fragments of contemporary poetry

sorry for question which is not reffered straightly to the thread... some weeks ago i remeber the thread about jim morrison and his poetry, now i can´t find it.. anybody can help me?

THE ANTIWORLDS



1961



.....The Anti-great-academician
has got a blotting paper vision.

Long live creative Antiworlds,
great fantasy amidst daft words!
There are wise men and stupid peasants,
there are no trees without deserts.

There’re Antimen and Antilorries,
Antimachines in woods and forests.
There’s salt of earth, and there’s a fake.
A falcon dies without a snake.

I like my dear critics best.
The greatest of them beats the rest
for on his shoulders there’s no head,
he’s got an Antihead instead.

At night I sleep with windows open
and hear the rings of falling stars,
From up above skyscrapers drop and,
like stalactites, look down on us.

High up above me upside down,
stuck like a fork into the ground,
my nice light-hearted butterfly,
my Antiworld, is getting by.

I wonder if it’s wrong or right
that Antiworlds should date at night.
Why should they sit there side by side
watching TV all through the night?
They do not understand a word.
It’s their last date in this world.
They sit and chat for hours, and
they will regret it in the end!
The two have burning ears and eyes,
resembling purple butterflies...

...A lecturer once said to me:
«An Antiworld? It’s loonacy!»

I’m half asleep, and I would sooner
believe than doubt the man’s word...
My green-eyed kitty, like a tuner,
receives the signals of the world. {excerpt}




Translated by Alec Vagapov

Life at War



The disasters numb within us
caught in the chest, rolling
in the brain like pebbles. The feeling
resembles lumps of raw dough


weighing down a child’s stomach on baking day.
Or Rilke said it, ‘My heart. . .
Could I say of it, it overflows
with bitterness . . . but no, as though


its contents were simply balled into
formless lumps, thus
do I carry it about.’
The same war


continues.
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives,
our lungs are pocked with it,
the mucous membrane of our dreams
coated with it, the imagination
filmed over with the gray filth of it:


the knowledge that humankind,


delicate Man, whose flesh
responds to a caress, whose eyes
are flowers that perceive the stars,


whose music excels the music of birds,
whose laughter matches the laughter of dogs,
whose understanding manifests designs
fairer than the spider’s most intricate web,


still turns without surprise, with mere regret
to the scheduled breaking open of breasts whose milk
runs out over the entrails of still-alive babies,
transformation of witnessing eyes to pulp-fragments,
implosion of skinned penises into carcass-gulleys.


We are the humans, men who can make;
whose language imagines mercy,
lovingkindness we have believed one another
mirrored forms of a God we felt as good—


who do these acts, who convince ourselves
it is necessary; these acts are done
to our own flesh; burned human flesh
is smelling in Vietnam as I write. ... {excerpt}

A Performance Of Henry V At Stratford-Upon-Avon
Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language - Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today shall be my brother."
Say this is patriotic, out of date.
But you are wrong. It never is too late

For nights of stars and feet that move to an
Iambic measure; all who clapped were linked,
The theatre is our treasury and too,
Our study, school-room, house where mercy is

Dispensed with justice. ... {excerpt}

—from Loose Sugar

visitor fragment

Lately the visitor
looks the same as the enemy; why
should I agree to see her?

She withdraws to the various
outposts I invented earlier…

My visitor is on the other side,
I can’t see her from
the ring of fire I’ve been assigned…

{excerpt}

blue square

When I gave up hope of being complete
the sorrow deepened.
As that went too, a mystery replaced it.

Now it’s a faint blue square against which being
and nonbeing will always
wrestle, even in the afterlife…

{excerpt}

below below

In the corner of the heart
reserved for action, a pig is eating
the poppies of hell;

it doesn’t look up when I come in;
it doesn’t need
a confirming ideal. If there are flowers

there must be dirt below hell
where power has no meaning
but growth comes out of it.

{excerpt}

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/bo...a2&oref=slogin



--Juan Felipe Herrera Review entitled "Punk Half

Panther' by Stephen Burt 8/10/08 -- NYT book

review ----- "For Juan Felipe Herrera, poetry is all about breaking down barriers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/bo...html?ref=books

Books of The Times
Truth and Beauty? Only in Afterlife, a review by

Charles McGrath




Published: August 7, 2008 ---

POSTHUMOUS KEATS

A Personal Biography

By Stanley Plumly

392 pages. W. W. Norton & Company. $27.95.

My word against theirs, my sickle humor
against their last glass of chianti. Simple,
Direct and compassionate—in a way, let us say,
it is in my nature to be generous: to remind
the passengers about the last stop in Anguish-
town, to spell integration with an X, to scrub
the word Prison with sneaky vastness inside.

It is my own penchant for skull symphonies
my embossed headdress, especially, that brings
me to your carpeted doom-time; this flowery intro
serves a purpose; every spirit strand is an exit,
a cash & carry star of exits and entrances. ---



La Muerte

(Death)

by Juan Felipe Herrera

Cows

Over the shrug of the motorway bridge
they go, their vintage design
stirring vague pangs of grief
in salesmen and long-distance lorry drivers.

As a child I would scramble under the hedge
to consult with cows. I found them enigmatic
with their slow conversation, lathery breath,
eyes like planets. It seemed they had few plans,
gave scant thought to the question of destiny.
But sometimes there might be a calf,
with soft hooves, and a stunned expression -
a dumb prophet, visited by this future:

no dry-straw jostle of the cowshed.....

(excerpt, Cows from the collection Tilt)

http://www.pw.org/content/poetry_bro..._new_york_city --- Article: THE POETRY BROTHEL: POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK CITY

http://www.pw.org/content/poetry_bro..._new_york_city THE POETRY BROTHEL: POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK CITY (proper spelling of author...Jean Hartig

Below is a poem by 2008 Jackson Poetry Prize recipient, Tony Hoagland.

IN THE PAINTING THE ALLEGORY OF THE TEMP AGENCY,

the employers are depicted as wolves
with bloodred mouths and yellow greedy eyes,
pursuing the small-business employees through the dark

forest of capitalism. It is night, and
by the light of the minimum-wage moon we can see
the long pink tongues of the bosses hanging out

and the dilated white eyeballs of the employees as they flee
through woods, lacking any sense of
solidarity or collective organizing power.

Upon closer inspection the leaves beneath their feet
are shredded dollar bills which bear
the distressed expressions of ex-presidents

and the wind in the trees is making a long
howl of no health insurance or job security
and No, it is not really a very good painting,

heavy-handed in concept, and unintentionally
comic in a way that
invites us to laugh at the desire for justice –

Rather, the painting shows that the artist was untalented,
and is an allegory of how difficult it is
to be both skillful and sincere ... {excerpt}

Writing in the Afterlife



I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.


Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.


I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.


I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed


that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,


rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be


to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—

{excerpt}

cruel, cruel summer



either the postagestamp-bright inflorescence of wild mustard
or the drab tassel of prairie smoke, waving its dirty garments


either the low breeze through the cracked window
or houseflies and drawn blinds to spare us the calid sun


one day commands the next to lie down, to scatter: we're done
with allegiance, devotion, the malicious idea of what's eternal


picture the terrain sunk, return of the inland sea, your spectacle
your metaphor, the scope of this twiggy dominion pulled under


crest and crest, wave and cloud, the thunder blast and burst of swells
this is the sum of us: brief sneezeweed, brief yellow blaze put out


so little, your departure, one plunk upon the earth's surface,
one drop to bind the dust, a little mud, a field of mud


the swale gradually submerged, gradually forgotten
and that is all that is to be borne of your empirical trope: ... {excerpt}

oops... double post!