>>8047527
Never really got into poetry that much. Blue Bird by Bukowski really resonates with me though.

>there's a bluebird in my heart that
>wants to get out
>but I'm too tough for him,
>I say, stay in there, I'm not going
>to let anybody see
>you.
>there's a bluebird in my heart that
>wants to get out
>but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
>cigarette smoke
>and the whores and the bartenders
>and the grocery clerks
>never know that
>he's
>in there.

>there's a bluebird in my heart that
>wants to get out
>but I'm too tough for him,
>I say,
>stay down, do you want to mess
>me up?
>you want to screw up the
>works?
>you want to blow my book sales in
>Europe?
>there's a bluebird in my heart that
>wants to get out
>but I'm too clever, I only let him out
>at night sometimes
>when everybody's asleep.
>I say, I know that you're there,
>so don't be
>sad.
>then I put him back,
>but he's singing a little
>in there, I haven't quite let him
>die
>and we sleep together like
>that
>with our
>secret pact
>and it's nice enough to
>make a man
>weep, but I don't
>weep, do
>you?

>>8047527
What are the best poetry anthologies or compilations? In high school I really like Dickinson

>>8047652
what an upstuck asshole
>imm too cool for feelingss im a manly man that never cries and drink and smoke himself to death cause that's what man do

>>8048910
you don't understand the poem. he's revealing himself as vulnerable.

>>8048910

lol, missed the point.

>>8048926

this. i like this poem too.

Feeling Fucked Up
by Etheridge Knight

Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing

>>8048926
>>8048937
I understood the poem, obviously the fact that he cries about it only makes him more of a faggot
no shit drowning yourself in materialism for years and wearing a facade of "manliness" isn't going to make you happy, wallowing in your self pity because of poor life choices, which is exactly what he's doing here is the most faggoty thing you can do

Anyone read any of Melville's poetry? It's pretty good. Some of his stuff is about prett much what you'd expect (nature, the sea etc) but my favourite's this one, called Art:

>In placid hours well-pleased we dream
>Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
>But form to lend, pulsed life create,
>What unlike things must meet and mate:
>A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
>Sad patience—joyous energies;
>Humility—yet pride and scorn;
>Instinct and study; love and hate;
>Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
>And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
>To wrestle with the angel—Art.

>>8047527
this thread is cancer
>i never read poetry but here is a poem
what. it's not even good. bukowski is not good.

Sonnet XXXIV

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.

>>8048948
Not sure if you're going meta or if you really lack that much reading comprehension but here's your (You)

>>8048973
ee cummings

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

>>8048976
John Gould Fletcher

XXXI

My stiff-spread arms
Break into sudden gesture;
My feet seize upon the rhythm;
My hands drag it upwards:
Thus I create the dance.

I drink of the red bowl of the sunlight:
I swim through seas of rain:
I dig my toes into earth:
I taste the smack of the wind:
I am myself:
I live.

The temples of the gods are forgotten or in ruins:
Professors are still arguing about the past and the future:
I am sick of reading marginal notes on life,
I am weary of following false banners:
I desire nothing more intensely or completely than this present;
There is nothing about me you are more likely to notice than my being:
Let me therefore rejoice silently,
A golden butterfly glancing against an unflecked wall.

>>8048977
Weariness of Me
Frank Stanford

My grandmother said when she was young
The grass was so wild and high
You couldn’t see a man on horseback.

In the fields she made out
Three barns,
Dark and blown down from the weather
Like her husbands.

She remembers them in the dark,
Cursing the beasts,
And how they would leave the bed
In the morning,
The dead grass of their eyes
Stacked against her.

>>8048974
Sorry didn't mean to ruin your favorite poem bro

>>8048985
Returning, We Hear the Larks
Isaac Rosenberg

Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

>>8048990
John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Poetry isn't much discussed due to people here speaking different languages. Unlike a novel, poetry is hardly translatable since the metrics, overall structure and the very poetics aesthetics strongly vary according to the language it's written in. English, French, Japanese and Farsi poetry share literally nothing and I've never met a single person who deeply appreciate both, well, Arab and German ones, for example.

>>8048991
First Snow in Alsace
Richard Wilbur

The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it did not know they'd changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

The ration stacks are milky domes;
Across the ammunition pile
The snow has climbed in sparkling combs.

