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Thread: Your Favorite Poems from fellow Lit-Netters

  1. #166
    This celestial seascape! Lynne50's Avatar
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    Has anyone heard about the scandal with the Oxford professorship of poetry. It seems that Derek Walcott was going to get the honor, but then another poet named Ruth Padel ( a descendant of Darwin), another candidate, started sending derogatory emails to try and smear Walcott. Seems Walcott had in his past a couple of sexual harrassment claims against him that were never prosecuted. Padel admitted sending the emails, so has taken her name out of contention and Walcott is completely uninterested now.
    I didn't know poets could be so cutthroat. I guess we have to wait and see who will finally accept the post. I like the way the Philadephia Inquirer's writer, John Timpane, finished his column. " Stay tuned. Seldom has the poetic world known such suspense, or tasted such bile."
    "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare." W.H. Davies

  2. #167
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lynne50 View Post
    Has anyone heard about the scandal with the Oxford professorship of poetry. It seems that Derek Walcott was going to get the honor, but then another poet named Ruth Padel ( a descendant of Darwin), another candidate, started sending derogatory emails to try and smear Walcott. Seems Walcott had in his past a couple of sexual harrassment claims against him that were never prosecuted. Padel admitted sending the emails, so has taken her name out of contention and Walcott is completely uninterested now.
    I didn't know poets could be so cutthroat. I guess we have to wait and see who will finally accept the post. I like the way the Philadephia Inquirer's writer, John Timpane, finished his column. " Stay tuned. Seldom has the poetic world known such suspense, or tasted such bile."
    This raises the eternally interesting question of how and whether we should separate the artist from his or her art. Whilst I am far from wishing to defend Walcott in the face of the sexual harassment charges, in this I feel more distaste for Ms Padel in using that to disqualify a competitor.

    But wouldn't your post be more appropriate - and more likely to get the attention it deserves if it were in the General Literature Forum, as a new thread?

  3. #168
    Registered User quasimodo1's Avatar
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    now that is the most non-poetic news I've ever heard, at least in those environs.

  4. #169
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by quasimodo1 View Post
    now that is the most non-poetic news I've ever heard, at least in those environs.
    And yet, my dear Q.,
    whom do we suppose write poems?
    Is it only the saints
    among us, in which case
    how thin the anthologies might be!

    Is it the men and women
    of serene temperament
    and hearts as broad
    as some long, leisurely unwinding
    line of verse?

    Remember Baudelaire and his
    toi hypocrite lecteur,
    mon semblable, mon frere!
    Last edited by PrinceMyshkin; 05-31-2009 at 01:58 PM.

  5. #170
    Registered User quasimodo1's Avatar
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    to PrinceMyshkin: Now you know I love a dark poem as much as anybody; my remark is aimed at the lack of savoir faire in the "glorious" limelight, and hammering my Carribbean genious with such cheap shots. No, you're right...I'm not suprised. At least I/we are not degrading Joyce today...that's progress.

  6. #171
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by quasimodo1 View Post
    to PrinceMyshkin: Now you know I love a dark poem as much as anybody; my remark is aimed at the lack of savoir faire in the "glorious" limelight, and hammering my Carribbean genious with such cheap shots. No, you're right...I'm not suprised. At least I/we are not degrading Joyce today...that's progress.
    Anyone who takes a shot at the ol' man, you send him or her to see me.

  7. #172
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years

    A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years

    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years

    For fifty years my mother’s bones lay still
    above the Mohawk’s blue and sun-streaked line.
    They don't hear the wind whining up the hill,
    no hopeful birds, nor cheerless songs of mine.

    They wouldn't know the one she used to call
    “the shy one in the corner of the hall.”
    Long past her age, and with each July,
    I've grown more gray and wrinkled (but still shy.)

    It’s good she never sees in her repose
    the deeper hole in which I've dug myself:
    the stark result of dreaming, I suppose,
    with half a century of dust left on the shelf.

    It’s just as well that separation hides
    the tacit disappointment on both sides.

  8. #173
    This celestial seascape! Lynne50's Avatar
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    Aunt Shecky
    I don't think your mother would be disappointed. She would probably take much delight in reading your good poems.

    Thanks Prince Myshkin for posting this.
    "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare." W.H. Davies

  9. #174
    All are at the crossroads qimissung's Avatar
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    No kidding. It's letter-perfect, in tone and word.
    "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
    "Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai
    "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka

  10. #175
    My mind's in rags breathtest's Avatar
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    “Death and Oreos”

    No good can I see in the world
    Death and despair
    Rape and murder
    Sickness and famine
    (Oreos on sale this week)
    Three soldiers killed in a car bomb
    Oreos sound good, come to think of it.


