Yui-chan Posted April 27, 2006 Author Report Posted April 27, 2006 26 April, 2006 since feeling is first e.e. cummings since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry —the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis [i tend to think of cummings as the quintessential example of a poet who's worth the effort -- his syntax can be wonky and weird at first, but when the payoff is something as sweet and happy and unsaccharine as this, who can resist him?] A YEAR AGO TODAY: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats -- http://www.well.com/www/eob/poetry/The_Second_Coming.html
Sweetcherrie Posted April 27, 2006 Report Posted April 27, 2006 I really like this last one. Gives me those warm fuzzy feelings inside feelings inside, and the way he plays with words is brilliant. Thanks again for doing this Yui, it gives me a chance to get to know poetry by the poem instead of a whole bunch at the same time.
Yui-chan Posted May 2, 2006 Author Report Posted May 2, 2006 27 April, 2006 Crusoe in England Elizabeth Bishop A new volcano has erupted, the papers say, and last week I was reading where some ship saw an island being born: at first a breath of steam, ten miles away; and then a black fleck--basalt probably-- rose in the mate's binoculars and caught on the horizon like a fly. They named it. But my poor old island's still un-rediscovered, un-renamable. None of the books has ever got it right. ... Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography. Just when I thought I couldn't stand it another minute longer, Friday came. (Accounts of that have everything all wrong.) Friday was nice. Friday was nice, and we were friends. If only he had been a woman! I wanted to propagate my kind, and so did he, I think, poor boy. He'd pet the baby goats sometimes, and race with them, or carry one around. --Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body. And then one day they came and took us off. Now I live here, another island, that doesn't seem like one, but who decides? My blood was full of them; my brain bred islands. But that archipelago has petered out. I'm old. I'm bored too, drinking my real tea, surrounded by uninteresting lumber. The knife there on the shelf-- it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix. It lived. How many years did I beg it, implore it, not to break? I knew each nick and scratch by heart, the bluish blade, the broken tip, the lines of wood-grain in the handle... Now it won't look at me at all. The living soul has dribbled away. My eyes rest on it and pass on. The local museum's asked me to leave everything to them: the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes, my shedding goatskin trousers (moths have got in the fur), the parasol that took me such a time remembering the way the ribs should go. It still will work but, folded up looks like a plucked and skinny fowl. How can anyone want such things? --And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles seventeen years ago come March. [This is only part of the full poem -- if you'd like to read it all, you can go here: http://www.caterina.net/crusoe.html I love how Elizabeth Bishop brings Robinson Crusoe to life, gives him this conversational, wistful voice, and examines what happens after the story has ended. So fascinating and sad, and the idea of Crusoe who reads newspapers and lives an ordinary life somehow makes him seem so much more real. My favorites are the lines the poem seems to build to, but which at the same time seem to stand so alone: "--Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body." And the way the parts that mean the most are so matter-of-fact and hide so much: "And then one day they came and took us off." And those killer last two lines. Other (shorter!) Bishop poems you might like: -- Letter to N.Y. -- http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoet...html?mode=reply -- Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore -- http://www.ncguru.org/poems/eb-invit.htm ] A YEAR AGO TODAY: Dream Song 1, John Berryman -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/26
Yui-chan Posted May 2, 2006 Author Report Posted May 2, 2006 28 April, 2006 Dream Song 145 John Berryman Also I love him: me he's done no wrong for going on forty years -- forgiveness time -- I touch now his despair, he felt as bad as Whitman on his tower but he did not swim out with me or my brother as he threatened -- a powerful swimmer, to take one of us along as company in the defeat sublime, freezing my helpless mother: he only, very early in the morning, rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window and did what was needed. I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong & so undone. I've always tried. I -- I'm trying to forgive whose frantic passage, when he could not live an instant longer, in the summer dawn left Henry to live on. [The Dream Songs are written in a format John Berryman invented partly to address the big issues that plagued him, most notably the suicide of his father when Berryman was a child. I strongly recommend reading more, because they vary wildly in tone and topic, can be very funny or very sad, and are really unique in the way they play with syntax and voice. A lot of them are an internal dialogue between a Berryman-character called Henry and a voice of conscience and reason, Mr. Bones, and this idea of the fragmentary self gets played out in the last stanza of this poem: "I -- I'm" Like he's broken in two. And I think this is such a beautiful and hard look at how you go about trying to make yourself forgive someone for something so unforgiveable. If you're interested, I linked quite a few other Berryman poems at the bottom of this post from last year: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/26 ] A YEAR AGO TOAY: Having It Out With Melancholy, Jane Kenyon -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/27
Yui-chan Posted May 2, 2006 Author Report Posted May 2, 2006 29 April, 2006 Fever 103º Sylvia Plath Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. The tinder cries. The indelible smell Of a snuffed candle! Love, love, the low smokes roll From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel. Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise, But trundle round the globe Choking the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse baby in its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden in the air, Devilish leopard! Radiation turned it white And killed it in an hour. Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin. Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss. Three days. Three nights. Lemon water, chicken Water, water make me retch. I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ---- My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. Does not my heat astound you. And my light. All by myself I am a huge camellia Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. I think I am going up, I think I may rise ---- The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses, By kisses, by cherubim, By whatever these pink things mean. Not you, nor him. Not him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ---- To Paradise. [A poem about being sick. I love how vivid the images are! There's no slack writing here, every line is full of sensation.] A YEAR AGO TODAY: King Lear Considers What He's Wrought, Melissa Kirsch -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/28
Yui-chan Posted May 2, 2006 Author Report Posted May 2, 2006 30 April, 2006 Preludes T.S. Eliot 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 The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimneypots, 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 From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That times resumes, 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; 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 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 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, 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, 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 Infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots. [so T.S. Eliot is my favorite poet of all time, ever. I think his longer stuff is where he really shines (The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), but I love how even in his smaller, early poems, like this one, he has such a knack for filling the gritty little details of everyday life with a sadness and wistfulness. I like how he uses vision in the third section -- the flickering images on the ceiling and how the way you look out at the ordinary street can change so much -- and the last two little stanzas that bring in some loveliness to all the bleak parts. It's also interesting to pay attention to all the movement in the poem, how things shift in relation to one another.] A YEAR AGO TODAY: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/29 I can't believe National Poetry Month is over already! I hope you had as much fun as I did. If you'd like to keep reading poetry, check out the following resources: -- The Writer's Almanac -- daily e-mail newsletter with a poem and literary facts about this day in history, by Garrison Keillor -- http://mail.publicradio.org/writers -- Poetry Daily posts a poem every day -- http://www.poems.com/today.htm -- Greatpoets is a LiveJournal community with a fairly wide range of submissions -- http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/ Thanks for reading! Martha
Yui-chan Posted May 2, 2006 Author Report Posted May 2, 2006 Well, that's the end of National Poetry Month. If anyone is interested, I can go back and post the ones from the beginning of the month that I missed. Would you like to see those? Thanks, ~Yui
Sweetcherrie Posted May 2, 2006 Report Posted May 2, 2006 I would And once again, thank you for doing this...also..hmm Maybe the AVV could do something like this, but more as a Pen Poetry month? just wondering here...
Ayshela Posted May 2, 2006 Report Posted May 2, 2006 ooh! *waves hand wildly* mememememememememeeee!!!! umm.. yesplease? =) when you have time, I'd love to see them! Thank you SO much for posting these!
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