A few of my favorites:
Nothing Like the First Time - George Watsky
The Quiet World - Jeffrey McDaniel
Bluebird - Charles Bukowski
Sonnet XVII - Pablo Neruda
Bag of Mice - Nick Flynn
Will dump text
The Quiet World - Jeffrey McDaniel
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
Bluebird - Charles Bukowski
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?
Sonnet XVII - Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Bag of Mice - Nick Flynn
I dreamt your suicide note
was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,
& in the bag were six baby mice. The bag
opened into darkness,
smoldering
from the top down. The mice,
huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag
across a shorn field. I stood over it
& as the burning reached each carbon letter
of what you'd written
your voice released into the night
like a song, & the mice
grew wilder.
Nothing Like the First Time is too long to post, but you can read it here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/watsky/nothinglikethefirsttime.html
I think it's really beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk
In the Desert
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
what if man door hook doorman
People seem to dislike Keats here, but, Hyperion is terrific.
>>8156454
I love this one too.
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.
>>8156495
I think it captures a complicated idea really succinctly: often there's a lot of beauty in suffering, especially if we can relate to it. Happy stuff is almost never as deep or beautiful as sad stuff.
That's just my two cents though.
of what i read recently, i like how to call your king a son of 'good cow' was considered a praise
>This is what my master has spoken, this is what he has said. My king who from his birth has been fitted for lordship (1 ms. has instead: for the crown), the lord of Unug, the sajkal snake living in Sumer, who pulverizes mountains (2 mss. have instead: heads) like flour, the stag of the tall mountains, endowed with princely antlers, wild cow, kid pawing the the holy soapwort with its hoof, whom the good cow had given birth to in the heart of the mountains, Enmerkar, the son of Utu, has sent me to you.
also describes the invention of mail (the whole epic is literally consist only of exchanging messages till the pour courier got dizzy)
>His speech was substantial, and its contents extensive. The messenger, whose mouth was heavy, was not able to repeat it. Because the messenger, whose mouth was tired, was not able to repeat it, the lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote the message as if on a tablet. Formerly, the writing of messages on clay was not established. Now, under that sun and on that day, it was indeed so. The lord of Kulaba inscribed the message like a tablet. It was just like that.
also i like this moment, no idea what it describes, can it be... an elevator, lol
(jipar it's apparently some shrine too)
>When in the abzu I utter praise, when I bring the me from Eridug, when, in lordship, I am adorned with the crown like a purified shrine, when I place on my head the holy crown in Unug Kulaba, then may the ...... of the great shrine bring me into the jipar, and may the ...... of the jipar bring me into the great shrine.
also this is from the most famous part of it, which some people read as an account of babel-like confusion of tongues but it seems it's rather a chant so all people spoke one tongue, anyway, i like this part of it because it's like an extreme example of parallelism:
>For at that time, for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious princes, for the ambitious kings, Enki, for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious princes, for the ambitious kings, for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious princes, for the ambitious kings -- Enki, the lord of abundance and of steadfast decisions, the wise and knowing lord of the Land, the expert of the gods, chosen for wisdom, the lord of Eridug, shall change the speech in their mouths, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.
I read some Ashbery in the store today. I don't remember much but two words - portable laugh. Was a lovely afternoon.
>>8156459
are you kidding me
people here jack high romantics off and bathe in their semen and they typically crown Keats as the king of cum
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
>>8156558
who was keat's senpai?
>>8156555
The last ten or so comments I've seen of Keats here have been "the worst of the romantics. ez to spot a pseud once they mention keats favorably". Anecdotal, who knows what phase the board is in.
>>8156588
Shakes, probably. Wouldn't you say?
>>8156618
whom do you quote in the name of your pic?
i don't recall it and neither i can find it
it reminds me barnitz's
>And lo, she was more fair than all the lilies,
>Among the lilies, in the lily garden.
>>8156711
>whom do you quote
He be me. He who typed the first alliterative ells he thought. Truthfully, in my google image search, I saw a Keats image paired with a sandwich, which he eyed wanting.
Then I wondered if sheep eat flowers. They don't, but there was a certain nomadic shepherd tribe in Northwest Ireland who ate Tanyas, a violet-green flower with triangular petals that prospered in the cold. The tribe believed it would prevent old age, as the petal of the tanya does not wilt.
