ITT: poems that stop you in your tracks.
not necessarily poems that you like, not necessarily poems you think are """""""good poems""""""" (although they certainly can be these things as long as they meet the topical condition as well).
poems that give you pause. poems that are jarring. poems that make you double-take. post them here.
>>8114902
i'll start:
>Sparrow Trapped in the Airport by Averill Curdy
Never the bark and abalone mask
cracked by storms of a mastering god,
never the gods’ favored glamour, never
the pelagic messenger bearing orchards
in its beak, never allegory, not wisdom
or valor or cunning, much less hunger
demanding vigilance, industry, invention,
or the instinct to claim some small rise
above the plain and from there to assert
the song of another day ending;
lentil brown, uncounted, overlooked
in the clamorous public of the flock
so unlikely to be noticed here by arrivals,
faces shining with oils of their many miles,
where it hops and scratches below
the baggage carousel and lights too high,
too bright for any real illumination,
looking more like a fumbled punch line
than a stowaway whose revelation
recalls how lightly we once traveled.
>>8114902
John Ashbury is perfect for this
The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits
in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.”
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How
pleasant
To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye," she
scratched
Her cleft chin’s solitary hair. She remembered spinach
And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach.
“M’love," he intercepted, “the plains are decked out
in thunder
Today, and it shall be as you wish.” He scratched
The part of his head under his hat. The apartment
Seemed to grow smaller. “But what if no pleasant
Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my
country.”
Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country.
Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach
When the door opened and Swee’pea crept in. “How pleasant!”
But Swee’pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib.
“Thunder
And tears are unavailing," it read. “Henceforth shall
Popeye’s apartment
Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or
scratched.”
Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched
Her long thigh. “I have news!” she gasped. “Popeye, forced as
you know to flee the country
One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened,
duplicate father, jealous of the apartment
And all that it contains, myself and spinach
In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder
At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant
Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant
Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the
scratched
Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and
thunder.”
She grabbed Swee’pea. “I’m taking the brat to the country.”
“But you can’t do that—he hasn’t even finished his spinach,"
Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment.
But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment
Succumbed to a strange new hush. “Actually it’s quite pleasant
Here," thought the Sea Hag. “If this is all we need fear from
spinach
Then I don’t mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon
over”—she scratched
One dug pensively—“but Wimpy is such a country
Bumpkin, always burping like that.” Minute at first, the thunder
Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,
The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched
His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.
>>8114919
l m a o w u t
m
a
o
w
u
t
>>8114902
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/return-1
Pound is really hit or miss, but something about the momentum of each line in this one build so dramatically that you can't just read part of it.
http://genius.com/Robert-frost-directive-annotated
those first few lines are fantastic
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48459
>>8114945
Idk, man. Ashbery is weird.
Al and Harry had their moment in the sun.
Oblivion swiftly followed, the universe
playing catch-up, as
it is wont to do. Oh, bugger
the attendance record! I see a long line
of attendees waiting, cock in hand.
Yeats' The Second Coming
Israfel
By Edgar Allan Poe
And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures. —KORAN
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute”;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty,
Where Love’s a grown-up God,
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit—
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervour of thy lute—
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
>>8114902
>ITT: poems that stop you in your tracks
that poem about tendies and good boy points from a recent poetry thread :^)
If I know absolutely nothing about poetry, where do I start reading? I assume the greeks? Who are the best greek poets, and where do I go from there?
>He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven, Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of 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 dreams.
The message is straightforward, and a perennial one in poetry (and, indeed, song lyrics). The speaker, addressing his lover or would-be lover, says: if I were a rich man, I’d give you the world and all its treasures. If I were a god, I could take the heavenly sky and make a blanket out of it for you. (This is similar to the sentiment expressed by the speaker of T. E. Hulme’s ‘The Embankment’.) But I’m only a poor man, and obviously the idea of making the sky into a blanket is silly and out of the question, so all I have of any worth are my dreams. And dreams are delicate and vulnerable – hence ‘Tread softly’.
