Favorite Poems/Poets

[Angalin]

"Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside

They’re drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide

I live in another world where life and death are memorized

Where the earth is strung with lovers’ pearls and all I see are dark eyes

Ha! That one's been stuck in my head the last few months. :)

[Sci-2]

Ha! That one's been stuck in my head the last few months. :)

It's probably my favorite Dylan song, partially due to all the covers and the duets with Patti Smith.

[cseresz.reborn]

"September 29, 2012 marks the second annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots organization that brings poets, artists and musicians (new this year) together to call for environmental, social, and political change, within the framework of peace and sustainability. The local focus is key to this global event as communities around the world raise their voices through concerts, readings, workshops, flash mobs and demonstrations that speak to the heart of their specific area of concerns, such as homelessness, ecocide, racism and censorship."

http://petaluma.patc...change-818a11fc

There are nearly 700 events planned worldwide!

[cseresz.reborn]

Bertolt Brecht: The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June

The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

[cseresz.reborn]

Omar Khayyám:

I sent my soul into the invisible,

Some letter of that after life to spell.

And by and by my soul returned to me

And answered, I myself am heaven and hell.

[Aerys Blackfyre]

William Blake!

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see not thro' the eye,

Which was born in a night to perish in a night,

When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,

To those poor souls who dwell in night;

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

[cseresz.reborn]

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Sylvia Plath: Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.

I want to fill it with color and ducks,

The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --

April snowdrop, Indian pipe,

Little

Stalk without wrinkle,

Pool in which images

Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous

Wringing of hands, this dark

Ceiling without a star.

Pablo Neruda: Your Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,

take air away, but

do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,

the lance flower that you pluck,

the water that suddenly

bursts forth in joy,

the sudden wave

of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back

with eyes tired

at times from having seen

the unchanging earth,

but when your laughter enters

it rises to the sky seeking me

and it opens for me all

the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest

hour your laughter

opens, and if suddenly

you see my blood staining

the stones of the street,

laugh, because your laughter

will be for my hands

like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,

your laughter must raise

its foamy cascade,

and in the spring, love,

I want your laughter like

the flower I was waiting for,

the blue flower, the rose

of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,

at the day, at the moon,

laugh at the twisted

streets of the island,

laugh at this clumsy

boy who loves you,

but when I open

my eyes and close them,

when my steps go,

when my steps return,

deny me bread, air,

light, spring,

but never your laughter

for I would die.

[Sci-2]

Understand, I'll slip quietly

away from the noisy crowd

when I see the pale

stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.

I'll pursue solitary pathways

through the pale twilit meadows,

with only this one dream:

You come too.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[cseresz.reborn]

OFF:

Spoiler

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Declines Poetry Prize, Citing Right-wing Hungarian Government Funds

http://ndbooks.com/b...es-poetry-prize

Below is the official press release that we sent out earlier this morning, addressing Lawerence Ferlinghetti's decision to decline an international poetry prize (and 50,000 Euros) from the Hungarian PEN Club because of the right-wing Hungarian governm

Dear Geza Szocs,

After careful research into the Pannonius Prize and its sponsors, including the present Hungarian government, I have come to the following conclusions: Since the Prize is partially funded by the present Hungarian government, and since the policies of this right-wing regime tend toward authoritarian rule and the consequent curtailing of freedom of exp

ression and civil liberties, I find it impossible for me to accept the Prize in the United States. Thus I must refuse the Prize in its present terms.

However, assuming the total devotion of the Hungarian PEN Club and yourself to freedom of speech and social justice, I propose that the Prize money be used to set up a fund to be administered by the Hungarian PEN Club, said fund to be devoted solely to the publication of Hungarian authors whose writings support total freedom of speech, civil rights, and social justice. These are the only terms under which I can accept the Pannonius Prize.

In defense of individual freedom and democratic institutions, I am faithfully yours,

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

At that point Mr. Szocs offered to exclude the Hungarian government’s contribution to the prize money and to begin negotiations surrounding the proposed fund, but Ferlinghetti is steadfast in his views, saying:

I hereby refuse the Prize in all its forms. There is no possibility of my accepting the prize in a ceremony in the United States or elsewhere. I am sorry it has come to this, and I am grateful to those in Hungary who may have had the purest motives in offering me the Prize.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[Ser Jon Snow]

I've always liked this short and simple poem by Theodore Roethke called "My Papa's Waltz"

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

[cseresz.reborn]

Tandori Dezso: Camille Pissarro: Rue d’Amsterdam – 1897

Rue d'Amsterdam is awash with rain.

Meanwhile, as if the sun shone bright,

the ankle-deep water is bathed in light.