>>8156741
oh, i see
>Mary had a little lamb,
>His fleece was white as snow
>>Then I wondered if sheep eat flowers. They don't
but they do? even saint-exupery knew it
>Il y a des millions d'années que les fleures fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d'années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs.
p.s. this is the a weird chinese poem which i found while i looked for "little lamb looked"
>the little lamb looked
>prettier than a baby
>there was no one around
>I winked at it, flirtatiously
>and adjusted my lower jaw
>surreptitiously, in imitation of
>its angelic expression
>>8156791
>but they do? even saint-exupery knew it
we are the music makers
and we are the makers of memes
That night the moon drifted over the pond,
turning the water to milk, and under
the boughs of the trees, the blue trees,
a young woman walked, and for an instant
the future came to her:
rain falling on her husband’s grave, rain falling
on the lawns of her children, her own mouth
filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,
a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it,
a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death,
thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising
and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
>Carl Brutananadilewski
>Poetry
>>8156526
And there's a reason for that. Ashbery is ultimately forgettable. I agree with Bloom on most things, but in regard to Ashbery he can suck a dick.
>>8156873
>Ashbery is ultimately forgettable
Christ, this place is pretty much r/books now. Ashbery is one of the only living poets worth a damn, and you should feel bad that you don't see that.
What a place this could be if the prevailing discussion was about poetry. All the following are relatively short:
Shakespeare - sonnets 15, 23, 30, 60, 73, 116
John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale, To Autumn
Whitman - As I Ebb'd, Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
Stevens - The Snow Man, The Place of the Solitaires, Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, Six Significant Landscapes, The Wind Shifts, A Postcard from the Volcano, The Poems of Our Climate, The House was quite and the world was calm, The course of a particular
Ashbery: Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Rilke: Duino Elegies, particularly 1, 2, 8, 9.
Wordsworth: Ode: Intimations of Immortality, I wandered lonely as a cloud
Lord Byron: Darkness
TS Eliot: Preludes
Robert Frost: Desert Places
John Donne - The Ecstasy
Philip Larkin - Aubade
Dickinson - 419, 510, 712, 683, 822, 1260, 761, 1717, 1499, 1603
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Days
There was an unwanted child.
Aborted by three modern methods
she hung on to the womb,
hooked onto I
building her house into it
and it was to no avail,
to black her out.
At her birth
she did not cry,
spanked indeed,
but did not yell-
instead snow fell out of her mouth.
As she grew, year by year,
her hair turned like a rose in a vase,
and bled down her face.
Rocks were placed on her to keep
the growing silent,
and though they bruised,
they did not kill,
though kill was tangled into her beginning.
They locked her in a football
but she merely curled up
and pretended it was a warm doll's house.
They pushed insects in to bite her off
and she let them crawl into her eyes
pretending they were a puppet show.
Later, later,
grown fully, as they say,
they gave her a ring,
and she wore it like a root
and said to herself,
'To be not loved is the human condition,'
and lay like a stature in her bed.
Then once,
by terrible chance,
love took her in his big boat
and she shoveled the ocean
in a scalding joy.
Then,
slowly,
love seeped away,
the boat turned into paper
and she knew her fate,
at last.
Turn where you belong,
into a deaf mute
that metal house,
let him drill you into no one.
>>8156400
Absolute garbage
>>8157414
i read bluebird by bukovsky
and then i caught bronchitis
they made me undergo x-ray of my chest
there was no bluebird there
true story
either me or bukovsky is a mutant
Did life's penurious length
Italicize its sweetness,
The men that daily live
Would stand so deep in joy
That it would clog the cogs
Of that revolving reason
Whose esoteric belt
Protects our sanity.
To The Harbormaster - Frank O' Hara
Some of the formatting is messed up, but have some NZ poetry.
>James K. Baxter - High Country Weather
Alone we are born
And die alone;
Yet see the red-gold cirrus
Over snow-mountain shine.
Upon the upland road
Ride easy, stranger:
Surrender to the sky
Your heart of anger.
>Allen Curnow - Fantasy On a Hillside
Sun's hammer swinging at the skull
Starts a lark singing off the hill,
Pacific stoops a broad blue back
Lower, the higher loops the track;
Eyes brim, tilt
More sea is spilt
Over the rolling convex floor
Between the sky-sill and the shore.