This is a rather old idea, but what helps to make the poem striking and memorable is its use of repetition of key words: cloths (three times), dreams (three times), light (three times), spread (twice), tread (twice), under your feet (twice). (And, if we include the title, you might add an extra ‘cloths’ and count ‘heaven’ as one of the repeated words.) The rhyme of the poem supports this repetition: technically, there are no rhymes as such, merely the same words repeated at the end of lines: cloths, light, feet, dreams. This gives the words of the poem a simplicity but also a sense of familiarity, even banality: the poet is reduced to finding slightly different ways of saying the same thing. But playing off this rhyme-that-is-not-rhyme at the end of the lines is the internal rhyme: ‘Of night and light and the half light‘, ‘I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams’. Because this involves words which are themselves repeated, it shifts the expected rhyme (e.g. night and light at the end of the lines) to the middle of the lines, highlighting that things are not as the poet would wish them to be.
>>8117166
>getting memed this hard
>>8117166
Rather than by default going to the Greeks, I would suggest you start your poetic exploration by reading widely but shallowly. That is to say, read a little bit of everything, from a lot of languages and a lot of eras/movements. Maybe get an anthology. Discover what it is you like, and explore that in more detail.
>>8117212
I have absolutely no idea where to start. What authors, what eras, what movements? And what anthologies?
And before hell mouth; dry plain
and two mountains;
On the one mountain, a running form,
and another
In the turn of the hill; in hard steel
The road like a slow screw’s thread,
The angle almost imperceptible,
so that the circuit seemed hardly to rise;
And the running form, naked, Blake,
Shouting, whirling his arms, the swift limbs,
Howling against the evil,
his eyes rolling,
Whirling like flaming cart-wheels,
and his head held backward to gaze on the evil
As he ran from it,
to be hid by the steel mountain,
And when he showed again from the north side;
his eyes blazing toward hell mouth,
His neck forward,
and like him Peire Cardinal.
And in the west mountain, Il Fiorentino,
Seeing hell in his mirror,
and lo Sordels
Looking on it in his shield;
And Augustine, gazing toward the invisible.
And past them, the criminal
lying in the blue lakes of acid,
The road between the two hills, upward
slowly,
The flames patterned in lacquer, crimen est actio,
The limbo of chopped ice and saw-dust,
And I bathed myself with acid to free myself
of the hell ticks,
Scales, fallen louse eggs.
Palux Laerna,
the lake of bodies, aqua morta,
of limbs fluid, and mingled, like fish heaped in a bin,
and here an arm upward, clutching a fragment of marble,
And the embryos, in flux,
new inflow, submerging,
Here an arm upward, trout, submerged by the eels;
and from the bank, the stiff herbage
the dry nobbled path, saw many known, and unknown,
for an instant;
submerging,
The face gone, generation.
![1280px-Muscolopapillare%2Bcordetendinee[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/LBMnbVG.jpg "1280px-Muscolopapillare%2Bcordetendinee[1].jpg")
>>8115728
>the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute
<- heart strings aka tendinous chords
from all directions come things that pull unevenly; like puppeteers whose strings control the way they aught to be; like flies with gorgeous wings that catch the light we cannot see; because the small and large are outside realms of possibility; says the one who finds them self tunneled into trees; one at a time, with the lumbering, of an ever groping bumble bee
>>8117310
All right, let's try this. Read the following poems and tell me which you preferred and why.
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
- George Herbert, "Love (3)"
- John Milton, "When I Consider How My Light is Spent"
- Alexander Pope, "The Dying Christian to his Soul"
- John Dryden, "Hidden Flame"
- William Wordsworth, "Nutting"
- John Clare, "I Am"
- Tennyson, "In Memoriam", Canto 54
- W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
- T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
>>8117390
making this easier to read
From all direction come things, that pull unevenly;
like puppeteers whose strings control the way they aught to be;
like flies with gorgeous wings that catch the light we cannot see;
because the small and large are outside realms of possibility;
says the one who finds them self tunneled into trees;
one at a time, with the lumbering, of an ever groping bumble bee
I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.
>>8117419
this is really bad and I love it
>>8117398
I really liked every single one of those, haha. I think my favorites out of all of them would be Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Tennyson. I can't put my finger on why, but they all really resonated. It might just be subject matter, because all of them have that theme of anxiety about fading away. Yeats and Eliot didn't move me as much, but they seem like they've got more "there," like they're riddles that you need to study more, which is really cool. My least favorite was Wordsworth, and it's not that his was bad, but that he seemed to say less with more lines.
>>8117566
Was there anything about the style you liked? The poems you singled out are all technically quite highly-wrought, with regular metre, a set rhyme-scheme, and often end-closed lines. Is there any chance this is what you're picking up on?
