Robin Of House Hill Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angalin Posted March 29, 2012 Share Posted March 29, 2012 In memory of Adrienne Rich, who died yesterday.XIII Dedicationsby Adrienne Richfrom "An Atlas of the Difficult World"I know you are reading this poemlate, before leaving your officeof the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening windowin the lassitude of a building faded to quietlong after rush hour.I know you are reading this poemstanding up in a bookstore far from the oceanon a grey day of early spring, faint flakes drivenacross the plains' enormous spaces around you.I know you are reading this poemin a room where too much has happened for you to bearwhere the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bedand the open valise speaks of flightbut you cannot leave yet.I know you are reading this poemas the underground train loses momentumand before running up the stairstoward a new kind of loveyour life has never allowed.I know you are reading this poem by the lightof the television screen where soundless images jerk and slidewhile you wait for the newscast from the intifada.I know you are reading this poem in a waiting roomof eyes met and unmeeting,of identity with strangers.I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent lightin the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,count themselves out, at too early an age.I know you are reading this poem through your failing sight,the thick lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaningyet you read onbecause even the alphabet is precious.I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stovewarming milk, a crying child on your shoulder,a book in your handbecause life is short and you too are thirsty.I know you are reading this poem which is not in your languageguessing at some words while others keep you readingand I want to know which words they are.I know you are reading this poem listening for something,torn between bitterness and hopeturning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing elseleft to readthere where you have landedstripped as you are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomBombadil Posted March 29, 2012 Share Posted March 29, 2012 J.R.R. Tolkien Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 "I am here, the mermaid whose dark hairstreams black, the merman in his armored bodyWe circle silently about the wreckwe dive into the hold. ...We are, I am, you areby cowardice or couragethe one who find our wayback to the scenecarrying a knife, a cameraa book of mythsin whichour names do not appear."-Adrienne RichThanks to Angalin for showcasing this beautiful woman. In case you are as ignorant as I am, here is an article on the work and life of Adrienne Rich.ETA: ....Ms. Rich was far too seasoned a campaigner to think that verse alone could change entrenched social institutions. “Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy,” she said in an acceptance speech to the National Book Foundation in 2006, on receiving its medal for distinguished contribution to American letters. “Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard.”But at the same time, as she made resoundingly clear in interviews, in public lectures and in her work, Ms. Rich saw poetry as a keen-edged beacon by which women’s lives — and women’s consciousness — could be illuminated.She was never supposed to have turned out as she did.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Hey, interesting thread.I am NO kind of poetry expert, but here is the poem that I have thought about the most over the years:Root Cellar -- Theodore RoethkeNothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,Shoots dangled and drooped,Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.And what a congress of stinks!Roots ripe as old bait,Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.Nothing would give up life:Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Thanks to Larry & Weird Fiction Review for putting me onto this guy:Villa of the Mysterieswhat I could feel on my eyesblank spatulate tips of stonecold against the heaviness of the lidshands caked with coal slivers and dustand no ointment to salve the horrorof the haunting ground belowI entered by way of the lowest gallerywas interred in the well of the underlingsstretched out on tufts the earth grows for hairshading its worms with a bone gardenthe darkness licking at my tonguethe ebb of the heart’s cage murmuringblue mountains beyond the crumbling colonnadecalm sea and not a single sail to shatterthe monotony of the curtain in the webmy face behind a thousand fading mirrorsfrom the first to the last unrecognizableopen the books and the pages will fall awaythe woman held a gram of stardustin her palm the glitter of forgotten eyesmore moist and naked than her fleshgreen against the hedge she was lyingon her belly arched her haunches and smiledas though no one were there to seenone but she to peruse these antiquitiescenotaphs with turning heads the glancesof sepulchral monuments embedded inthe lawns the tiles the terraced flagstoneswhere lizards cooled themselves beneath willowsand dreamed the dream of the dragon’s doomdream of the monster Blindnessthat creeps through the pillared hallsstops for the echo of its breath off the wallsto tell the distance it has yet to crossto find the bleeding core of the Villaand wipe death’s glaze from its eyelidsTiresias in rags sifting the volcanic ashfor buried centaurs found a hooftugged at the desiccated fetlocktill a flank emerged and the facecame up black its eyes the sightless rubieshe could touch but never see the blindness ofthe rest of the unhealed prophets layfour to a room with the unforgiventhe olympians and the dead messiahschained to their bedposts clothedas the tree is in high summercrowned like the goat-footed godover cavernous noises their screamscarried far into the woodsunlocked the oblong doors to the treesthe upright tombs whose rusted hinges sighedto find a voice through the red dusta lying-place under the silence of the moonthis forest of women their bodieshalf transformed like mermaidsmade of flesh and tree barkwarms at the pale loins wherethe brown moss merges with the trunkand the sap flows into the rootstheir life’s blood meanders below groundbeneath the silt and through the ocher weedsto drench the Villa’s ancient voices in the nightand there the toothless mouth will yawnat the blade’s edge of sleep the eyeswill roll before they open on the blacknessbard in the boreal night bearded and strangea glass moon hangs above your stubbled headflakes