(Who feathers frightened fields with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields
easily the pale club of the wind and swirled justly souls of flower strike
the air in utterable coolness
deeds of green thrilling light with thinned
newfragile yellows
lurch and.press
—in the woods which stutter and
sing And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms;but i should rather than anything have(almost when hugeness will shut quietly)almost, your kiss
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start to tell them, They think I'm telling lies. I say, It's in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.
I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm around me, A hive of honey bees. I say, It's the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.
Men themselves have wondered What they see in me. They try so much But they can't touch My inner mystery. When I try to show them They say they still can't see. I say, It's in the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts, The grace of my style. I'm a woman
Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.
Now you understand Just why my head's not bowed. I don't shout or jump about Or have to talk real loud. When you see me passing It ought to make you proud. I say, It's in the click of my heels, The bend of my hair, the palm of my hand, The need of my care, 'Cause I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.
Don't go far off, not even for a day - Pablo Neruda
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -- because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach; may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance. Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
because in that moment you'll have gone so far I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking, Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer—
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
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 a whimper.
Also from TS Elliot, The Waste Land. It's too long to cut and paste, so here's my favorite part -
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Post by pedanticwench on Mar 28, 2014 10:49:20 GMT -5
There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away, Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul.
I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books? I shall only engage in commerce if books are the coin. -- Catherynne M. Valente
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
_______________
Clearly I have rediscovered myself. I could go on all day. Fortunately for you all, my mom is on her way over for dinner so I'm going to have to get going pretty soon.
This is one of my top 3 as well. It is the only poem I have memorized.
Post by Miss Phryne Fisher on Mar 29, 2014 16:55:59 GMT -5
As I posted above, Death of a Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell is a favorite, along with The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" has always spoken to me and I don't know why.
As you can see by my love of Jarrell and Eliot, I like them morbid. This is my other favorite. I was introduced to all of these my senior year in HS by a fantastic humanities teacher. I will always thank him.
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.
In addition to everything NewOrleans posted, and every Eliot poem ever (man, I love the modernists), these:
my girl's tall with hard long eyes e.e. cummings
my girl’s tall with hard long eyes as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping silence on her dress,good for sleeping is her long hard body filled with surprise like a white shocking wire, when she smiles a hard long smile it sometimes makes gaily go clean through me tickling aches, and the weak noise of her eyes easily files my impatience to an edge—my girl’s tall and taut, with thin legs just like a vine that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall, and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed with these legs she begins to heave and twine about me,and to kiss my face and head. *************************************************** she being Brand e.e. cummings
she being Brand -new;and you know consequently a little stiff I was careful of her and (having thoroughly oiled the universal joint tested my gas felt of her radiator made sure her springs were O. K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her up,slipped the clutch (and then somehow got into reverse she kicked what the hell) next minute i was back in neutral tried and again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my lev-er Right- oh and her gears being in A 1 shape passed from low through second-in-to-high like greasedlightning) just as we turned the corner of Divinity avenue i touched the accelerator and give her the juice,good (it was the first ride and believe I we was happy to see how nice and acted right up to the last minute coming back down by the Public Gardens I slammed on the internalexpanding & externalcontracting breaks Bothatonce and brought allofher tremB -ling to a:dead. stand- ;Still)
And this. This is my favorite poem of ALL THE POEMS. Ever.
The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy Jeffery McDaniel
Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end
of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds of women—those you write poems about
and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction
lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast
as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power
never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely
a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,
as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long
regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don't know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light
of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that's just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing
into each other's ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn't make the silence any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses
I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out
of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you'd press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I'm sorry this poem has taken thirteen years
to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade's precipice and joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away like chocolate
to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn't be said.
How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, Gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other’s bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth, whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio vascular health—just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time.
I learned his poem, Bonne Justice, when I was a junior in high school and I have not been able to get it out of my soul. It sticks with me.