About the idea of mortality and fading away into obscurity, I think it's fair to say that this is the primary occupation of Shakespeare's entire sonnet sequence. Around sonnet 15, he starts to have the realisation that a way to immortalise his subject is to write poetry about him, because as long as the poetry has readers, the subject cannot entirely pass into obscurity. Sonnet 18 is so wonderful because it functions as a record of the process of writing itself. By the time the poem draws to a close, you as the reader have become the performative agent described in the final couplet: simply by reading, you are actively participating in granting the subject of the poem the kind of immortality Shakespeare is aiming for.
If that kind of thing resonates with you, look into a few more Shakespearean sonnets, particularly 15, 16, 55, 81, 107. And if the sonnet form interests you, try some sonnets of Petrarch (Pick a few out of 3, 22, 35, 90, 129, 132, 159, 264, 267, 292, 310), Spenser (30, 70, 67, 75). Also Milton: "Methought I saw my late espoused saint", "On Shakespeare, 1630", "How soon hath time the subtle thief of youth". And, continuing on the theme of mortality and fading away, try Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale", "When I have Fears that I may cease to be", "Last Sonnet." Also Byron: "Don Juan", Canto 4, stanzas 11-12. Good luck.
>>8117375
That's pretty nasty.
I'm glad I don't have that heart condition.
>>8118457
I think it was what you mentioned, that they all had very regular and conventional meters and rhyming. Might be a consequence of not having read as many poems -- the classical style comes off better for now, but I suppose the ones breaking those rules will be of more interest later. Thanks anon.
domination
exploration
idle chat
the roses are lying flat
beautiful coral in the sea
fatality, we will never be free
>>8119644
Well I'll be checking the thread until it 404s I guess, so if you'd like any more guidance or pointers, I'm happy to help.
>>8114909
>Never the bark and abalone mask
>cracked by storms of a mastering god
>god
>gask
>god
>gask
That's not a poem. It's a shitty paragraph.
>>8121320
How do you usually find new poems? Do you read books of poems or look at them individually or find somewhere to read all of a single author's poems at once? I feel like I always have an idea of what my next novel will be, but every time I read a poem it's in complete isolation and I think "huh, that's neat" and then never have anywhere to go from there.
>>8121535
Mostly, I dabble. Reading a poem is not as much of a commitment as a novel, so I tend to stay quite light and flit between a bunch of stuff, letting my whims guide me. I own a bunch of books of poetry so I have the luxury of being able to scan the spines on my shelves and simply pick out what I feel like reading on any given day. Quite often I will begin reading one poet, and what I read will lead my thoughts to another, and so I'll pick up their book and start reading that -- and so on.
For that reason I would not recommend reading all of a poet's works at once, unless you have a good reason to. You will likely only wear yourself out. There are some exceptions to this, like Petrarch's "Canzoniere" or Herbert's "Temple", which I think must be read as full works in their own right, because the individual poems refer to each other, and you only really understand any given poem with reference to the others which surround it. And then there are long poems, like epics, which require a more serious commitment of time and consistent reading. But generally speaking, I try to stay quite light on my feet and let myself be guided simply by what delights me.
He was touched or he touched or
she did and was, or they were
and would. Or the room could, its
three doors, two windows or
the house on a slant touching,
touched by the drift down street, cars
pressing quick or slowing. All along
the town touched a river, the river
the filth falling through it. What was clean—
a source pure as rumor—a shore
touching lake touched by wind above,
and below, a spring. All touch blindly
further water. That blue touching
blacker regions in the sea so weirdly
solitary, each to under, to every
sideways past deeper, where nowhere.
Yeats has been posted a lot so far, but no one's posted my personal favourite, The Lake Isle of Innisfree:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
>>8121595
>>8121595
I'm not the one you were talking to, but I'm interested in what you're saying.
So I'd like to ask, do you have a preferred anthology to recommend?
Ideally to me it would be something with annotations too, because not only I'm foreign but I have a hard time with poetry in general, even in Portuguese (my native language).
But if you don't know anything like that I'd still like to have your recommendation on a standard anthology, since you seem to know a lot about poetry.
>>8115023
>steve roggenbuck
what a hack
>>8121698
The Norton Anthology of Poetry is probably the best if you want a physical edition, but it's quite pricey. Will last you a very long time though, and has a good balance of genres and eras. Also some very good essays at the end about verification and poetic syntax.