Through the house-walls' multi-colored stains

a radiance, hidden by plaster, penetrates.

Now the rain washes away,

pugs the surface into a gray

clay-like plasticine state.

I'd love to live there in eternal rain

if I could only believe the paintings, Mr. C.

I'd be most happy to wave if only

an open yellow-red cabriolet

drove by-though I'd end up that much wetter

the longer I stayed there waving in

Rue d'Amsterdam, bathing in

the cool inner stream of light-filled water.

If I knew that I really had a cache

of radiancé, only hidden by

some substance from whose surface I

could on the spot be freed by a splash

of pouring rain-if that's what it took,

I'd step out into the rain forthwith

as long as it rained on me just like this.

But it will stop. I close the book.

(pic:http://www.artsunlig...-amsterdam.html)

[Screaming Turkey Ultimate]

T. S. Eliot:

For thine is

Life is

For thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper

Best ending to a poem ever. So powerful.

I really like Percy Shelley as well:

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,

Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings

Give various response to each varying blast,

To whose frail frame no second motion brings

One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;

We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,

The path of its departure still is free:

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but Mutability.

[Screaming Turkey Ultimate]

William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming

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: a waste of desert sand;

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

Wind 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?

History as a gyre is interesting to me. We move in cycles while progressing. I had a similar theory of history in high school but couldn't picture it so eloquently. However, Yeats thought the gyre would contract back into itself. It just seems to be getting wider and wider.

[Sci-2]

Illuminated woman am I, says

led by a yellow dog across rivers and deserts

on a dry road walking, says in the day of nine dogs,

says going down to the place of weeping

This thing is big.

Woman of first star, am I woman of the star of day mysterious woman says

And Tlazolteotl says,

'I have made you strong. and wise. and incorruptible.'

'I have shown you the worst there is, and made you free.'

You who are mystery and redemption.

You who teach witchcraft and forgive all who fall.

I will crawl through shit.

I will take all the filth of the world

And turn it into the purest gold.

I will rise from darkness,

shining like the morning star.

Illuminated woman am I, says."

--The Invisibles

[Sci-2]

eta: formatting, also thanks to Larry for the rec!

"Bastard's Song" by Cynthia Huntington

Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. 6 " 'Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!"

-Ezekiel 13, 3-6

My mother was a Hittite and my father an Amorite.

My foster uncle was an albatross

and his brother-in-law ran a gambling join in Altoona.

My cousins were stockbrokers in Scottsdale before the crash.

I was sold to strangers for a bag of wheat

and wandered the roads and the mountain passes

like a dark wind, touching and picking up

whatever came into my hands. I will stay alone many days

until I meet up once more with the men I knew in my youth:

men from Syracuse, men from Toledo,

men from Odessa and Scranton and New Alexandria,

and all those men from Assyria. They will assail me

and pinch my nipples, and pull up my skirt,

and make pure with suffering.

My mother was a prophet and a priestess of suffering.

She walked the hospital corridors in her white robe

wringing the bones of her hands. My half-sister was a mudfish,

whispering warnings in the reeds of the marsh.

My mother was a whore, a midget, a human sacrifice,

and a candle guttering at the top of a stair. My father

came from another world that called him back,

and swallowed him like Saturn, like time,

like a world without oxygen, or a slow disease.

He was imprisoned in a tree by a sorceress

one hundred years; he rode with an army on black horses

that pounded the earth and raised dust in the mouths of settlers,

and when he died his papers were taken away and burned.

He then was drowned at sea.

My grandmother lived to ninety-seven years

through cunning and fornication,

but never came to visit or to claim me.

I was found beneath a tree by a herd of wildebeests

who fed me on salt water and tears of the dead.

I endured innumerable blows inflicted by hypocrites.

I lay cast out on the ground. No one

pitied me or looked on me with kindness.

A woman bore me and consented to have me killed.

I believe I have a human soul.

My name is Sorrow. I fell into the earth like a seed

and grew like the grass of the fields

and I am alive today by no one's grace or will.

[King Tyrion I]

William Butler Yeats: The Stolen Child

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.

For those interested in a musical rendering, I'd like to recommend the song by the same title sung by Loreena McKennitt.

[Zap]

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann

[Datepalm]

BYZANTIUM, YB Yeats

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

All that man is,

All mere complexities,

The fury and the mire of human veins.

[cseresz.reborn]

Come slowly, Eden

Lips unused to thee.

Bashful, sip thy jasmines,

As the fainting bee,

Reaching late his flower,

Round her chamber hums,

Counts his nectars -alights,

And is lost in balms!

E. D.

[andrew_]

Edgar Allen Poe- The Raven