Poets

[JazmenFlowers]

anyone here into poetry? I used to really love it (I guess it's the English major in me). I also used to write all the time and won several contests and was in my college's yearly bulletin a few times. Recently, I've been getting back into poetry...Anyway, who is your favorite poet or poem and do you write?

my favorite poem is The Forsaken Merman by Matthew Arnold

COME, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go.
Call once yet.
In a voice that she will know:
'Margaret! Margaret!'
Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;
Children's voices, wild with pain.
Surely she will come again.
Call her once and come away.
This way, this way!
'Mother dear, we cannot stay.'
The wild white horses foam and fret.
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down.
Call no more.
One last look at the white-wall'd town,
And the little grey church on the windy shore.
Then come down.
She will not come though you call all day.
Come away, come away.
Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam;
Where the salt weed sways in the stream;
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail, and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.
She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.
She said, 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'
I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves.
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'
She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?
'The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.
Long prayers,' I said, 'in the world they say.
Come,' I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town.
Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,
To the little grey church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold-blowing airs.
We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her dear:
'Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.
Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long alone.
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.'
But, ah! she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book.
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Came away, children, call no more.
Come away, come down, call no more.

Down, down, down;
Down to the depths of the sea.
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: 'O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy.
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun.'
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the shuttle falls from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away, children.
Come children, come down.
The hoarse wind blows colder;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing, 'Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she:
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.'

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow;
When clear falls the moonlight;
When spring-tides are low:
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom;
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom:
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie;
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side--
And then come back down.
Singing, 'There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she.
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.

and this is the most successful of my poems


Rats

I sit behind in the gray velour that
reminds me of rat fur

Rats
seem to eat at my flesh and my heart
my head
is about to explode from thought on top of thought
I swim in a sea of thoughts
my mind can not rest
I am walking the line

Did I not bleed?
Did my eyes not say?
Did my soul not tell yours something was wrong?
Could you not read my mind to
see each "t" was not crossed and I
forgot to dot each i am open
torn open by rats

See my insides spill
finally, you see something
but you will not see me...the little boy I was
and still am
who needed someone
as the rats nibble what is left of my fingers

The rat fur is
starting to get to me
I will be smothered by it and it will consume me and
my silence
will be indefinite
why can't you see?
I want to scream out to you...spit blood at you
but I sit still as we pass the city limit sign

[elie]

My favorite poet is Sylvia Plath and my favorite poem would have to be Lady Lazarus.

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

[jannieC]

Jason, I've never really enjoyed poetry. I think it's because I just don't like to have to think so hard to understand something (which makes me sound really stupid, I know). However, I really enjoy a lot of Maya Angelou's stuff (IN SPITE of her friendship with Hoprah). She came into the hotel I used to work at for lunch, and I said something to her (which we were neever supposed to do). She was very gracious and took my hand in both of hers. Lovely woman, really.

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by jannieC

Jason, I've never really enjoyed poetry. I think it's because I just don't like to have to think so hard to understand something (which makes me sound really stupid, I know). However, I really enjoy a lot of Maya Angelou's stuff (IN SPITE of her friendship with Hoprah). She came into the hotel I used to work at for lunch, and I said something to her (which we were neever supposed to do). She was very gracious and took my hand in both of hers. Lovely woman, really.

nah...I think lots of people feel that way. I have always had the mindset that if a poem doesn't move me at all and I have to think about it, I move on. There are poems I don't understand AT ALL, but I love because they are so pretty.

[Jyqm]

Thanks for starting this thread! I had mentioned in passing a while back that it would interesting to hear about people's favorite poems or their own work, but I never got around to starting the thread myself.

My favorite poetry tends to be longer epic stuff. It really doesn't get much better (in English, at least) than Paradise Lost, or The Faerie Queene, or Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Or Leaves of Grass, on the American side of the ocean. Or Howl (much shorter than those others, of course, but that certainly doesn't make it any less epic).

As for shorter, lyric stuff, I also like Arnold, though of those late Victorian guys, I think I prefer Hopkins (sprung rhyme is pretty awesome; check out "The Windhover") and Hardy ("The Darkling Thrush").

Plath is pretty great, too - she was so wonderful with really harsh juxtapositions of imagery - and I think if I'm going to include an actual poem (and not just a link) in this post, it's going to be "The Swarm":

Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The hump of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off

In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm balls and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.

It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.

The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.

The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,

Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!

The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.

How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.

The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'

Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!

As for me, I wrote a number of prose sonnets last year. Here's a few of them, with the line breaks marked:

"Sonnet about Strawberries"

So earlier tonight, as I was wal/king down to Karl's apartment, right there on / the sidewalk, cold, abandoned, wet, I saw / these strawberries. They had been spilled. I pon/dered it but briefly as I passed - this taw/dry scene of hugely poignant, yet incon/sequential melancholy - as the raw/ness of the weather kept me focused on / arriving at my destination quick/ly. I was careful, though, and didn't step / on any of the orphaned fruit. No sense / in slipping on red pulp. The streets were slick / enough from hours of rain, and I had fal/len once already. There goes decadence.