Alternatively, the Oxford Book of English Verse, a classic text which had an enormous influence when it was published in 1900, is available for free online. It does not, however, include poetry before 1250 (a great pity, because Anglo-Saxon poetry is very good and unfairly neglected), and also obviously nothing after 1900. So it's not as complete as the Norton, but still extremely serviceable for the period it does treat. Here's a link if you want to check it out: http://john.fremlin.de/pgbev/html-interface/full-index.html
>>8121806
>verification
Versification *
quoth the raven.......nevermore.......
A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds, and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what, if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it 's most used to do.
"Me?
Whee!"
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
Ernest Dowson
The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long. –Horace
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
>>8114902
what the fuck is up with the quotes I'm a 12 year old in illinois and I don't get what you are trying to communicate
>>8121694
I liked the poem a lot better when I read it as
deep ( heart's core )
rather than
( deep heart )'s core
>>8123401
school's
OUT
FOR SUMMER
>>8121806
I know you were probably referring to the latest edition of the Norton anthology, but the price on that one is a no go for me here in Brazil.
Luckily enough though, I found one offer in a site for the second edition at a relatively low price, so I bought it!
By the time it arrives at my house this thread will probably be one week dead, so let me thank you right now for the recommendation.
That book looks really good and the site is great too. Thanks a lot, you're a gentleman and a scholar.
>>8125669
No worries man, glad that I could help. There isn't an enormous difference between the various editions anyway. As with the other poster I replied to, I would encourage you to explore the works you find in the anthology almost haphazardly -- open it to a random page; if you like it, keep reading; if not, turn a few more pages and find a new poet. I really believe that being guided by what _delights_ is a truly valuable endeavour. Because my chief literary interest lies with poetry as opposed to prose or drama, I am very well read within English poetry; and so, if you discover any particular poet, era, genre or style which interests you, I will probably be able to guide you in your explorations. As I said to the other poster I will be checking this thread until it 404s, so feel free to direct any questions you still have my way, and I'll do my best to answer them.
In the meanwhile, here is a poem I have always been in love with:
"Prayer 1", George Herbert
Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
>>8117375
It's an Evangelion reference stupid tripfag.
Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning
One of my favorites to this day, its dark and you dont see it coming
>>8114902
I just started reading ee cummings and have to ask: what the fuck? How do I make sense of some of this
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
This is a poem by Brazilian modernist author Carlos Drummond de Andrade. The year is 1930.
>Poema de Sete Faces
Quando nasci, um anjo torto
desses que vivem na sombra
disse: Vai, Carlos! ser gauche na vida.
As casas espiam os homens
que correm atrás de mulheres.
A tarde talvez fosse azul,
não houvesse tantos desejos.
O bonde passa cheio de pernas:
pernas brancas pretas amarelas.
Para que tanta perna, meu Deus, pergunta meu coração.
Porém meus olhos
não perguntam nada.
O homem atrás do bigode
é sério, simples e forte.
Quase não conversa.
Tem poucos, raros amigos
o homem atrás dos óculos e do bigode.
Meu Deus, por que me abandonaste
se sabias que eu não era Deus
se sabias que eu era fraco.
Mundo mundo vasto mundo,
se eu me chamasse Raimundo
seria uma rima, não seria uma solução.
Mundo mundo vasto mundo,
mais vasto é meu coração.
Eu não devia te dizer
mas essa lua
mas esse conhaque
botam a gente comovido como o diabo.
>>8128794
English translation by Elizabeth Bishop
>Seven-Sided Poem
When I was born, one of the crooked
angels who live in shadow, said:
Carlos, go on! Be gauche in life.
The houses watch the men,
men who run after women.
If the afternoon had been blue,
there might have been less desire.
The trolley goes by full of legs:
white legs, black legs, yellow legs.
My God, why all the legs?
my heart asks. But my eyes
ask nothing at all.
The man behind the moustache
is serious, simple, and strong.
He hardly ever speaks.
He has a few, choice friends,
the man behind the spectacles and the moustache.
My God, why hast Thou forsaken me
if Thou knew’st I was not God,
if Thou- knew’st that I was weak.
Universe, vast universe,
if I had been named Eugene
that would not be what I mean
but it would go into verse
faster.
Universe, vast universe,
my heart is vaster.
I oughtn’t to tell you,
but this moon
and this brandy
play the devil with one’s emotions.
When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.
The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.
Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself--no cost,
No past, no people else at all--
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?
