I'm all emo in my choices. I absolutely love Emily Dickinson and her fondness for cemeteries. Edgar Allen Poe thrills my heart. John Donne could do naughty things to me.
My favorite poems are:
Not Waving, But Drowning by Stevie Smith -
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.
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Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson -
Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury!
Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! Might I but moor - tonight - In thee!
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Surprisingly not emo - Daffodils by William Wordsworth -
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
Post by NewOrleans on Mar 27, 2014 15:05:17 GMT -5
omg. And ee cummings. This is my favorite from him.
somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing
(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
Post by NewOrleans on Mar 27, 2014 15:06:25 GMT -5
Pixy, here is a sinister little sonnet by Robert Frost for you that I love.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth -- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth -- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
I don't agree with defacing private property, but I was at one of my favorite Philly bars once and saw someone had written a line by Allen Ginsberg in one of the bathrooms. ("America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.") I was really quite torn.
A Supermarket in California is one of my favorites:
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20] And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Somewhere I have a recording of Ginsberg doing it live, I think in City Lights, and it's awesome because you hear the crowd laughing uproariously, and he's feeding off of them and chuckling at his own lines-- it's so real. I love hearing poetry as it was meant to be-- a shared experience.
Post by vaportrail on Mar 27, 2014 15:13:32 GMT -5
Ophelia’s Confession
by Tracy Herd
Every day God pats my head and calls me angel, his little broken woman and gives me flowers as if I hadn’t had enough of these and I choke back my rage and he mistakes this for distress as I stand there shaking in my little sackcloth dress.
Had I ever had the choice I’d have worn a very different dress, slit from breast to navel and far too tight and I’d have smoked and sworn and been out of my head on drugs, not grief, and the flowers would have been a tattoo around my ankle, not an anchor to drag me down, and as for being a virgin, I’d have slept with both men and women.
I would never recommend a shallow stream and what was no more than a daisy chain as being the ideal way to die. It was far too pretty but I had to improvise and I was a poet, far more so than him, who threw out every word he ever thought as if that might have kept his sorry life afloat.
I didn’t drown by accident. It was a suicide. At least let me call my mind my own even when my heart was gone beyond recall.
Today, a car crash might have been my final scene, a black Mercedes in a tunnel by the Seine, with no last words, no poetry, with flashbulbs tearing at my broken body because broken was the way I felt inside, the cameras lighting up the wreckage of a life. That would, at least, have been an honest way to die.
I have an affinity for Shakespeare's sonnets When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have expressed Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Oh, since someone mentioned Frost, he's not one of my favorites, but I like this poem quite a bit:
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
Every day God pats my head and calls me angel, his little broken woman and gives me flowers as if I hadn’t had enough of these and I choke back my rage and he mistakes this for distress as I stand there shaking in my little sackcloth dress.
Had I ever had the choice I’d have worn a very different dress, slit from breast to navel and far too tight and I’d have smoked and sworn and been out of my head on drugs, not grief, and the flowers would have been a tattoo around my ankle, not an anchor to drag me down, and as for being a virgin, I’d have slept with both men and women.
I would never recommend a shallow stream and what was no more than a daisy chain as being the ideal way to die. It was far too pretty but I had to improvise and I was a poet, far more so than him, who threw out every word he ever thought as if that might have kept his sorry life afloat.
I didn’t drown by accident. It was a suicide. At least let me call my mind my own even when my heart was gone beyond recall.
Today, a car crash might have been my final scene, a black Mercedes in a tunnel by the Seine, with no last words, no poetry, with flashbulbs tearing at my broken body because broken was the way I felt inside, the cameras lighting up the wreckage of a life. That would, at least, have been an honest way to die.
thank you for this-- I know a few poems from Ophelia's pov and a few from Hamlet's pov, and it is cool to compare them to the original.
Somewhere I have a recording of Ginsberg doing it live, I think in City Lights, and it's awesome because you hear the crowd laughing uproariously, and he's feeding off of them and chuckling at his own lines-- it's so real. I love hearing poetry as it was meant to be-- a shared experience.
My husband and I honeymooned in Napa. When we were driving back to LA, we went to San Francisco, just for the afternoon. City Lights was on of the must-see things (along with getting a burrito in the Mission). Yeah, that pretty much rounded out my SF experience!
Post by NewOrleans on Mar 27, 2014 15:18:09 GMT -5
For the Donne fans. This is called UNholy Sonnet (playing off of his Holy Sonnets.)
After the praying, after the hymn-singing, After the sermon’s trenchant commentary On the world’s ills, which make ours secondary, After communion, after the hand wringing, And after peace descends upon us, bringing Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary And how the light swords through it, and how, scary In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging— There is, as doctors say about some pain, Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers, Your listening and rejoicing, your small part In this communal stab at coming clean, There is one stubborn remnant of your cares Intact. There is still murder in your heart.
Post by NewOrleans on Mar 27, 2014 15:25:40 GMT -5
She is not best known as a poet, but this one by Atwood lights me up.
Spelling
My daughter plays on the floor with plastic letters, red, blue & hard yellow, learning how to spell, spelling, how to make spells.
I wonder how many women denied themselves daughters, closed themselves in rooms, drew the curtains so they could mainline words.
A child is not a poem, a poem is not a child. there is no either/or. However.
I return to the story of the woman caught in the war & in labour, her thighs tied together by the enemy so she could not give birth.
Ancestress: the burning witch, her mouth covered by leather to strangle words.
A word after a word after a word is power.
At the point where language falls away from the hot bones, at the point where the rock breaks open and darkness flows out of it like blood, at the melting point of granite when the bones know they are hollow & the word splits & doubles & speaks the truth & the body itself becomes a mouth.
This is a metaphor.
How do you learn to spell? Blood, sky & the sun, your own name first, your first naming, your first name, your first word.
Post by NewOrleans on Mar 27, 2014 15:31:39 GMT -5
The Negro Speaks of Rivers BY LANGSTON HUGHES I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
The free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with fearful trill of the things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom
The free bird thinks of another breeze an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
Amy Lowell, Dylan Thomas, and Pablo Neruda are probably tops for me. Here is Thomas's "Fern Hill":
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Post by NewOrleans on Mar 27, 2014 15:47:02 GMT -5
Need to read some of these unfamiliar ones later.
Here is one that always provokes good discussion.
American History by Michael S. Harper
Those four black girls blown up in that Alabama church remind me of five hundred middle passage blacks, in a net, under water in Charleston harbor so redcoats wouldn't find them. Can't find what you can't see can you?