Marooned I gaze, marooned I climb,
Pouring seas to bottomless Time
Whose vaporous chasm will not float
Knotted raft or hollowed boat:
Horizon's brink
Should stretch, I think
With height, and I, with strides immense,
Climb easily into continents.
>Sam Hunt - Porirua Friday Night
Acne blossoms scarlet on their cheeks
These kids up Porirua East....
Pinned across this young girl's breast
A name-tag on the supermarket badge;
A city-sky-blue smock.
Her face unclenches like a fist.
Fourteen when I met her first
A year ago, she's now left school,
Going with the boy
She hopes will marry her next year.
I asked if she found it hard
Working in the store these Friday nights
When friends are on the town.
She never heard;
But went on, rather, talking of
The house her man had put
A first deposit on
And what it's like to be in love.
>Hone Tuwhare - Rain
I can hear you making
small holes in the silence
rain
If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut
And I should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind:
the steady drum-roll
sound you make
when the wind drops
the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground
But if I should not
hear
smell or feel or see you
you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain
Keeping Things WholeRelated Poem Content Details
BY MARK STRAND
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
>>8157414
such a poem doesn't really work on a blue board
Recognition - Carol Ann Duffy
Things get away from one.
I’ve let myself go, I know.
Children? I’ve had three
and don’t even know them.
I strain to remember a time
when my body felt lighter.
Years. My face is swollen
with regrets. I put powder on,
but it flakes off. I love him,
through habit, but the proof
has evaporated. He gets upset.
I tried to do all the essentials
On one trip. Foolish, yes,
but I was weepy all morning.
Quiche. A blond boy swung me up
in his arms and promised the earth.
You see, this came back to me
as I stood on the scales.
I wept. Shallots. In the window,
creamy ladies held a pose
which left me clogged and old.
The waste. I’d forgotten my purse,
fumbled; the shopgirl gaped at me,
compassionless. Claret. I blushed.
Cheese. Kleenex. It did happen.
I lay in my slip on wet grass,
Laughing. Years. I had to rush out,
blind in a hot flush, and bumped
into an anxious, dowdy matron
who touched the cold mirror
and stared at me. Stared
and said I’m sorry sorry sorry.
For whatever reason I found this poem online when I was 12 or 13 and obsessed with Irish folk music and have always remembered it.
Dublin - Louis MacNiece
Grey brick uopn brick
Declamatory bronze
On somber pedestals
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the creek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.
This never was my town
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hides behind
Her Georgian facades
The catcalls and the pain
The glamour of her squalor
The bravado of her talk
The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.
She is not an Irish town
And she is not English
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin
Of an oratorical phrase
But oh the days are soft
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal
The steel behind the laugh
The Four Courts burnt.
Fort of the Dane
Garrison of the Saxon
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation
Appropriating all
The alien brought
You give me time for though
And by a juggler's trick
You poise the toppling hour
O greyness run to flower
Grey stone, grey water
And brick upon grey brick.
>>8157402
looks like you just parrot harold bloom
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind,
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death By Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Please read them at my cremation.
>>8156400
muh knäckprosa
>>8156400
This is really bad. I really don't understand how anyone could enjoy Bukowski.
>>8158221
derp
I It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy -- willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
>>8156393
Most anything by Rabindranath Tagore
I love A.E. Housman. This is from A Shropshire Lad:
'Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town
The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
Should charge the land with snow.
Spring will not wait the loiterer's time
Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
The hedgerows heaped with may.
Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
That will not shower on me.
>>8156397
>>8157374
Leaving something for those interested:
>Jeffrey McDaniel - The Endarkenment
It isn't the book with "The Quiet World", though. Couldn't get that one.
https://u.pomf.is/welkru.epub
>>8159567
>Rabindranath Tagore
Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.
I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.
I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.
Perhaps you glance at me and think, "What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!"
Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud-pies.
I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver.
With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain.
In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.
Tricked again.
I really love The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Honestly it's pretty shit, but I have a soft spot for tragic romance .
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43187
>>8156454
>>8156488
How does the beast look like in your head?
I see him this way.
>>8159950
Your perception seems a little confused. That yugioh card has entirely the wrong expression.