You think: beyond the town a mile
Or two, this snowfall fills the eyes
Of soldiers dead a little while.

Persons and persons in disguise,
Walking the new air white and fine,
Trade glances quick with shared surprise.

At children's windows, heaped, benign,
As always, winter shines the most,
And frost makes marvelous designs.

The night guard coming from his post,
Ten first-snows back in thought, walks slow
And warms him with a boyish boast:

He was the first to see the snow.

>>8048996
Discordants I
Conrad Aiken

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,--
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,--
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

>>8048987
Hardly my favorite. I didn't post it. I just think you lack critical skills.

>>8049007
Epexegesis
Cesar Vallejo

I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Everybody knows that I'm alive,
that I'm bad; and they do not know
about the December of that January.
For I was born on a day
when God was sick.

There is a void
in my metaphysical air
that no one's going to touch;
the cloister of a silence
that spoke flush with fire.

I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Brother, listen, listen ...
Okay. And do not let me leave
without bringing Decembers,
without leaving Januaries.
For I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Everybody knows that I'm alive,
that I chew ... And they do not know
why in my verse galled winds,
untwisted from the inquisitive
Sphinx of the Desert,
screech an obscure
coffin anxiety.

Everybody knows ... And they do not know
that the Light is consumptive,
and the Shadow fat..........
And they do not know how Mystery synthesizes...........
how it is the sad musical
humpback who denounces from afar
the meridional step from the limits to the Limits.

I was born on a day
when God was sick,
gravely.

Inside my eyes
Inside my head
Inside my brain
It's a burning hell

Looking at the schoolyard cunts
Looking at their assholes
See the f..cking whores
It's a burning hell

Drinking blood
Eating pills
Burning flesh
It's a burning hell

Inside my eyes
Inside my head
Inside my brain
It's a burning hell

Screaming voices making me insane
White lights burning in my brain
It's a burning hell

Looking at the schoolyard cunts
Looking at their assholes
See the f..cking whores
It's a burning hell

The demon in my heart want more and more and more
The voices in my brain
It's a burning hell

Inside my eyes
Inside my head
Inside my brain
It's a burning hell

Drinking blood
Eating pills
Burning flesh
It's a burning hell

Inside my eyes
Inside my head
Inside my brain
It's a burning hell

Screaming voices making me insane
White lights burning in my brain
It's a burning hell

Inside my eyes

Inside my head

It's a burning hell

It's a burning hell

Inside my eyes
Inside my head
Inside my brain
It's a burning hell

It's a burning hell

Inside my eyes
Inside my head
Inside my brain
It's a burning hell

It's a burning hell

>>8049015
The Corn-Stalk Fiddle
Paul Lawrence Dunbar

When the corn’s all cut and the bright stalks shine
Like the burnished spears of a field of gold;
When the field-mice rich on the nubbins dine,
And the frost comes white and the wind blows cold;
Then its heigho fellows and hi-diddle-diddle,
For the time is ripe for the corn-stalk fiddle.

And you take a stalk that is straight and long,
With an expert eye to its worthy points,
And you think of the bubbling strains of song
That are bound between its pithy joints—
Then you cut out strings, with a bridge in the middle,
With a corn-stalk bow for a corn-stalk fiddle.

Then the strains that grow as you draw the bow
O’er the yielding strings with a practiced hand!
And the music’s flow never loud but low
Is the concert note of a fairy band.
Oh, your dainty songs are a misty riddle
To the simple sweets of the corn-stalk fiddle.

When the eve comes on and our work is done
And the sun drops down with a tender glance,
With their hearts all prime for the harmless fun,
Come the neighbor girls for the evening’s dance,
And they wait for the well-known twist and twiddle,
More time than tune—from the corn-stalk fiddle.

Then brother Jabez takes the bow,
While Ned stands off with Susan Bland,
Then Henry stops by Milly Snow
And John takes Nellie Jones’s hand,
While I pair off with Mandy Biddle,
And scrape, scrape, scrape goes the corn-stalk fiddle.

“Salute your partners,” comes the call,
“All join hands and circle round,”
“Grand train back,” and “Balance all,”
Footsteps lightly spurn the ground,
“Take your lady and balance down the middle”
To the merry strains of the corn-stalk fiddle.