ETA Bonne Justice en Francais and English:
BONNE JUSTICE
C'est la chaude loi des hommes
Du raisin ils font du vin
Du charbon ils font du feu
Des baisers ils font des hommes
C'est la dure loi des hommes
Se garder intact malgré
Les guerres et la misère
Malgré les dangers de mort
C'est la douce loi des hommes
De changer l'eau en lumière
Le rêve en réalité
Et les ennemis en frères
Une loi vieille et nouvelle
Qui va se perfectionnant
Du fond du coeur de l'enfant
Jusqu'à la raison suprême.
Translated online as:
Good Justice
The hot law of man:
From grapes they make wine,
From charcoal they make fire,
From kisses (or fucking [baise-moi] they make men
The hard law of man:
To keep themselves safe despite
War and misery,
Despite the danger of death.
The sweet law of man:
To change water into light,
Dream into reality,
And enemies into brothers.
A law old and new
That continues to perfect itself:
From the bottom of a child's heart
To supreme reason.
And while some consider him so common, I do love Robert Frost's Road Less Traveled. It brings me comfort and courage when I doubt myself or when I'm afraid to take a risk.
Perhaps not to be is to be without your being - Pablo Neruda
Perhaps not to be is to be without your being, without your going, that cuts noon light like a blue flower, without your passing later through fog and stones, without the torch you lift in your hand that others may not see as golden, that perhaps no one believed blossomed the glowing origin of the rose, without, in the end, your being, your coming suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life, blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze: and it follows that I am, because you are: it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we: and, because of love, you will, I will, We will, come to be
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— 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?
I took a class in college called "Pablo Neruda. Love, Politics and Poetry. This is my favorite, especially the last line:
Poem #14
Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white head that I hold tightly as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.
You are like nobody since I love you. Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them. The rain takes off her clothes.
The birds go by, fleeing. The wind. The wind. I can contend only against the power of men. The storm whirls dark leaves and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.
You are here. Oh, you do not run away. You will answer me to the last cry. Cling to me as though you were frightened. Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.
Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle, and even your breasts smell of it. While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you. A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body. I go so far as to think that you own the universe. I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
And them the complete opposite: DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs And towards our distant rest(3) 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(4) Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind. Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . . Dim, through the misty panes(10) 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,(11) 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(12) Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.(15)
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?
This thread makes me so happy (and sad and moved and all the other emotions poems inspire). I haven't read much poetry since my English major days and I need to get back to it. Some of these poets I've never heard of, so I'm googling them and having the best time reading. This one reminded me of my own early memories:
My First Memory ( Of Librarians )by Nikki Giovanni
This is my first memory: A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floor A line of green shades—bankers' lights—down the center Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply too short For me to sit in and read So my first book was always big In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided To the left side the card catalogue On the right newspapers draped over what looked like a quilt rack Magazines face out from the wall The welcoming smile of my librarian The anticipation in my heart All those books—another world—just waiting At my fingertips.
My eyes already touch the sunny hill. going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has inner light, even from a distance-
and charges us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on answering our own wave... but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
I don't have a ton of exposure to poetry but this one that I first heard in the 4 weddings movie is one of favorites.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
As I posted above, Death of a Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell is a favorite, along with The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" has always spoken to me and I don't know why.
As you can see by my love of Jarrell and Eliot, I like them morbid. This is my other favorite. I was introduced to all of these my senior year in HS by a fantastic humanities teacher. I will always thank him.
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.
I always liked Richard Cory as well. Then I heard the Simon and Garfunkel song (Paul Simon is my favorite musical artist) and it is terrible! Hate the song. It's a pity.
My favorites were always the modernists generally as well as it seems many of the rest of you.
Not mentioned (and not Modernist), this is one of my favorites:
War Is Kind
Stephen Crane (1899)
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind, Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them. Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. Because your father tumbles in the yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died, Do not weep. War is kind.
Swift blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep. War is kind!