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Originally Posted by ragandbone
I really love this thread, but work has mademe into a hit and run poster, unable to keep up with the discussion. I wanted to post some favortie merwin poems, and I have had trouble finding the ones I want anywhere but in my books. I guess I will have to resort ot typing. Sigh.
Jyqm, I really like your "Water Damage" piece!
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Thanks! I tend to feel a little embarrassed by it, but I might be a little too close to it to really judge it on its own merits.
If you post the names of the Merwin poems you want, I can try searching around for them as well. You never know what might turn up if you have multiple people looking!
Most of Tom Waits' early songs are practically beat poems:
The Ghosts of Saturday Night
(After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)
A cab combs the snake,
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life
like small change on strangers...
Paws his inside P-coat pocket
for a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.
Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, "Irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes
And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a 'Ring and Valve Special'...
Cryin' "Fill'er up and check that oil"
"You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil."
The early mornin' final edition's on the stands,
And that town cryer's cryin' there with nickels in his hands.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs - roll 'em over and a package of Kents,
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late.
And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
filled with twilight Coupe Devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night...