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Thread: Auntie's Anti-Poems

  1. #46
    All are at the crossroads qimissung's Avatar
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    cogs has a point, now that I think of it. This was my personal favorite in the contest, AuntShecky.
    "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

  2. #47
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    Thank you, dear readers. Here is a short link to another
    important quotation from John Muir, to which the last line of the ditty refers:

    http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_...misquotes.html

  3. #48
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    Everybody's Everybody

    Everybody’s Everybody

    Everybody’s every color,
    a multi-grain cake of yeast.
    Everyone’s a hundred percent Jewish,
    and a Moslem facing east.

    Everybody’s an Asian
    speaking Swahili in the rain.
    Everybody’s an Amer-Indian
    with ancestors from Spain.

    Everybody’s an atheist
    who reads the Good Book every day.
    Everybody’s Irish-Northern-Catholic,
    and everyone’s a little bit gay.

    Everybody needs a place to sleep
    after he hugs his kids at night.
    Everybody wants to eat and drink,
    but nobody – really – wants to fight.

    Everybody on this elevator
    feels the plunging down the chute.
    That’s why everybody gets the shaft,
    no matter whom they persecute.

    Each of us is born a unique scion
    from the same old piece of wood.
    Every body will die some day,
    but every body’s good.

    Everybody’s everyone,
    and Everyone is good.

  4. #49
    Vincit Qui Se Vincit Virgil's Avatar
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    Enjoyable!! The poem is really solid. This stanza hit home:
    Each of us is born a unique scion
    from the same old piece of wood.
    Every body will die some day,
    but every body’s good.
    That really pulls everything together.

    I don't know if you meant but it echos the Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows." Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5e1oaen-M.

    By the way you have a typo in the fourth line. It should be "muslim" not "moslim."
    LET THERE BE LIGHT

    "Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena

    My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/

  5. #50
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    Everybody’s Everybody

    Everybody’s every color,
    a multi-grain cake of yeast.
    Everyone’s a hundred percent Jewish,
    and a Moslem facing east.

    Everybody’s an Asian
    speaking Swahili in the rain.
    Everybody’s an Amer-Indian
    with ancestors from Spain.

    Everybody’s an atheist
    who reads the Good Book every day.
    Everybody’s Irish-Northern-Catholic,
    and everyone’s a little bit gay.

    Everybody needs a place to sleep
    after he hugs his kids at night.
    Everybody wants to eat and drink,
    but nobody – really – wants to fight.

    Everybody on this elevator
    feels the plunging down the chute.
    That’s why everybody gets the shaft,
    no matter whom they persecute.

    Each of us is born a unique scion
    from the same old piece of wood.
    Every body will die some day,
    but every body’s good.

    Everybody’s everyone,
    and Everyone is good.
    Holy Mother! And I do mean Holy Mother, Father, Child and Cousin! Who cares that this is GOOD poetry? It's way more than that, more like GREAT HUMANITY!

    Auntie! I mean Auntie! I'll have whatever you're having...

  6. #51
    feathers firefangled's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post

    Anthropomorphism in Autumn

    Can winter’s omens shake slim aspens with cold fears?
    Would mountain peaks yearn to suckle an infant in the sky?
    Do geese compare this trip to those of other years?
    Are airborne tufts of milkweed aware of where they'll fly?

    Would fading flowers cause the meadow’s heart to ache?
    Does a maple ever dream of a future April bed?
    Might the October moon want to get a rake
    to whisk occluding clouds away from its clearer head?

    Do nettles itch to snag crisp days on bristled burrs?
    Could wildlife somehow imagine a poorer patch,
    to contemplate nature’s bliss and brutal spurs,
    while wretchedly singular, from the universe detached?
    I loved the variation of this piece. It was my favorite. I expecially liked this line:

    Do nettles itch to snag crisp days on bristled burrs?

  7. #52
    feathers firefangled's Avatar
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    You need to send Everybody's Everybody to the UN. It should be posted in all the school classrooms of the world.

    It is important hearty stuff but it's light and less filling the way Everyone makes India Pale Ale.

    Wonderful poem, Auntie! I couldn't not read it several times.

  8. #53
    chercheur ~Sophia~'s Avatar
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    I second that (those)!!!!! Inspired and inspirational!

  9. #54
    All are at the crossroads qimissung's Avatar
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    It makes me feel happy inside.
    "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. #55
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    Wish List

    Wish List

    -Exoneration
    -Vindication
    -Justification

    -Communication
    -Compilation
    -Dedication

    -Validation
    -Re-forestation
    -a long vacation

    -less frustration
    -more elation
    -less putrefaction
    -more elevation

    -a white carnation
    -and a robust potation
    (less filling– tastes great!)

    -gratification
    -celebration
    -bebop-ulation

    -jubilation
    -congratulations
    -adulation

    Affirmation!

