A Place of Poems

[peter]

Av - can't find the thread you refer to. Can you indicate where I should go [a search of this phrase didn't turn it up.]

[ussusimiel]

Maybe it's this one.

The opposite is funny

u.

[Avatar]

Hahaha, I was actually confusing the one in U's first link with a topic in the writers forum, "Awesome hooks: Opening lines that we love..." which I can't link to since it's a private forum.

It's on page 2 in that forum if you have access. If not, we can add you if you want.

--A

[peter]

Nice threads [?] - It's a shame the 'opposit' one didn't get more response because it had good potential. Might try to come up with something to 'bump' it again.

Av, that would be good; I'd like to have a peek around the writers forum just as a voyeur rather than as a contributor if thats ok.

[Avatar]

Hmmm...I don't care. But I think the rule is you have to actually write something...

--A

[peter]

No worries - it would be pushing it a bit far to describe anything I do as actual writing. Like Oscar Wilde, my talent I put into my job but my genius I put into my life!

[Avatar]

Ah, you might be surprised.

Anyway, all you have to do is say you're going to write something... wink wink.

--A

[peter]

Well I *do* sort of write daily on the Watch, but I guess that doesn't count [though I fully expect to have my Watch contributions gathered together one day, "The Collective Thoughts of Peter the Unfettered"...or some such thing.] But no Av - I'll stick to the rules for once. [But thanks anyway ].

[TheFallen]

I've arrived late to this thread, but I have to say there's some damn good stuff quoted herein.

So, kudos to Av for his Byron, Moore, Masefield, Macaulay, Browning, Coleridge and Shelley... all excellent choices (frankly, I can take or leave Eliot). And kudos to u. for bringing WB into play too... I think Yeats edges it as my all-time favourite poet and certainly my favourite 20th/21st century one.

I compulsively have to add a piece of Yeats here:

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate,
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

And for contrast/comparison, this not particularly well-known sonnet written by a 19 year old WW2 American pilot flying with the RAF shortly before he was killed. It's always struck me as an evocative mix of youthful exuberance and poignancy:

High Flight - An Airman's Ecstasy

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

And finally, IMO, Shelley's best, again in sonnet form:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[lucimay]

Hahaha, I was actually confusing the one in U's first link with a topic in the writers forum, "Awesome hooks: Opening lines that we love..." which I can't link to since it's a private forum.

It's on page 2 in that forum if you have access. If not, we can add you if you want.

--A

yeah throw me a pm if you need an invite to the writers forum.

[Avatar]

Ah, I love all the ones you quoted there. And "High flight" is known by everybody who flies or wants to.

--A

[peter]

The Fallen; If you like this particular poem can I reccomend trying to get hold of a cd called 'Now and In Time To Be'. It's a celebration of Yeats work set [in some cases] to music or in this case read by perfectly by Shane McGowan in his broad Irish drawl. . The cd features other Yeats classics such as 'Stolen Child' [sung absolutely beautifully by The Waterboys] and the actor Richard Harris reading the 'tread softly for you tread on my dreams' poem. Here's a taste for you:-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-oJKYIinQ

[sgt.null]

The voice you hear when you read silently

by Thomas Lux

is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head; it is *spoken*,
a voice is *saying* it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her 'voice' but the sound
of that voice is the sound of *your* voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word 'barn'
that the writer wrote
but the 'barn' you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally- some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled *chirr* of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows...
And 'barn' is only a noun- no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.

www.poemhunter.com/thomas-lux/

[Orlion]

Fantastic poem there, Sarge! It will give me something else to look for.

Let's see, today I'll share a couple of poems, one old and British the other new and American:

Helas!
By Oscar Wilde

To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance-
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?



Myth
By: Natasha Trethewey

I was asleep while you were dying.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,

the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking

you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.

*

Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.

But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in- still, trying-

I make between my slumber and my waking.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying.

[Avatar]

I like that second one...the words anyway...can't decide if I like the backwards trick...maybe more if it worked better backwards.

--A

[Orlion]

For obvious reasons, here's a poem by Billy Collins entitled "The Names" for today.

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone

Or cried out behind a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled into the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names in the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

[michaelm]

I first read this not long after my brother died, and I can barely ever read it without tearing up.

I know what it is like to lose a brother and a parent, but I simply cannot imagine what it is like to lose a child

On my First Son
BY BEN JONSON

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

[Lazy Luke]

poems from the random search engine

Carlo C Gomez
Happy Chemtrails


In theory, the sky is falling,

Showering particles of merry madness and homespun delirium,

As we sleep in the formerly sealed
containers that kept us fresh,

But now leave us active:

Radioactive.

Actually though, this is more a soulless, weather modified masquerade,

Where we dance at funerals, drink to cloud seeding,

And play 'Guess Who?' retributions,

While locked in the closet with flight attendants left for kindling...




Rupert Pip
gore

Break my bones;
cut my throat.
Pull me open,
learn the ropes.

Breath me in;
taste the fear.
Shank my skin;
stand and cheer.

Kick my head;
let me bleed.
Unbolt my veins;
enjoy the read.

Gouge my eyes;
punch my face.
Wrap me up
in your embrace.




Innocent
Adieu

In my heart hides a small leaking hole
Which is used to control and cajole
I’m lulled into believing in hope
Feeling light, whispers, like a Kaleidoscope
Leaving me in doubt

Adieu adieu adieu