Poetry II: poetry for all

[Angalin]

Our first kick at the can is over here. Lots of magic in there.

The Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh does a good job of promoting poetry over social media. It has a poster for this one:

Strawberries

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Edwin Morgan

[Disputatious]

Angalin:

Would you please put in a link back to part one of the thread? Perhaps one could rename the previous part explicitly as "part one"? Now we have to talk TKS, sci-2, kyoshi, et al (and me) into doing inaugural posts to the new part :)

Here is the wiki page for the Scottish Poetry Library:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Poetry_Library

[Disputatious]

Here is a good performance of the Nocturne from the Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings, by Britten, the text for which is the extract from Tennyson's "The Princess" that I posted at the end of part one of this thread:

Philip Langridge, Tenor

http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=ZtTApthsoaA&list=PL88340537CF684D9D

[Teng Ai Hui]

I regularly listen to Greg Proops' podcast. In it, he often reads poetry. I highly enjoyed this one that was featured recently:

GARBAGE MAN by Sheree Fitch

on Thursdays we hear the crunch of the garbage truck

run to watch the garbage man working

underneath the sun

he is young and tanned and wears no shirt

just cut-off jeans

his hair is honey blond

beneath a red scarf turban

a medallion on a chain

dances on his chest

as he builds up his momentum

orang-utan swinging from truck to curb

half-running half-leaping

with a rhythm that suggests

he is keeping time to music

the sun shining down on his shoulders

sweat-slippery biceps bulging

hamstrings hard as hammers

pirouetting pirate

in an innovative free-style

garbage day ballet

we call the garbage man

Baryshnikov

I tell my children

watch him and remember

when

you do the thing you do with joy

you create a thing of beauty

this is the challenge and the task

of being human:

to take all life's garbage

transform it into dance

I bore them with my metaphor

and my children always wary

of my vision from my window

think he's just a man

in a hurry

to get home for a beer

[Disputatious]

Teng Ai Hui: that last stanza of the Fitch poem is a sort of O'Henry ending: I like it: especially that it is the children that pour cold water on the romanticism of the adult :)

[Disputatious]

Now to reverse the instructions to the white rabbit, start at the end and work back to the beginning, so we begin with the lyric from "Henry VIII" and work our way back to "Two Gentleman of Verona".

Orpheus With His Lute:

Orpheus with his lute made trees,

And the mountain tops that freeze,

Bow themselves when he did sing:

To his music plants and flowers

Ever sprung; as sun and showers

There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads, and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art,

Killing care and grief of heart

Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

Wm. Shakespeare.

Ralph Vaughn Williams

He composed two different settings of this. The. following is a performance of the first version (singer and pianist not given):

http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=hVwZCVZ8iks

[Sci-2]

Have to catch up on the posts above, but was suddenly taken by the need to share Stafford! - Apologies!

William Stafford:

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider---
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe---
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

=-=-=

Vocation

This dream the world is having about itself
includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,
a groove in the grass my father showed us all
one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell
something better about to happen.

I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,
and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.
But then my mother called us back to the car:
she was afraid; she always blamed the place,
the time, anything my father planned.

Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,
the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's whole dream
remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,
helpless, both of them part of me:
"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be."

=-=-=

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

[Richard]

Carol Ann Duffy - I've lent out my Selected Poems, but the Scottish Poetry Library has her, notably with this. To me, she feels like a tougher, cannier Plath.

And there's Tom Waits, of course. Non-pareil.

[Sci-2]

Some great stuff guys!

"let the storm wash the plates" is a great ending.

Disputatious, I could access that Langridge link for some reason? Is it taken down?

Some Rumi:

Low in the earth
I lived in realms of ore and stone;
And then I smiled in many flowers;
Them roving with the wild and wandering hours,
O'er earth and air and ocean's zone,
In a new birth,
I dived and flew,
And crept and ran,
And all the secret of my essence drew
Within a form that brought them all to view-
And lo, a Man!
And then my goal.
Beyond the clouds, beyond the sky,
In realms where none may change or die-
In angel form; and then away
Beyond the bounds of night and day,
And Life and Death, unseen or seen,
Where all that is hath ever been,
As One and Whole.

[Disputatious]

sci-2:: the Landgridge link works for me; it's the link to the Vaughn Williams that is a problem for me. Maybe it's just my ISP or maybe the load on You Tube is getting out of hand. I have no way of figuring it out at present. What I get are delays both at the beginning and in the middle of the clip and a noise like a fingernail on a chalkboard. The latter I have encountered before, so maybe that is trouble with my connection to You Tube.

I did not recall knowing about William Stafford, so I looked him up on Wikipedia: now that man was really prolific. Over twenty thousand poems in manuscript and three thousand in print: I'm impressed, even if the ones in print are the only good ones.

I did not realize (but should have) that there are several good settings of "Orpheus with his Lute" including the second one by Vaughn Williams, so I may have to do another posting with the links, once I listen to the entries on You Tube and decide which ones I like. Or maybe I should have started with "The Tempest". Fewer compositions and those more familiar to me.