>>8159963
It doesn't hold a heart either. How do you imagine it, though?
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?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qz2MfXTsk0
>inb4 not a poem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6CCePrJlaU
>>8158886
it is like this
when you slip down,
done like a wound-up victrola
(you remember those?)
and you go downtown
and watch the boys punch
but the big blondes sit with
someone else
and you've aged like a punk in a movie:
cigar in skull, fat gut,
but only no money,
no wiseness of way, no worldliness,
but as usual
most of the fights are bad,
and afterwards
back in the parking lot
you sit and watch them go,
light the last cigar,
and then start the old car,
old car, not so young man
going down the street
stopped by a red light
as if time were no problem,
and they come up to you:
a car full of young,
laughing,
and you watch them go
until
somebody behind you honks
and you are shaken back
into what is left
of your life.
pitiful, self-pity,
and your foot is to the floor
and you catch the young ones,
you pass the young ones
and holding the wheel like all love gone
you race to the beach
with them
brandishing your cigar and your steel,
laughing,
you will take them to the ocean
to the last mermaid,
seaweed and shark, merry whale,
end of flesh and hour and horror,
and finally they stop
and you go on
toward your ocean,
the cigar biting your lips
the way love used to.
>>8160259
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HEq8UqrujM
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.
Bit of an obscure one, but let's see if anyone here knows it. *ahem*
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
>>8160570
Dont make fun of her :(
Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
I’ve never kept flocks,
But it’s like I’ve kept them.
My soul is like a shepherd,
It knows the wind and the sun
And it walks hand in hand with the Seasons,
Following and seeing.
All the peace of Nature without people
Comes and sits at my side.
But I get sad
As the sunset is in our imagination
When it gets cold down in the plain
And you feel night coming in
Like a butterfly through the window.
But my sadness is quiet
Because it’s natural and it’s just
And it’s what should be in my soul
When it already thinks it exists
And my hands pick flowers
And my soul doesn’t know it.
Like the sound of cowbells
Beyond the curve of the road,
All my thoughts are peaceful.
I’m just sorry about knowing they’re peaceful,
Because if I didn’t know it,
Instead of them being peaceful and sad,
They’d be happy and peaceful.
Thinking makes you uncomfortable like walking in the rain
When the wind gets stronger and it seems to rain more.
I don’t have ambitions or desires.
Being a poet isn’t my ambition,
It’s my way of being alone.
And sometimes if I want
To imagine I’m a lamb
(Or a whole flock
Spreading out all over the hillside
So I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),
It’s only because I feel what I write at sunset,
Or when a cloud passes its hand over the light
And silence runs over the grass outside.
When I sit and write poems
Or, walking along the roads or pathways,
I write poems on the paper in my thoughts,
I feel a staff in my hand
And see my silhouette
On top of a knoll,
Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas,
Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock,
With a silly smile like someone who doesn’t understand what somebody’s saying
But tries to pretend they do.
I greet everyone who reads me,
I tip my wide hat to them
When they see me at my door
Just as the stagecoach comes to the top of my hill.
I greet them and wish them sunshine,
Or rain, when rain is needed,
And that their houses have
A favorite chair
Where they sit reading my poems
By an open window.
And when they read my poems, I hope they think
I’m something natural —
An ancient tree, for instance,
Where they sat down with a thump
In the shade when they were kids
Tired from playing, and wiped the sweat
From their hot brows
With the sleeve of their striped cotton smock.
>Robert Burns - To a Mouse
>On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss ’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
I
THE WINTER evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps 5
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots, 10
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer 15
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes, 20
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited; 25
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back 30
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where 35
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block, 40
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties, 45
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle 50
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
ts eliot- preludes
>>8162409
>Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
>O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
cute <3
>>8160259
literally not a poem
>>8159828
Thanks lad.
When I was 16 years old, I did not particularly 'like' or 'dislike' poetry, just didn't think much about it, although I did enjoy reading literature a lot. I had a German teacher (I'm Dutch myself) who was incredibly fond of poetry and literature, and would try to structure his German lessons around famous German literary works (Faust), movies (Goodbye Lenin), documentaries, you get the idea. At some point he was talking about Bertolt Brecht and he read the poem 'Erinnerung an die Marie A'. By then my German was good enough to understand it, I understood the words and quite liked it, but I did not 'fully understand' it the way I did a few years later. When I came across the poem again after a few years, for the first time a poem actually made me feel the atmosphere the poem was describing, simply because I was older, had loved, and could relate to it more. Never before had a poem stirred a certain emotion before.
