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The Poetry Thread (1 Viewer)

Henry Ford

Footballguy
A somewhat drunken, meandering post of mine last night led to a discussion of 20th-century poetry.  I'd be happy if people would post their favorite poems in here - the good, the bad, and the horrifyingly misogynistic limericks I expect from many.  My initial contribution:

If, by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

 
"African Dream"

Tim and I a hunting went;

we came upon three maidens in a tent;

since they were three, and we were two;

I had one and Timbuktu..

 
Are couplets poetry?

Naught's had, all's spent,

where our desire is got without content.

Tis better to be that which we destroy,

than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

 
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And said, "Hey! What's in the bowl, #####?"

 
alwaysbeenafanof

eecummingsandof

his works i think

this is

mymymymymy

favorite:

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol's farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who'd given my Unde Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scrumptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and

i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol's coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)


 
Bluebird by 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?

 
STYLE—go ahead talking about style.





You can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs or Ty Cobb his batting eye.





 


    Go on talking.





Only don’t take my style away.





      It’s my face.


        5


      Maybe no good





          but anyway, my face.





I talk with it, I sing with it, I see, taste and feel with it, I know why I want to keep it.





 


Kill my style





            and you break Pavlowa’s legs,


        10


            and you blind Ty Cobb’s batting eye.

~Style by Carl Sandburg

 
My favorite poetry has always been lyrics, at least after I passed from my first poetic loves Dr. Seuss and Ogden Nash.  I hesitate to begin posting of lyrics as I believe the thread had a different direction or thrust.   I have found some value in Whitman, some meaning which resonated with me.

 
 I hesitate to begin posting of lyrics as I believe the thread had a different direction or thrust.   
I didn't start this thread, but post away anyhow; whatever the original intent, this thread is becoming like a poem in and of itself. 

Here, I have another one.  I lifted it from an article a couple of years ago about inner city education.  This was supposedly written by an inner city kid, wasn't attributed to an author, and it's simply titled "square":

He drew... the things inside that needed saying. Beautiful pictures he kept under his pillow.
When he started school he brought them...
To have along like a friend.
It was funny about school, he sat at a square brown desk Like all the other square brown desks... and his room Was a square brown room like all the other rooms, tight And close and stiff.

He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, his arms stiff
His feet flat on the floor, stiff, the teacher watching
And watching. She told him to wear a tie like
All the other boys, he said he didn't like them.
She said it didn't matter what he liked. After that the class drew.
He drew all yellow. It was the way he felt about Morning. The Teacher came and smiled, "What's this?
Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing?"
After that his mother bought him a tie, and he always Drew airplanes and rocketships like everyone else.
He was square inside and brown and his hands were stiff. The things inside that needed saying didn't need it
Anymore, they had stopped pushing... crushed, stiff
Like everything else.

 
Kitchenette Building by Gwendolyn Brooks
 
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”
 
But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an ariaaria an elaborate song for one voice with orchestral accompaniment, appearing most often in opera (“aria” means “air” in Italian). down these rooms
 
Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?
 
We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

 
My favorite poetry has always been lyrics, at least after I passed from my first poetic loves Dr. Seuss and Ogden Nash.  I hesitate to begin posting of lyrics as I believe the thread had a different direction or thrust.   I have found some value in Whitman, some meaning which resonated with me.
He who hesitates is lost.  Post away.

 
“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”


Kierkegaard (not to be confused with norwegian soccer sensation, Odegaard)

 
A bit more appropriate for the Free For All

Oscar Wilde by Dorothy Parker

If, among the literate free for all I am

compelled to try an epigram,

I never seek to take the credit.

They all assume that Oscar fatguyinalittlecoat said it.

 
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: somewhere in sands of the desert
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
Reel 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?


 
wow post count

found amongst the ruins of a yellow board

gone black, like none

of the posters at this haven

not even poster @cliffclavin

as the wind takes our shick,

so stays the shtick of the board elite clique

 
 "Eyes Of The World"
 

Right outside this lazy summer home
ain't got time to call your soul a critic no.
Right outside the lazy gate of winter's summer home,
wond'rin' where the nut-thatch winters,
wings a mile long, just carried the bird away.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Your heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own.
Right now discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings.
Your heart has its seasons, its evenin's and songs of its own.

There comes a redeemer, and he slowly too fades away.
There follows a wagon behind him that's loaded with clay.
The seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay.
The night comes so quiet, it's close on the heels of the day.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Your heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own.
Right now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings.
Your heart has its seasons, its evenin's and songs of its own.

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.
Sometimes we visit your country and live in your home.
Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,
Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Your heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings.
Your heart has its seasons, its evenin's and songs of its own.
                                                                       --Robert Hunter
 
 
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For HF, and his nascent bovine superpowers.

