Topic 3 of 53: What poetry I am reading right now
Wed, Nov 27, 1996 (08:39) |
Paul Terry Walhus (terry)
What poetry are you reading right now. Comment.
24 responses total.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 1 of 24: Grace (Grace) * Thu, Jan 30, 1997 (12:54) * 27 lines
Cheryl (of 'Ooooh Baby,Ooooh Baby' fame in the Austen conference), you expressed an interest in the poems of Robert Herrick so I will leave this one as a little gift. You must, dear friend, let me know if it rates one or more 'oooh babys'!!
The Vine
I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which, crawling one and every way,
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought, her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise:
Her belley, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced
About her head I writhing hung
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
(All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke,
And found (ah me!)this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 2 of 24: Cheryl Sneed (Cheryl) * Fri, Jan 31, 1997 (03:15) * 1 lines
LOL Grace! Boy those Renaissance poets were a lusty lot! I rate this one three Ooh baby's! ;-)
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 3 of 24: aubrey (aubrey) * Fri, Apr 18, 1997 (09:46) * 3 lines
I have a really sad computer so I can't split the lines where they should; I'll just slash away. BETWEEN ANGELS Between angels, on this earth/absurdly between angels, I/try to navigate//in the bluesy middle ground/of desire and withdrawal,/in the industrial air,/among the bittersweet//efforts of people to connect,/make sense, endure./The angels out there,/what are they?//Old helpers, half-believed,/or dazzling better selves,/imagined./that I turn away from/as if I preferred/all the ordinary, dispirit
ng/tasks at hand?//I shop in the cold/neon aisles/thinking of pleasure,/I kiss my paycheck//a mournful kiss goodbye/thinking of pleasure,/in the evening replenish//my drink, make a choice/to read or love or watch,/and increasingly I watch./I do not/ mind living//like this. I cannot bear/living like this./Oh, everything's true/at different times//in the capacious day,/just as I don't forget/and always forget//half the people in the world/are dispossesd./Here chestnut oaks/and tenements//make their unequal
claims./Someone thinks of betrayal./A child spills her milk./I'm on my knees cleaning it up-//sponge, squeeze, I change nothing,/just move it around./The inconsequential floor /is beginning to shine.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 4 of 24: ouch! (aubrey) * Fri, Apr 18, 1997 (09:48) * 1 lines
That was a lot longer than it looks on my page! It's by Stephen Dunn. I know angels have been done to death (!) but I just connect with the old helpers half-believed or dazzling better selves imagined---see Wings of Desire. I'll pick shorter poems and a better computer in future.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 5 of 24: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sat, Apr 19, 1997 (01:56) * 1 lines
Cool.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 6 of 24: hmmmm (aubrey) * Mon, Apr 21, 1997 (14:31) * 1 lines
You know, terry, you are an enigmatic little fellow...one never knows whether cool refers to the fine if stilted poetry splashed about, or the idea of picking shorter poems. Keep up the fine obfuscation!
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 7 of 24: heh heh heh (aubrey) * Mon, Apr 21, 1997 (14:31) * 1 lines
And your response MUST be: "fine"
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 8 of 24: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Apr 23, 1997 (00:30) * 1 lines
OK. Fine.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 9 of 24: carmen hermosillo (hummie) * Fri, Jun 20, 1997 (17:22) * 6 lines
louise gluck
federico garcia lorca
rafael jimenez
adolfo becquer
robert desnos
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 10 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Wed, Jan 28, 1998 (16:52) * 21 lines
reading tennyson today (and wordsworth last night... i MUST be
getting musty, 'cause i couldn't stand these guys not so very
long ago)...
anyway, this is tennyson's "crossing the bar", which i find
unutterably beautiful (so i shant, uh, utter more about it):
Sunset and evening star,
and one clear call for me.
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
when I put out to sea,
but such tide as moving seems asleep,
too full for sound and foam,
when that which drew from out the boundless deep
turns home again.
Twilight and evening bell,
and after that the dark.
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
when I embark;
for though from out our bourne of Time and Place
the tide may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
when I have crossed the bar.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 11 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:34) * 10 lines
wordsworth...
"a slumber did my spirit seal;
i had no human fears:
she seemed a thing that could not feel
the touch of earthly years.
no motion has she now, no force;
she neither hears nor sees;
wrapped 'round in earth's diurnal course,
with rocks, and stones, and trees..."
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 12 of 24: Wolf (Wolf) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:36) * 1 lines
speaking of reading poetry-where did you post that bit yesterday?
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 13 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:39) * 2 lines
what?
(the tennyson?)
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 14 of 24: Wolf (Wolf) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:40) * 1 lines
yes, yes....where did you put it?
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 15 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:43) * 2 lines
uhhhh... yer sitting on it
(here...resp.#10, i think...)
