ties itself in hitch knots, does back
flips on balance beams,
then strays across the median
into oncoming traffic. Syllables like limbs
with compound fractures.

v.
All afternoon, the pair of us
lick envelopes for hungry children
in Sudan. Later, we survey
the versatility of tongues:
our palates piqued with lemon sorbet
and the salt of each other’s skin.

–from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
Tribute to Mental Health Professionals

[blue moon]

Alone And Drinking Under The Moon
by Li Po

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

[blue moon]

The Logical Conclusion
by Ezra Pound

When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall 'baaa' on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
When there shall be nothing to research
But the notes of annoted notes,
And Baalam's ass shall inquire
The price of imported oats;

Then no one shall tell him the answer
For each shall know the one fact
That lies in the special ass-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the ass shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look.

[senorita]

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

John Clare 1844/45

[blue moon]

...thanks for posting those beautiful poems user and eggo.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Selected verses.

8
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

12
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

13
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of the distant Drum!

24
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and - sans End!

37
For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay;
And with it's all-obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd- "Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

56
For "Is" and "Is-Not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up-and-Down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but - Wine.

Omar Khayyam (1048-1122),
translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883). Fifth Edition.

[blue moon]

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.

by Pablo Neruda.

[blue moon]

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 27

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809–1892 Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
.

[blue moon]

by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

[blue moon]

Marriage: by Gregory Corso

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-
When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-
But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-
Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon
No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-
O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!
Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

Gregory Corso

[this and that]

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