1. An jenem Tag im blauen Mond September
Still unter einem jungen Pflaumenbaum
Da hielt ich sie, die stille bleiche Liebe
In meinem Arm wie einen holden Traum.
2. Und über uns im schönen Sommerhimmel
War eine Wolke, die ich lange sah
Sie war sehr weiß und ungeheuer oben
Und als ich aufsah, war sie nimmer da.
3. Seit jenem Tag sind viele, viele Monde
Geschwommen still hinunter und vorbei.
Die Pflaumenbäume sind wohl abgehauen
Und fragst du mich, was mit der Liebe sei.
4. So sag ich dir: ich kann mich nicht erinnern
Und doch, gewiß, ich weiß schon, was du meinst.
Doch ihr Gesicht, das weiß ich wirklich nimmer
Ich weiß nunmehr: ich küßte es dereinst.
5. Und auch den Kuß, ich hätt ihn längst vergessen
Wenn nicht die Wolke dagewesen wär
Die weiß ich noch und werd ich immer wissen
Sie war sehr weiß und kam von oben her.
6. Die Pflaumenbäume blühn vielleicht noch immer
Und jene Frau hat jetzt vielleicht das siebte Kind.
Doch jene Wolke blühte nur Minuten
Und als ich aufsah, schwand sie schon im Wind.
there - who? - a man windocleans my eyes high
high above the level of my feet
Done, how shall he get in and go down and get out?
Nights my eyes black, mornings blue, now - gray.
He leans far far out beyond my lids, high
over the multitudes of toes - who pinch
themselves only to look down, while I,
child to man plus little man - I stretch
laughter and terror to make both ends of his belt meet,
hold - why? - for all I care he could fall like sleet,
Haul my hands to tempt or topple him?
Hands off, hands down to him who'd clear my balls of phlegm,
who here stares me in the eye, his own a bubbling weld,
safety aflame to plumb my shriek at man unknown dead
at my feet
>>8160880
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbd4h1kaFlY
“What fires burn within my heart and force me to contend
With the perils that await me at this tragic journey’s end?
I have walked the roads that lead to Hell, I have challenged all but Fate.
I have fought and bled and carried on just to reach this final gate.
And now the task before me looms, this dire deed undone;
I shall make my stand against the Three until the battle's won.
What fear or wound could ever still this last defiant cry,
As I stand against the Shadow 'neath the endless burning sky?”
>>8162844
What is this? I can't find it on Google.
>>8162919
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRwSBoC30zk
>>8164146
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0q3Ly6a6t0
>>8163882
It's by Gil Orlovitz, retrieved from this critical article: (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27776057?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old—
This knight so bold—
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied—
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
>Rudyard Kipling - The Recall
I am the land of their fathers,
In me the virtue stays;
I will bring back my children,
After certain days.
Under their feet in the grasses
My clinging magic runs.
They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.
Over their heads in the branches
Of their new-bought, ancient trees,
I weave an incantation,
And draw them to my knees.
Scent of smoke in the evening,
Smell of rain in the night,
The hours, the days and the seasons
Order their souls aright;
Till I make plain the meaning
Of all my thousand years
Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes with tears.
Complete book can be downloaded here: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/actions/index.html
It's not a poetry book though, but a collection of short-stories with some poems in between.
>>8166570
i take it it's a call to send all the blacks from the usa to africa which longingly awaits them there?
>John Donne - Song
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
At the last must part, ’tis best,
Thus to use myself in jest
By feigned deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here to-day;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way;
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall;
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lovest me as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil.
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep.
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
>>8157362
Not the same guy as him, but I remember when I first heard of Ashbery, my friend had me read this poem of his:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/daffy-duck-in-hollywood/
I don't think I've read any poem more masturbatory than that. He has some clever turns of phrase, but the whole damn poem is nothing but a bunch of flowery drivel and attempts at high brow and obscure references, and more so, it's just an exercise at flaunting his vocabulary. I really do like poetry that is experimental, but this just seems so utterly pretentious.