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 16 of 24: Wolf (Wolf) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:47) * 1 lines
*blush*
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 17 of 24: Wolf (Wolf) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:48) * 1 lines
ahh, yes.
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 18 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Thu, Jan 29, 1998 (22:52) * 1 lines
yup
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 19 of 24: Marcia (MarciaH) * Tue, Feb 27, 2001 (14:51) * 24 lines
Iwo Jima Anniversary is just past but I was not aware of this till now. To honor all who had made the ultimate sacrifice:
Soldier, Ask Not
by Gordon R. Dickson (1923 ), published 1965
Soldier, ask not - now, or ever,
Where to war your banners go.
Anarch's legions all surround us.
Strike - and do not count the blow!
Glory, honor, praise and profit,
Are but toys of tinsel worth.
Render up your work, unasking,
Leave the human clay to earth.
Blood and sorrow, pain unending,
Are the portion of us all.
Grasp the naked sword, opposing,
Gladly in the battle fall.
So shall we, anointed soldiers,
Stand at last before the Throne,
Baptized in our wounds, red-flowing,
Sealed unto our Lord - alone!
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 20 of 24: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Sun, Jan 5, 2003 (09:08) * 76 lines
Topic 3 of 51: 'What poetry I am reading right now'
Resp 20 of 20: Mary Murphy (Brown32) Fri, Jan 3, 2003 (19:30) 70 lines
Poem: "Any prince to any princess," by Adrian Henri from The Loveless
Motel (Jonathan Cape).
August is coming
and the goose, I'm afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.
I can't imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.
I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.
The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.
I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn't getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see
the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It's been three weeks now, and not even
a word.
Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,
let down your hair,
reconsider.
This poem is from The Writer's Almanac, a daily program of poetry and
history hosted by Garrison Keillor
http://almanac.mpr.org/
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 21 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Sun, Dec 6, 2009 (08:07) * 10 lines
damn...
weird reading stuff that's been up for the past 12 years...inside this cavernous empty room...
haven't read any poetry, actually, in a little while...except for paula jane's, and some of those she brings home from her workshop (she's in graduate school at michigan now)...we both miss austin really really really bad
(really)...she's been after me to read a few books...c.d.wright and alice fulton...this raymond something-or-other-guy who teaches here at michigan... i resolve that i shall read 3 books of poetry this week...yep...that is going to happen...this week...
haven't been able to write, either, for quite a few weeks... i was in a place where i was writing frequently, couple of finished poems a week, pretty happy with the direction... when the anarchy happened, i was working on 3 poems...and i'm still working on the same 3 poems...a year later...its like these words are hovering there in my brain...shifting around, constantly, chaotically, obscuring my view of what comes next...no, that's false, i know, it doesn't really matter what comes "next"--there is no "next"--"next" is illusionary, or it is psychically a red herring, a false dichotomy (that's what it is, yeah)...
wallace stevens...i need to read wallace stevens...he was a horrible old fart, and a cranky old snob who treated his wife abominably and yelled at her in front of the help and he was an inveterate capitalist to boot...and he created some of the most sublime poetry i have ever read...can help me reboot...i think...chase the chaos...away...yes, wallace stevens...death's ironic scraping...thin blood pulsing... pizzicati of hosanna...and the green going of evening...austin!!!...
yes yes...i must use that...stevens and austin...
when i come back... i'll be 3 books smarter, i promise...and i will be filled with wallace stevens...
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 22 of 24: paulajane (paulajane) * Wed, Dec 9, 2009 (12:45) * 9 lines
aw...
my baby loves graveyards. austin ain't here, it's over there (over there, over there). it is quite peaceful in here, tho, i can see why you came.
still, there are many ways to haunt home that isn't so lonesome as this... you want i should find you a blog? a blog about home? with pics to deepen the missing, help you write? you ought do something with the one i started for you... post notes, drafts, thoughts. it'll help, i promise. once you get into it, it's good to have all your thinking written down. it sharpens the process, i think, or anyway, it makes it easier to get there--that place you have trouble getting to.
i so wish you would read who i'm reading, i want so much to talk to you about them. also--mr. something-or-other guy, i know you'll like those books baby. you'll get around to remembering his name one day, right?
i don't know if reading stevens again won't just be spinning wheels. maybe you're stuck cos your reading's stuck. just finished this henri cole, i think you'd like it...
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 23 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Wed, Dec 9, 2009 (13:10) * 6 lines
"though graveidigger's toil is long
sharp his spade, his muscles strong
he but thrusts his buried me
back, in the human mind again."
(not really a graveyard...just an empty room, inside the collective memory)...
Topic 3 of 53 [poetry]: What poetry I am reading right now
Response 24 of 24: nick a'hannay (pmnh) * Sun, Dec 13, 2009 (08:17) * 140 lines
Sunday Morning
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkness among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
V
She says, ``But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.''
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
(Wallace Stevens)
(not exactly kris kristofferson, but it'll do)...
poetry conference 
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