    This poem by mutatis-mutandi really spoke out to me because it shows how easy it is to forget the horrible things in the world
    'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'. Hemingway

  11. #176
    unidentified hit record blp's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kevinthediltz quoting Sophia View Post
    Girl Talk

    If I could speak to you - Frida, Léonor, Leonora - Margaret
    I would fiery say your sibylline minds change me.

    Those double jointed hips, diarized scars,
    stapled nipples, retractable wombs

    skeletons wired with explosives -

    it was the fallout of you.
    The heap of cleavage and clitoris.
    Dirty laundry, dirty bombs imploding

    the femme enfant only authorized
    to live - to love between man’s while.

    Clearly - giving life means taking life,
    the quickening egg devouring its host.

    I would tell you I have a new canvas
    turned to the wall - the birth of death.

    Remedios nailed to a bed, raptors emerging
    two by two from the nest between her legs.

    Fiercely - your sibylline hands rearrange me.


    By ~Sophia~
    Yes, this one's incredible.

  12. #177
    ésprit de l’escalier DanielBenoit's Avatar
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    Unbelievable. . .. . .

    Originally posted by quimissung
    King Kong in Chains

    The wide sky leapt above me like a salmon
    finding its way upstream
    The wind gently touched my face
    with the delicate and deft fingers of a blind man
    I knew the seasons and how they changed,
    a sure knowledge I wore with my skin
    And I knew not hunger, nor hungered
    for more than I had, until I lost it
    My string of pearls, unknotted, fell,
    and rolled this way and that
    Across the polished wooden floor
    And even though I could hear them
    And scrabbled on hand and knees
    To find them, my search was fruitless
    And I sat as daylight faded from my eyes
    And my fingers grew useless,
    My body no longer fit the space I lived in
    And what I felt did not match what those around me felt
    I became useless and hung from the side of a building
    Far above them
    And they were no more to me than ants crawling over and around
    One another in an ambiance of unthinking industry
    I hung there until my arms grew rubbery and unfeeling
    And I grew desperate to cling to this brick and mortar,
    Fighting to keep the fragile connection
    Until my days were spent in an agony of wondering how long I could hold on
    I dreamt that I held in the palm of my hand
    a small delicate and fluttering thing
    breathing all the life I could not find and looking
    at me steadily
    suddenly I could not breathe for looking
    at the thing of iridescent beauty that lay in the hollow of its neck
    my eyes absorbed its beauty
    I could see, then, a shard of light among the darkened clouds
    And even as I looked and wondered at it, I could not help but think
    That if this small pulsing fluttering creature were to fall from my so great paw,
    Would I go after it?
    Or would I stay, smitten by the sky?

    Qimissung

    (for Pendragon)

    There's too many to choose from, so I'll just choose one of the most effective of his "snapshots"

    Originally posted by PrinceMyshkin

    Birds in adjacent cages
    pondering
    each other's dreams
    Last edited by DanielBenoit; 10-18-2009 at 08:15 PM.
    The Moments of Dominion
    That happen on the Soul
    And leave it with a Discontent
    Too exquisite — to tell —
    -Emily Dickinson
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4

  13. #178
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Muffled Confession

    Here I sit with baited breath
    as your cracked dry lips part
    to fess your secrets in death
    pour forth from wither'd heart
    that which you held from me in life

    Now your voice husks weak
    And my hand shall smother
    Any words you speak
    Shallow yet mysterious mother
    padlocked woman, closed lipped wife

    _____
    Delta40

  14. #179
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DanielBenoit View Post
    Unbelievable. . .. . .
    Agreed! Qimissung is always exceptional, and

    There's too many to choose from, so I'll just choose one of the most effective of his "snapshots"
    I overlooked your citation of this (one of my own favourites among my "Snapshots"). Thank you

  15. #180
    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    Here's a recent one that somehow has escaped many comments:

    Quote Originally Posted by DanBierce
    ~Sand~

    The breakwalled harbor
    holds sea-locked lives
    as docklines stretch, then sag,
    stretch, then sag
    on the moon-sucked surge.

    Mary tends a seaside bar, mends wounds,
    dodges brawls. She escorts
    the drowned and found to their graves.
    The drowned and lost
    langour in her dreams.

    Fuel-dock Harry
    rolls out hose, tops-off tanks,
    ices the holds. Corporate pockets
    take the cash. Harry
    shut it down one day
    with a two-barrel blast in his shack.

    Harbor master Jim, widowed
    now, patrols the dusk-dim
    moorings abob in his wake
    as complaints of gulls
    land on cormorants black as dread.
    They dive, beak death
    to minnows and silver needlefish.

    Bouy bells clong and clang
    socked in a shawl of fog.
    A raft of kelp, with its crew of flies,
    shades a shale-toothed reef
    as I watch phosphorescent swells
    pilfer the helpless shore,

    and this saddens me at times,
    as I walk the beach,
    feel the sand,
    the mountain it had been,
    being pulled from around my feet
    to lie forever beyond the light.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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