14.2.2005


"Two Days after Aunt Jane Fell"

I think what most surprised me when we went / into the house was the near total lack / of stench. I had expected the warm, black / odor of death. Instead, the only scent / to be detected was the faint bouquet / of vodka: empty Smirnoff bottles - four / of them - held vigil near the spot of floor / where red had long since turned to brown. The ta/ble stood defiant. Victory was his. / I looked away. A painting on the wall - / the dog, Frisky. Long dead, if I recall. / Rabies, I think. Forget it. There is busi/ness to attend to yet. What do they say / gets blood stains out of carpet, anyway?

21.2.2005


“Voice of a Generation”

It seems like every time you buy a book-/on-tape these days, it's some celebrity / who's reading it. But what about the peo/ple that we used to hear - the ones with crook/ed teeth and dirty fingernails, the book-/on-tape professionals, who starve so we / can hear our damned beloved Michael Kea/ton narrate Moby Dick or Through the Look/ing Glass? Is modern culture really this / obsessed with Hollywood - that we will screw / folks out of work 'cause People Magazine / has never done a spread on them? 'Course, who / am I to judge? I'd sell my soul to lis/ten to Huck Finn, as read by Charlie Sheen.

14.3.2005

I also wrote this little over-the-top Spenserian excerise, which I rather enjoy:

“A Conversation with Rita, on the Eve of My Departure for Germany”

I, solitary, ‘pon the stalwart strand,
Across the heaving plain out-staring, stood.
Fev’rishly, the spray clutched at the land;
The ivory moon retreated, as it would.
A fleshly link reluctant, ‘cause I could,
I—home, alone—, into the gale, had cried:
“I’m not afraid anymore!” A voice—I should
Say that of Byron—scolded me: “I’d
Have said it better, or at least have harder tried.”

19.9.2005

All right, that's enough out of me. Onward.

[EnchantedSLN]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

my favorite poem is The Forsaken Merman by Matthew Arnold

I like it. Thanks for posting.

I love Pablo Neruda, John Keats, Walt Whitman, ee cummings, Rumi. My favorite poem is Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant:

TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice—Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings,
The powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings,—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

"Two Days after Aunt Jane Fell"

I think what most surprised me when we went / into the house was the near total lack / of stench. I had expected the warm, black / odor of death. Instead, the only scent / to be detected was the faint bouquet / of vodka: empty Smirnoff bottles - four / of them - held vigil near the spot of floor / where red had long since turned to brown. The ta/ble stood defiant. Victory was his. / I looked away. A painting on the wall - / the dog, Frisky. Long dead, if I recall. / Rabies, I think. Forget it. There is busi/ness to attend to yet. What do they say / gets blood stains out of carpet, anyway?

21.2.2005

see...I do have substance...I'm more than sun-ripened raspberries and polished eyebrows...

I love The Windhover and The Darkling Thrush - thanks for posting those...I love the alliteration and sibilance in those poems.

I wrote a "response" to Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill that I should post...it won a couple of awards.

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by jannieC

Jason, I've never really enjoyed poetry. I think it's because I just don't like to have to think so hard to understand something

I'm almost exactly the opposite (though no, that doesn't make you sound stupid), at least when it comes to lyric poetry: If I completely understand or get a lot out of a poem on first reading, odds are there won't be much to discover when I go back to it. My favorite poems end up being the ones that, after the first reading, had me scratching my head.

Originally Posted by EnchantedSLN

My favorite poem is Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant:

Good ol' Dubya Cee Bee. I forget about him. Thanks for the reminder!

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

see...I do have substance...I'm more than sun-ripened raspberries and polished eyebrows...

I don't get it...

I enjoyed your poem! Well, maybe "enjoyed" isn't the right word... But I like poems that thrust that kind of vivid, violent imagery into a seemingly totally banal situation.

I love The Windhover and The Darkling Thrush - thanks for posting those...I love the alliteration and sibilance in those poems.

"The Darkling Thrush" is almost devastating a century later, isn't it? You had no idea, Tom... Not a clue...

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

I don't get it...

I enjoyed your poem! Well, maybe "enjoyed" isn't the right word... But I like poems that thrust that kind of vivid, violent imagery into a seemingly totally banal situation.

"The Darkling Thrush" is almost devastating a century later, isn't it? You had no idea, Tom... Not a clue...

oh I was just poking fun at a few here who pick on me for being slightly (he he slightly) nelly at times I guess...because I use Sun-Ripened Raspberry deodorant and drink Raspberry Ice water and keep my eyebrows in shape...lol

I appreciate what you said about my poem. It's about being in the car with my parents and wanting so bad to tell them something...it's like a conversation with myself I guess...I have a lot of poems that deal with the sexual abuse I experienced, go figure

oh and I meant to tell you how much I enjoyed your poem...WOW, it's awesome...reminds me of A Rose for Emily. Very nice.