So the night goes on and the dance is o’er,
And the merry girls are homeward gone,
But I see it all in my sleep once more,
And I dream till the very break of dawn
Of an impish dance on a red-hot griddle
To the screech and scrape of a corn-stalk fiddle.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn,
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O Master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:

The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

Lionel P. Johnson, “The Dark Angel”

>>8049020
First Song
Galway Kinnell

Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear the pond frogs all
Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.

Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall
Of Illinois, and from the fields two small
Boys came bearing cornstalk violins
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.

It was now fine music the frogs and the boys
Did in the towering Illinois twilight make
And into dark in spite of a shoulder's ache
A boy's hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.

>>8047527

Bitches aint shit but hoes and tricks
Lick on these nuts and suck the dick
Gets the fuck out after you're done
And I hops in my ride to make a quick run

I used to know a bitch named Eric Wright
We used to roll around and fuck the hoes at night
Tighter than a motherfucka with the gangsta beats
And we was balling on the motherfucking Compton streets
Peep, the shit got deep and it was on
Number 1 song after number 1 song
Long as my motherfucking pockets was fat
I didn't give a fuck where the bitch was at
But she was hanging with a white bitch doing the shit she do
Sucking on his dick just to get a buck or 2
And the few ends she got didn't mean nothing
Now she's suing cause the shit she be doing ain't shit
Bitch can't hang with the streets, she found herself short
So now she's taking me to court

>>8048995
>English, French, Japanese and Farsi poetry share literally nothing

literally bs

english, french and farsi poetries are pretty close to each other since they all use meter and rhyme. farsi has plenty of words which rhyme so their classical stanzas often have only one rhyme through the whole poem, but they also use pretty common rhymed couplets.

>The world’s birds gathered for their conference
>And said: ‘Our constitution makes no sense.
>All nations in the world require a king;
>How is it we alone have no such thing?

^ such an alien poetry indeed

english and french literally use the same common rhyme schemes and stuff, albeit english has less rhymes and so tend to use them less since a complicated stanza may indeed constrain the poet

if we speak about free style poems which don't apply meter and rhyme they sometimes apply some general prosodic methods like parallelism which can be done with any of these languages, or they still often have some rudiments of meter and rhyme and if nothing of it applies the more so the language of the poem doesn't matter

japanese indeed has a different poetry which is usually rendered in english as a free style poem with meaningless constraints (countiong the number of syllables in the indo-european languages makes no sense)

>>8048995
Poetry isn't much discussed because it's become a very minor art form--little studied, rarely practiced. Music has taken its place.

>>8049040
>Music has taken its place.
lol

>>8049039
This is wrong. French—as well as German—use syllables instead of verses as metrical units, which is used in Greek/Latin/English. Have you ever heard a French talking about rhymed iambic meters? No, it doesn't even exist. It makes both composition and reading entirely different. Japanese uses mora. Any translation between them is a whole, new poem with little authenticity.

>>8049040
It doesn't help, but I honestly don't think that's the main reason.

>>8049044
metre is always determined by syllables, different indo-european languages have slightly different approaches to it but their metres still are interchangeable

>>8049044
english uses verses? what does that even mean?

>>8049050
English poetry uses the foot as a unit, and its constraint revolves around rhyme. It doesn't work like that in French, which is about syllables' number. Since French is phonologically extremely different than English, and doesn't have any stress mark but instead a single, oxyton accent. Because it almost always falls on the last syllable, any prosody based on stressed/unstressed syllables is meaningless. Iamb, trochee, anapaest, dactyl or spondee feet don't exist in French. Verse composition is very different. Blank verse and different vowel-ending lines is completely non-existent in formal French poetry. German and French ones are similar, indeed, but English uses entirely different schemes.

>>8049054
I mean “foot”. Sorry.

are you fags actually arguing about the fact that different languages produce different poems and you need to know x language to understand x poem?
obviously the only language that matters here in an English website is English

well interchangeable to an extent
french poetry doesn't have iamb but english poetry does have alexandrine

also blank verse doesn't assume iambic pentameter... w/e, french poetry doesn't have a tradition to use it anyway

English poetry sounds childish to me because of the meter.

>>8047652
Bukowski is better than I remember.

>>8047652
Just middling prose with line breaks at random desu

>>8049019
what is this piece of shit

>>8047527
That picture is awfully reminiscent of Stephen Fry and his fuckboy. That same smug look on Wilde. That empty gaze on the fuckboy. Sad.

>>8047527
The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.

I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.