of brittle snow shuddered by windcry farewell to the land of the sunthat spirals over the eucalyptus treefarewell to swamps and their slithering venomsthis is not mine but the dream of anotherwho has never seen my face or heard my voicebut whom the womb separated before birthwhen I too was breathing water and mistgilled for an eternity in the grotto where no soundcould reach him untranslated by these liquid depthsEric Basso, May 1988ETA: line breaks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 13, 2012 Share Posted April 13, 2012 HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet,Tread softly because you tread on my dreamsW.B. Yeats Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 14, 2012 Share Posted April 14, 2012 Howl:Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I amI'm with you in Rockland where you must feel strangeI'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my motherI'm with you in Rockland where you've murdered your twelve secretariesI'm with you in Rockland where you laugh at this invisible humourI'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriterI'm with you in Rockland where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radioI'm with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the sensesI'm with you in Rockland where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of UticaI'm with you in Rockland where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the BronxI'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of actual pingpong of the abyssI'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouseI'm with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the voidI'm with you in Rockland where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national GolgothaI'm with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tombI'm with you in Rockland where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the InternationaleI'm with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleepI'm with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're freeI'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 The true poemthough spoken inhuman tongueis pronouncedwith the lispof a fox growlingover a dead rabbit.The true poem,even when typedon a computer,is inscribedin the rabbit’s bloodby a quillfrom a crow’s wing.Its letters are readnot by the eyesbut by the endsof the nerves,as Braille is readby fingertips.The Ladyand Her lovertrail through the poem,their footprintsfading in drying dew.They passthe crossroadsunder the beamof the Hanging Tree.The white doewatches from hedgesof wild roses.The true poemmay seem slightbut the must ofwild mushroomsand leaf moldworm through the lines.As if Grandmother Spidercrawled over his nape,the reader shivers.Serena Fusek, who reads this poem here has her poem read here:http://www.mythicdel...dex.htm#feature(Her soundfile follows Valente's poem on mecha driving girls, which is also awesome) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZombieWife Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 I'm also a big fan of Yeats. The Second Coming is pretty damn remarkable.I love me some T.S. Eliot as well. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one of my favorite poems to this day. I've also been reading a lot of Billy Collins. Whenever my prose starts turning to mush, I read some poetry.Introduction to PoetryBilly CollinsI ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slideor press an ear against its hive.I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore.But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Ha! I love that one, thanks for posting it. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Rain and Sound by Sergio OrtizListen to me as one listens to the rain:we are distracted once again. Nightapproaches with its dense cloak of fear,an assault for which there is no cure.It is never winter here,yet the hibiscus have been censoredlike men trying to show their affectionfor each other. Air, water, and flower —there is no weight in these words.Night has the figurations of mist.Listen to me as one listens to the rain:(Censor my desire for writing you poems.)Not attentive, not distracted, only as ifI were the rain. Hear me out untilthe asphalt is wet. You are youin night steam. You enter my eyesas your steam crosses the street.We are both steam. Steam of anothercensored flower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teng Ai Hui Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 About 7 or 8 years ago, I was a "para-professional" at a high school in the U.S. My job was to aide a boy in the junior class who had Muscular Dystrophy. He showed me several poems that he had written. The poem below was his favorite, and he asked me to read it for him during the English department's Poetry Day.“I AM”by William Thorne Jr.I am a boy in a wheelchair that writes poetryI wonder if I will ever walk on my own two feet.I heard life before I took a breathI see life flash before my eyes.I want the world to be as oneI am a boy in a wheelchair that writes poetry.I pretend to walk across the floorI feel God’s hand taking mine.I touch heaven up aboveI worry that I might not get to walk.I cry when someone dear to me passes away.I am a boy in a wheelchair that writes poetry.I understand that Muscular Dystrophy is toughI say that it will be all right.I dream that there will be a cure.I try to make the best out of my life.I hope that time will be on my sideI am a boy in a wheelchair that writes poetry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ylva Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 Langston Hughes - No Regrets“Out of love,No regrets--Though the goodnessBe wasted forever.Out of love,No regrets--Though the returnBe never.”Matthew Arnold - Dover BeachThe sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in.Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Ægean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.Alfred Lord Tennyson - Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.The firefly wakens; waken thou with me. Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,And all thy heart lies open unto me. Now slides the silent meteor on, and leavesA shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,And slips into the bosom of the lake.So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slipInto my bosom and be lost in me.Edna St. Vincent Millay - I, Being Born a WomanI, being born a woman and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo bear your body's weight upon my breast:So subtly is the fume of life designed,To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,And leave me once again undone, possessed.Think not for this, however, the poor treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again.Robert FrostWhose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village, though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.