Small Conversation In The Afternoon With John Fante - Poem by Charles Bukowski

he said, "I was working in Hollywood when Faulkner wasworking in Hollywood and he wasthe worst: he was too drunk to stand up at theend of the afternoon and so I had to help himinto a taxiday after day after day. "but when he left Hollywood, I stayed on, and while Ididn't drink like that maybe I should have, I might havehad the guts then to follow him and get the hell out ofthere." I told him, "you write as well asFaulkner.: "you mean that?" he asked from the hospitalbed, smiling.

 
In Retirement

Father sits in the living room
Relaxing in his easy chair
History book open on his lap
Eyes closed
Dead tired from the days work
Laying carpet in the upstairs bedrooms
Painting the kitchen or
Building a workshop in the basement.

On a counter nearby are three tape measures
One for each floor, he says with a wink
When asked why he keeps the three
All in one place.

I turn on the TV to watch a ballgame
Father stirs and, pretending he's been reading,
Lifts his book
"What's the score?" he asks.
"The Sox are losing again." I tell him,
And soon his tired, grey head rolls forward once more
And he is resting again.

--For my father, William E. Merrill, who, as a school administrator for more than 30 years, spent countless nights at School Board and PTA meetings for the benefit of the children of the Lebanon and Somersworth, N.H. and Randolph, Vt. School Districts.

 
Sent this to a girl once (which failed miserably), but still one of my favorites: 

Wild nights - Wild nights! (269) Related Poem Content Details
BY EMILY DICKINSON
Audio Player
00:0000:32Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
Wild nights - Wild nights! 
Were I with thee 
Wild nights should be 
Our luxury! 

Futile - the winds - 
To a Heart in port - 
Done with the Compass - 
Done with the Chart! 

Rowing in Eden - 
Ah - the Sea! 
Might I but moor - tonight - 
In thee! 
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sent this to a girl once (which failed miserably), but still one of my favorites: 

Wild nights - Wild nights! (269) Related Poem Content Details
BY EMILY DICKINSON
Audio Player
00:0000:32Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
Wild nights - Wild nights! 
Were I with thee 
Wild nights should be 
Our luxury! 

Futile - the winds - 
To a Heart in port - 
Done with the Compass - 
Done with the Chart! 

Rowing in Eden - 
Ah - the Sea! 
Might I but moor - tonight - 
In thee! 
was it the racist? I hope it was the racist.

 
was it the racist? I hope it was the racist.
Nope.   Some chick I was really into my first year of college despite being squarely placed in her friend zone. 

RacistEx would laugh at something like this to mask the fact she didn't understand like ten of the words.

 
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I think that any discussion of great twentieth century poets would be incomplete without Anthony Hecht. This one is long, so I've cut and pasted, but the epigraph of his Collected Later Poems reads this, to his second wife...

Oh my most dear/I know the live imprint of that smile of gratitude/know it more perfectly than any book/it brims upon the world a mood of love/a mode of gladness without stint/Oh, that I may be worthy of that look. 

And then the book duly goes. The Transparent Man is a masterpiece, about death, politics, social callings, virginity, all beautiful and pristine things.  

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/transparent-man

An excerpt: 

Code:
But this last week it seems I have found myself
Looking beyond, or through, individual trees
At the dense, clustered woodland just behind them,
Where those great, nameless crowds patiently stand.
It’s become a sort of complex, ultimate puzzle
And keeps me fascinated.  My eyes are twenty-twenty,
Or used to be, but of course I can’t unravel
The tousled snarl of intersecting limbs,
That mackled, cinder grayness.  It’s a riddle
Beyond the eye’s solution.  Impenetrable.
If there is order in all that anarchy
Of granite mezzotint, that wilderness,
It takes a better eye than mine to see it.
It set me on to wondering how to deal
With such a thickness of particulars,
Deal with it faithfully, you understand,
Without blurring the issue. Of course I know
That within a month the sleeving snows will come
With cold, selective emphases, with massings
And arbitrary contrasts, rendering things
Deceptively simple, thickening the twigs
To frosty veins, bestowing epaulets
And decorations on every birch and aspen.
And the eye, self-satisfied, will be misled,
Thinking the puzzle solved, supposing at last
It can look forth and comprehend the world.
That’s when you have to really watch yourself.
 
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Also, I love Beautiful Lofty Things by Yeats 

BEAUTIFUL lofty things: O'Leary's noble head;My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd:'This Land of Saints,' and then as the applause died out,'Of plaster Saints'; his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.Standish O'Grady supporting himself between the tablesSpeaking to a drunken audience high nonsensical words;Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table,Her eightieth winter approaching: 'Yesterday he threatened my life.I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table,The blinds drawn up'; Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train,Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head:All the Olympians; a thing never known again.

 
Sent this to a girl once (which failed miserably), but still one of my favorites: 

Wild nights - Wild nights! (269) Related Poem Content Details
BY EMILY DICKINSON
Audio Player
00:0000:32Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
Wild nights - Wild nights! 
Were I with thee 
Wild nights should be 
Our luxury! 