  11. #56
    chercheur ~Sophia~'s Avatar
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    Christmas is coming and you've been very very good! I think you'll get it all!

  12. #57
    feathers firefangled's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ~Sophia~ View Post
    Christmas is coming and you've been very very good! I think you'll get it all!
    Absolutely, once the list is checked twice and undergoes the summation.

  13. #58
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    Auntie 'splains' it all, or some of it. . .

    This reply begins with a thank you to all of the readers of this thread so far, especially those who posted such flattering replies.

    Please believe that I accept your attention and comments with gratitude, and, though I risk sounding like a stand-up comedian who tries to defuse all of his insulting jokes by ending with the comment -- "You've been a wonderful audience and I mean that most sincerely."

    I don't deserve any of this praise, and I mean that sincerely as well.

    Let me backtrack a little. Even though I really am grateful for your comments, I have to, as Desi commanded Lucy to do, "'splain" myself.

    Explaining, expanding, or otherwise commenting on one's own work is a "no no" in literary circles. At best, it sounds defensive; at worst, it pegs the writer as a mealy-mouthed, attention-starved bore (and "boor.")

    Even so, the opinions, sentiments, philosophies implied in all of the ditties above are not necessarily those of the author. The speaker and/or the "I" of the poem is usually not yours truly, and despite what pundits have been telling us since September of Aught One, it is still the Age of Irony. For instance, I, personally am not as materialistic as the speaker in # 9 above, although I am an American. #48 ("Everybody's Everybody") could have been written by an incorrigibly earnest undergraduate female or have an entirely different meaning if had come from a frat boy mocking her idealism. Maybe it's the voice of a seventh-grader, who is too young to know what the world is really like but old enough to know what he'd like it to be. Beats me-- and I wrote the damn thing!

    "Don't trust the teller, trust the tale," D. H. Lawrence famously said. All we have is what's on the page.

    We're all familiar with critics who rail about "the heresy of paraphrase," because with good verse, one can never separate the content from the form. Well, the title of this thread is "anti" poems, and I don't see myself as astute as Cleanth Brooks. ("Cleanth"-- how's that for a name for one's first-born?) Even so, critics such as Brooks know more than I, and they always will.

    Here's a case in point. As John Kilgore says in this excellent article:
    http://www.eiu.edu/~ipaweb/pipa/volume3/kilgore.htm

    it's deadly to try to speculate on a poet's intentions. Again, all we have is what's on the page, but we might have to read it more than a couple of times to glean what's there.

    For instance, Prof. Kilgore (a name's the same as a Kurt Vonnegut character) says that in their efforts to get students to "like" poetry by making it "relevant" to the lives of adolescents, teachers unwittingly do a disservice to the original poet, the poem, and to the teachers themselves. Imagine the topic of Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as an example of "peer pressure!" And it's interesting to note that Kilgore states that no one ever "complains" about "bad" poetry-- not principals, not parents, not students.

    One more thing about that article I couldn't ignore is the obvious notion that I could try to move heaven and earth and spend 24/7 writing verse for the rest of my life (give or take, with the shadow of what the news is calling "Ukrainian Super Flu" waiting in the wings) yet never, EVER produce a poem as good as "The Road Not Taken." And that's a fact, Jack!


    If I may be so bold to suggest that even poets themselves, as in Browning's famous quotation, might not be aware of the actual "reason" they're writing a particular piece. If there is a message, maybe we should just call Western Union (or we would, if we were all still living back in 1935.)

    There wasn't really any message in #55, which arose from attempting to have each line end with the same rhyming sound (more or less) as well as -- forgive me, Mssrs. Brooks et al. -- to defy the rule against writing verse containing "abstractions," the occasional white carnation aside. Sometimes, however, when we say we want certain materialistic items, what we really wish for are the abstractions: self-esteem, success, praise, attention, etc.

    And, the "message" in this particular reply is: again, thank you for your comments, but if, after reading this, you might want to go back and edit or delete them, certainly I wouldn't blame you.

    Still, thank you.

    Really.

  14. #59
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    I don't deserve any of this praise, and I mean that sincerely as well.
    Who deserves what praise or how much of it - or for that matter how much fault-finding - must have been an issue from early in our species history! But consider that it may give someone pleasure to praise you, would you really deny them that pleasure?

  15. #60
    Vincit Qui Se Vincit Virgil's Avatar
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    Auntie, I must say I've been amiss in not stopping here. I assumed everyone starts up a new thread for each new poem. You on the other hand collate them here under one roof. I shall make it a point to go back and read them and stop by more often.

    "Don't trust the teller, trust the tale," D. H. Lawrence famously said. All we have is what's on the page.
    That is my reading assumption for any work. I never assume autobiographical, though bits and pieces may, or quite likely be, be based on personal experience. But the reader has no clue and shouldn't assume he can tell. Essentially it's irrevelant.
    LET THERE BE LIGHT

    "Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena

    My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/

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