[Lord Orys]

My girlfriend makes me a poster for an e.e cummings poem every Valentines Day. So there's this one I always have next to my desk:

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while spring is in the world

my blood approves, and kisses-

are better fate than wisdom

I swear by all flowers. Don't cry

the best gesture of my brain is less

,less than your eyelids flutter which says

....we are for each other:then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life is not a paragraph

and death is not a parenthesis

-e.e cummings

[Kyoshi]

I'll start with another Wilfred Owen beauty:

Dulce et De Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[Kyoshi]

<>Some Rumi:

<>

I just recently discovered Rumi. My favourite line: Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there's a field, I'll meet you there.

Thanks for the new thread, Angalin! Great stuff from everyone.

[UtherDoul]

W.H. Auden: THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

She looked over his shoulder

For vines and olive trees,

Marble well-governed cities

And ships upon untamed seas,

But there on the shining metal

His hands had put instead

An artificial wilderness

And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,

Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,

Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

An unintelligible multitude,

A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face

Proved by statistics that some cause was just

In tones as dry and level as the place:

No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;

Column by column in a cloud of dust

They marched away enduring a belief

Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder

For ritual pieties,

White flower-garlanded heifers,

Libation and sacrifice,

But there on the shining metal

Where the altar should have been,

She saw by his flickering forge-light

Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot

Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)

And sentries sweated for the day was hot:

A crowd of ordinary decent folk

Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke

As three pale figures were led forth and bound

To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all

That carries weight and always weighs the same

Lay in the hands of others; they were small

And could not hope for help and no help came:

What their foes like to do was done, their shame

Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride

And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder

For athletes at their games,

Men and women in a dance

Moving their sweet limbs

Quick, quick, to music,

But there on the shining shield

His hands had set no dancing-floor

But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

Loitered about that vacancy; a bird

Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,

Were axioms to him, who’d never heard

Of any world where promises were kept,

Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,

Hephaestos, hobbled away,

Thetis of the shining breasts

Cried out in dismay

At what the god had wrought

To please her son, the strong

Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles

Who would not live long.

[Sci-2]

Lead

by Mary Oliver

Here is a story

to break your heart.

Are you willing?

This winter

the loons came to our harbor

and died, one by one,

of nothing we could see.

A friend told me

of one on the shore

that lifted its head and opened

the elegant beak and cried out

in the long, sweet savoring of its life

which, if you have heard it,

you know is a sacred thing.,

and for which, if you have not heard it,

you had better hurry to where

they still sing.

And, believe me, tell no one

just where that is.

The next morning

this loon, speckled

and iridescent and with a plan

to fly home

to some hidden lake,

was dead on the shore.

I tell you this

to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open and never close again

to the rest of the world.

[Sci-2]

The conclusion to the Comedy:

'Like a geometer, who sets himself to measure, in radii, the exact circumference of the circle, and who cannot find, by thought, the principle he lacks, so was I, at this new sight: I wished to see how the image fitted the circle, and how it was set in place, but my true wings had not been made for this, if it were not that my mind was struck by lightning, from which its will emerged.

Power, here, failed the deep imagining: but already my desire and will were rolled, like a wheel that is turned, equally, by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.'
-Paradiso

=-=-=

The Summer Day (Mary Oliver)

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-the one who the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

[Angalin]

The Summer Day (Mary Oliver)

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-the one who the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Somewhere out there on the net, there's a recording of Oliver reading this which is ... well. Inspirational. (When I think my own work is too prosaic, I remind myself that she doesn't use impenetrable imagery and I feel better.)

[Disputatious]

Odds and ends:

Kyoshi: do you know Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem"? The Wilfred Owen poems you have posted are all used as texts in that work. There are a number of posts to You Tube for the Britten work, some for the complete Requiem and some for the individual sections, so one can listen to the music for the individual poems. Also, is it just Owens or do you like the other War Poets as well?

Sci-2 and Angalin: thanks for the introduction to Mary Oliver. I should know her poetry, but I did not. The wiki page says that she lived for seven years in Edna St. Vincent Millay's house and helped Norma Millay, the poet's sister with Millay's papers:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Oliver

I suspect that the way Oliver writes is influenced by Millay's poetry: it feels a bit like that anyway.

[Disputatious]

Okay, here, from You Tube, is Oliver reading "The Summer Day"

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=16CL6bKVbJQ

[Disputatious]

I will return to the Shakespeare sequence, but I found my copy of Elinor Wylie's collected poems under some other books. Here is a one that I find charming:

Drowned Woman

He shall be my jailer

Who sets me free

From shackles frailer

Then the wind spun sea.

He shall be my teacher

Who cries "Be brave,"

To a weeping creature

In a glass-walled cave

But he shall be my brother

Whose mocking despair

Dives headlong to smother

in the weeds of my hair.

Elinor Wylie