Futile - the winds - 
To a Heart in port - 
Done with the Compass - 
Done with the Chart! 

Rowing in Eden - 
Ah - the Sea! 
Might I but moor - tonight - 
In thee! 
Maybe she was confused by the Up/Down Arrow keys.

 
A. E. Housman (1859–1936).  A Shropshire Lad.  1896.


 


LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff


 



 


‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:





You eat your victuals fast enough;





There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,





To see the rate you drink your beer.





But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,


        5


It gives a chap the belly-ache.





The cow, the old cow, she is dead;





It sleeps well, the horned head:





We poor lads, ’tis our turn now





To hear such tunes as killed the cow.


        10


Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme





Your friends to death before their time





Moping melancholy mad:





Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’





 


  Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,


        15


There’s brisker pipes than poetry.





Say, for what were hop-yards meant,





Or why was Burton built on Trent?





Oh many a peer of England brews





Livelier liquor than the Muse,


        20


And malt does more than Milton can





To justify God’s ways to man.





Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink





For fellows whom it hurts to think:





Look into the pewter pot


        25


To see the world as the world’s not.





And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:





The mischief is that ’twill not last.





Oh I have been to Ludlow fair





And left my necktie God knows where,


        30


And carried half way home, or near,





Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:





Then the world seemed none so bad,





And I myself a sterling lad;





And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,


        35


Happy till I woke again.





Then I saw the morning sky:





Heigho, the tale was all a lie;





The world, it was the old world yet,





I was I, my things were wet,


        40


And nothing now remained to do





But begin the game anew.





 


  Therefore, since the world has still





Much good, but much less good than ill,





And while the sun and moon endure


        45


Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,





I’d face it as a wise man would,





And train for ill and not for good.





’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale





Is not so brisk a brew as ale:


        50


Out of a stem that scored the hand





I wrung it in a weary land.





But take it: if the smack is sour,





The better for the embittered hour;





It should do good to heart and head


        55


When your soul is in my soul’s stead;





And I will friend you, if I may,





In the dark and cloudy day.





 


  There was a king reigned in the East:





There, when kings will sit to feast,


        60


They get their fill before they think





With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.





He gathered all that springs to birth





From the many-venomed earth;





First a little, thence to more,


        65


He sampled all her killing store;





And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,





Sate the king when healths went round.





They put arsenic in his meat





And stared aghast to watch him eat;


        70


They poured strychnine in his cup





And shook to see him drink it up:





They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:





Them it was their poison hurt.





—I tell the tale that I heard told.


        75


Mithridates, he died old.


 
Serious answer though:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/44212

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse 
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, 
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. 
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo 
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, 
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.




Let us go then, you and I, 
When the evening is spread out against the sky 
Like a patient etherized upon a table; 
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 
The muttering retreats 
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 
Streets that follow like a tedious argument 
Of insidious intent 
To lead you to an overwhelming question ... 
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” 
Let us go and make our visit. 
 
In the room the women come and go 
Talking of Michelangelo. 
 
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, 
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 
And seeing that it was a soft October night, 
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 
 
And indeed there will be time 
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 
There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 
There will be time to murder and create, 
And time for all the works and days of hands 
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 
And for a hundred visions and revisions, 
Before the taking of a toast and tea. 
 
In the room the women come and go 
Talking of Michelangelo. 
 
And indeed there will be time 
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 
Time to turn back and descend the stair, 
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — 
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) 
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — 
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) 
Do I dare 
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. 
 
For I have known them all already, known them all: 
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; 
I know the voices dying with a dying fall 
Beneath the music from a farther room. 
               So how should I presume? 
 
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, 
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, 
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, 
Then how should I begin 
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 
               And how should I presume? 
 
And I have known the arms already, known them all— 
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare 
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) 
Is it perfume from a dress 
That makes me so digress? 
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. 
               And should I then presume? 
               And how should I begin? 
 
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... 
 
I should have been a pair of ragged claws 
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. 
 
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 
Smoothed by long fingers, 
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, 
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. 
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, 
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; 
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 
And in short, I was afraid. 
 
And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while, 
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 
To have squeezed the universe into a ball 
To roll it towards some overwhelming question, 
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 
If one, settling a pillow by her head 
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; 
               That is not it, at all.” 
 
And would it have been worth it, after all, 
Would it have been worth while, 
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, 
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— 
And this, and so much more?— 
It is impossible to say just what I mean! 
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 
Would it have been worth while 
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, 
And turning toward the window, should say: 
               “That is not it at all, 
               That is not what I meant, at all.” 
 
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 
Am an attendant lord, one that will do 
To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 
Deferential, glad to be of use, 
Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 
Almost, at times, the Fool. 
 
I grow old ... I grow old ... 
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 
 
Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach? 
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 
 
I do not think that they will sing to me. 
 
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

 

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