(Most of Frost's poems are really great. I also recommend "The Mending Wall" and "The Road Not Taken")Walt Whitman's - Leaves of Grass, especially this part from 'Song of Myself':Do I contradict myself?Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.There's tons more (Dickinson, H.D., Stevie Smith, some of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock', Claude McKayy,....) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apoapsis Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 The Second Coming, quoted earlier in the thread, is a favourite of mine. In general I prefer poetry with a mystical feel to it, ranging from abstract to simple metered verses. Here's another one that I really like (34 verses so I'm not quoting it):Robert Browning -Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (Wikisource)And here's one that literary snobs probably wouldn't touch with a ten feet pole, but which, in my mind, is almost as enjoyable as the ones above:H. P. Lovecraft - Festival (or Yule Horror, I've seen both titles)There is snow on the ground and the valleys are cold,and a midnight profound blackly squats o'er the wold;but a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallowed and old.There is death in the clouds, there is fear in the night,for the dead in their shrouds hail the sun's turning flightand chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.To no gale of Earth's kind sways the forest of oak,where the thick boughs entwined by mad mistletoes choke,for these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.And mayst thou to such deeds be an abbot and priest,singing cannibal creeds at each devil-wrought feastand to all the incredulous world shewing dimly the sign of the beast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 , by Jill ScottI had been turning tricks longer than I actually knew it. Being whatever they wanted me to be whenever they wanted me to be it. A freak, inside, outside kitchen counters, laundry mats, hotels, motels, and backseats of leased cars, vans and jeeps. Made myself like it 'cause they liked it and I liked that they liked it and so I continued being the perfect image of a wet dream. Nasty, wild, exotic, erotic, freak was they wanted so freak was who I was and everybody was walking around talking about me. Like teenage pregnancy wasn't becoming synonymous with being black and woman like America wasn't suffocating our thoughts. Like there was nothing to talk about what was doing or screwing and I thought the whole damn thing was ridiculous, which it was. 'Cause I was content giving my men a little heaven between their struggle to breathe and their contemplation of suicide. Wasn't I good for the cause? Closed mind, open legs, making niggers forget why they're so damn angry. Wasn't I good? Then the mood swung as well the tempo and I became an ideal. They want her pretty and docile, caring and stupid and there I was on your Mark Seth Joe and I was Suzy homemaker on the hunt for love; cooking and cleaning, ironing and faithful and a freak cause that's what they liked and I liked being what they liked so that's what I was. A prostitute, selling my soul for emotional gain, struggling not to be the third generation of lonely women in my family. Struggling to gain but gaining nothing but confusion, frustration, illusion, 'cause there was no love, just empty condom wrappers on the floors to be discarded like me. A prize performer long before I actually knew it too, 'cause I was faking me out of the me I would become. The me that I see now. The me that holds onto herself with both hands and all feet. The me who must have love and give it. The me who brings more to the table than good looks and a wet hole. The me that is confident, and intelligent and filled to the brim with respect for me and a freak 'cause that's what I like and I like being what I like and what I like is all a part of what I am. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnWitch Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Many of my favourite poets are Portuguese, like me, and I can't find decent translations to show you guys.That said, here comes the clichéeeeee: Robert Frost. I seriously love most everything Frost has written. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 "the oak tree bears its brown of death beside its bud of green the livery of breezes north into the easting spring. on bare boughs the sentries stand all papery and dry the granddad husk remains to show that all must die. but to the granddad husk is revealed the soft vermillion stem to show that life shall conquer death and love rule in the end." -j.r. king Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 A Geology LessonHere, the sea strains to climb up on the landand the wind blows dust in a single direction.The trees bend themselves all one wayand volcanoes explode often.Why is this? Many years backa woman of strong purposepassed through this sectionand everything else tried to follow.– Judy Grahn, from She Who Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 Another one of my all time favorites, also one that may be scorned by poetry snobs, but I don't care. In the "olden days" when TV stations went off the air for a few hours at night, or at least *signed* off the air (some would then sign right back on), one of the stations I listened to regularly would play this poem every night as their sign-off.The poet, John Gillespie Magee, was an American pilot who was serving with the Royal Canadian airforce during WWII. He was killed while flying, at age 19. If he could produce this beautiful poem at 19, just think of all the wonderful poetry we lost with his death."High Flight"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air....Up, up the long, delirious, burning blueI’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.Where never lark, or even eagle flew —And, while with silent lifting mind I have trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.edited to add -- oh wow, I found the exact video that my station used. I musta seen this about a bazillion times while I was growing up. I think I'm imprinted on this poem -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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