[irishgrl]

The Cremation of Sam McGee, by: Robert Service (1874-1958)

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold, till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead — it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you, to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — Oh God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear, you'll let in the cold and storm —
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

and for sheer brevity (I cant remember the author's name, he/she was a poetry contest winner):

My skin is thin
but its enough
to keep me in.

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

I appreciate what you said about my poem. It's about being in the car with my parents and wanting so bad to tell them something...it's like a conversation with myself I guess...I have a lot of poems that deal with the sexual abuse I experienced, go figure

Hey, write what you know, right?

oh and I meant to tell you how much I enjoyed your poem...WOW, it's awesome...reminds me of A Rose for Emily. Very nice.

Thanks! I definitely did not "enjoy" your poem, but I've gone back to read it again several times now, which as I mentioned in my other post, is always a good sign. This last time through, I especially liked this part:

my head
is about to explode from thought on top of thought
I swim in a sea of thoughts
my mind can not rest
I am walking the line

In any other context, I might think, "Geez, talk about your mixed metaphors," but those last three lines really do a great job of expressing how overwhelmed and confused the speaker is in kind of a subtle way.

Originally Posted by irishgrl

The Cremation of Sam McGee, by: Robert Service (1874-1958)

Is this strictly a poem, or is it also a song? Or has music ever been written for it? It'd make for a real nice folk/country song.

[hayley]

I love ee cummings, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, & Pablo Neruda. I have two favorite poems, both terribly cliche.

The first is I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You- by Neruda.

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

My other favorite poem is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot. Cliche, I know. But I can still recite every line of this thing, that's how many times I've read it.

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?

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

Is this strictly a poem, or is it also a song? Or has music ever been written for it? It'd make for a real nice folk/country song.

as far as I know its only a poem. Robert W. Service has quite a lot of poems dealing with the Yukon/Gold Rush days.........
http://www.robertwservice.com/module...p?articleid=30
this is the home page with a voice clip from the old boy hisself:
Robert W. Service

another favorite is The Shooting of Dan McGrew

Another "poem" I like which is actually a song, is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald I think Gordon Lightfoot did an awesome job with this song/poem.

[BTFLCHLD]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

anyone here into poetry?

very cool jaz...i thought to add this to the song/lyric thread...but now you have this...very cool...
i love to read poetry... ive written quite a number myself...

Ode to Beauty
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

WHO gave thee, O Beauty,
The keys of this breast,—
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Say, when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old?
Or what was the service
For which I was sold?
When first my eyes saw thee,
I found me thy thrall,
By magical drawings,
Sweet tyrant of all!
I drank at thy fountain
False waters of thirst;
Thou intimate stranger,
Thou latest and first!
Thy dangerous glances
Make women of men;
New-born, we are melting
Into nature again.
Lavish, lavish promiser,
Nigh persuading gods to err!
Guest of million painted forms,
Which in turn thy glory warms!
The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
The acorn’s cup, the raindrop’s arc,
The swinging spider’s silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wine,
The shining pebble of the pond,
Thou inscribest with a bond,
In thy momentary play,
Would bankrupt nature to repay.

Ah, what avails it
To hide or to shun
Whom the Infinite One
Hath granted His throne?
The heaven high over
Is the deep’s lover;
The sun and sea,
Informed by thee,
Before me run,
And draw me on,
Yet fly me still,
As Fate refuses
To me the heart Fate for me chooses.
Is it that my opulent soul
Was mingled from the generous whole;
Sea-valleys and the deep of skies
Furnished several supplies;
And the sands whereof I’m made
Draw me to them, self-betrayed?
I turn the proud portfolios
Which hold the grand designs
Of Salvator, of Guercino,
And Piranesi’s lines.
I hear the lofty paeans
Of the masters of the shell,
Who heard the starry music
And recount the numbers well;
Olympian bards who sung
Divine Ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
Oft, in streets or humblest places,
I detect far-wandered graces,
Which, from Eden wide astray,
In lonely homes have lost their way.

Thee gliding through the sea of form,
Like the lightning through the storm,
Somewhat not to be possessed,
Somewhat not to be caressed.
No feet so fleet could ever find,
No perfect form could ever bind.
Thou eternal fugitive,
Hovering over all that live,
Quick and skilful to inspire
Sweet, extravagant desire,
Starry space and lily-bell
Filling with thy roseate smell,
Wilt not give the lips to taste
Of the nectar which thou hast.

All that’s good and great with thee
Works in close conspiracy;
Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely
To report thy features only,
And the cold and purple morning
Itself with thoughts of thee adorning;
The leafy dell, the city mart,
Equal trophies of thine art;
E’en the flowing azure air
Thou hast touched for my despair;
And, if I languish into dreams,
Again I meet the ardent beams.
Queen of things! I dare not die
In Being’s deeps past ear and eye;
Lest there I find the same deceiver,
And be the sport of Fate for ever.
Dread Power, but dear! if God thou be,
Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me!

[DavidMn]

I havent seen it in a long time, but I reall like this poem by William Carlos Williams about Nantucket. I'd love to see it again!